Ex on the Beach (2 page)

Thanks to Kayla, every detail was in perfect order. Andie poured herself a cup of chamomile tea and settled in to review the information on the bride’s family. They were high-society Chicago, owners of an extensive line of upscale shopping centers. And though most had expected a big Chicago bash for the family’s only daughter, the bride had insisted on having her wedding at a private beachfront location instead. She wanted the romance of a beach and the ocean — but was making sure not to leave her girls behind. There would be a total of ten wedding attendants, five on each side.

Seaglass Celebrations wasn’t as well-known as the outfit the Jordans had originally picked, but Andie was determined to make it clear it was the better choice. The family and wedding party would be hosted on the Whitmore grounds, and wedding guests would stay in the five-star accommodations at the island’s historic hotel.

Andie turned her attention back to the folder to find the groom’s information, but before she could flip past the header page for that section, she paused on the last name.
Masterson
. She’d known another Masterson once. That one had been from Boston. And he’d been an ass. But he would be the exact kind of man who’d kill to marry into the Jordan family.

A turn of the page showed her the details on the Mastersons, including a photo of the groom, and she clunked down her mug of tea. The hot liquid splashed out onto her hand.

“Ow,” she muttered, grabbing a towel to wipe away the liquid as she glared at the paper. Robert Masterson. The guy who’d been best man at her wedding.

Which meant he was probably also bringing —

Shit.

Her heart constricted, limiting the air being pulled into her lungs, as she couldn’t help but bounce to that day four years ago. It had been a June wedding then, too.

She shoved the memories from her mind, and scanned over the sheet for more details.
Joseph
Robert Masterson. Well, dang. The man’s first name was Joseph. And, of course, since she hadn’t been the one doing the invites or place cards, the first names and the total number of guests were all she’d paid attention to.

She got her breathing back under control, then quickly ran through the rest of the document, skipping over a majority of the groom’s information, but noting that he worked at a prestigious law firm in Chicago. She silently pleaded that he and Mark were no longer the big buds they’d been four years earlier. But she knew differently. They’d been friends since elementary school. Their families were friends. Heck, they’d all vacationed together for the last thirty years.

Robert had also likely served as best man in the wedding she’d seen announced in the Sunday Styles section of the
New York Times
last fall — that of Mark Kavanaugh and Elizabeth Ryan, a woman from an even more blue-blood, old-Boston family than Mark’s.

Nope, there was no way that Mark wouldn’t be involved in this event.

But a girl could surely hope.

Only, hoping was futile. There it was in black and white — Best Man: Mark Kavanaugh. A recent picture accompanied the info, and she couldn’t help but linger over it.

He looked good. Damned good.

If he wasn’t such a pig for dumping her the way he had, she’d be hard-pressed not to be turned on by the simple image of him.

She glanced toward the door that Ginny had disappeared through, realizing that her aunt would be aware that Mark was scheduled to arrive today. How long she’d known? But then, it didn’t matter. This was a wedding they had to do. Andie wouldn’t lose Aunt Ginny’s house because she didn’t want to face her louse of an ex.

The phone rang and she reached over to answer it, shoving Mark’s picture aside to peruse the remainder of list.

“Ms. Shayne, please,” said a male voice on the other end of the line.

“This is Andie. How may I help you?”

“Oh Andie, hello. This is Dan Stapleton from the bank.”

Her pulse spiked. News on the loan. “Hello, Mr. Stapleton. I sure hope you have good news for me.”

The uncomfortable silence that met her words turned her stomach sour.

“I’m afraid, Ms. Shayne, that I don’t.”

Andie closed her eyes. The bonus from this wedding would cover the loan, but just barely. If anything at all were to go wrong …

“I’m sorry to say that the committee has reviewed your request for an extension, but we cannot grant one at this time.”

She couldn’t breathe. “The whole amount? But there have been extenuating circumstances. Natural disasters.”

“Yes, ma’am. We did take that into consideration.”

“Any way we could pay half this month and half the next?” She wasn’t even sure that would be doable, but it was better than all of it now.

“I’m afraid not, Ms. Shayne. The full amount of the payment will be due as stated in the original terms of the agreement; payable the last day of this month.”

The sound of laughter hit her ears as she heard the first of the guests arriving in the other room. Looked like the time had come. Prove she was the businesswoman her Harvard MBA declared her to be, or …

She shook her head. There was no “or.”

“I understand. Thank you for trying, sir.”

After hanging up, Andie sat staring out at the waves of the Atlantic, wondering how in the world she was going to tell Aunt Ginny that they were within a hair’s breadth of losing this place.

And how she would live with herself if she let it happen.

Mark Kavanaugh stood in the parking lot of Gin’s, the beachfront bar and café, and stared up at the sign depicting the caricature with the bright red curls. There was no doubt it was meant to be Andie’s aunt, Genevieve Whitmore. And it was fabulous. One look at that face and customers would know they were entering a place with life.

He’d only met Ginny the one time, but she’d made a lasting impression.

“I’ve heard good things about this place.”

“Yeah?” Mark glanced at the man standing to his right. Grayson McTavish had gone to law school with him and Rob, and was also in the wedding party. The two of them had caught the same flight out of Boston — though Mark still didn’t understand why they had to come down two weeks before the wedding. How many pre-wedding activities could one couple have? “You research it before coming down?”

Gray had a spreadsheet for everything. Restaurant ratings were a favorite.

“Bite me, Kavanaugh. At least you know you’ll be eating well when you travel with me.”

Mark lifted a hand and shot him the bird. “There are three restaurants on the island, moron. We’ll eat what we get.”

