‘Seems to me they’re being sensible getting them in early,’ Ash said, and she just knew he was raising an eyebrow at her, the way he always used to when she and Grace came home from the pub tipsy and tried to deny that last bottle of wine they’d shared. ‘Tomorrow is not looking like a sure thing right now.’
Outside, a warm breeze fluttered past like butterfly wings. She was in paradise—a luxurious island in the middle of the Indian ocean, a boutique hotel filled with her and David’s friends and family, private villas on stilts stretching out into the azure sea from a wooden boardwalk for all her guests.
It was just unfortunate that, from the minute she’d arrived three days ago for the last-minute wedding preparations, she’d felt as if she’d been trapped in purgatory.
But she wasn’t going to escape hell through this window—even if she had followed any of those ‘Lose Ten Pounds for your Wedding Day’ diets her mother had kept leaving strategically around the house. Which she hadn’t.
Resigned, Zoey pulled her head back through the open window, turned to face her best friend’s husband and sat down on the windowsill. ‘I can’t go back in there, Ash.’
Ash took a seat on the table she’d climbed up on to reach the window. ‘Because rehearsal dinners are a terrible tradition that should be banned, or because you don’t want to marry David tomorrow?’
‘Both,’ Zoey replied promptly. ‘And I should know. I’ve had three rehearsal dinners, including this one.’
‘And not a wedding between them,’ Ash said mournfully. ‘Not to mention the two other broken engagements.’
Zoey winced. ‘Three, actually. One of them was before Grace and I met you.’
‘The musician, right?’ Ash tilted his head to the side as he looked at her. ‘Grace told me about him. I think calling that one off was legit.’
‘As opposed to the others?’ She gave him a sideways look. ‘Do you honestly think I should have married Harry, or Julian, or Fred?’
‘I suppose not.’ Leaning back, Ash rested his elbows on the table and looked up at her. His bright blue eyes were too knowing, and Zoey had to work to resist the urge to brush his sooty hair away from them. He really was absurdly good-looking. The thought registered, as it always did—an acknowledgement of a fact, like saying the ocean was blue.
She’d never let herself dwell on it beyond that. That way lay madness and misery.
‘It’s just a shame you never figured out that they weren’t the right guy for you until the morning of the wedding,’ Ash went on, and she focused on his words rather than his looks again. ‘As much as I love a last-minute runaway bride drama, I think some other people might be thinking it’s gone a little far now.’
He could have a point, Zoey allowed. In fact, she had a nagging suspicion that David might have had an ulterior motive for insisting the wedding took place on an island in the middle of nowhere.
She frowned. Ash would know. ‘When David spoke to you about booking the wedding, did he say why he wanted to have it here?’ She hadn’t wanted to ask before. But if not now, when?
Ash, as heir to the Carmichael Luxury Travel business, had organised the use of the island hotel as his wedding present to them. She was pretty sure his company actually owned the island, as well as the hotel, when it came down to it. Zoey wondered if she’d have to pay him back for that if the wedding didn’t go ahead. She hoped not. Her job as an art gallery assistant in London was her dream, but the benefits weren’t all entirely financial.
‘He might have mentioned the advantages of having control over which boats and sea planes arrived at—and more pertinently left—the island,’ Ash said diplomatically.
‘You mean he was trying to make sure I couldn’t run away.’ Zoey frowned. Was He manipulated my wedding venue choice a good enough excuse not to marry him? And why did she need an excuse at all beyond I don’t want to?
Because your mother is going to pitch a fit. Not to mention all the other people you’re letting down.
Not Ash, though. Even if he had gone along with David’s possibly nefarious scheme.