Always the Bridesmaid
Author
Ally Blake
Reads
19.6K
Chapters
13
Attend the wedding of the year with Ally Blake's latest Harlequin Romance, and discover what happens when a bridesmaid-for-hire has to enlist an old friend to play the part of best man… THE BEST MAN PROPOSITION Charlotte is a bridesmaid-for-hire — but this time a best man is also needed. Conveniently, her old friend is building a beach house next door. She hasn't seen handsome Beau for years but begs him to step in anyway. Following a bereavement, Beau is taking a break. Except he can't refuse Charlie, even if attending a wedding with her is harder than expected… Every moment evokes memories of his troubled childhood, while Charlie is more beguiling than ever. A steamy affair seems inevitable. But will it be a road to further heartache or true happiness?
CHAPTER ONE
CHARLOTTE GOODE STOOD in the shade of a pale pink castle-shaped wedding cake the size of a dolls’ house. While the bride, Leesa, not two metres away, gawped back at her, eyes glassy, mouth wide with shock.
No wonder, for the bride’s eye-wateringly expensive dress, with its vintage lace bodice, and voluminous layers of imported French tulle, was dripping in great globs of rich, gooey mud-brown cake and pale pink buttercream frosting.
The remains of which were stuck to the nooks and crannies of Charlotte’s fiercely clenched hand.
For mere moments earlier, Charlotte had shoved her hand deep into the guts of that fairy-tale cake and grabbed a hearty fistful—in much the same way the bad guy in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom had reached into that guy’s chest and come out with his bloody beating heart—before hoicking back her hand and letting the cake fly...
Charlie shuddered, attempting to rid herself of the shocking memory.
It had been two years since that fateful day. Her Momentary Lapse of Reason, she called it; to everyone else it had become #cakegate.
Two years since Charlie had stepped into her infamous era. Whether it was the optics of such a manifestly opulent wedding, the fact that Leesa, the bride, was the daughter of a US senator who’d gone apoplectic in the aftermath, or that one perfect photo of the aftermath, their perfectly meme-able faces in twin shocked expressions, for a minute #cakegate had trended higher than #distractedboyfriend and #todayyearsold.
Whatever one called it, she’d become a laughingstock, poison, and unemployable. The life she’d worked, and tried, and hustled so hard to build had ended up in pieces at her well-shod feet.
She looked at her feet now—lifting them from the armrest of the lumpy couch on which she lay, and giving them a wriggle, before ducking the chipped black evidence of a hasty home pedicure back out of sight.
She puffed out a breath, and tried, for the thousandth time, to think of some way she might have fixed things.
What if she’d not been so hasty as to resign from her role as junior event coordinator at the iconic San Francisco Bay Library? What if she’d refused to agree to their demand that she not contact the bride to apologise? What if she explained that she’d had a really good reason why she’d done what she did. That she’d been aiming for the groom, and missed.
Charlie groaned, and squeezed her eyes shut tighter, knowing it wouldn’t have helped. For despite all that, she’d done something rash, and unconscionable. And in the end she’d only had herself to blame.
Hence the fact she was scrolling cat videos and nibbling at the bowl of stale mixed nuts balanced precariously on her chest while slouched back on the lumpy cane couch in her parents’ sunroom in a house on picturesque hilltop Myrtle Way, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
There, that ought to distract her from #cakegate. The fact that after leaving home and vowing never to return, she was back living in her parents’ place.
Her parents’ place.
Charlie kept calling it that even though in actual fact the place had been vacant for years; the captured-in-time furniture, peeling wallpaper, funny smell in the laundry, and overgrown front garden were proof of that.
For when her father had died a number of years back, leaving behind a large collection of jackets with elbow patches and Charlie’s habit of looking over her shoulder in case he was still there shaking his head at her in grave disappointment, her mum had hightailed it to the UK the day after she’d buried him. Like a rubber band stretched to its limits that had finally snapped.
“Are you sure?” Charlie’s mum had said over the phone when Charlie had managed to track her down in the wilds of Scotland, where she was living these days, to make the mortifying “is it okay if I crash at home for a bit?” call. Her memories of the years spent in that house as snarled as Charlie’s own.
After giving her mum the shiniest possible version of becoming an unemployable punch line, Charlie had said, “You know I’d not ask if I had any other choice—”
“Of course, honey,” her mother had cooed. “Warning, I have no clue what condition the place is in after all this time. There’s nothing owing on the place, the one good thing I can say about your father, but there may be a smidge of land tax due, and a few things that need fixing to make it habitable. But stay. Or sell the thing, and come on over here. There’s no room in the caravan, but you’d love Edinburgh. Or, do as I planned, and let the earth eat it alive. Heck, burn it to the ground if that’s what you want!”
