It Happened One Wedding

Praise for

Love Irresistibly

“The best book yet in her FBI/U.S. Attorney series.”

—
The Washington Post

“Great characters, a believable blend of romance, funny dialogue that all comes together in a story that flows with feeling and depth to it as well. It’s damn near perfect.”

—
Dear Author

“[James] writes smart, mature characters, with humor and a little mystery . . . You really can’t go wrong with a Julie James book.”

—
Smexy Books

“
Love Irresistibly
has firmly established Julie James as one of today’s premier contemporary romance authors. Fresh and inventive, full of intelligent people and witty repartee, this is a great story in a fantastic series.”

—
Fresh Fiction

“A ride filled with heat and passion . . . Truly entertaining.”

—
RT Book Reviews

“[James is] a master at creating sexual tension . . . It’s fitting that the last word in the book is ‘perfect,’ because this book is.”

—
USA Today

“Absolutely delicious . . . [A] brilliantly written book that is a must-read!”

—
The Romance Dish

“James never lets me down. The pacing is perfection, the writing is free-flowing and hits all the right notes . . . Fans of Jill Shalvis will enjoy the sidesplitting narration that James brings to all her books.”

—
Under the Covers Book Blog
(Top Pick)

About That Night

“Filled with fast quips and chemistry that heats up the pages. Readers will love the back-and-forth between the main characters . . . and the story is a fantastic romantic comedy. This one would be great on the big screen.”

—
RT Book Reviews
(Top Pick)

“Julie James’s best book to date! . . . It is utterly enchanting, sensual, and fabulous. Julie James gives a robust voice to contemporary courtships! Amusing and sexy, Julie James’s books are flirtatious temptations for every reader.”

—
Romance Junkies

“The sexiest book of Julie James’s yet . . . Smart [and] fun.”

—
Smexy Books

A Lot Like Love

“Julie James writes books I can’t put down.
A Lot Like Love
kept me up way past midnight!”

—Nalini Singh,
New York Times
bestselling author

“Sexy fun. Romance fans will pop their corks over this one.”

—
Library Journal

“Fueled by equal measures of seductive wit, edge-of-the-seat suspense, and scorching-hot sexual chemistry, James’s latest scintillating novel of romantic suspense is a rare treat.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“[James] exhibits her trademark sizzle and wit.”

—
Booklist

“You’ll fall head over heels for
A Lot Like Love
.”

—
USA Today

“Julie James . . . is mastering the genre of romantic suspense.”

—The News-Gazette
(East Central Illinois)

“James writes characters so real you can almost reach out and touch them. A delicious blend of romance and suspense.”

—
RT Book Reviews

“Just the right balance of charm, love, action, and touches of humor and suspense.”

—
Fresh Fiction

“There’s a whole lot to love about
A Lot Like Love
from Julie James. This is a superb read, plain and simple.”

—
Babbling About Books, and More

Something About You

“Smart, snappy, funny yet realistic. I can’t count the number of times I laughed while reading the book . . . This is one book I can totally recommend.”

—
Dear Author

“From first impressions to the last page, it’s worth shaking your tail feather over . . . This is a contemporary romance well worth savoring, and laughing over, and reading all over again.”

—
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

“Just plain fun! James is a master of witty repartee.”

—
RT Book Reviews

Practice Makes Perfect

“A tantalizing dessert—a delicious, delightful read that all hopeless romantics will enjoy.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

“A fast-paced romantic comedy, packed with hilarious situations and sharp dialogue . . . A talented writer . . . Expect a lot of sparks to fly.”

—
San Francisco Book Review

“A sophisticated contemporary romance . . . proves that [James] is a master at conveying both courtroom and behind-the-scenes maneuvering.”

—
Booklist
(starred review)

Just the Sexiest Man Alive

“Fantastic, frolicking fun . . . Read
Just the Sexiest Man Alive
, and you will be adding Julie James to your automatic-buy list!”

—Janet Chapman,
New York Times
bestselling author

“Witty banter and an amazing chemistry . . . bring this delightful story to life.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

“Remind[s] me of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy movies: they have that funny edge.”

—Eloisa James,
New York Times
bestselling author

“Witty and romantic.”

—
Publishers Weekly

Titles by Julie James

JUST THE SEXIEST MAN ALIVE

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

SOMETHING ABOUT YOU

A LOT LIKE LOVE

ABOUT THAT NIGHT

LOVE IRRESISTIBLY

IT HAPPENED ONE WEDDING

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

IT HAPPENED ONE WEDDING

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2014 by Julie James.

