Happy Monday, Friends!
Today, Davalynn Spencer has stopped by to talk about her hero and heroine in the novella Taste and See featured in the anthology collection Always a Wedding Planner. It releases tomorrow and I’m super excited to share it with you. Grab a cup of tea (or coffee) and chat with her!
About the Book
Love Is Only Business for 4 Wedding Planners
Discover how keeping secrets from each other threatens four women’s friendships, wedding business, and own ability to find love in Loveland, Colorado.
Business partners Felicity Edwards, the cake baker; Kiki Bell, the seamstress; Cassie Blackthorn, the coordinator; and Chef Saffron Delarosa are best of friends in a town that is a romantic wedding destination for many couples—who work together at Weddings by Design to make every bride’s special day perfect. Could each falling into their own romance be the key to working out their differences and learning to trust each other—and God—with their futures?
“Taste and See”
At twenty-eight, Saffron (Ronnie) Fare is too busy cooking for other people’s weddings to cook up romantic plans of her own. She doesn’t have time for a boyfriend, so she rarely glances at groomsmen or any men, for that matter, and gives all her attention to making a bride and groom’s special day the most delectable it can be – from fruit-and-soda mocktinis, hors d’oeuvres and small-plate specialties to buffets and full sit-down dinners – whatever the couples want.
Sure, life is sometimes lonely, but her mother and Gramma ‘Cine taught her how to cope during her early teens after cancer took her Daddy. They taught her to cook and gave her a purpose. Today as the director of Food & Beverages for Weddings By Design, she’s busy and fulfilled. At least that’s what she tells her retired-schoolteacher mom who drags her along on birthday cruises. The latest Caribbean holiday left Ronnie with a sinus infection that cancelled not only her olfactory nerve but her sense of taste as well. She’s afraid her three business partners will can her if they learn she can’t tell the difference between a carrot and a catfish. Who wants a chef that can’t taste or smell?
When a gas leak shuts down her commercial kitchen, dollar signs threaten to shut down her life. But a friend offers the name of a licensed plumber who will give her a break. When a guy shows up at her front door in boots, jeans, and cocked-back ball cap claiming to be a plumber, his green eyes and good looks disarm Ronnie’s good sense. Desperate to keep her job, she agrees to let him fix the leak. And every other little thing that’s wrong with her under-renovation Victorian house. Boy howdy, or whatever they say.
Ty Ellicott twists ropes for a living and raises a few head of cattle on the side. Then there’s the plumbing thing he picked up years ago, as in an actual license. He’s helped out a lot of friends in recent years since his parents and brother went down in a single-engine plane crash and left him the sole owner of Ellicott Ropes. At thirty-five, time is something he doesn’t have a lot of if he wants to keep the business profitable, but doing a friend a favor lands him on the front porch of an old Victorian home.
Gas leak, his pal said, and Ty can smell a hint of it as he waits for the homeowner, Ron Fare, to come to the door. Should be a simple fix and a few extra bucks. But simple and few roll right off the porch when a gal in an oversized white T-shirt, cut-offs and piled up yellow hair comes to the door smelling like cinnamon rolls and heaven.
Teased about his eligible-bachelor status, Ty has managed to keep his life locked away from money-hungry women interested more in his assets than his heart, but Ronnie Fare soon has him hogtied and happy with her constant queries about what he thinks of her cooking. All of a sudden, he’s got plenty of time to work on her fix-it projects and serve as her official taste-tester.
Davalynn Spencer is a Publisher’s Weekly and ECPA bestselling author and winner of the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction. She is the wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters and the author of sixteen titles, both contemporary and historical. She blogs monthly for Christian Authors Network, contributes to the American Christian Fiction Writers blog, and writes her own weekly inspirational blog. She teaches writing workshops when not wrangling Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Connect with her at https://www.davalynnspencer.com.
Toni Shiloh 