What pleased Charlie was to take advantage of rent-free shelter, while curling up in a ball till she stopped feeling sorry for herself. Turned out that didn’t happen overnight. For living in a falling down, debt-ridden house that she’d vowed never to set foot in again wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
So, she’d shaken herself off, stripped the bed, organised power and water like a proper grown-up, made a deal with the council to pay the eye-watering back taxes bit by bit, and started over. Again.
For Charlie was nothing if not resilient. She’d been knocked down—and, far more importantly, gotten back up again—more times than she could remember.
Only this time it had taken her rather a lot longer than usual to dust herself off. She was hopeful it was proportionate to the event, and not some indication that there was a finite number of times a person could get knocked down before it became just too hard to get back up again.
Then, like some portent of doom, Charlie flinched as an actual knock came at the front door.
She squinted up the hall, through the dust motes glittering in a beam of afternoon sunlight.
Eighteen months she’d been there now, and nobody had knocked. Likely because it meant braving the wildly overgrown front drive. There was also the fact she’d not exactly done much in the way of friend-making since she’d come home. Why bother, when she wasn’t planning on sticking around. She just needed something—a spark, a sign, a kick in the pants—and she’d be back. Fierce and fighting fit. Till then, scrolling funny cat videos held great appeal.
Another knock. This one a little louder.
It was probably someone selling solar panel plans. Or maybe a tradesperson letting her know her hot water might be cut off for a few days, as yet another house along the street had been knocked down to make way for some contemporary hilltop mega-palace.
For the place on Myrtle Way, for all its drawbacks—distance to the nearest big city, inconsistent Wi-Fi, back steps held together with termite poop—was situated in the prettiest place on the planet.
The road itself wound along the peak of a band of verdant hills, leading to a number of small but popular tourist towns filled with quaint shops and even quainter people. But it was the view east that was the real money shot—a bright blue dome of a sky above layers of rich layers of green undulating forest rolling toward the deep blue distant twinkle of the Pacific beyond.
The gentrification of the area since she’d left was unsurprising. The speed at which it had was enough to give a person whiplash.
Another knock.
Wow, they were really keen. Their stickability was next level. It reminded her of...
Heat rushed up Charlie’s neck and her belly felt all pins and needly as the aftermath of #cakegate came swimming at her all over again. In the weeks that followed she’d had to battle emails, phone calls, people stopping her on the street to take selfies. And once her address was out there, knocks at her door at any hour.
The breaking point had been an interview with a potential employer, smiling at her as if he’d met her somewhere before. Until something clicked, his eyes widening as he realised who she was. What she’d done. His disappointment had felt like a knife through the heart.
Thank everything good and holy this place was backwater enough that the whiff of #cakegate hadn’t followed. But if it found her again, she honestly had no clue what she might do.
Knock. Knock. Knock-knock-knock.
Enough was enough.
Cursing the gods of mischief and mayhem who seemed to have taken a liking to her from birth, Charlie tossed her phone to the couch, pushed herself to standing, and padded up the hallway to the door.
A quick check of her T-shirt sporting the mean old guys on The Muppets told her she had put on a bra that morning. The messy bun atop her head, and the fact she likely smelled like coffee and a medium to low current level of self-care were what they were.
Then, with a fortifying breath, she whipped open her front door.
To find a man mountain blocking the sun on her wide front veranda.
Even facing away, looking up the curving driveway past the overgrowth, toward the hidden road beyond, it was clear the guy was no door-to-door salesperson. Or a tradie for that matter. Too well-dressed in his slick brown boots, dark jeans, and peacoat a smidge too warm for the subtropical climate.
Too tall, too. Was that a thing? Could a person be too tall to take on a door-to-door job? For the man was mighty at well over six and a half feet and built to match.
Even his hair was a lot. Thick, gloriously tousled, the colour of rich dark chocolate. So soft-looking her fingers curled into her palms.
It was the weirdest thing. Her entire body seemed to be in the midst of some kind of chemical reaction. As if it was trying to tell her something. Had she stood up too fast? Been bitten by something on her walk down the hall?
All that in the space of two seconds.
For then the man turned.
Time seemed to slow as sunlight rained over him, dappled and bright, creating a halo of white gold around his spectacular face. Sparks glinted off black-rimmed glasses, shards of golden light picked out a sharp jaw covered in neat stubble, a straight nose, the outline of the most beautifully carved lips curving into a slow smile—
“Charlotte?”