Excerpt from
Practice Makes Perfect
copyright © 2009 by Julie James.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

JOVE
®
is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

The “J” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-13790-5

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Jove mass-market edition / May 2014

Cover design by Rita Frangie.

Cover photograph of wedding shoes © Miljan Mladenovic / Getty Images.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To my parents

I’m indebted to several individuals who helped me make this book what it is today. First and foremost is Brent Dempsey, whose knowledge and insight were invaluable to the development of this story. I’m incredibly appreciative for all the assistance.

Thanks as well to Dave Scalzo for answering my many questions about the world of private equity and investment banking, and whose enthusiasm for the subject was key in the development stages of my heroine. I’m also particularly grateful to Pamela Clare for her knowledge of firearms and for going above and beyond in providing me with the technical expertise for a shooting range scene that, sadly, had to be cut from the book. Also thanks to Dr. Alex Lin for his obstetrics expertise.

I’m truly appreciative of my wonderful beta readers, Elyssa Papa and Kati Brown, two smart and thoughtful women who make my stories stronger and are a genuine pleasure to work with. Thanks to my editor, Wendy McCurdy, who always knows how to point me in the right direction with a story, and whose insight was instrumental in helping me through the early drafts of this book. Thanks to my publicist, Erin Galloway, and the entire team at Berkley, and also to my agent, Robin Rue, for all her support and knowledge and encouragement this past year.

Finally, to my husband, who married a lawyer and now lives instead with a woman who wakes him up at 3
A.M.
saying she has no clue where to go with her book. Thanks for always listening.

WELL-TRAINED IN THE
art of reading the subtle cues of body language, FBI Special Agent Vaughn Roberts was quite certain this date was going down in flames.

On the upside, it wasn’t
his
date that was crashing and burning. Rather, the unfortunate rendezvous was between the attractive auburn-haired woman who’d caught his eye when she’d walked into the coffee shop twenty minutes ago and some dude in a striped banker shirt who apparently was vying for the Guinness record for World’s Longest Story Ever.

The woman nodded along with the story, trying to appear interested. She blinked, stifled a yawn, and then quickly grabbed her coffee and took a sip to cover.

Vaughn smiled. He guessed that this was either a blind date or an online match, given the way the woman had looked around the shop when she first arrived, paused, and then walked over to Striped Banker Shirt’s table with a tentative smile. He also guessed, given the way things were going, that this would be the
only
date these two would ever have. But he gave the woman props for being polite while the guy continued to ramble on.

One of the most important first-date rules, Vaughn knew, was to ask
questions
. Women liked men who were curious about them—and, just as important, they liked men who paid attention to their answers. As a man who was trained to ask questions and pay careful attention to answers, he had something of an edge in this.

Striped Banker Shirt, on the other hand, obviously missed the memo.

Going back to his own business, Vaughn pulled out his cell phone and checked his e-mail. He had ten minutes to kill before meeting his younger brother, Simon, and Simon’s new girlfriend at a restaurant around the corner for dinner—a dinner he was very curious about.

This was his first time meeting Isabelle since his brother had begun dating her three months earlier. But Simon had mentioned her on more than one occasion, and that spoke volumes. Like Vaughn, Simon avoided talking too much about any one particular woman around his family. Doing so inherently invited numerous questions from their very traditionally minded, very Catholic mother, who’d been hoping for one of her sons to settle down for some time now. Having written Vaughn off as a lost cause—the mere idea of a thirty-four-year-old committed bachelor being thoroughly “un-Irish”—she’d pinned all her hopes on Simon.

But now here they were, the first time Simon had specifically asked Vaughn to meet someone he was dating. Not unexpectedly, Vaughn was under strict instructions to call his mother with a full report as soon as dinner was over.

A masculine laugh cut across the coffee shop, interrupting Vaughn’s thoughts. He glanced up from his phone, thinking perhaps the date he’d been observing had turned for the better.

No dice.

Striped Banker Shirt was still rambling away, now laughing at his
own
stories, because—obviously—not only was he a good-looking guy in an expensive suit with a knack for scintillating conversation, but he was
just so funny, too
!

Right.

Women liked confident men, no doubt. But as a guy who’d never had any problems meeting women—quite the contrary, actually—Vaughn also knew that a woman wanted a guy who expressed interest in getting to know
her
specifically. And Striped Banker Shirt had failed woefully on that score.

