Risk Everything. Janie Crouch

       Chapter One

      In the past year Bree Daniels had been chased across the country, shot at, kidnapped, almost blown up, strangled and had watched the man she loved almost bleed to death right in front of her.

      But she could honestly say none of that was as treacherous as what she was going through now.

      Planning her wedding.

      Seriously. When a bad guy with a gun or a knife came at you, you knew you were in trouble. But nobody suspected that agreeing to get married and giving the ladies of the small town where you’d made your home free rein in planning said nuptials was also just as dangerous.

      If they were ever arrested, wedding planners would need their own special section in prison. In isolation. Because otherwise they would take over and rule the place, for sure.

      For the past seven months the women of Risk Peak—mostly Cassandra, her good friend and future sister-in-law, and Cheryl, owner of the Sunrise Diner and surrogate mother to Bree—had tracked Bree down, no matter where she’d tried to hide, demanding answers to impossible questions of all types.

      Like what kinds of flower arrangements Bree wanted. And whether she wanted a custard cream, buttercream or whipped cream to go along with the raspberry ganache in the cake.

      When Bree had finally had a chance to look up what a ganache was, she wanted to throw her computer across the room. Why the heck hadn’t they just said raspberry filling?

      The ladies were so enthusiastic about the event that Bree wasn’t even sure they would notice if she fled the state.

      The thought had crossed her mind.

      But she was trying to be more normal. Normal women were excited about all this wedding planning, right? Cassandra had shown her the scrapbook she’d made from the ages of seven to eighteen. That thing had roughly four million pages of pictures of wedding gowns, color schemes, flower types and bridesmaids’ dresses.

      Bree had mentioned there were much better ways to organize the information electronically, but Cassandra had just rolled her eyes and said that wasn’t the point.

      Bree wasn’t exactly sure what was the point, but she knew that most women were a lot more excited about this whole planning process than she was.

      Bree just wanted to be Mrs. Tanner Dempsey. She wished she could go back in time and punch her past self in the face for not taking him up on his offer/threat to drag her in front of the nearest county judge and get married right away after they’d gotten engaged.

      Well, the second time they’d gotten engaged.

      The first time he’d asked her it had been right after a monster from her past had almost blown them both up. They’d been covered in smoke, bleeding and a little shaky on their feet. But Tanner had dropped to one knee right there and asked her to marry him, not wanting to wait a second longer.

      The second time, a few weeks later on Valentine’s Day, Tanner had taken her deep into the land of the ranch they both loved and asked her again—so romantically—at sunset, the gorgeous Rocky Mountains in the distance.

      He’d explained that when she told their grandkids about how he’d asked her to marry him, he wanted this to be the story she would tell.

      She planned to tell both.

      But the next day when Tanner had threatened to drag her to get married right then, she should’ve taken him up on it.

      Maybe then she wouldn’t be going through the most vicious of wedding planning torture: the gown fittings. The gown everything. She’d almost rather be on the run for her life than be twisted, pulled on, poked and prodded and, worst of all, oohed over.

      “My brother is going to lose his…stuff when he sees you in this wedding gown.”

      Cassandra Dempsey Martin was the only person Bree knew who could out curse a seasoned sailor yet still be in tears at the sight of the wedding gown.

      Cheryl grabbed Cassandra’s hand that was fluttering emotionally in midair and nodded. “Oh, honey, it really does look more gorgeous every time you put it on.”

      Bree grimaced. “It’s just so much money to spend on a dress that I’m only going to wear once. That’s just so impractical. Why would I do this?”

      It went against every instinct Bree had to be impractical. She was nothing if not logical, orderly and pragmatic.

      Cassandra rolled her eyes. “It’s your wedding dress. It’s supposed to be impractical. Because if you do it right, you only do it once. Because you deserve to wear a beautiful gown walking down the aisle. And besides, it’s really not that much for a wedding dress. Most gowns cost five times that much.”

      Bree just stared at herself in the three-way mirror. She had to admit, it was a beautiful, elaborate dress. It made her waist seem trimmer, and her hips, which had filled out to a much more feminine shape over the last few months since she was eating regularly and not on the run for her life, flared nicely under the material.

      But it was too fancy. Too much lace. Too many sequins. Too much of that itchy white stuff. It was a gorgeous gown, but it just wasn’t her. She shouldn’t have let herself be talked into it, but Cheryl and Dan—the people who had taken her in when she first arrived in Risk Peak basically living out of her car—had insisted on buying her a gown. Then Bree had made the mistake of taking Cassandra and a group of their friends shopping with her for one.

      She’d put this gown on in the dressing room with the associate’s help and then almost taken it back off again. It was too fancy. But the damned associate had talked her into showing it to her friends.

      There was so much crying and cursing from her friends when they saw the dress, Bree figured they must know something she didn’t. And when it came to dresses, that was a lot. So she’d gotten it.

      And it was still just as beautiful. She couldn’t deny that.

      Plus, if she was honest, she could admit it wasn’t really even the dress that had her in such a tizzy. It was the fact that in two weeks she was going to have to stand up in front of over five hundred people—that was more people than she’d ever talked to in her entire life combined—and say her vows to Tanner. Vows they’d agreed to personalize and write themselves.

      If Bree speaking in front of a huge group of people about her emotions wasn’t