Read Ex on the Beach for Free Online Page B

thinking about. Genevieve Whitmore.
    Her red curls had been tamed tonight, into a sophisticated style back behind her head, and though her dress looked like the last thing someone would want to get sand out of, she motioned for him to scoot over and plopped right down next to him.
    “You mean sitting here staring at the ocean? Or …”
    She harrumphed like any good southern woman and then gave him that evil eye she’d no doubt perfected early in life. “You’re not stupid, Mark. Don’t pretend I am either.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered. It had been four years, but she still had him instantly treading on fear. “And no, not a coincidence. I suggested Seaglass to the Jordans.”
    “That’s what Andie said. She was fit to be tied over it, too. Not a word out of you in years, and then you show up, bringing a whole crew with you?”
    “I was impressed by what I saw online.” And he had been, but that had zilch to do with suggesting Seaglass as the wedding site. He rubbed the palms of his hands together and gazed off into the distance. “She’s been all right, then? All this time?”
    He didn’t see them, but he felt those deep green eyes studying him. Finally, she spoke. “She’s a fighter. She’ll get up and keep going no matter what.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “I remember.” She’d hit a couple bumps at her job in Boston early on, but they hadn’t deterred her. He glanced over at Ginny. “But how has she been? Really?”
    “That would be something you’ll have to ask her yourself, young man. I don’t presume to speak for my niece, even when it eats at me not to.” Her lips took on a slight curve, and for the first time since he’d taken the ferry over to the island, Mark’s shoulders lost a little of their tension.
    He propped his elbows on his knees, his head turned toward her. “She didn’t seem too thrilled at the idea of talking to me earlier today.”
    “That’s because she’d learned you were coming here just an hour before.”
    He widened his gaze. “And I take it you knew before then?”
    “I don’t miss much.”
    No, she didn’t. The day she’d shown up in Boston to pack Andie’s things, she’d given him an earful. And what he’d gotten from that lecture had been that first, she wanted to rip his balls off and feed them to the nearest snake, but also that she knew the breakup was for the best. “It was fate,” she’d said. According to her, fate knew the right time for two people to get together. And it apparently hadn’t been their time.
    Which had left him wondering if she thought another time would be right for them.
    “I never quit worrying about her,” he said. That was something he hadn’t admitted to anyone. Not even to his own mother. But he suspected Ginny needed to hear it to know that no matter how he’d treated Andie at the end, he had cared about her. A lot.
    “And I imagine she never quit wondering what she’d done wrong.”
    “But Rob told her …”
    He drifted off. Rob was supposed to have told her that Mark had overheard her the morning of their wedding. She’d been on a call with a client, hastily pulling out clothes for an apparent, last-minute business meeting before the wedding. And it had been clear from the snippet of conversation he’d overheard, that she was not shy about throwing around the Kavanaugh name. She was marrying him for his last name. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t heard it with his own ears. The impending wedding probably hadn’t even registered with her, other than to invite the client over to meet his parents during the reception.
    As he’d stood there that day, faced with the reality that not only had she repeatedly put work ahead of him, but that she hadn’t really wanted him at all, Mark had refused to go into a marriage with the balance so unevenly distributed. He’d wanted Andie, and he’d wanted her forever, but he wouldn’t come home to someone, day after day, who only remembered he existed when