But Mark had read the same thing about Gin’s when he’d been scouring the Internet for information on Andie. It was top-of-the-line. Andie owned the bar, she’d named it after her aunt, and apparently she’d wooed a top Chicago chef down south. It had a stellar rating. He’d like to say he was at Gin’s for the reputation — instead of at the inn where he was supposed to be meeting up with Rob, and where he’d almost definitely run into Andie — but that would be a lie. He was there because he was stalling. It had been four years since he’d seen Andie.

He wasn’t quite sure he was ready to see her now.

He’d ended things poorly, and the guilt hadn’t let him forget it. This trip wasn’t just about standing up for his friend. It was about finally moving on. Closure. He wanted to settle down. He wanted what his mom and dad had. And he wanted Andie’s face to quit flashing through his mind every damn time he thought about it.

It was the guilt, he was certain. He still believed he’d made the right choice; he wouldn’t have wanted the marriage he’d been heading into. Though the childish way in which he’d called it off had been beneath him. And his mother had let him know it.

Genevieve Whitmore had also let him know it.

But he’d never gotten to apologize to Andie. No matter what, she hadn’t deserved to be left standing at the altar.

Now was his chance to make sure she was okay, and in doing so, get himself there, as well.

He took in the cream-colored plank siding of the building, with the cheery yellow, blue, and pink trim, and couldn’t help but smile. It looked like Andie.

The covered patio facing the ocean struck him as exactly the kind of place she’d love to sit and read a book. She’d always wanted to go off to the beach for weekends when they’d lived together in Boston. Summer or winter, if she could sit and listen to the ocean, she was a happy woman.

From what he’d been able to find out, she’d had plenty of time to do just that since they’d broken up. Turtle Island had been the last place he’d expected to find her — what with the way she’d been going after a career as an investment banker — but it seemed she’d taken her drive for success and zeroed in on building a growing destination wedding business, instead.

He hoped she was happy.

“Check out the kids.” Gray nodded toward the beach where a family of five was making their way toward the boardwalk. “They remind me of me and my brother.”

Two dark-haired boys, probably ages five or six, punched each other and rolled around in the sand in front of their mother, who was carrying an enormous bag with all manner of toys sticking out of it and wrestling a squirming baby wearing a tiny hat and some sort of pink contraption. Dad pulled up the rear, both arms full of chairs, an umbrella, and a rolling cooler that wasn’t doing much rolling. It was only midafternoon, but by the pink shine on the man’s shoulders, they’d already waited too long before calling it a day.

“Add in a couple more boys and it could be my family,” Mark muttered. “Minus the baby. Hang on a sec.”

He left Gray where he stood and jogged down the walkway to the family, catching mom as she hit the stairs. The boys were now lagging behind, covered from head to toe in sand.

“Let me help you with that.” Mark reached for the bag, eyeing the baby as he did. She was a cute thing. Two teeth winked at him as she opened her mouth in a slobbery grin.

“Oh,” mom said. A tired smile broke out across her face as she gratefully handed over the bag. “Thank you.” She motioned toward the blue minivan he’d passed on his way down. “Just drop it at the back door if you don’t mind.”

“Sure thing.” Mark turned to go, but the boys caught his attention. They had run circles around their dad and were now racing toward the stairs, sand spraying up behind them with each step. Mom was safely out of the way, but the boys had picked up speed and were shoving at each other as they ran. The steps would be slick with sand if taken too fast.

Before Mark could say anything, one of the boys hit the bottom plank and lunged upward for the next, and just as Mark had feared, the kid’s leg went flying out behind him, bringing him face-first down toward the step.

“Watch out!” Mark lunged past mom, certain there would be a broken nose at the least. But the second brother merely yanked the first down and climbed over him, leaving the kid who’d face-planted laughing and throwing a handful of sand in his wake.

“You must not be a father,” the mom said. She shook her head in a sympathetic, understanding way. “I’m sure you were just as rowdy for your mother, at one point in your life.”

No doubt he had been. And no wonder his mother had been coloring her hair since her thirties.

Mark watched the two kids continue to wrestle as they made their way past him, no broken nose, not even a nosebleed, only a token glance tossed his way, accompanied by an eye roll that suggested he was the biggest dork in the world for worrying. And he guessed he was.

They were just playing. No different from what he and his own brothers had done throughout their childhood. No different from any kid, he supposed.

He shook his head at his own naïveté, grabbed an armload of chairs from the dad, and then walked with the two adults back to their car.

“You here with your family?” dad asked.

“Ah.” Mark paused, glanced at the boys again, then at the baby who was watching his every move. A single band of pressure tightened around his chest. “No. No family.”

“You want one?” Mom jostled the chubby-cheeked kid in her arms as she took the two steps from the wooden path to the parking lot. She nodded toward the boys now shooting each other with pretend guns, each kid ducking and hiding on either side of the van. “I might be willing to set you up with a couple kids to start you off.”

She chuckled at her own teasing tone, and shot Mark a grin.

“Maybe someday,” he said. He gave the boys one last look, unable to keep from imagining a couple of his own on a similar family outing, and gave a slight nod. “Yeah. Maybe someday. That would be nice. But I think you’d better keep these two yourself.”

He gave mom a wink, and she let out a long, overly dramatic sigh. “I suppose if I must.”

Mark chuckled and deposited his load at the back bumper of the van. Nice family. Two of his brothers had that in their lives already. He liked to imagine he’d eventually follow suit.

He tossed a wave at their thanks, and made his way back to the bar where Gray was leaning against the wall beside the door, his arms folded across his chest.

“Ever the Good Samaritan, I see,” Gray teased.

“Wouldn’t hurt you to help.”