Vaughn saw the woman make a deliberate gesture of checking her watch. Curious, he watched to see what would happen next. The next time Striped Banker Shirt came up for air, she quickly jumped into the conversation with a smile. The smile temporarily silenced Striped Banker Shirt, as well it should.

She had a gorgeous smile.

It was about this time that Vaughn really began paying attention to
her
, instead of the awkward but interesting-to-watch-and-pass-the-time circumstances of their date. Her auburn hair fell past her shoulders in a stylish, layered cut. In fact, everything about her looked stylish and put-together, from her ivory ruffled blouse to her sleek gray pencil skirt to the light summer scarf around her neck. He guessed her to be in her early thirties, and in some kind of professional occupation, given her well-tailored clothes and classic heels.

In other words, she was smart, attractive, and seemingly single.

He could work with this.

After a few moments, Striped Banker Shirt stood up from the table, gesturing emphatically as if to say,
No problem, I have somewhere to be, too.
And obviously he had places to go because not only was he good-looking and funny with a fancy job,
but he was important, too
!

Sure.

Now Auburn had a decision to make. She could take the easy way out—
E-mail me, let’s do this again
, and then never write the guy back—or she could go for the more awkward, but honest,
This was nice, but I’m just not feeling a connection between us
.

Striped Banker Shirt pointed to his phone.
How about I call you sometime?
Then he waited to see if he was in.

Vaughn waited along with him.

The woman shook her head regretfully.

Vaughn’s interest shot up fivefold. As a man who valued honesty in his own relationships, he liked this woman’s style. It took balls to go with the truth in these circumstances.

Striped Banker Shirt clearly had not expected the rejection, and, for that, Vaughn was sympathetic. He watched as the guy asked the woman a question, ironically choosing this moment to finally give her an opportunity to speak. She appeared to answer graciously, saying something that made him nod and, with a bit of a bewildered expression, head for the door.

As soon as he left, she let out a sigh of relief and took her cell phone out of her purse.

Vaughn watched as she crossed one long leg over the other, getting comfortable in her chair.

It would be a shame to let a woman like that end her Friday night on such a sour note.

 • • • 

WELL, THAT HAD
been unfortunate.

Sidney Sinclair texted her best friend, Trish, who’d helped create her dating profile last Saturday night over a bottle of pinot noir. At the time, the idea of online dating had struck her as fun and exciting—and maybe it would still prove to be that—but thus far, she was batting 0 and 1.

BACHELOR NUMBER ONE IS A NO-GO,
she texted Trish.
HE TALKED TOO MUCH.

Within seconds, Trish texted back.
ISN’T TALKING A GOOD THING ON A FIRST DATE?

Of course, Trish was trying to put a positive spin on things. As the happily-married-with-child best friend of a single, thirty-three-year-old woman, it was part of the job description.

AS IN, DONKEY FROM SHREK TOO MUCH,
Sidney typed back.

OUCH. THAT’S NOT GOOD.

No kidding. William, aka Bachelor Number One, had seemed to have a lot of potential. As a trader, he was in the investment business. Right there, they’d had some common ground, something they—meaning her included—could talk about. And he’d said he liked to travel, go to the movies, and enjoyed trying new restaurants in the city. All of which fell solidly in the “plus” column.

What he hadn’t mentioned in his profile was that he liked to talk about these things in mind-numbing detail.

Not that Sidney couldn’t appreciate that people sometimes got nervous on first dates and might possibly talk a lot to compensate for that. But William hadn’t seemed nervous so much as full of himself—and that definitely merited a big old pass in her book.

One of the things Sidney had decided, now that she was back in Chicago after eight years in New York, was that she needed to have a plan when it came to dating. It had been six months since she’d broken her engagement with her now ex-fiancé—plenty of time to mourn the loss of that relationship.

Moving back to Chicago, her hometown, was her chance to get a fresh start. And to make the most of the opportunity, Sidney had decided to draw on the skills she’d cultivated in her professional life. As a director at one of the most successful private equity firms in the country, she had great instincts when it came to determining whether a company was a good or bad investment. Those instincts, in fact, were the reason her new firm had approached her three months ago, at the Manhattan-based investment bank where she’d previously worked, and asked her to manage a four-billion-dollar fund they’d nearly finished raising.

Now she simply needed to apply those same instincts to her personal life. One had to be somewhat businesslike in order to survive the thirtysomething dating scene; to be successful, she needed to be open to new prospects, but also decisive and quick to move on when a candidate looked to be a less-than-stellar investment.

