An Accidental Bride

Accidental Bride is the 15th stand-alone romance novel by American author, Jackie Merritt. Loan officer at a bank in Houghton, Montana, Blair Conover is happily engaged to blond-haired Derek Kingston and looking forward to their summer wedding when Madame Morova, a fortune teller at a travelling carnival, predicts she will marry a tall, dark stranger in the autumn. Clearly, the woman is a fake. But days later, her car has a close encounter with the (uninsured) truck of a tall, dark and incredibly attractive stranger, one Ace Barclay. Blair is furious, and Ace seems much too laid-back about the whole thing. Not only that, he seems to be flirting with her! His offer to fix her car doesn’t seem unreasonable, but Derek explodes, and his reaction begins to niggle: her fiancé seems determined to dictate her behaviour. In her next encounter with Ace, Blair finds herself acting completely out of character, overwhelmingly charmed by this handsome man, with far-reaching consequences. Merritt’s plot may be a bit predictable, though there is a twist; her characters are the strength of this romance. It is impossible not to like Ace, and the snappy dialogue between him and Blair is great fun. An enjoyable Merritt offering.