Planning a wedding is so romantic . . . except when it’s not yours, and you’re planning it with the guy you’re secretly crushing on.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Zoe Allison’s The Wedding Engagement, which is out now.
Scottish schoolteacher Liv Holland has a secret. She’s been carrying a torch for Arran Adebayo, her brother’s best friend, for years. A blind date gone wrong cements in Liv’s mind that Arran has no romantic interest in her whatsoever. But then, with her brother set to marry her own best friend, she and Arran are enlisted to help plan the festivities…
After being left at the altar by his ex, single father Arran is having trouble managing his growing feelings towards the woman who is both his best friend’s sister and his son’s teacher: Liv. Then his mind is blown when fate thrusts them together for an unexpected blind date, but he messes up his chance to tell her how he feels.
As the big day approaches and Liv and Arran’s connection intensifies, their chemistry chafes against their checkered romantic histories. Risking everything for love could mean losing each other forever . . . or being the next ones to find their happy ever after.
EXCERPT
Finishing off the last flick of the curling iron, Liv paused to check out her efforts. Hair curled—check. Smoky eye and winged eyeliner—check. Little black skater-style dress with best lacy underwear hidden underneath—check.
She purposely hadn’t mentioned her blind date to Arran when she’d dropped Jayce off earlier on, feeling rather self-conscious about the whole thing. Luckily, he’d only asked what she was doing the next day, not that evening, so she hadn’t needed to make something up. She sucked at lying and loathed doing it.
At first she’d resisted the idea when her friend Maya had told her about the new blind-date app—BlindLove—but then her resolve had crumbled when she’d pondered how long it had been since she’d been on a date. It would be fun to find something casual again, and it didn’t need to progress to anything serious.
She’d admitted to Maya and their other best friend, Elise, that she was going on the date but had asked them not to mention it to anyone because she couldn’t be bothered with the inevitable pressure to pursue a serious relationship. People really were obsessed with converting single women’s relationship status to “coupled up.”
Her phone buzzed, signaling that her taxi was approaching, so she hurried down the stairs to put on her black heels and biker-style jacket before heading out to the waiting car.
On the way to the bar, she opened the BlindLove app again. The app’s algorithm wasn’t based on information such as job status or hobbies, but matched people anonymously using themes such as values, character traits, and life goals. Her date’s profile indicated that he liked physical/slapstick and wordplay-type humor (tick), liked kids (tick), and was just getting into dating again and not looking for anything serious (big tick). He valued honesty, integrity, family, and friends above any monetary or materialistic possessions. He also shared her dreams of taking some time to travel before coming back to Glenavie to settle down. Both felt that this town of theirs carried a central, special place in their hearts.
Her date’s handle was GlenavieTimelord and she wouldn’t discover his real name until they met in person.
Liv scanned the rest of their messages. Careful not to reveal any details that would unblind them, they’d discussed their mutual love of Doctor Who and eighties movies.
Liv popped the phone into her handbag, peering through the windshield to see if they were nearly there.
Once the taxi pulled up and she paid the driver, the nerves really set in. She glanced down at herself as she crossed the threshold, hoping that her date would like the way she looked. As she scanned the crowd, searching for a man also wearing a homemade badge with David Tennant’s face on it (they had decided to opt for this as their call sign, both being Whovians and in agreement that David was all-round awesome), she hoped that in addition she would like the way he looked. And then perhaps the lacy underwear wouldn’t have come out for nothing . . .
Her gaze landed on a badge sporting David Tennant’s smiling face, attached to a dark T-shirt stretching over an appealingly toned chest. And upon raising her eyes to her date’s face, she found herself staring straight into familiar honey-colored eyes.
Excerpted from THE WEDDING ENGAGEMENT by Zoe Allison published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2024
