Read Online Ex on the Beach by Kim Law - Free Book Online Page A

to foot. He wanted to know what she was thinking.
    Suddenly, her arm shot up and his other loafer hit the ocean.
    “What was that for?” he asked, incredulity lining his voice. Not that he could have worn just one shoe, but it seemed sacrilegious to toss both of them in the water.
    “For sending Rob instead of having the guts to come yourself.”
    He nodded, suddenly sober with the hurt he’d caused. Maybe she hadn’t loved him as much as he’d wanted her to, but it wasn’t as if nothing had been between them. Their kiss of only a few moments ago had shown that there had once been something there. Heck, there was still something there. She may claim she’d been faking it, but he’d felt her body tremble against his.
    “I came by the apartment that morning. Did Rob tell you that?”
    Wide eyes blinked up at him, confused. “When?”
    Right . Of course Rob hadn’t told her that.
    Mark had spent the night before at his parents’ home, as he and Andie had planned to follow tradition and not see each other until she walked down the aisle. Only he’d had a gift for her. Something that would’ve made the day even more special. And he’d wanted to give it to her with no one else around.
    But seeing the bride before the wedding had definitely brought bad luck.
    “The morning of the wedding. You were on a conference call when I came in.”
    She looked briefly stunned, and then nodded. It hadn’t taken her long to remember who she’d been talking to. “Why didn’t you say something?”
    “Because you were picking out an outfit to wear to the office.”
    She lowered her gaze. They’d had many arguments about how much she’d been working. The fact that his mother had planned the majority of their wedding instead of her had been a testament to her long hours.
    “It was an important account,” she said, almost too softly to hear.
    “I gathered that.”
    At some point, they’d begun walking side by side through the rising tide, and he could now make out another couple far off in the distance. He hoped they were enjoying themselves instead of ripping their hearts open like they were.
    Andie stopped and faced him. “Is that why? Because I was going into the office that morning? I told you I was at a critical point in my job. But I wouldn’t have been late for my own wedding.”
    “Andie, you’d barely had anything to do with the wedding for months. All you thought about was the job. We still made love,” — they’d come together in the middle of the night as explosively as they ever had — “but other than that, I never saw you. We never talked.”
    “But my job was important. I’d told you that.”
    He nodded. “And having a wife who thought of me on occasion was important, too.”
    “Thought of you, as in quit her job and stayed home to raise the kids. Right? Like your mom? We’d talked about that so much.”
    “Argued about it.”
    “Yes, argued. Because you wanted me to be something I wasn’t. Did you really not realize until that morning that I wasn’t going to be that kind of wife? That it wasn’t what I wanted?”
    “No. That wasn’t it. I meant it every single time I told you I didn’t mind if you worked.” And he had, even though he would still argue that the job she’d had wasn’t the right one for her. His father had called in a favor because she’d wanted it so bad, but it had never felt like a good fit for her. “But what I didn’t realize until that morning, and what sealed the deal for me, was that you were more interested in marrying me for my name than because you wanted me .”
    Shock registered on her face. “I was not — ”
    “I heard you on the phone. You were not casual in the way you tossed around the Kavanaugh name. And you invited your client to the wedding so you could introduce them to my parents. Come on, babe. What else was I supposed to think?”
    The guilt on her face made it plain. He’d come to the correct conclusion.
    “It wasn’t like that,” she