One Hot Summer Wedding (Summer Lovin’ collection #3)

Chapter 1 Four days before the wedding

Four days before the wedding

Sara: There will be a driver waiting for you at the airport! Let me know when you land!

Me: Will do!

Sara: Thank you so much again for doing this.

Sara: I’m looking forward to catching up!

Me: Me too

By the time I make it through customs, there’s so much sweat gathered at the small of my back that it’s starting to drip down to my butt. If I harbored any illusions about the glamour of this summer vacation, they have been fully and completely squashed.

Still, I smile at the agent as he stamps my passport, thanking him before wheeling my suitcase toward the exit. I keep my eyes peeled for one of those fancy-looking chauffeurs wearing a jaunty little hat and holding a sign with my last name on it.

It’s Sara’s last name that I end up spotting.

“Hola. Como estas?” I say to the driver, exhausting my high school Spanish in my first full sentence.

“Ms. Alexander?” He offers me a wide, warm smile.

“That’s me.”

“Welcome to Costa Rica. My name is Francisco.” He reaches for the backpack I’ve slung over one shoulder, the paperback I crammed inside still not even cracked open as I spent most of the flight catastrophizing. “Allow me. We’re just waiting on your companion, and then we can be on our way.”

“Oh, right. Sounds good.” Sara failed to mention someone else would be joining me on the ride from the airport to the resort, but I suppose it makes sense. There are probably a bunch of guests flying in for the wedding, and it’s not like I need my own car.

I stand at the driver’s side, my eyes flitting around the interior of the airport. It looks like every other airport I’ve ever been in, and if I let my mind wander, it will dredge up the memories of a hundred other summer vacations, and I don’t need that. Not today.

So instead I focus my attention back on Francisco.

He offers me another wide smile, but he doesn’t say anything and so neither do I and I don’t really know the protocol as I’ve never had a driver before, so I mirror his smile and shuffle my feet and turn my attention to people watching, hoping the milling tourists can provide a sufficient distraction.

“Ah,” Francisco says after a few more minutes of awkward silence. “I believe this is him.”

I know even before I turn around who “him” is, though I argue with myself that it can’t be.

There’s no way. She wouldn’t have arranged this, knowing what she knows.

Still, it’s one of those weird sixth-sense moments when everything in me is screaming to retreat, turn back, flee now while I still have the chance.

Save myself from the absolute mortification and devastation heading my way.

But I’ve never been good at listening to my instincts. So I ignore that inner bitch and follow Francisco’s line of sight.

And there he is. The bane of my existence and the object of all my desires.

Well, the object of my incredibly misguided, very much expired teenage desires.

Still the bane of my existence, though.

Not that he occupies my thoughts anymore.

Not even lying about that.

I haven’t seen Beckett Thatcher in ten years.

And I really wish those ten years had turned him into a disgusting old troll or a douchey tech bro or something equally unappealing.

But no.

Of course Beckett Thatcher looks better now than he did at twenty-one. He’s still tall, still broad, still sports a golden brown tan and blond hair that looks bleached by the sun, even if he now resides in Manhattan and doesn’t spend every morning surfing like he did when we were growing up.

Despite being the villain in my story, he didn’t become some obnoxious finance guy or bloodsucking corporate lawyer. He edits children’s books and spends his free time volunteering at the local animal shelter.

And before you ask, I don’t know any of that information because I stalk him on Instagram. I don’t. Honestly.

But I do follow an account that highlights eligible singles living in the city, and Beckett Thatcher happened to be featured two months ago.

Of course, the post only highlighted his highly desirable traits and failed to mention that Beckett Thatcher might be all knight in shining armor on paper but, in reality, is a supreme, grade A, class one asswipe.

An asswipe I really wish didn’t manage to look so effortlessly put together after a six-hour flight.

This man striding toward me clearly at no point had sweat dripping down his butt.

He’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, a duffel slung over one shoulder, and never has the casual combination looked so good.

Also, who wears jeans on a plane?

I surreptitiously glance down at my own outfit—a completely plane-appropriate pair of black leggings and an oversize sweatshirt that may or may not be the cause of all the sweating.

