Too Sexy For Marriage
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Excerpt
Dear Reader1
Title Page
Dear Reader2
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Copyright
Once upon a time there lived the Marriage Makers—three fairy godmothers. Their job was to look after all the triplets in their domain, including the Knight triplets. One by one each fairy sprinkled her dust…
The first fairy godmother sneezed and covered baby Jason (Too Sexy for Marriage) with more purple and silver fairy dust than he ought to have had, giving him too much common sense and sex appeal.
The second fairy godmother, convinced she could do better, ripped open the lid of her container, spewing gold and emerald green dust all over baby Ryan (Too Stubborn to Marry), bestowing him with an overdose of humor and stubbornness.
The third fairy godmother imperiously produced a velvet pillow, edged in fringe, that she tipped, sprinkling baby Anastasia (Too Smart for Marriage) with midnight blue and fiery red. Anastasia would be the one with intelligence and a little too much attitude.
Could they all live happily ever after?
Dear Reader,
We have so many goodies for you this month, I barely know where to begin! Longtime reader favorite Cathie Linz has joined the Love & Laughter lineup with a very special trilogy called MARRIAGE MAKERS. Susan Elizabeth Phillips says, “Cathie Linz’s fun and lively romances are guaranteed to win readers’ hearts! A shining star of the romance genre.” Jennifer Greene adds, “Every book has sparkle and wit; Cathie is truly a unique voice in the genre.” Cathie is also the winner of the Romantic Times Storyteller of the Year Award as well as having been nominated for Career Achievement in Love and Laughter. Her trilogy about the Knight triplets includes lots of emotion, comedy and the antics of some well-intentioned but bumbling fairy godmothers. Don’t miss Too Stubborn to Marry in June and Too Smart for Marriage in September.
Bullets over Boise is a fabulous comic mystery from bright new star Kristin Gabriel. Caterer Carly Weston wants to be famous for her meat loaf, not for dead bodies in her kitchen. Still, being the star witness in a murder trial means she needs the expert protection of Agent Jack Brannigan. Only, Carly prefers seeing sexy Jack wearing an apron rather than a gun…
Don’t miss these two very special and wonderful stories.
Malle Vallik
Associate Senior Editor
Too Sexy for Marriage
Cathie Linz
Dear Reader,
Who doesn’t love a good fairy tale? I know I do. When I was a little girl, the first movie I ever saw was Sleeping Beauty, and I can still remember thinking the princess had great hair and the prince was really cute. But I was most impressed by the fairy godmothers and the colorful magic they possessed. This quickly became my favorite fairy tale and my favorite Disney classic.
My fondness for fairy godmothers continues to this day, which is why I’m so delighted to be working on this very special trilogy with Betty, Muriel and Hattie Goodie—a trio of novice fairy godmothers who each have an attitude and know how to use it. They are not as proficient, however, with their magic…as you will soon see. Everything that can go wrong does. But these intrepid fairy godmothers are nothing if not persevering in their quest as marriage makers who must unite true soul mates.
So sit back, kick off your shoes, keep some chocolatechip cookies handy and be prepared to meet a man who is too sexy for marriage and the woman who gets caught up in a bet that she can snag him. I hope you enjoy reading Jason and Heather’s story as much as I did writing it!
Happy reading,
Cathie Linz
For Meg Ruley, Agent of the Century who believes in magic. Thanks for believing in mine and sharing the dream.
Prologue
“HOW HARD CAN THE JOB be?” Betty Goodie demanded of her two sisters.
“The responsibility is tremendous,” Muriel Goodie stated solemnly.
“Does this hat go with this dress?” Hattie Goodie fussed with the bluebird on the wide brim before daintily patting her silver curls in place. “Maybe I should have worn my lilac gown instead. Is this shade of blue the right color for a christening?”
“Look,” Betty said sternly, “let’s just focus on the matter at hand, shall we?”
Hattie, the resident worrier in the group, leaned over the church balcony railing to ask, “Are you sure no one can see us up here?”
“Of course they can’t see us,” Betty snapped, shoving the bangs of her Prince Valiant haircut off her forehead. “We’re fairy godmothers, for petunia’s sake. It’s our job to be invisible.”
“And it’s our job to look after all the triplets born in our domain,” Muriel added. “Oh, dear, look…the poor Knight triplets are crying.”
“What a racket!” Betty exclaimed, clapping her hands over her ears and nearly jabbing herself in the eye with her magic wand. “Let’s do our job and get out of here.”
“Don’t be so cavalier about this,” Muriel scolded. “We have to do this right, or else!”
“Or else we’re out on our fairy godmother bottoms.” Betty glared at Muriel. “I know that. Try and make me nervous, why don’t you?”
“We’re nervous because this is our very first day on the job,” Hattie noted, as she smoothed her frilly sky blue gown. “Not that our predecessors didn’t have the right, after 250 years, to retire…oh, dear, this flying is such a tricky business,” she added as she bumped into the head of a gilded angel hanging high on the church wall. She grabbed the carving before it tumbled in the sunbeams streaking through the stained glass windows and fell onto the small crowd gathered below. Batting her wings as she rehung the ornamental object, she peered down over her shoulder to say, “I do hope the gentlemen can’t look up my skirt with me hovering up here like this.”
