Bahamas Escape with the Best Man, page 1
Marlee melted against Matteo and he could feel her cheek on his back.
“Let’s pretend,” she suggested gleefully. “You’re an Italian beach bum, and I’m an outlaw pretending to be a librarian.”
He was going to say “Let’s not,” but her face had a light in it—playful, invigorated, alive—that would take a man much stronger than him to put out.
“I’ve never been on a motorbike before,” she called.
“Calling it a motorbike is a stretch,” he called back to her. “It’s a scooter.”
“Whatever it is, it’s awesome. Go faster!”
He thought they were probably at about maximum speed already—in every single way—but if he could squeeze a little more power out of the machine, did that mean she would cling harder? He couldn’t help himself. He had to find out.
And just like that, it was awesome: the wind, the sun, the charms of the island, a beautiful woman clinging to him. Matteo did something he rarely did.
He surrendered to the day.
He was pretty sure he was lost in more ways than one.
Dear Reader,
My friends Bill and Rose are to gardens what I hope I am to writing. They transform empty—or even ugly—spaces into places of pure magic.
Thanks to them, my garden (I used to call it a yard!) has become the most inspiring of places. Uniquely beautiful, some of its spaces vibrate with ever-changing color and energy and light, and others—deeply shaded—offer room for tranquility and introspection.
This story really flowed from the solitude of early morning in the sanctuary that Bill and Rose created for me.
In that garden, I am reminded of how interconnected all our gifts are, and I am deeply grateful for that awareness.
My wish is that my gift brings you, the reader, moments of pure wonder, just like those I have received from Bill and Rose.
With best wishes,
Cara Colter
Bahamas Escape with the Best Man
Cara Colter
Cara Colter shares her life in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, nine horses and one small Pomeranian with a large attitude. She loves to hear from readers, and you can learn more about her and contact her through Facebook.
Books by Cara Colter
Harlequin Romance
A Fairytale Summer!
Cinderella’s New York Fling
Cinderellas in the Palace
His Convenient Royal Bride
One Night with Her Brooding Bodyguard
A Crown by Christmas
Cinderella’s Prince Under the Mistletoe
Matchmaker and the Manhattan Millionaire
His Cinderella Next Door
The Wedding Planner’s Christmas Wish
Snowbound with the Prince
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
To Bill and Rose Pastorek, with deepest gratitude for how generously they have shared their gifts with me.
Praise for Cara Colter
“Ms. Colter’s writing style is one you will want to continue to read. Her descriptions place you there.... This story does have a HEA but leaves you wanting more.”
—Harlequin Junkie on His Convenient Royal Bride
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM RULES OF THEIR PARISIAN FLING BY ELLIE DARKINS
CHAPTER ONE
“SIR, WE’LL BE landing in a few minutes.”
Matteo Keller opened his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he’d been sleeping, or just drifting.
Either was unusual. Usually, he found the time on board his company’s private jet to be perfect for catching up on work, uninterrupted.
He had a well-honed jet lag strategy where he used the flight time to start resetting his inner clock from the time in Zurich to the time zone he would be arriving in.
Definitely sleeping, he thought, bemused, as he looked at the business papers that had slid from his tabletop desk and now lay around him. So much for his jet lag strategy. The sun was setting out there, and now he was wide-awake.
Right on top of the scattered papers was a brochure, shiny and colorful. Matteo picked it up. It described his destination, one of the two thousand four hundred cays and seven hundred islands that formed the Bahamas.
Coconut Cay, the safest place on earth.
Glancing at the pictures of the boutique hotel, the white sands and the turquoise waters of the island, Matteo was not sure why safety had been picked as the main selling feature of the tropical paradise. If he was in charge of marketing...
You’re not, he told himself firmly.
And maybe there was something to be said for the brochure’s claim that doors could be left unlocked and your watch would be safe on the bedside table.
Well, maybe not his watch.
According to the brochure, the tiny island, which had several resorts and one village, had a zero crime rate, and each guest was carefully vetted.
He did vaguely remember his assistant asking him questions that had seemed, at the time, both mildly intrusive and slightly irritating.
Welcome to Sullivan’s Island, he thought, calling it after a very old and very corny American sitcom about an unlikely group of people shipwrecked.
The island, as the jet descended, seemed idyllic, drowsy and gilded in gold. No doubt safe.
And yet he, of all people, knew that danger lurked in life itself. No matter how hard you tried, there would always be events out of your control, waiting to blow your world to smithereens.
Matteo was taken aback at himself.
That was what he got for dozing, instead of working, for not adhering to his rigid schedule to avert jet lag.
Those were unwanted thoughts, slipping outside of his customary discipline, his ability not to think of the world he had once had or lament how quickly it had slipped away.
