Beached Wedding
I had one job: get the groom to the wedding…
I failed.
I’m still hungover from the bachelor party when I arrive in Oahu and ruin Ashley’s life. She was expecting to marry my best mate, but on the way to the airport, he confessed he didn’t want to marry her. They only knew each other three months, but Ashley is devastated.
Now we’re stuck with her family and the groom’s parents—who’ve always treated me like a son. I’d love to abandon ship, but Ashley needs a friend and that’s what I am. It’s the only thing I can be.
But as we spend the week together, and she realizes she was more in love with a wedding and moving to Sydney than she was with her groom, things change between us. Falling for my best friend’s bride will sink more than a friendship. We’re partners in a surf shop on the brink of expansion. Am I headed for a wipeout? Or the longest, most perfect ride of my life?
Beached Wedding is a slow burn, off-limits, friends-to-lovers romance with a solid HEA. It’s not a love triangle. You’ll ship Ashley and Fox all the way.
350 Pages | 7 Hours | 95K words
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EXCERPT
“Fox! Aloha!”
Despite my legal status of ‘walking dead,’ my heart lifted at the sight of Ashley. I’d missed her. A half-smile tugged one corner of my mouth.
She always made me smile. It was her sincerity and the way she radiated warmth. She had bouncy brown hair and big brown eyes and I especially enjoyed the fact she always tried to dress to the nines but, by her own admission, only made it to seven and a half. Today that meant full make-up, a pretty sundress that bared her shoulders topped with a thick, ruffled lei of pink and white flowers. Her hair framed her face in windswept waves. On her feet, she wore dollar-store flip-flops on toes overdue for fresh polish.
She was real. Earthy and funny. Bright and nice. She did not deserve to be thrown over by anyone. What the hell had I done?
“Good to see you, Ash.” I slouched for the hug she offered, but the cringe that briefly soured my face couldn’t be helped, not when I was accosted by a fresh slant of sun and the thick blanket of humidity and the sickly-sweet aroma off the leis.
“Oh, wow,” she said with a wince of her own, drawing back.
“Yeah, I need a shower. Bad.” The whore’s bath in the chemical toilet hadn’t taken.
“Where’s Shane? Not stuck in customs.” She looked around me.
“He didn’t text you?” Let there be a God.
“About?” She frowned with concern and looked past me again.
I rubbed where the sun radiated against my short, recently-barbered curls. I stepped into the shade. Then I grabbed the proverbial bandage and yanked, even though it was attached to something inside me and turned me inside out.
“He didn’t come.”
Ashley gave a half-gurgling chuckle as if she knew her leg was being pulled and she appreciated the effort, but it wouldn’t work.
“Is he in the john? It sounds like you guys were really drunk. It’s okay. You can sleep it off by the pool.”
I clenched my molars against a fresh lurch in my gut.
“He didn’t get on the plane, Ash. The wedding’s off.”