Memories flickered and flashed, tumbling frantically over one another—rope swings, hide-and-seek, shooting-star watch parties. Picking wildflowers to make potions. A secret space in the small dank nook under the back porch of her house to hide in when her father, or his parents, were being particularly...them. A tumbled mess of laughter, daring, tenderness, rebellion, togetherness, confusion, anger, and the deep ache that comes from falling out with a friend—
Charlie rocked on her feet, as if something had reached in and dragged her through a gap in the space-time continuum.
“Beau?” she said, her voice catching.
It was. It was Beau Griffin. The boy next door.
Only he was not a boy anymore. For this Beau was a man. A big stunning manly man. With facial hair and bone structure and shoulders she had to move her head to measure.
Beau huffed out a soft laugh, and shook his head. As if he was as surprised to find her in her parents’ home as she was to see him on their front veranda. A crease curved in just the one cheek, lines fanning out from the edges of his glasses behind which resided eyes she’d at one time known better than her own. Eyes the colour of peanut butter. Of autumn leaves. She may once have written a very secret poem saying as much.
Thankfully, some seed of self-control burst inside her. Which was a small miracle, considering her history of giving into urges that erred on the side of self-destructive.
“Beau!” she said again. Then, “Beau Griffin. It’s been forever.”
Not quite, though. For she remembered the date, the day, what they were both wearing. The awful fight they’d had the night before. How she’d had to cross her arms so tight across her chest in order to stop the shakes when he’d driven away to take on the phenomenal early scholarship he’d been awarded, and not looked back.
How her father—a “renowned doctor of chemistry” to anyone who asked, as opposed to mildly successful high school science teacher—had moved in behind her, and hissed into her ear, asking why with all the advantages she’d been given—aka being his daughter—she couldn’t be more like Beau.
“It’s so good to see you!” she said, feeling totally fine about all that now. Then she reached out and gave his arm a chummy smack, and her hand bounced off what felt like wool over solid concrete. That was new.
“I thought,” he said, brow furrowing over his glasses, “I’d heard you were working overseas?”
And didn’t that just set off a swirl of feelings inside her, imagining he must have googled her or secretly stalked her social media at some point.
Then, as if it had been lying in wait, #cakegate poked out its head. Had he seen the memes? Or heard the song someone had made that had gone viral for a half second, using the gasps and chair scrapes and clanking plates as percussion.
Her whole body felt as if it was curling on itself as she waited for the follow up. The weirdness that always came next. Hell, if she saw disappointment in Beau Griffin’s eyes she might never recover. But nothing more came of it, and she relaxed a very little.
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “I’m crashing here for a little bit. Passing through really. And you? Working hard doing something amazing I bet.”
Last she’d heard he was in Sydney, fronting a groundbreaking team of engineers working to invent some renewable, green clean energy battery, or engine, or something, that was going to save the world. For yes, she had cyber-stalked him a while back, before she realised it didn’t make her feel any better about how things had gone down.
He lifted a hand to the back of his neck, a classic Beau move, giving him the air of a tortured poet. “Busy enough. Though I’ve just... I’m taking some time off right now.”
She might have asked, Time off from what? or Why? but there was the fact that he was looking at her mouth. Like, really looking.
Then his hand lifted from its position hooked into the front of a pair of awfully flattering jeans and both she and her inner monologue had no words as he reached up. His fingers hovered an inch away from her jaw, his thumb hooked as if he might brush her lips. While his gaze was so focused, warmth spread through her like liquid sunshine.
Then, in Beau’s voice yet not Beau’s voice for it was lower than she remembered, deep, with a husky edge, said, “You have a small flake of something on the corner of your mouth.”
Sorry, what now?
Charlie’s tongue darted out, catching a not small flake of peanut skin that had been stuck there. The entire time.
All the strange warmth that had been dancing through her zoomed straight to her cheeks as she wiped quickly at her mouth, to find it covered in peanut salt. Looking down she found yet more salt, more peanut flakes, glittering her boobs.
She brushed herself down, frantically flapped her shirt, then started to laugh. Cackling, really, for the first time in what felt like eons. Till her stomach hurt.
“You have no idea how much I needed that,” she said, once she was recovered. Then she looked up at him, arms wide, and said, “Truth is, I’m a hot mess. How the heck are you?”
“I’m...fine,” he said, as if, despite all evidence to the contrary, he’d needed that moment to be sure. Then, “Surprised to see you. Thrilled, that it was you who opened the door, but surprised.”
“Thrilled, you say?”
The crease in his right cheek grew a little deeper, and even while the smile never quite reached his eyes, her knees all but gave way.
“I was beginning to wonder how many more times I should knock before it bordered on too many,” Beau said.
