The Beach Wedding (Married in Malibu Book 1) Read Free Page A

good-looking, and in great shape despite a job that involved many hours sitting at a keyboard. People had joked more than once that his novels would sell even better if his photograph was on the cover.
    “All of which means it’s probably a good thing that Married in Malibu wasn’t open when Amber and Robert got engaged,” Liz said to herself. Because if there was one thing that made Liz’s heart want to leap out of her chest, it was the thought of seeing Jason again. Especially after all this time.
    A knock on her office door snapped Liz out of her reverie. “I’m coming,” Liz said, getting up to let Nate in, figuring he must have his hands full of coffee cups for the whole team. “Hold on a second.”
    But when Liz made it to the door and pulled it open, she came face to face with a ghost.
    There was no other way to put it. No other way to describe how it felt when Jason Lomax said, “Hello, Liz,” as casually as if it had been ten hours since she’d last seen him rather than ten years.

Chapter Two
    J ason knew he was taking a risk coming to Married in Malibu today. A big risk with his own happiness and potentially his niece’s, too. Yet Married in Malibu was also the best chance he could see of making sure that Amber did end up happy.
    And he’d do anything to ensure that.
    He’d taken Amber in when his sister had lost her battle with the bottle eight years ago. Jason had done his best to love his sister through all her problems, but it still destroyed him that Maxine hadn’t been there for a daughter as wonderful as Amber. He’d been determined to give his niece everything she could ever want, even while he was still struggling to get his own dreams of writing thrillers off the ground. He’d had to learn as he went along, doing his best to be there for her through sometimes difficult high school and college years. Amber had turned out amazingly well, thank God. She was only twenty-three, but she already had a string of successful movie roles and was a rising star. Rising so fast, in fact, that her engagement to Robert was all over the press.
    Jason couldn’t have hoped for his niece to fall in love with a better guy. Robert was five years older than Amber and as steady as they came, working as a financial analyst rather than in the entertainment industry. Unfortunately, Amber had become so famous that organizing a wedding was no simple thing. Though they were still six months away from the wedding they were planning at the French château, news was plastered on the gossip sites every day. There was speculation over every little detail, from who was and wasn’t going to be invited, to what designer Amber would be wearing, to the flavor and style of cake they would serve to their guests.
    “It’s all getting to be too much,” Amber had told him when she’d checked in via Skype a couple of nights ago from the set of her latest movie in Prague. “If I’m not being asked a zillion questions by the château’s wedding planners, then I’m being bombarded with questions about the wedding from the media. It’s starting to feel like it’s getting in the way of everything. My work and my relationship with Robert.” Amber had sounded like she wanted to burst into tears. “I’m pretty sure a couple of the other actors on the set think that I’m nothing but a vacuous wannabe who’s only interested in fame, but I swear I’m not trying to push my wedding into everyone’s face. And neither is Robert, though even his financial clients are asking about it now. If I could just marry Robert tomorrow, I would. Even if it means going to Vegas and getting married by some guy dressed like Elvis. I just don’t want to lose Robert because everything has gotten so crazy.”
    Jason knew far too well how much it hurt when love went wrong. He also knew that it didn’t matter how successfully things went in the rest of your life if it all felt empty when the person you loved was gone. In that moment that he’d