Moon Over Montego Bay
Page 1
Moon Over Montego Bay
Book 1 of the Moon Series
Jane Graves
Contents
ABOUT THE BOOK
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
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ABOUT MOON OVER MONTEGO BAY
Book 1 of the Moon Series
A breezy romantic comedy about a man who has three days to fly to Montego Bay, stop his estranged brother's wedding, and steal the bride…
* * *
Sarah Renfro's vacation fling with Nick Baxter made her feel like another woman--wildly free and sexually uninhibited. Then reality set in. She left Nick before dawn one morning, flew home, and vowed to put the experience behind her. A year later, she's in Montego Bay for her dream wedding to a rich, handsome, successful man. Then her fiance's black-sheep brother shows up. One look at him, and Sarah knows he could blow her wedding plans sky high!
* * *
When Nick met Sarah, it was love at first sight, and he was convinced she was his soul mate. When he woke one morning to discover she'd disappeared without a trace, he was devastated, but not nearly as upset as he is a year later to discover that his estranged brother is getting married. To Sarah. In three days.
* * *
There's only one thing Nick can do. He hops a plane to Montego Bay, determined to convince Sarah that his arrogant, obnoxious brother isn't the right man for her—and he is!
Copyright © 2017 by Jane Graves
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. The events, places, names and characters in this book are derived from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to events, locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
1
Nick Baxter wasn’t Facebook friends with his brother. In fact, he wasn’t any kind of friends with his brother. But one evening while he was drinking a beer and watching a basketball game with his friend Michael, he clicked over to Randall’s page for no reason at all, the way you looked up that guy you went to summer camp with or the girl you took to the prom.
And there she was. Sarah. Right there with Randall in his profile pic.
Nick sat up suddenly, clutching his iPad in both hands, telling himself it couldn’t be her. Maybe his vision was out of whack. Or maybe it wasn’t his Sarah—what if she had an identical twin? But when he looked at that blond waterfall of hair and eyes like a cloudless summer sky, he knew the truth.
It was Sarah.
“What’s the matter?” Michael asked, as he grabbed another nacho. “You look sick.”
Nick couldn't stop looking at the screen. It was as if she'd leaned out of the photo and whispered hot, sexy promises in his ear, paralyzing him with anticipation.
Again.
Michael sat up and peered around the edge of the iPad. “Wow. She’s hot.”
No. She was more than just hot. So much more.
Images filled Nick’s mind, one after the other—searing, sexy images of the three days he’d spent with her a year ago in Park City. They met at the Sundance Film Festival, at the screening of a movie whose name Nick didn’t even remember. All he remembered was blinking as the lights came up, and then turning to the woman in the seat next to him. One look at those beautiful eyes, and he was a goner.
Within the hour they were back at his place, and the sex was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. She was a woman unlike any he’d ever experienced, with a smile that made his nerves sizzle and a carefree laugh that filled the air like siren song.
When she told him she was there for only three days, suddenly every hour seemed too precious to waste on something as trivial as his business. So for the next few days he was missing in action, confounding the hell out of Michael, who worked himself silly covering for him. They were business partners, so it was horribly unfair for Nick to disappear. He knew he’d have to atone for that sin later, but it was one he’d cheerfully committed. He couldn’t fight it. He just couldn’t fight the intense desire he felt to be with her, that sensation of floating a foot above the ground, that exhilarating, heady feeling that he, Nick Baxter, just might be falling in love.
“So who is she?” Michael asked.
“Sarah,” Nick murmured.
Michael looked at him blankly for a moment, and then his eyebrows rose. “Sarah? The woman from the film festival?”
“Yeah.”
“The most perfect woman in the world?”
“Yeah.”
“The one who loved you and left you?”
Even now, a year later, Nick still felt a sharp, gnawing pain in his stomach at the very thought of it. He’d awakened the morning of her last day in town to find her gone, and all she’d left behind was a single line scrawled on a piece of note paper. Thanks for a great time…Sarah. He told himself it didn’t mean she’d left for good, that maybe she’d just gone for a walk, or to the market to pick up breakfast. Something. Anything. But as the hours passed, he had to face facts. She was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.
Desperate to find her, he plowed through his memory for any clues she might have given him. She’d told him she lived in Houston and worked for a nonprofit agency, but in a city the size of Houston, that wasn’t enough information to go on. They’d spent hours talking about movies. Politics. Current events. But almost all their conversations had centered around What do you think? rather than Where exactly do you live? or even What’s your last name? It had been as if too much information would break the spell and bring the experience back to the mundane real world. Even so, he felt as if he knew her more intimately than any woman he’d ever met. But when weeks passed and he didn’t hear from her, he knew the truth.