“I told you, they can’t see us.” To prove her point, Betty swooped down and buzzed around the minister’s head three times before shooting back up to bestow a gloating smile upon Muriel.
“Show-off!” Muriel’s sniff was disapproving.
“Fussbudget!” Betty retorted. “Stop imitating a stiff-necked stork and let’s get this show on the road.” Being the oldest of the Goodie triplets, Betty was used to giving orders and even more used to having them obeyed.
Tugging on her left ear lobe with one hand, she concentrated on materializing the all-so-important fairy dust into the palm of her other hand. With a showy flash, a glass jar appeared right on target. Betty’s triumphant look continued as she easily opened the container.
“You store your fairy dust in a grape-jelly jar?” Muriel asked with a disbelieving shake of her head.
“Never mind that.” Hattie’s voice quivered with excitement. “This is our moment to shine!”
Instead, it was Betty’s moment to…sneeze.
Sparkling fairy dust, in shimmery silver and regal purple, settled over one of the babies wrapped in a blue receiving blanket.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Hattie wailed. “You got dust on my dress!”
“Forget your dress, what about the baby?” Muriel said in an apprehensive voice. “That dust is powerful. It affects the entire future of the babies, regulating their personal characteristics. We were told over and over again how important it was to dispense it in just the right proportions!”
Betty shrugged. “So baby Jason Knight gets a little more silver and purple than usual…wha
t characteristics do silver and purple control, anyway?”
“Common sense and sex appeal,” Muriel replied.
“Works for me,” Betty said.
Muriel was infuriated. “How are we ever going to get this job done when you can’t even do a simple thing like shake out a little fairy dust? You’re not taking this seriously enough, that’s the problem,” she muttered in disgust, the spiky tufts of her short white hair sticking up from her cowlick and giving her the appearance of a woodpecker. Reaching inside one of the myriad pockets of her photographer’s vest—her favorite attire—she lifted out a compartmentalized container that looked like it should have been in a chemistry lab. “Unlike you, I store the tools of my trade properly. All I have to do is open the lid and…” She paused to struggle with the stubborn hinge.
“You were saying?” Betty smirked.
“All I have to do is open the blasted thing…” Muriel angrily braced the container against her ample bosom and put all her strength into yanking the lid open. “Aha!” she exclaimed triumphantly, once the obstinate lid finally gave with a suddenness that caused a hefty amount of the contents at the far end of the container—glittering gold and intense emerald green dust—to fly out.
“Nice going,” Betty said mockingly. “A direct hit on baby number two, Ryan of the powerful lungs—listen to that little guy scream—who just got overdosed with what?”
“Too much from the humor and stubbornness end of the characteristic scales, I fear,” Hattie noted with a shake of her head. “Really, girls, I can’t believe how the two of you have botched this job. Let me show you how it should be done.”
“Fine, Miss Smarty-pants,” Muriel retorted. “Let’s see you do it.”
“Well, to begin with, presentation is everything,” Hattie stated with an airy wave of her magic wand. As always, her wand matched the color of her dress.
With the second wave of her wand, a royal purple velvet pillow edged in a golden fringe appeared in midair. The top of the pillow was draped with elegant folds of sheer chiffon shot with strands of gold and purple threads. Nestled in the midst of all this splendor was a glorious gilded vessel adorned with cherubs.
“Now that’s more like it,” Hattie noted, taking her eyes off her creation long enough to shoot her two sisters an imperious look.
The small break in her concentration was just enough to disturb the floating pillow’s precarious balance, upsetting the elaborate vessel with its fairy dust along with it.
Alarmed, Hattie reached out to make a grab for it. But all she ended up accomplishing was a somersault in midair that would have made a gymnast proud. The hem of her frothy sky blue skirt caught on her hat as it drunkenly tipped over one of her eyes, leaving her to helplessly watch the overabundance of midnight blue and fiery red dust pour daintily down upon the youngest Knight triplet, Anastasia.
“Oh, horsefeathers!” Hattie exclaimed when she finally managed to right her hat, her dress, and herself. Peering down at the wailing baby girl, she said, “You know, those two colors do make a lovely shade of plum. I wonder how too much intelligence and attitude will work on a girl?”
Disconcerted, the fairy godmothers gazed down at the havoc they’d unwittingly caused.
As the poor parents looked on in dismay, baby Anastasia cried and waved her hands, smacking the poor minister on the nose as he bent over her. Propped against his father’s shoulder, in between gusty wails, baby Ryan would pause to grin at some inner joke. Baby Jason, held in his frazzled mother’s arms, looked very disapproving of the entire thing as he joined his siblings in their painfully loud vocal outburst.
“I can tell you one thing,” Betty noted, tugging on her snowy bangs with a heavy sigh. “I think we’re going to have our hands full with these three! If we don’t go deaf first!”
