Has this runaway bride...
...finally found a groom worth staying for?
If Zoey Hepburn has to be stranded on a tropical island after escaping her wedding, who better to keep her company than her best friend, tycoon Ash Carmichael? Widower Ash understands better than anyone the risk to your heart when making marriage vows. But when a passionate night alone changes their relationship forever, will they be able to face the consequences nine months later?
“Ash, really. I’m fine. Must have been something I ate earlier that disagreed with me,” she said.
“Don’t lie to me, Zoey,” he said, his voice low. “I’m not some fiancé you’re running out on. I’m your friend. I want to help you. And I can’t do that if you won’t tell me the truth.”
“You want to help...” Zoey shook her head as she looked down at the floor. “Don’t you see? That’s half the problem. The moment I tell you you’ll want to fix everything. And I need to know I can do that on my own.”
Fix everything. That meant there was something that needed fixing. Of course he was going to want to do that, then.
“Zo. Please. Talk to me.”
Indecision flickered across her face.
“Just tell me,” he whispered. “Whatever it is, Zo, we can fix it. Together.”
“That’s the thing,” she replied. “I don’t want to fix it.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Zoey took a breath so deep he could see her chest rising.
Then she said, “Ash, I’m pregnant.”
And his whole world shifted.
Dear Reader,
Love can be both terrifying and wonderful at the same time—which is why I can totally empathize with all the runaway brides, commitmentphobe boyfriends, bachelors for life and committedly single ladies who so often feature in romance books.
What I’ve learned, though—through love, and quite a few years of marriage—is that finding the right person, your true love, doesn’t mean that the fear goes away. It just makes it worthwhile being scared.
I loved writing Ash and Zoey’s story as they hurtle together from a last-minute wedding escape toward this same conclusion—only with a lot more drama than my husband and I managed! I hope you enjoy sharing the story with them, too.
Love and confetti,
Sophie x
Carrying Her Millionaire’s Baby
Sophie Pembroke
Sophie Pembroke has been dreaming, reading and writing romance ever since she read her first Harlequin as part of her English literature degree at Lancaster University, so getting to write romantic fiction for a living really is a dream come true! Born in Abu Dhabi, Sophie grew up in Wales and now lives in a little Hertfordshire market town with her scientist husband, her incredibly imaginative and creative daughter and her adventurous, adorable little boy. In Sophie’s world, happy is for ever after, everything stops for tea and there’s always time for one more page...
Books by Sophie Pembroke
Harlequin Romance
The Cattaneos’ Christmas Miracles
CEO’s Marriage Miracle
Wedding Island
Island Fling to Forever
Wedding of the Year
Slow Dance with the Best Man
Proposal for the Wedding Planner
A Proposal Worth Millions
The Unexpected Holiday Gift
Newborn Under the Christmas Tree
Road Trip with the Best Man
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
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For Hayley, with love and takeaway curry x
Praise for
Sophie Pembroke
“A poignant, feel-good and irresistible romantic treat that I struggled to put down, Slow Dance with the Best Man is a fantastic tale about second chances, healing from old wounds and finding the courage to fall in love that will touch the hearts of romance readers everywhere.”
—Goodreads
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
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM FROM HEIRESS TO MOM BY THERESE BEHARRIE
CHAPTER ONE
ZOEY HEPBURN SHOVED the hotel window a little further open, hoisted her bare foot up onto the sill and cursed as her hem got caught on the latch—again. She was beginning to regret the strapless hot pink dress she’d chosen for her rehearsal dinner. However pretty the lacy skirt was, it was not getaway-friendly.
Of course, when she bought it, she hadn’t been planning on escaping through a back window the night before her wedding. But then, she never did.
‘People are looking for you, you know.’ The calm, almost lazy voice behind her made Zoey jump just enough to whack her head on the window frame. Ow. ‘Also, you made me promise I wouldn’t let you do this again this time.’
‘Again feels a little harsh. I’ve never actually climbed out of a window before.’ Maybe her shoulders would fit through the small gap better if she twisted them more to the left.
Zoey tried it. They wouldn’t.
Ash sighed. His usual, What did I do in a past life to get lumbered with you as my friend? sigh. Zoey was alarmingly familiar with it.
‘They want to do the speeches,’ he said. As if the idea of hearing David’s father waffle on about how important his family was—to him and to the world at large—might tempt her back into the hotel restaurant. Everyone in there knew what trouble his company was in anyway, whatever tall tales he told about famous people he’d met once and who would never remember his name.
David didn’t do that, she reminded herself. David was reasonably modest. Well, compared to his father anyway, which wasn’t a very high bar, she had to admit.
Still, it meant she probably couldn’t use ‘pompous name-dropper’ as a reason for not marrying him.
‘Since when did speeches become a must for rehearsal dinners, anyway?’ she asked, eyeing the window again. ‘Can’t they save them for tomorrow? You know, the actual wedding.’
‘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 strat
egically 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.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?’ she asked, trying to feel outraged and failing. ‘I mean, you’d let me marry a man who didn’t give me an out on my wedding day? What kind of a friend are you?’
Ash rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, obviously this is my fault. Zoey, you know that if you told me you wanted out then I would get you out—planes, boats and automobiles be damned. But, if you recall, you also told me—quite definitely—when we had dinner last month that David was absolutely the one, and that I wasn’t to let you get cold feet this time, because you’d regret it for the rest of your life.’