Before I have a chance to shuck the sweatshirt and reveal the white tank top hiding underneath, he’s here. Right there.

He stops in front of Francisco, offering his hand and shaking it firmly. “Beckett Thatcher. Thanks so much for picking us up.” He turns to me, hand still extended. “You must be one of Sara’s friends. I’m her older brother, Beckett.”

My mouth drops open, an unholy squeak passing through my lips. It takes a solid minute for me to form the brilliant question: “Are you kidding me right now?”

His brow furrows, his hand still lingering in the air between us. “No?” His eyes dart to Francisco, silently begging for help, but the man shrugs as if to say, Above my pay grade, man.

“Jesus Christ, I knew you were self-absorbed, but how oblivious do you have to be to not recognize your sister’s childhood best friend?

You know, the one who practically lived with you for ten years?

” I did always get the sense that Beckett preferred to ignore my existence, but it’s not like he could have fully escaped my presence; Sara and I were joined at the hip when we were younger.

The color drains from his face, that golden tan morphing into a pasty white. “Lucy?”

I roll my eyes, not deigning to confirm. I turn my back to him, complete with a hair flip, pleading with Francisco. “Are we waiting for anyone else, or can we please get the hell out of here?”

His eyes dart between the two of us, and his customer service smile turns strained. “Follow me.” He hoists my backpack over his shoulder and takes my wheelie bag in hand.

I march close behind him, elbows out, keeping Beckett from entering my personal space.

Francisco leads us outside, and I’m immediately smacked in the face with warm, slightly humid air.

I thought I was escaping the damp New York summer, but this is another level of heat.

My naturally wavy brown hair is already crying, but there’s a kiss of a breeze that feels like heaven after the stuffy airport.

I follow Francisco to a black Town Car, sighing in frustration when he beeps the locks and starts loading our bags in the trunk. I suppose it was too much to hope for a van with multiple rows of seating, not that a Hummer stretch limo would provide enough space for me to hide from him.

Sliding into the back seat, I turn my attention to the window, keeping my gaze firmly planted outside even though there’s nothing here to see except a lot of cars, and security guards waving people away from lingering at the curb.

The car door shuts behind Beckett, and the air inside shrinks down to nothing. I try to roll down the window, but Francisco is still busy loading the bags and hasn’t turned the car on yet.

“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.” Beckett’s voice is low and deep, a little scratchy from inhaling the recycled plane air. “I . . . I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I say, not even bothering to look at him.

It’s not fine, obviously. But I’m certainly not going to get into that here, right now, while we’re trapped in the back seat of a soon-to-be-moving vehicle.

But really, it shouldn’t come as a surprise at all.

Beckett wrote me off a decade ago—plenty of time for him to forget all about me.

It still hurts to think about how easy it was for both of the Thatchers to wipe me out of their lives, erasing years of friendship.

Family vacations and days at the beach, school dances and cheer competitions and driving around in the back seat of Beckett’s car right after he got his license, feeling like the absolute coolest thirteen-year-old in town.

Francisco slides into the front seat and starts the car, a blast of cool air hitting me in the face and shocking me out of the black hole of my memories. “We should arrive at the resort in about an hour,” he tells us.

That’s about fifty-nine minutes more than I want to spend in Beckett’s company, but there’s no use complaining about it now.

I knew he would be here. Obviously he was going to be in attendance at his sister’s wedding.

But I wasn’t prepared for him to be here.

Right next to me. For fifty-eight more hellish minutes.

“I didn’t realize you and Sara kept in touch.”

I glance over my shoulder but snap my gaze back to the window when my eyes meet his.

The bright green hasn’t faded over the years.

“We didn’t.” I had been shocked to open her email, sent just two months ago, informing me she was engaged.

It was the first time she’d reached out in ten years.

The message was short and to the point. My childhood best friend was getting married this summer, and despite everything, she couldn’t imagine me not being there by her side, as we’d always planned when we were kids.

I should have said no, but when I let myself think about it, I didn’t want her getting married without me.

Sara might have ended our relationship with a finality only an eighteen-year-old could declare, but that didn’t change the impact she’d had on my life.

If she wanted me by her side, then by her side I would be.