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  OH, WHAT A NIGHT

  Cassie Huntington and Declan Preston began crushing on each other when they were kids. For years, neither acted on their feelings. Then, on one fantastic, reckless night in Seaside, Florida, just before Cassie was to marry another man and Declan was to leave for London, they shared everything they ever wanted. Then Declan left.

  After the best sex of his life, Declan knew he’d return to reclaim his first love when his two-year stint in London ended. But when he learns Cassie has been hiding life-altering secrets, he realizes he doesn’t know the woman he’d left behind. Worse, just when he thinks one deception is cleared up, she lays another whopper on him—a fake holiday wedding. Yet what starts as lies will end as a truth that could never be denied: Declan and Cassie are meant to be together. Forever.

  HAPPY PLACE

  L.P. Maxa

  www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.

  HAPPY PLACE

  Copyright © 2016 L.P. Maxa

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. Unless specifically noted, no part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Boroughs Publishing Group. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of Boroughs Publishing Group is illegal and punishable by law. Participation in the piracy of copyrighted materials violates the author’s rights.

  ISBN 978-1-944262-56-3

  E-book formatting by Maureen Cutajar

  www.gopublished.com

  To my mom and Scott. Thank you for introducing me to the beach I've grown to love so much.

  To my Happy Place.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once again, thank you to my amazing family for being so supportive. Thank you for understanding when I need to lock myself in the office for hours on end. You guys are the best part of my day, every day. To both my Amys! Y’all keep me laughing and you keep me in graphics. Couldn’t do it without y’all. And my readers, of course. Thank you for being so excited about every new release. I literally couldn’t do it without you.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by L.P. Maxa

  HAPPY PLACE

  “Love consumes us only in the measure of our self-surrender.”

  —St. Therese of Lisieux

  Chapter One

  Cassie

  The waves. The breeze. The sun. This beach was and always would be my happy place. I’d spent so many summers here as a child, it was the only place I ever truly felt free. My older brother and I would play in the sand and the surf until we were exhausted and gritty from the salt water. The beach usually did wonders at calming my nerves, but not today. My life was on its way to unrecognizable and for some reason, I’d just now noticed. No matter how many times I mentally said my new mantra, it wasn’t sinking in. Maybe if I tried it again, out loud? With my eyes closed? That seemed way more Zen anyway. “I love my fiancé, I love my fiancé. I love my fiancé. I love—”

  “Well, I should hope so since you convinced me to let you use my swanky bachelor pad for your boring bachelorette weekend.”

  My eyes flew open at the sound of Declan Preston’s sexy-as-sin voice. It was like warm whiskey, hot but rough. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were going camping with the guys?” My brother and fiancé were spending the weekend in Colorado. You’d think that men like them would prefer Vegas or Miami for a bachelor weekend. But they’d opted out, said they’d already partied everywhere worth partying. And I didn’t doubt it for a second.

  Declan chuckled and came around to sit in the Adirondack chair next to mine. “I had a late business thing. I’m going to meet them in the morning. And I think camping is a relatively loose term for what your brother and fiancé are doing this weekend. They’re staying in an air-conditioned cabin, not a tent.” He reached over and grabbed my wine, taking a big sip before handing it back. “Where are all the girls?”

  I wanted to put my mouth where his had been. I wanted to so freaking bad. But I didn’t, because I was a mature engaged woman. “I told them to come tomorrow. I wanted to have one night of peace. The calm before the storm.” It was the God’s honest truth. My mother had turned into even more of a neurotic nut-job planning my insanely over-the-top wedding. And my friends had taken to squealing at everything wedding related, which made me want to throat punch them. I needed some calm and quiet.

  “Sorry to ruin your night of solitude, princess, but I’m not heading out to that cabin until I absolutely have to.” Declan looked over at me and winked. I swooned. Silently. In a mature way.

  He was so handsome with dark hair, which always looked like he’d just run his fingers through it. He had dark eyes, olive skin that deliciously covered the rippled defined muscles all over his sexy body.

  Declan and my brother had been best friends since we were all kids. And I’d been in love with Declan for just as long. It wasn’t until the summer I turned sixteen and caught a nineteen-year-old Declan watching me change in his parents’ pool house that my love joined happily with lust. I’ll never forget the way I felt, seeing Declan look at me with a man’s need instead of playful indifference. “Cassie?”

  “Huh? What?” Wonderful, had he seen the heat rise in my cheeks just remembering his eyes on me? I loved that he still called me Cassie. My parents hated nicknames; they tolerated it when I was younger, but now that I was older they wouldn’t hear of it. Unseemly, that’s what my mother called it.

  “I asked if you wanted to head over to Seaside and have some dinner. Maybe some drinks? Let me send you off the right way.”