1
Thirty-three years later, 1998
“YOU LUCKY DOG, you! Normally when I eat here it takes me ten minutes just to get a waitress’s attention. Today I’m with you and we’ve got four waitresses hovering around us at all times.”
“Maybe if you tipped better, you’d get better service,” Jason Knight retorted, giving fellow attorney Gordon Metcheff a reprimanding look meant to shut him up. It didn’t work.
Gordon might look like a blond choirboy, but he had the heart of a shark.
“This has nothing to do with tips,” Gordon said, raising his eyebrow as he sat back in the booth. The restaurant was located near the courthouse and hadn’t been redecorated since Kennedy was president The red flocked wallpaper was showing signs of wear, but the food in the place was not only good but quickly served, important for lawyers with harried schedules. “This has to do with you being named Chicago’s Sexiest Bachelor.”
“Why don’t you say it a little louder? I think there are still a few in the back who might not have heard you the first time.”
“Can I get you some more coffee?” a perky brunette server asked, leaning close to Jason to show him her cleavage. He could have sworn she’d undone another button on her white blouse since the last time she’d stopped by their table, four minutes ago. She’d also written her name and phone number on a paper napkin and slipped it to him with his grilled chicken sandwich.
“No, thanks. We’re fine,” he said, giving the waitress a no-nonsense look that he hoped would kill her ardor, for once and for all. Couldn’t a man enjoy his lunch in peace?
“I’m glad to hear that. I like my customers to be fine. And you certainly do qualify as being fine.” She gave Jason a blatant once-over. “If you need anything, you just give me a whistle.”
Jason just shook his head in dismay as the waitress sashayed off, moving her hips in a way that made Mae West seem demure in comparison.
“Who can whistle?” Gordon groaned. “My mouth’s dry.”
“That’s because your tongue is hanging out.” Jason impatiently tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “Can we stick to business here?” Gordon worked in the public defender’s office, and Jason’s work as a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office meant they were on opposing sides in court. “I thought we were having lunch to discuss the Fiarelli case.”
“Later. First let me bask in this spotlight you’ve got shining on you,” Gordon said, ogling the women who were ogling their booth.
“Some spotlight,” Jason grumbled as two women in another booth giggled and pointed at him.
Gordon was not sympathetic. “Hey, if it happened to me, I’d be shouting the news from the rooftops. What a brilliant way to meet babes. So how does it feel?”
“I admit that at first it was…interesting, but now it’s interfering with my work. My desk is covered with strange mail reeking of perfume. Would you believe that I actually got some woman’s underwear in the mail yesterday? She sent them to me along with a photo of her modeling them.”
“Were they thongs, by any chance?” Gordon was practically drooling onto his roast beef sandwich. “Please tell me they were thongs.”
“Can I get you some more ice water?” another waitress, a blonde this time, inquired in a husky voice.
“No.” Jason was curt with her, seeing as she’d already spilled several ice cubes in his lap because she’d been batting her eyelashes at him instead of paying attention to what she was doing. Luckily, the water pitcher had been practically empty at the time. “No more ice or water.”
Pouting, the waitress flounced away.
“Let’s get back to that photo,” Gordon suggested. “Clearly it upset you. The least I can do is take it off your hands for you. Do you have it with you? You better give me the underwear, too.”
Jason was not amused. “This is no laughing matter. Do you have any idea how much ribbing I’ve taken at the office? I mean, I like a woman’s attention as much as the next guy, but there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing.”
“I wouldn’t know. Women aren’t exactly lining up to go out with me,” Gordon said, grimacing.
“They were lining up at the health club to u
se the exercise bike next to mine. It was embarrassing. I could kill my sister for doing this to me.”
“What’s your sister got to do with it?”
“She’s the one who sent in my picture to Chicagoan Magazine.”
“And they published it without your authorization?”
“No. It turns out the publisher is a college buddy of our illustrious district attorney.”
“And since you’re a rising star in the D.A.’s office, you didn’t want to rock the boat by refusing to let your boss’s friend run your picture and crown you Chicago’s Sexiest Bachelor.”
“That’s it in a nutshell.”
“Then take my advice, buddy.”
“Which is?”
“Sit back and enjoy the attention while it lasts. And be sure to pass any women you don’t want in my direction.”
“PSST, WAKE UP!” Heather Grayson whispered to her friend and radio producer, Nita Weisskopf, as the two of them sat in the far corner of the crowded conference/break room. Several of the smaller tables had been pushed together to form one long table around which most of the staff of WMAX sat in various stages of attentiveness. Latecomers like Heather and Nita were relegated to the back, near the refrigerator that was on the blink. “The meeting is almost over.”
“I’m wide-awake,” Nita whispered back.
Heather wasn’t buying that for a minute. “You were snoring.”
In her late forties, or so she said, Nita was a bleached blonde with golden skin and strong eyebrows. Both tough and glamorous, she had innate style, confidence and moxy. She might have been able to con most of the people in that room, but not Heather. That alone had made the two of them bond immediately.