His Wedding Date (Destination Weddings #1)

His Wedding Date

Ari Thatcher

His Wedding Date Copyright © 2014 Ari Thatcher

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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 permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

~*~

(This is a revised, expanded version of a novella previously released as The Substitute Stripper)

A free weekend at a ski lodge, and all she has to do is attend a wedding and reception on the arm of her sexy coworker, Ash? Heck, yeah! Bree is all over it. She’s been crushing on him for some time, but even if he’s not interested in anything long term, she’ll get a weekend in the snow.

Ash doesn’t mind attending his college buddy’s wedding at a ski lodge, except for the fact Greg’s sister is Ash’s ex-wife. All the things she said was wrong with him are still true, but the only one that bothers him is his inability to maintain a relationship. At least with Bree at his side, he can hold his head up around his friends. Too bad she’d never go for a guy like him…

~*~

Chapter One

Bree Simmons held the collar of her wool coat closed as the wind off the ocean blasted past the front of the office building. She should have worn pants to work, but her little plaid skirt was so much more fun. More fitting to the mood she’d been in when she woke. Flirty. Dangerous. It was Friday, the end of a long week, and she planned to make the most of the beginning of her weekend.

“Bree, wait up!” Ash Uberman, the hunky graphic artist who worked two cubicles away from hers trotted up. His straight brown hair danced in the blowing air. “Whew, this wind is crazy.”

“Yes, and thanks for making me stand in it longer.” She grinned to show she was teasing. “What’s up?”

He smiled and she forgot how cold her legs were. “I need a favor.
Huge
favor.”

They were friendly enough to have lunch on occasion, often with a few other coworkers, but other than the major crush she had on him, she wouldn’t call them friends. Still, with the right kind of favor, that could change. Or she could hope so. “Depends. What kind of favor?”

“I need a date.”

The laugh that escaped her was loud and brief, and she snapped her mouth closed a moment to regain her composure. “You need a date? I hear you on the phone all the time, baby this, sugar that. Someone stand you up?”

He glanced around then took her elbow and walked toward the parking lot. “It’s a long story. I don’t want to keep you out here in the cold. Can I buy you a drink?”

Dying to find out what was going on, she said, “Sure.”

She followed him in her car to a small pub not far from the office and he found them a small table in a corner near the fireplace, which she was very grateful to find burning brightly. She took off her coat and draped it over the chair while Ash went to the bar to get their drinks. She was a bit surprised when he came back with her favorite, a strawberry stripper. The man paid attention at their happy hour gatherings with their coworkers.

He sat and poured his bottled ale into a frosty glass. “Now, then. The favor. I need a date to a wedding.”

She raised an eyebrow. “One of your sugar babies can’t help you out?”

“I don’t want to ask any of them. This is important.”

She sipped her drink while she let that digest. It was too important to ask one of his bimbettes, so he was asking her. She shivered, and blamed it on the cold drink, not the thrill of excitement that he would ask her to do him an important favor. “So, when’s the wedding?”

“Next weekend.”

“Weekend,” she repeated. “Not next Saturday or next Sunday. They have some special ritualistic ceremony or something?”

“No. The wedding is at the Snowshoe Mountain Lodge. They picked the location so we can get some skiing in while we’re there.”

A weekend at the lodge, and all she had to do was show up at a wedding and reception.
Hello
. She’d be nuts not to go. If Ash wasn’t interested in warming her bed, she was sure she could find a lonely skier who’d be game. “I pretend to be your date and you pay for the weekend?”

His cool blue eyes locked on hers as if searching for something. “Well, yeah, if you have to pretend, I guess that still works.”

Aww
. That cute puppy sound went off in her head and tugged at her heart. He wanted her for a real date. He was too cute, and she was more than willing. “I’m sorry, you said you needed a favor so I assumed pretending to like you was the favor.”

Shit! She should just shove her whole boot in her mouth, since her foot was so far in. “Wait, I didn’t mean that. I meant—well, I don’t know what I meant. I’m a bitch, what can I say. I know, how’s this? I would love to be your date for the wedding.”

He smiled and took a quick swig of his beer. “Thanks. I can’t tell you how important this is.”

“You know, you could have saved me a lot of embarrassing moments here if you had just asked me to go as your date.”

He looked around the room, avoiding her gaze. “I wasn’t sure you’d go. I mean, I guess I should tell you I’m the best man, so everyone is going to be looking at who I bring to the wedding.”

She was a trophy date. This kept getting better and better. “And you think they’ll be impressed that you’re with me?”

His eyes widened and mouth went slack, as if she’d lost her mind. “Well, yeah. Have you looked in the mirror lately? Looked around the room?”

Unable to help herself, she glanced at the other patrons and caught more than a few guys watching her. Okay, so in her little red plaid schoolgirl skirt, tight sweater and killer boots, she could turn heads. She knew that. But she was far from the most beautiful girl around. When she turned back to Ash, she caught him staring at her boobs. They swelled in acknowledgement and sent waves of warmth through her belly.