Charlie braced a hip on the doorjamb. “Oh, it was definitely too many. I was ready to set the dogs on you.”
When he looked over her shoulder, down her parents’ front hall, as if expecting a horde of Dobermans to come at him, she added, “Metaphorically,” and got another half smile for her efforts.
As an inconvenient bloom rose inside her, Charlie wrapped the old wrap tighter about herself.
“Was there a reason for the knocking?” she asked, rather than the zillion other questions knocking about inside her head.
Why are you here? How have you been? Where have you been? Are you okay? Like, really okay? What happened to us? Are you married? Kids? Do you ever think of me? Of us? Do you ever wonder if the adventures we had before the whole weird “falling out” thing might end up being the best times of our lives?
Something flashed behind his eyes, making her wonder if he, too, was choosing which of a dozen questions to start with, before he went with, “How are your parents? Are they still about?”
Parents. Meaning he must not know about her father. She’d always imagined that while she and Beau had not spoken in years, her father had found a way to stay in contact over the years, for he’d seen Beau as the child he’d believed he deserved. The fact that she’d been wrong about that loosened something inside her.
“Dad passed away a while back,” Charlie said. “Mum is travelling the Scottish wilderness in a campervan with her lover, Alfredo.”
Beau lifted his chin in a nod, as if that all tracked. What he didn’t do was offer up any condolences over her father’s fate. Which she appreciated. For Beau understood that she’d have struggled to accept it. In fact, he was the only person who ever truly would.
She did him the same courtesy. She’d already moved overseas, having nabbed a green card in the visa lottery, when Beau’s parents had died. Her mother had called to tell her—gas inhalation in their kitchen, classified accidental, evidence suggesting both were likely too high to even notice.
His parents. Their house. Oh, no.
Before she could second-guess herself, Charlie leaped out onto the veranda, grabbed Beau’s arm, her hand sliding into the crook of his elbow the way it had done a thousand times before, and used the element of surprise to spin him so that their backs were to the place where Beau’s childhood home used to be.
For it was one of the most recent to have been torn down. Wrecking balls and bulldozers. The whole nine yards. It had been quite the show.
While it had probably a good thing, considering its macabre history, a gargantuan sharp-edged beast of a structure had begun to be constructed in its place. And while Beau’s childhood had been more chaotic than hers, even downright frightening at times, foundational memories could be complicated. She knew.
“Charlotte?” Beau said again, an all too familiar note of indulgence in his voice.
“Mm-hmm?”
“Is there a reason we’re looking at your rubbish bins.”
“Yep.”
Chances were, he knew about the house, right? Though, from the road it looked the same as it always had—big brick pillars covered in moss and wild jasmine, the gate long since gone, long driveway dipping past shrubs and lush trees blocking any view of the house settled into the gently sloping hillside at the rear.
But still he waited. Big to her small. All still stoicism to her constant fidgets. Patience to her restlessness. So warm and strong. So Beau.
A deep psychic ache rose up inside her then. The years she’d missed, even when he’d still been around. Wondering what she’d done to make him pull away, hating not knowing where they had gone so wrong.
So, yeah, maybe grabbing the guy hadn’t been the best move.
Then Beau made a sound. Or maybe he flexed beneath her gripping hand. Either way she looked up to find his gaze questioning. When his mouth did the quirk thing, the cheek bracket bracketing for all it was worth, she let go as if burned.
And moved away from him, keeping his attention in the bin direction, which was probably what she ought to have done in the first place. Clicked her fingers. Look over here!
Then she said. “I have to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“Your house... Your parents’ old house—it’s no longer there. And now they’re building some modern monstrosity in its place. All sooty wood, cantilever architecture, with the charm of a weapons facility. It’s as if the new owner has the hots for Grand Designs and hopes to blow out their harebrained budget in the name of owning their very own Mojo Dojo Casa House.”
Beau’s eyebrows slowly rose. Then he turned, as if to see for himself.
In a panic, Charlie grabbed him by both arms this time. Holy hell, the man was made of concrete. “I just—” She stopped to clear her throat. “I didn’t want you to head over there, unprepared.”
And as he looked at her, once again the memories just flooded on in. She, his great defender. Taking on school bullies, sneaking him food when it was clear he’d gone without, forcing him on adventures to distract him from whatever went on behind his front door that made him look so haunted all the damn time. His friendship giving her quiet assurance that she was worthy of it.
Until the summer she turned sixteen, and their friendship had gone up in smoke.
“May I?” he said, a hand reaching to open his jacket.
Realising she still held him, she let go. Stepping back, she put her hands in the back pockets of her short cut-offs so that she’d not grab the guy again. Sheesh!