Had she really said that? It was hard to imagine somehow, here and now. Impossible to summon up that certainty again—and not because of the island, or his father’s pompous speeches. But because now it came down to it she simply could not picture spending the rest of her life with David.
But she had been able to once. She must have done, to say yes to his proposal. She’d loved him—or believed she did—and had been planning their life together right up until the moment they had arrived in paradise to get married.
People might laugh at her history of running out on weddings—and, yes, there had been a few family members who’d refused to even come to this one, just in case—but when she said yes to a guy on one knee with a sparkly ring, she always, always meant it.
It was just getting from ‘yes’ to ‘I do’ that seemed to cause her problems.
Her whole life with just one person—that was a big ask. And Zoey had seen first-hand what a disaster it could be if she picked the wrong one. Her own parents were a shining example of how not to do marriage.
And then there was Ash.
Ash, her only friend, who had been her best friend’s husband. Ash, who’d had the perfect marriage—until it had been ripped away from him and had left him broken.
Zoey bit her lip, contemplating the question she wanted to ask but didn’t know if she dared.
‘What?’ Ash sat up straighter, watching her. ‘Whatever it is, just ask, Zoey. You know I’ll help if I can.’
He always had. Ash was one of only two people she’d known beyond doubt that she’d always be able to rely on, ever since she and Grace had met him in the student union over a decade earlier. But she didn’t want to hurt him by bringing up painful memories.
On the other hand, she needed to know the answer, if she were to make a real decision about what to do next—not just bash her way through a window and hope for the best.
‘When you and Grace...on your wedding day. Weren’t you nervous?’
Unbidden, memories of that perfect English summer day came back to her. Grace, her best friend since junior school, ethereally beautiful in her delicate lace dress. Zoey’s rose-pink bridesmaid’s dress, a perfect match for the tea roses in Grace’s bouquet. The tiny stone chapel in their home village. The afternoon tea reception on the village green, with mismatched china and bunting strung all around.
And, through it all, Ash and Grace smiling at each other as if their hearts were on show. So in love, so certain that the future would be perfect, as long as they were together.
It hurt now to think of how happy they’d all been, never imagining that it could all be torn away from them in a heartbeat.
‘Nervous?’ Ash shook his head. ‘I was terrified.’
He hadn’t looked it. He’d seemed like a man whose every dream had come true.
If Ash had been nervous, maybe it was okay that she was too?
Or maybe it depended on why. Because Ash had gone through with it. He’d said ‘I do’ and promised his whole life to another person.
And six diamond rings later, that was something Zoey still hadn’t managed.
* * *
Ash took in the look of confusion on Zoey’s face and wondered how he could make her understand, when the depth and strength of his love for Grace had always been something he’d just had to take on faith, rather than pick apart and puzzle out.
He was telling the truth when he said he’d been nervous, but perhaps not in the way Zoey meant the question. It hadn’t been the wedding—all those people there looking at him—that had worried him, or the fear of anything going wrong. And it definitely hadn’t been the concept of marriage itself; the idea of spending the rest of his life with Grace had only ever made him smile.
No, he’d never been scared of committing to Grace. But he’d been petrified of not being good enough to deserve her. Even now she was gone, the idea of not living up to the man she’d believed he could be kept him awake some nights.
Sometimes, he wondered if it was only Grace’s belief in him, in what he could become, that kept him going after her death. That, and Zoey’s blind determination to drag him out of the pit he’d buried himse
lf in the moment the doctor had told him the news.
But that was him. It was all so different for Zoey. For her, it was the commitment she was terrified of. The idea of forever with one person.
Not that she’d ever told him that. But Grace had tried to explain it to him once, back when they were blissfully happy in their extended honeymoon period, and Zoey had just run out on her latest fiancé.
‘It’s not that she doesn’t want to get married. She does, desperately, I think. It’s just that after so many years of watching her parents perform the perfect How Not to Be a Happy Couple show, she’s terrified of getting it wrong.’
That had been three fiancés ago and now, sitting in a tiny storeroom of a luxury hotel, watching Zoey eye up the too-small window as a viable escape route again, Ash had to admit that his wife had been right. As usual.
Hardly surprising, he supposed. Grace had known Zoey better than anyone in the world. Almost as well as she’d known him.
And now he and Zoey were all that was left, trying to muddle through together. She’d literally picked him up off the floor after Grace was pronounced dead following a frantic ambulance ride from the scene of a multi-car pileup that stole three other lives. In return, he tried to be the best friend he could to Zoey, to make up for the much better one that she’d lost that day.
Some days he was better at it than others. He hoped today was a good day. Zoey looked as if she needed it.
And she was still waiting for him to explain his fears.
‘It never occurred to me not to marry Grace.’ Ash stretched out his legs along the table, turning so he could see Zoey as he talked. ‘From the first moment I met her, she was my future. She was all I could think about.’
‘I remember,’ Zoey said, her voice dry. ‘You had to be reminded that you’d actually met me that night too, when you both finally came up for air a week or so later.’
Ash winced. His eighteen-year-old self might not have been entirely aware of other people’s feelings. But Zoey was smiling at the memory, so he figured he must have made up for it in the decade or so since then.
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