He sincerely hoped the safest place on earth was not going to make a run at his carefully constructed barriers.
The plane touched down.
“It won’t,” Matteo told himself tersely, rising from his seat, “because I won’t let it.”
And yet here it was, nighttime, and he was wide-awake. And for some reason, when he disembarked the plane, he left the scattered business papers—his balm—behind.
* * *
Marlee Copeland decided she absolutely hated destination weddings. This was her third one in the past two years.
Admittedly, Coconut Cay was the most beautiful of the three. The small tropical island was extraordinary: gorgeous beaches, calm waters, rainbow-hued flowers the size of basketballs, mangoes, coconuts and banana clusters hanging in trees.
The resort was like something out of a dream. The color palette of the structures, inside and out, was creamy whites and soothing beiges, everything subdued and extraordinarily tasteful, in sharp and deliberate contrast to the vibrant backdrop of the island.
“So, what’s to hate?” Marlee asked herself, the warm air—so different than the November dreariness she had left behind in Seattle—caressing her.
She was standing in darkness that felt somehow silky on her skin, on the pathway outside the private cabana she had wisely paid extra for instead of sharing accommodations with the other bridesmaids.
Night had fallen with the suddenness of a dark blanket being dropped over the sky, and she watched the stars wink out, one by one, and then a rising moon paint the caps of the gentle waves nearby in silver. She listened to them lap on shore. In the distance, she could hear laughter and voices at the pool.
The bridal side of the wedding party. Fiona, bride-to-be, had suggested they arrive a few days early, though not to unwind, as one might think after all the stress of planning a wedding three thousand miles from home.
No, the early arrival was to get rid of the “pasty” look. For the photos. Which had to be perfect, naturally. Marlee was fairly certain Fiona had cast her a glance when she made the “pasty look” comment.
Or maybe the bride’s choice of a dress for her had just made her overly sensitive. Marlee sighed. She knew she should join them, of course. But she didn’t want to. The fact she hated it all was just going to be too evident, no matter how hard she tried to hide it.
“What’s to hate?” she asked herself again. A night bird chattered as palm fronds swayed in a faint breeze, the air faintly perfumed.
It was all so romantic.
And perfect.
And that was what Marlee hated. All the weddings she had been to lately—and there had been many as her friends were at that age where they were ready for the “next stage” in life were like this. Romantic and perfect.
Admittedly, her cynicism had set in after her own wedding had fallen through, cancellation notices sent and her elaborate wedding gown boxed up and sent to the thrift store. Before that, at every wedding she’d attended, she had made notes, gleaned ideas and admired dresses.
This was the first wedding since her own matrimonial debacle. Now she felt weddings—including the one she hadn’t had—were pure theater, where everyone played their part, especially the beautiful, joyous bride and the handsome, devoted groom, with eyes only for each other. It was pageantry, blind to the statistics that said it probably wasn’t going to work out in quite the way the glowing bride and the besotted groom hoped.
Despite how justifiable Marlee’s skepticism around weddings might have been, she knew in her heart that she was kidding herself. She still yearned for all that romance to be true.
“You’re jealous,” Marlee decided.
Was she? Of course! She was supposed to have had all this. Planning her day had consumed the better part of her life for over a year.
No destination wedding for her, because of her huge extended family, but instead a gorgeous old church and a posh hotel...and then, the exit by her fiancé, Arthur, just six months ago, embarrassingly close to their spring wedding date.
Even with the help of sympathetic—make that pitying—family members and friends, canceling everything and letting people know there would be no wedding had been nearly as much work as putting it all together.
Add to that the humiliation...
Jilted at the altar.
“I’m not jealous,” Marlee ordered herself. She was just tired. There was only a three-hour time difference between this tiny island and her home, but the crazy fifteen-hour travel schedule from Seattle to Florida, onward to Nassau, and then finally to Coconut Cay, had left Marlee exhausted and discombobulated. Really, she didn’t know if it was time to get up or time to go to bed. Should she have supper now or breakfast?
The other destination weddings she had attended had not required quite so much effort to get there.
Now everything felt like too much. They had barely been whisked to the resort from the tiny airport when Fiona had rounded them all up and herded them into her luxurious suite for the big reveal: the bridesmaid’s dresses.
They were Fiona’s “surprise” to her girlfriends who were standing up with her, a gift intended to in some way assuage the huge financial and time commitment involved in saying yes to being a part of a destination wedding. She had collected all their measurements and refused to reveal any details of the custom-made dresses. Until now.
Until they were trapped here and couldn’t say no, Marlee thought, perhaps unkindly.
