Anne Farleigh looked like an angel.

A very wet angel.

But even soaked to the skin, with her long hair and dress both utterly drenched, she was beautiful.

Gareth Cavendish had been waiting in the rain in front of her house for the past hour, enough time to make some calculated guesses about the woman who lived in the old-fashioned but obviously well-cared-for home. For starters, there was a white picket fence running around it. Gareth didn’t know many people who actually had white picket fences, but it spoke to him of a family that had lived there happily for a long time.

Of course, looks could be deceiving, as the contents of the envelope in his jacket pocket proved.

The case was straightforward. Jasmine Turner, a twenty-one-year-old woman from Oregon, wanted to track down the father who had abandoned her and her mother. She’d hired Richard Wells’s law firm to represent her.

Since leaving the police force six months earlier and starting Cavendish Investigations, Gareth had worked several private cases for Richard. Most, unfortunately, involving cheating spouses. The Farleigh case, however, came with a large potential bonus: if Jasmine won her case for half of her biological father’s estate, Gareth would end up with enough of an additional payday to keep his new private practice comfortably afloat for a while.

As Anne moved closer on the sidewalk, he saw that she was smiling. How, he wondered, could someone be that happy about a world determined to drench them?

Even stranger, when she finally spotted him standing in the rain by his car, she didn’t seem at all suspicious. Instead, she smiled directly at him, stunning him momentarily.

“Hello,” she called out, “are you looking for someone?”

Quickly regrouping, he confirmed, “Are you Anne Farleigh?”

She nodded and sent another of those pretty smiles his way. He moved up onto her covered porch and was about to reach into his jacket for the envelope when he looked into her eyes and stopped cold.

Her eyes were the most incredible shade of blue, like the ocean on a perfectly sunny day. Even in the middle of a rain storm, the way she was looking at him warmed him.

Gareth needed to serve her and get out of there. Yet, in spite of the rain, he wasn’t in a hurry to leave.

Not with such a lovely woman standing in front of him.

He pushed the thought away as he finally grabbed the envelope and held it out. “This is for you.”

She took the envelope, opening it with the obvious excitement of someone expecting a pleasant surprise. As she took out the legal papers, he realized she was close enough for him to smell the sweet floral scent of her perfume.

She finished reading and held out the envelope to him. “You’ve made a mistake. You have the wrong person.”

“Your parents were Edward and Chloe Farleigh?”

Anne nodded. “Yes, but—”

“Then I’m afraid there hasn’t been any mistake. I’m here to serve you with papers relating to your father’s other daughter.”

Anne shook her head sharply. “No, I’m sorry. You’ve got this all horribly wrong. My father didn’t have another daughter. It’s just me.”

“He did, Ms. Farleigh. Her name is Jasmine Turner, and she is his daughter thanks to a relationship he had with Deirdre Turner twenty-two years ago.” Even though Gareth couldn’t help but feel bad for blindsiding her with the news, he had to do his job. “This is official legal notice that you’re being sued for a share of your father’s estate.”

People never reacted well to being told that they were being sued and he knew what to expect: Angry disbelief, giving way to grudging acceptance, and then resentment.

What he wasn’t expecting was for Anne to simply push the envelope back into his hand, letting go so that he had to either catch it or let it fall into the puddle gathering on the porch at his feet.

“I’m sorry, Mr.—”

“Cavendish. Gareth Cavendish. And you can’t just give me back these papers. You’ve been legally served with them now.”

“While I don’t understand how a mix-up like this could happen, I do know that you’ve served these papers to the wrong person, because my father would never have done something like this.”

She said it perfectly pleasantly, even a bit apologetically, as if she was sorry Gareth had wasted his time. Underlying her every word was a certainty that told him she wasn’t going to budge from her position. With that, she put her key in the lock of her front door.

“Ms. Farleigh,” he said again, “I’m certain there hasn’t been a mistake.”

“And I’m certain there has been. Good night.”

She stepped through the door and shut it behind her.

Excerpt from The Wedding Dress: Four Weddings & A Fiasco #4, copyright 2014, Lucy Kevin