Maybe some would say her approach to dating was too pragmatic, perhaps even somewhat aloof. Maybe some people would say that she should follow her heart instead of her head when it came to falling in love.

She used to be one of those people.

“At least the coffee’s good here.”

The rich masculine voice had a hint of rough grit to it. Sidney looked up from her cell phone and—

Criminy.

It was him. The hot guy she’d noticed when she’d first walked into the coffee shop. He was tall and somehow managed to look ruggedly sexy, despite the rather conservative dark gray suit and blue tie he wore. Maybe it was the short cut of his thick, brown hair. Or his keen hazel eyes. Or his strong, chiseled jaw with that just-perfect amount of five-o’clock shadow.

Too bad she had no clue what he was talking about.

“The coffee?” she asked. “As opposed to . . . ?”

“The conversation,” he said. “Your date looked like it could’ve gone better.”

“You noticed that, did you?” She wasn’t sure how she felt about the fact that a perfect stranger had been paying such close attention to her date.

“Yes. But only because I’m trained to notice things.” He flashed her a smile. “It’s not like I’m some creepy perv or something.”

“Probably that’s exactly what a creepy perv would say.”

“True.” There was a teasing gleam in his eyes. “I could show you my badge, if that’ll make you feel better.”

Sidney looked him over more closely. Presumably, this reference to a “badge” meant he was in some kind of law enforcement. She could see that—he had the bold air of someone accustomed to being in a position of authority. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not the first strange woman you’ve offered to show your badge to?”

“Trust me, in my line of work, a lot of strange women have seen my badge. Strange men, too.” With that, he grabbed the chair on the opposite end of the table and sat down.

Um. . . hello?
Sidney gestured to the chair he’d just helped himself to. “What are you doing?”

He looked at her as if this was obvious. “Starting a conversation.”

“But I don’t even know you.”

“That’s why I’m starting a conversation. Let’s begin with the basics. Like your name.”

Ah, right. Sidney knew exactly what was happening here. This guy had seen her on her failed date, had obviously deduced that she was single, and now thought she was easy pickings.

“I’m not giving you my name,” she said.

“All right, then. ‘Ms. Doe,’ it is,” he said, undeterred. “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself, Ms. Doe?”

She leveled him with her best “Scram, buddy” gaze, perfected after eight years of living in New York. “So we’re going with the good-cop pickup routine now? How original.”

His tone turned wicked. “I can easily switch to the bad-cop routine, if you like.”

Sidney fought back a blush at the innuendo. “I’m betting those kinds of comments normally work really well for you, don’t they?”

“The question is, are they working for you?”

“Not at all.”

“Damn. Guess I’d better switch tactics, then.”

“And I’d love to stick around for that. Really.” Sidney checked her watch. “But, unfortunately, I have a dinner I need to get to.”

He surprised her then.

His expression turned more earnest. “Okay, look. Maybe I’m coming on a little strong here. Normally I would’ve thought up some witty opening line, followed by this whole cute pickup routine in which I charm and impress you—yes, I see the skeptical look there, but you’ll have to trust me on this: it’s quality stuff. But like you, I have somewhere I need to be. So I’m under the gun.

“The simple truth is, you’ve had me intrigued from the moment you walked into this coffee shop. And I’d like to know more. You don’t have to give me your number or even your name. Just meet me here tomorrow, same time. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee, we’ll talk, and then you can decide whether I really am the asshole you’re thinking I might be.” A smile curled at the edges of his mouth. “I might actually surprise you on that front.”

Confident, flirty, and drop-dead gorgeous. It was a lethal combination that Sidney had no doubt typically played very well for this guy. She could easily say
Why not?
, meet him again tomorrow, and if he was as cocky as she thought he might be, that would be the end of that. She’d get a free cup of coffee out of it and the cheap thrill of having a guy who looked like him chasing after her.

But.

The problem was, she knew this guy. She’d dated this guy. Hell, she’d been
engaged
to this guy. Manhattan was crawling with guys just like him: confident, good-looking, and slick as all get-out. And she was plenty familiar with the way things would turn out because she’d once gone down this exact road with Brody: this guy wouldn’t actually be an asshole tomorrow, instead he would be smooth and smart and witty, and coffee would turn into drinks and drinks into dinner, and she would have flutters of excitement in her stomach throughout every moment of it. Blah, blah, blah.

She was so
over
this guy.

Because, in truth, any woman who allowed herself to be swept up in the romantic fantasy of dating this kind of guy would be ignoring one crucial fact.

This guy was a bad investment.

And she knew that better than anyone.