Bonnie’s in her 40s, engaged to be married for the first time, and suddenly finds herself guardian of her very first child -her orphaned niece. But will Ashley rip Bonnie and her fiancé apart, destroying all her hopes and dreams?
Buy Starting Over from Red Rose Publishing HERE.
I carefully take the dress out of its cover. “Do you like it?”
“No,” Ashley, my niece, replies sullenly.
“Why not?” I ask. “Maybe, you’ll like it once you try it on.”
“It’s ugly! I hate it,” Ashley shouts and rips the bridesmaid dress out of my hands. She throws it across the room; it lands behind the bed with a soft whisper of pale lavender silk. She stomps out of my bedroom. In her hurry, she nearly plows over Sam, my fiancé.
“Come back here and apologize to your aunt, young lady,” he yells. “You’re not my father,” Ashley shouts at him from down the hall, followed by the slam of her bedroom door.
Sam sighs and crosses his arms. “She’s our maid-of-honor and behaves like a two-year-old.”
I brush away a tear, nodding.
Ashley is like a daughter to me. When my sister died, I soon discovered that she had appointed me as Ashley’s legal guardian. I was happy to welcome the child into my home, especially since I’m unable to have children of my own, but since I passed the forty marker in my life, I had reservations about raising a child with so little experience. Sam and I met about the time Ashley came to live with me. She was twelve then, and Sam won her heart instantly, but six months ago, when we announced that we were engaged, her entire disposition changed.