She didn’t want to be found.
Michael set down his beer and twisted his head around for a better look at the photo. “So who’s that guy she’s with?”
That was the most horrible thing of all. “Randall.”
"Randall who?"
"My brother Randall."
Michael’s eyes flew open wide. “The one you don’t speak to? I don’t get it.”
Nick didn’t get it, either. He stared at the photo, searching for some kind of explanation for the two of them being together and came up with nothing. A slow, seething jealousy welled up inside him. How could this possibly be happening? How could his Sarah be in a photo with his estranged brother? Randall had his arm around her, and she was smiling. Maybe they were just friends. Please, God, let it be that.
“Holy crap,” Michael said, pointing to the “About” section of Randall’s page. “Look at that.”
Nick looked where Michael pointed, and air whooshed out of his lungs as if somebody had punched him in the stomach.
Engaged to Sarah Renfro.
Engaged? Engaged? She was engaged to his annoying, controlling, domineering brother? How t
he hell had that happened?
Nick had received the wedding invitation, so he knew Randall was getting married. Undoubtedly it had been sent to him at the insistence of their uptight, socially correct mother, because he couldn’t imagine Randall wanting him there. Nick had thrown it aside because he just didn’t give a damn. He knew Randall’s fiance was a woman named Sarah, but it was a common name, and not for one moment had Nick put two and two together.
“So let me get this straight,” Michael said. “The brother you can’t stand is marrying the woman you couldn’t shut up about. The one you were crazy about, except she left you without a trace. Is that right?”
It sounded even worse when Michael said it. Nick wished he could slip his hands into that photo and right around his brother’s neck. Get away from her, Randall! She’s mine, she’s mine, she’s mine!
“I wonder if they’re already married?” Michael said.
Nick jerked his head up, horrified at the thought. “His status still says ‘Engaged.’”
“Maybe he hasn’t thought to change it yet.”
Nick tossed his iPad aside and leaped off the sofa. He dug through a pile of mail on his kitchen counter, hoping he hadn’t thrown it away. Finally he saw the heavy ivory envelope beneath a circular from a car dealership. He extracted it from the pile, pulled out the invitation, and panic surged through him. “The wedding is in three days.”
Michael picked up his beer again. “Sorry, dude. Guess that’s the end of that.”
“The hell it is.” Nick he tossed the envelope aside. He sat down on the sofa again and grabbed his iPad.
“What are you doing?”
“Booking a flight to Jamaica.”
“Jamaica?”
“That’s where the wedding is taking place.”
Michael sat up suddenly. “Now, wait just a minute. You’re going to the wedding?”
“Why not?”
“Why not? You actually have to ask that?”
Nick pulled up his airline app. “I just want to find out what’s going on.”
“She’s marrying your brother. That’s what’s going on.”
Nick scrolled through the flights. “There has to be more to it than that. He’s not her type.”
“You had a three-day affair. How the hell do you know what her type is?”
“Okay, here’s a flight from Salt Lake City International to Montego Bay leaving first thing in the morning. I’ll have to lay over in Dallas, but I can be there by early evening.”
“Have you forgotten we have a software update day after tomorrow? A conference call with a new snowboard vendor? Business is crazy!”
Nick blew out a breath. “I know. I have no right to ask you to cover for me again. But—“
“But you’re going to anyway.” Michael shook his head. “This woman is becoming a real pain in my ass.”
“I’ll make it up to you. I swear. You name it. Whatever you want.”
"I want you to think about what you're doing."
"I've already thought about it."
“So what do you intend to do once you get to Jamaica? Stop the wedding?”
“I don’t know. It all depends on what I find out.”
“Oh, come on! That shit happens only in movies!”
Nick hit the button to book the departing flight. He had a choice of return flights, but since he had no idea when he’d be leaving Montego Bay, he decided to book one-way.
“Nick?” Michael said.
Nick filled in his name and address.
“This is a bad idea.”
Grabbed his credit card.
“A very bad idea.”
Typed the number.
“Nick! Your family already thinks you’re nuts!”
“I don’t give a damn.”
“Mess up that wedding, and there goes your inheritance.”
“My inheritance was gone a long time ago."
“There's always hope."
No. To hell with what his family thought. Why shouldn’t he hop a plane to a foreign country at a moment’s notice? He was nothing if not impulsive, right? Wasn’t that what he’d been told since he was old enough to know what the word meant? It fell right into place beside careless and unpredictable and irresponsible, words he’d heard so many times growing up that they’d been indelibly etched into his brain.