Beau reached for his phone, swiped it open and held up a picture of her front porch. A strange package thereupon.
Charlie looked around to find no such package. “I don’t understand.”
“This is why I came knocking. And knocking some more. My builders received this message yesterday saying some bathroom fittings they had been waiting for had been delivered. Only this was the image the delivery company sent as proof. Only it’s not my new front porch, it’s yours.”
His new front porch?
Charlie’s gaze swung past his big shoulders to the trees blocking the view of the house next door. “I don’t understand. Your house was sold after your parents—”
She bit her lip. According to her mum, debt collectors had swept in and picked it clean before the bank sold it for a pittance. A series of renters had moved in and out before her mother left and any connection to the house next door had been lost.
“I recently repurchased the place,” Beau said.
Charlie, moving back into the safety of the doorway, watched him look toward the house next door, the sliver of his face she could see unreadable.
“Recently?” she pressed. “Meaning you bought it...in order to knock it down?”
He turned back to her, then. A rueful smile on his face as he said, “I suppose I did.”
And again she noted that the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. In the old days that would have been her sign to drag him up a tree so that they could spy on her other neighbour, or under the back porch for a game of speed Uno.
Now she had nothing for him but, “Wow.”
“You haven’t considered doing the same?” he asked.
“Me? No!” she said, her hand leaping to her heart before she dropped it back to her side. For one thing, what with her situation and back taxes, she didn’t have the funds to fix the dodgy wiring, or look into the water stains on the ceiling, much less rebuild an entire house.
As to selling up? She could do that. Reinvest, move on. Her mother had even given the green light to burn the place to the ground. Yet she, the queen of burning it all down, was holding back on making a decision. Something keeping her put for the minute. And she wasn’t quite ready to unpack what that might be.
Beau, on the other hand, appeared totally cool with having razed his childhood home.
Beau, who’d been the sweetest little kid on the planet; the kind who’d step over an ants’ nest and never take the first turn. Who, even when he’d begun to make a name for himself, winning every national science championship there was, had hosted online Dungeons and Dragons games from the local library computers, because he was too shy to do so in person. Teen Beau had been more of an enigma, even before things had gone pear-shaped between them.
But he’d always been forgiving. Of her, when she pushed too hard. Of the kids at school who pegged them both as outsiders and treated them as such. Of his parents, despite what they’d put him through.
Clearly, she’d been mistaken.
When she realised they were both just looking at one another again, and her skin began to warm, Charlie said, “Sorry. I never saw that package in the photo. Maybe check with the delivery guys?”
He blinked as if pulling himself from his own fog of memories, then said, “Will do.”
Then, when Beau looked to the driveway, as if making to leave, Charlie found herself saying:
“And who do I call if I want to complain about the week of cold showers I was just forced to endure?”
That time the crinkles most definitely reached his eyes. Happy warmth flooded through her, reminding her how deeply satisfying it had been, all those years ago, to make this guy smile.
“Plumbing is all done,” Beau assured her with a tilt of his head, “so any cold showers you take from here should be by choice.” And was his voice a little dry? The kind of dry that scraped down a woman’s insides leaving a scratchy feeling in its wake. Her insides. She was the woman.
“If I get any more mystery packages?” she found herself asking.
After a beat, and a long breath in, Beau said, “Let the builders know.”
The builders. Not him.
Charlie swallowed, and nodded. “Sure. Of course.” Then she stepped back and reached blindly for the door handle. “I was in the middle of something,” aka scrolling cat videos, “and I really should get back to it. It was really nice to see you, Beau. Hope all goes well with the monstrosity!”
Beau’s mouth was open when she shut the door.
Charlie spun and leaned against the door, her head falling back to thunk against the wood.
Once she was sure enough the guy wasn’t about to knock again, she pushed off the door and tiptoed back down the hall to the sunroom. Where she sat on the lumpy cane couch, grabbed a cushion, hugged it to her chest, and stared into the middle distance.
So that was Beau Griffin. The once upon a time gentle to her wild. The sense to her daring. Twin stars revolving around a near-permanent state of imminent danger, keeping one another from flinging out into the void. All grown up.
What was his plan for the house next door? Was he going to sell it? Rent it out? Or keep it for a vacation home? Surely, he wasn’t moving back in. Not that it mattered. Not him, not his house. It was nothing to her.
It was enough to be on the lookout for that one great spark of inspiration that might get her out from under the #cakegate fugue. After which she’d be out of there! Faster than lightning.
She would find some place new. Some place entirely devoid of memories to make her mark. For while life might try to knock her down, the memories tripped her every damn time.
