This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Robin Lanier
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ISBNs: 978-1-5387-5328-6 (mass market); 978-1-5387-5329-3 (ebook)
E3-20210406-NF-DA-ORI
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
About the Author
Praise for Hope Ramsay
Also by Hope Ramsay
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Acknowledgments
I started writing A Wedding on Lilac Lane just about the same time that the governor of Virginia imposed a stay-at-home order to halt the spread of COVID-19. Writing a book is always a lonely affair, and you might think that writing a lighthearted book in the middle of a pandemic would be harder than normal. But it turned out not to be. In fact, all that social distancing made it hard to goof off. There just wasn’t much else to do but write. So here’s to silver linings.
Many thanks to Cathy Corman Hill for directing my local Christmas Chorale and showing me how a disciplined choral director can get the most out of a group of amateur singers. Cathy gave me many ideas that found their way into Brenda McMillan’s character, not only in this novel, but in the prequel Christmas story, “Joy to the World,” included in the anthology A Little Country Christmas.
Rev. St. Pierre’s Palm Sunday sermon included in this novel was heavily influenced by Fr. Michael K. Marsh. His wonderful sermon “Returning the Colt—A Palm Sunday Sermon, March 26, 2018” is readily available online.
I’d also like to thank the writers of the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood’s morning writing group, who showed up in the chat room every weekday like clockwork. Not only did we get a lot of writing done during the early days of the pandemic, we also shared recipes for stress-baking our way through it. Thank you, Nancy, Heather, Susan, and Cristina, for being such great friends.
Finally, as always, many thanks to my longtime editor, Alex Logan, who never fails to give me exactly the right advice to fix the problem I thought was unfixable. She makes every book so much better.
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Chapter One
Dylan Killough couldn’t decide what to make of Ella McMillan. She stood on the stage with a fiddle tucked under her chin as she played a mournful accompaniment to “Molly Malone.” A crown of green carnations encircled her brow, and her feather earrings floated on the air as she played. With each stroke of her bow, another lock of unruly auburn hair tumbled out of the messy knot at the top of her head.
She looked as if she’d stepped out of an Irish fairy tale. But the boho dress and feathered earrings suggested that she reliably voted the Democrat line, if she voted at all.
“I do love listening to your daughter play the fiddle,” Dad said, beaming at Brenda McMillan, Ella’s mother and Dad’s current girlfriend.
The whole Dad-Brenda thing unsettled Dylan even though it shouldn’t have. Dad had been a widower for decades. He should have a girlfriend, even if he was in his fifties. But maybe not Brenda. Dylan didn’t like Brenda much.
Or her daughter, who had arrived around the holidays, moved into Brenda’s beach house out at Paradise Beach, and evidently had no plans to actually work for a living or leave anytime soon. Since Dylan and his father shared a house, Dad had recently resorted to sneaking away in the afternoons or taking long weekends with Brenda on the mainland.
Dad had never brought her home for an overnight. Thank goodness. The mornings after in the kitchen they shared might get really awkward.
His father was acting like a sex-crazed teenager, which embarrassed Dylan. The geriatric set in Magnolia Harbor, many of whom were patients in Dylan’s family practice, seemed to regard Brenda and Dad’s romance as the juiciest topic du jour. And they thought nothing about asking Dylan for details, which he forthrightly refused to supply.
Dylan took a sip of his Guinness and glanced at his cell phone, checking the score for the NCAA First Four game being played in Dayton. Clemson, his alma mater, was down by two points.
He would much rather be home lounging on the sofa watching the ball game. But no, Dad had made his presence at this dinner mandatory because Ella was subbing for Connor O’Neal at the yacht club’s annual St. Patrick’s Day bash. Connor, one of Dylan’s patients, was down with a late-season case of the flu, which had been bad timing for a guy who made a living playing Irish music.
“Well, that wraps up our first set of