“You’ve told me about your brother,” Michael said. “He’s not the nicest guy in the world. If you show up there, you’re liable to end up at the bottom of the ocean.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“If you end up dead, can I have your Burton Barracuda?”
At that moment, Nick would have given away every high-end snowboard he owned just to have Sarah back again. “Sure, buddy. It’s all yours.”
“Well, then. In that case I’m pulling for Randall.”
“Watch the game,” Nick said, rising from the sofa. “I gotta pack.”
Michael shook his head. “I’ll say it again. This is a bad idea.”
“She’s worth it.”
“She’s another man’s fiance.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s getting into.”
“She left you after that weekend for a reason.”
Nick felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach all over again.
“I’m not trying to be a bastard,” Michael said. “And I don't know why she left. But she screwed you over once. Why would you rip that wound open all over again?”
Michael might be right. This could turn out very badly. In fact, it would be a miracle if it didn’t. But it was something Nick had to do. Once he was face to face with Sarah, he intended to get some answers, no matter how much it shook things up. He needed to see for himself that it really was her. He needed to know how she’d met Randall, much less gotten engaged to him.
But most of all, he needed to know why the most beautiful and intriguing woman he’d ever met had left him without a trace.
Everybody at the Jamaican resort, from the desk clerks to the cocktail waitresses to the concierge, kept saying everything was No problem, mon! but Sarah had news for them. She had a problem, and all the rum drinking and hammock swinging in the world wasn’t going to solve it.
Yesterday afternoon, she and Randall soared over the Caribbean Sea to land in Montego Bay to wrap up the details for their destination wedding. Sarah took one look at the clear blue water and the lush landscape of Jamaica and thought to herself, I’m the luckiest woman in the world.
Then Randall’s mother showed up, and everything went to hell.
To say Mona Baxter was intimidating was the understatement of the century. She had short, icy-white hair that faded to a muted charcoal at the back of her neck. She spent hours at the gym, sculpting her long, lean body to perfection, and she moved with impeccable grace. But beneath all the charm demanded by the Chicago society crowd she ran with, there was an undercurrent of calculating shrewdness that had kept Sarah on red alert since the day they met. This was a woman who could hold a bloody knife behind her back at the same time as she smiled sweetly at the officers and convinced them she had nothing to do with the dead body at her feet. Still, it had been clear to Sarah from the first time she met Mona that her future mother in law was the gatekeeper to the Baxter family, and Sarah was determined to stay in her good graces.
Now Sarah stood in the reception hall with Mona and Randall, going over the wedding preparations with Giselle, the resort’s wedding planner. The fact that Sarah was the bride seemed to have escaped her future mother in law, leaving poor Giselle not knowing which way to turn. But the fact that Mona and her husband had been coming to this resort for the past ten years definitely weighed in Mona’s favor.
Giselle showed Sarah her choice of linens. “White or ivory?”
“White,” Sarah said.
“Oh, no,” Mona said, looking slightly horrified. “White linens?”
Sarah froze. “Uh…yeah.”
“Hmm…” Mona put her finger to her chin and sho
ok her head. “Sarah, dear, are you absolutely certain you don’t want to rethink that?”
“Well, actually—“
“The ivory is simply lovely.”
“Yes, but—“
“It lends a touch of class you can’t get any other way.”
“Still, I thought—“
“Absolutely nobody uses white linens anymore. That’s what all the bridal magazines are saying.” Then she slid her hand to her throat. “Oh, my. I hope you haven’t been reading issues that were out of date!”
There it was again. That horrible jolt of inferiority Sarah felt every time she was around Randall's family. She looked at him, hoping for some support, but he was busy poking at his phone and looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else.
“And isn’t your dress ivory?” Mona said. “Can you even imagine how that would clash with white linens?”
Okay, so she had a point there. But was it really her place to make the point?
“Well, then,” Mona said. “Ivory it is.”
Sarah took a calming breath. No problem, mon...no problem, mon…
“Now for the silver pattern,” Mona said, looking over the display Giselle had set up. “The one with the rose filagree is simply stunning.”
“I like this one,” Sarah said pointing to a much plainer pattern. “It’s simpler. More elegant.”
“Simpler, yes. But elegant?” Mona let out a long-suffering sigh. “Dear, you don’t want everyone thinking you stopped at Target and picked up flatware on the way to Montego Bay, now do you?”
Sarah didn’t know who “everyone” was, but Mona seemed to greatly value the opinion of that particular group of people.