There were three bridesmaids and the dresses were all the same color—hideous. Fiona called it sea foam, but Marlee thought it looked like the Spanish moss that hung in creepy fingers from cypress trees in the Southern parts of the United States.
Though the same color, each dress purported to reflect the personality of the person it had been bestowed upon.
So Kathy’s had narrow straps and a form-hugging bodice. The short, full skirt flirted around her long legs and accentuated a subtle but undeniable sexiness. Kathy looked like she had been at the tanning booth for at least a month. Nothing pasty about her!
Brenda’s dress was a sleek, strapless sheath that, even while hugging her curves, hinted at a woman in control, and indeed, Brenda was CEO of a huge cosmetics company. That company had made their name—and a considerable fortune—on a tanning product called Beach-in-a-Bottle, so Brenda looked sun-kissed and glowing at all times.
And then there was Marlee’s. It was, sadly, the dress of the high-school-girl-trying-too-hard variety. In fact, the dress sang future librarian gets invited to a prom. Never mind that she was a librarian—and had the pasty complexion to prove it! The dress was high-collared and short-sleeved, and abounded with puff and ruffles.
And, as if the dress in and of itself was not like something out of a nightmare, Fiona had gushingly proclaimed, “It’s so you, Marlee.”
And the others had agreed!
After the great reveal, Fiona had ordered them all to their own rooms to change out of the precious garments, and then suggested meeting at the pool for drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
But Marlee was still here outside her cabana—not as luxurious as Fiona’s suite, but still beachy and charming—not changed, and despite being starving, was not going to the pool. The highly orchestrated schedule was already giving her a headache.
Not to mention a niggling but growing sense of rebellion.
Her cabana had come with a complimentary travel-size bottle of rum and a cigar. Apparently, the island was famous for both.
Marlee had never smoked a cigar. Ever. And she had certainly never drunk rum straight, but no mix had been provided.
In defiance of how that horrible dress said she was perceived—by those who supposedly knew her best—she cracked the rum open and held the cigar between her fingertips, liking the way that felt—bold and glamourous in an old movie kind of way. If her friends were to see her now, they would get the message.
You don’t know me at all.
She took a tentative sip of the rum. Her eyes watered. She choked. On her empty stomach, it was like swallowing fire.
Still, something warm and bold and lovely unfolded in her. She took another tentative sip of the rum and even looked at the cigar, considering whether she should light it.
That was when she became aware she was no longer alone.
The curving pathway that wound around the cabanas on its way to the beach was only faintly lit, solar lights twinkling in the deep, flower-threaded foliage on either side of it, but she could see a man was coming toward her.
In Seattle, alone outside on a dark night, she probably would have ducked back inside. But there was a light on in the cabana next door to hers, and through its open doors she could hear the faint sounds of people talking. Plus, she remembered the brochure’s promise that this was the safest place on earth.
The hotel had even sent a pre-arrival questionnaire to make sure they were not inviting criminals or miscreants into their island paradise.
So, chances of the man coming down the walkway being an ax murderer were largely reduced.
Besides which, she felt holding the cigar and sipping rum straight from the bottle asked her to be a different person, not quite so timid, not quite so willing to play it safe.
So, instead of moving away, Marlee watched the man approach. He was one of those men. You could tell by the way he moved. Not quite a swagger, but something smooth, confident and totally self-assured was in every step of that long stride.
The white towel draped around his neck was practically glowing against the darkness of the night.
He didn’t have a shirt on, and as he got closer, the magnificence of him was fully revealed to her.
He was like a poster boy for perfect. Wide shoulders, a broad chest, faint lines of ribs under taut skin, a flat, hard belly that dipped into boldly colored swim shorts, the bareness of his legs showing off how long and sculpted with muscle they were. He was barefoot.
Really, Marley told herself sternly, there was nothing sexy about that. Barefoot went with the beach. He was obviously on his way for a swim.
In the ocean. Not the pool. In the darkness. By himself.
Okay. There was something a little sexy about that. Or maybe a lot.
Or maybe not. He’d probably heard all that feminine giggling at the pool and made a fast detour toward the ocean.
Some instinct stopped him in his tracks then and he squinted up the walkway in her direction. The moon painted silver tips in his dark hair and gilded his face, which was as perfect as the rest of him.
He seemed unfairly handsome, exactly the kind of man who never paid any kind of attention to a woman like her.
Marlee resisted, again, the impulse to slide back toward her open, French-paned door. Wasn’t it exactly that shrinking librarian attitude that had earned her this dress?
CHAPTER TWO
AT THAT EXACT MOMENT, the man spotted her in the shadows. He hesitated, then moved forward cautiously, as if he knew a shrinking librarian when he saw one.