“So, who are the happy couple?” She toyed with her straw to have an excuse to put her arms in front of her. She knew her nipples had to be visible.

“Greg, the groom, went to UCSB with me, and he’s marrying the girl he met there. They dated a bit in college, went their separate ways, but met up again recently and really connected.”

“How sweet. And all your college buds will probably be there. The bachelor party ought to be wild.”

He nodded. “It had better be. I’m in charge. It’s been hard to set up a party at the lodge but we’ve reserved the main room for the night and I’ve arranged for porn and a stripper.”

“Just add alcohol and stir.” She raised her glass in a toast before taking another sip.

“There’s something else I should tell you.”

Something in his voice gave her pause. He had a girlfriend? He’s gay? The bride was a celebrity? She hated when people used that warning tone over nothing.

“Greg’s sister is my ex.”

She made a sympathetic face. “Ooh, you have to see your ex-girlfriend. That hurts.”

“Ex-wife.”

She choked on the peanut she was chewing. “You were married? I didn’t know.” She didn’t know anything about him, now that she thought about it. He could be an ex-con, or president of a biker gang. As she watched the emotions working over his face, and really looked at the sweetness there, the scroungy, reddish-brown facial hair that refused to become a five-o’clock shadow no matter how many days he grew it, and the gentlest baby-blues she’d ever seen, she knew he couldn’t hide any sort of wicked past.

“It was brief. She wanted a CEO and I was just a guy who drew cartoons for games.”

Her jaw dropped. “Does she know the awards you’ve gotten for those
cartoons
? How the gamers go on about your characters?” The woman was blind if she didn’t see the talent Ash had.

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’m happier without her. She’s happier with Pierce Henderson, the son of the CEO of Middleton Finance.”

Bree wanted to hug him, but instead she just smiled. “Her loss.”

“Thanks.”

“You know,” she said, toying with her straw, “if you really want to make an impression on your ex, we could pretend we have a thing going on. Something more than just a first date. I need to know everything about you since she last saw you.”

Ash reached for his beer, keeping his gaze down. “There’s not much to know. I buried myself in work, didn’t date for the first year after she left. That was during Warrior Kingdom. You came to BA Games just as we wrapped up that game, so you know what I’ve done since. You’ve worked on some of the same projects.”

“Yeah, but all I know is what you do at work. She’s going to expect details. What side of the bed do you sleep on? What brand toothpaste do you prefer?”

He looked up. “You really think she’s going to grill you at her brother’s wedding? I can’t see her even noticing I’m there. She’s done with me. And I’ve moved on. I’m glad she’s not in my life.”

She believed him, but didn’t want to give up her shot at learning more about him. “We’ll be there for the whole weekend, she’ll have plenty of time to grill me. And she sounds like the type to want to feel she made the right decision in leaving you. I think we should look like old friends, at the very least, at the reception. Unless you don’t want them to think we’re dating. In which case, I understand completely and—”

“No, no, us being together is great. So, what do you want to know?”

~*~

As Ash answered Bree’s questions, he had difficulty concentrating. Thank God he wasn’t going to have to face Jillian alone. It wasn’t like she was a bitch, but her superior attitude really ground him down. He kept trying to tell himself Jillian’s opinion of him didn’t matter anymore. Kept putting her out of his mind when he received recognition at work for some award he won, or they reported record-breaking sales on a project he’d been the lead artist on. Yet when there was no one at home waiting to hear how his day went, his thoughts naturally drifted to what might have been.

What if he’d gotten recognition sooner? If his fans had taken to social media a year or two sooner? Would it have been enough to save his marriage?

Then he remembered how quickly Jillian remarried. She obviously hadn’t loved him much, if at all.

“You know, you’ll pull this off better if you actually pay attention when I talk. Or were you going for old married couple?”

“Huh?” Shit, she’d been talking while he was moaning to himself about Jillian. Way to impress a girl.

“It wasn’t important.”

He looked in her eyes to determine if that was the typical female brush off or the truth. He hadn’t known her long enough. Well, maybe well enough, as they’d worked together for a couple of years.

“Do we need to figure out how we met?” Bree asked.

“Why make it more complicated. We met at work. Jillian and her husband live here in Oakland, so we need to keep it as close to factual as we can.”

“Just lengthen the time we’ve been together. And…pretend that we’ve slept together.” Her lashes lowered and she reached for her drink.

His dick jumped. “Yeah. Pretend.” Or they could practice a few times to make it look real. But he wasn’t going to blow his chances with Bree by suggesting it.

“Tell me something. How did you end up with a girl who didn’t appreciate your artistic talent?”

He shrugged. He’d asked himself that a few times, usually after too many beers. “I think she thought I’d outgrow it by the time we graduated.”

“So you guys never really talked about your future.”