  He was so damn gorgeous. I’d never be able to deny him anything, all he had to do was ask. “Sure, that sounds great. Just let me go change real quick.” We both got up and headed inside through the French doors that led to the master bedroom. “Oh, uh, sorry. I put my stuff in here. I figured…I mean, I just—”

  Declan smiled. “Hey, if any girl is going to be in my bed this weekend, I want it to be yo
u.” He winked again and then turned around and walked out.

  If he had any idea what those sexy winks did to my nerves, he’d stop. I had to lock my knees to keep them from buckling. I changed out of my yoga pants and tank top into a short black sundress with some wedges that made my legs look longer than they actually were.

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My honey blonde (that’s the color my stylist used) hair still had some volume and bounce from my blowout this morning. All I needed was a little blush and some mascara. I wanted to look good, but I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard.

  Pull yourself together, Cassie.

  So what if I was going to dinner with my lifelong crush. I’d shared countless meals with this man over the years, maybe none of them just the two of us, but still. I was a grown adult. I was getting married in two weeks.

  Yes, Declan was the actual man of my dreams, the man I measured all other men against, but he was also off limits. And I was almost positive that he still saw me as nothing but Brice’s baby sister. I added some lip gloss then turned out the light and went in search of my brother’s best friend.

  “Dec?”

  “I’m in the kitchen.” He was leaning his hip against one of the posh handpicked granite countertops, his thumbs flying away on his phone. “Just returning a few emails. You ready?” He clicked off his phone, placing it in his pocket, and finally looking up at me.

  His eyes traveled up and down my body. It wasn’t the first time Declan checked me out. I might be just Brice’s baby sister, but Declan was still a dude. I wasn’t self-conscious about my appearance. I knew I was pretty, and I knew he knew it. But that was as far as that went for him. I was painfully sure of it.

  “Yeah, which car are we taking, Rockefeller?”

  He laughed, he always laughed so easily. “Says the girl whose daddy bought her a brand-new Audi on her sixteenth birthday. At least I bought my current cars with my own money.”

  “Touché, douche bag.” He was right. I was spoiled, but I’d never asked to be. I didn’t want to go from living in an apartment my dad paid for to living in a house two sizes too big that my husband paid for. I wanted more for myself. It just wasn’t how things worked in my world. And I was too damn pleasing to stand up for myself, which was exactly how I was raised to be.

  Declan chose to drive the modest four-door Jeep. Good, it was my favorite. The top was removed and all the windows were down. It was the perfect beach vehicle.

  He opened the door and helped me hop inside. “Could your dress get any shorter?”

  “It could.” I smiled innocently, blinking down at him. He rolled his eyes and went around to climb in next to me.

  My family and I, along with every other affluent family in Dallas, spent summers vacationing in Seaside, Florida. I loved every damn thing about this little town. There were always kids scattered all over the place, bicycles leaning against all the buildings in the square.

  Laughter was carried on every breeze. The air smelled like the ocean and sunshine. I even liked it here in the winter, when the beach was empty and the sky was gray. I wanted to move here after college, open a little bookstore and spend my days reading on the beach. My parents laughed in my face when I’d shared my plans and promptly introduced me to Steven David IV, my fiancé.

  I closed my eyes and rested my head against the warm leather of the seat. I didn’t even try to control my hair; I let it whip and curl in the wind. This town always made me feel so content, and Declan always made me feel…well, a lot of things, but joyful was one of them. So hanging out with Dec in Seaside, just the two of us? Dream. Come. True.

  Declan pulled up to the valet in front of V Seagrove, one of the newer upscale restaurants in the area. I hadn’t eaten here yet, but I’d heard amazing things. I liked the décor; a lot of Seaside was shabby chic, but this was easy elegance.

  Declan placed his hand on my lower back, guiding me to our seat and pulling my chair out for me. “Have you been here before?”

  “No, I meant to try it out the last time I was here, but Steven insisted we spend most of our time in Rosemary Beach. He had some colleagues staying there.”

  “Of course he did.”

  I jerked back slightly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “No offense, Cassie, but your fiancé is a pretentious jackass.” Declan smiled up at our waitress as he said those words. She raised her eyebrows a fraction of an inch but didn’t comment. “We will take a bottle of the Kistler.”

  I smirked at him from across the table. “Talk about pretentious.”

  He grinned back. Declan smiled as easily as he laughed. “Knowing and enjoying good wine is not pretentious, it’s smart.” When our waitress came back with the wine, Declan sampled it and gave her a small nod of approval. After pouring me a glass, I had to agree, it was really good. “So, tell me again how you ended up engaged to Steven? It’s hard to believe that Brice would be okay with all this. He’s never liked the guy.”

  I took a larger-than-ladylike gulp of the cool Chardonnay. Just the sound of my fiancé’s name was driving me to drink today. Must be last-minute jitters. “My parents introduced us. Steven’s father works at the hospital where my dad sits on the board.” I ignored the comment about my brother. Brice wasn’t a huge Steven fan, but he tolerated him. Steven had been younger than my brother and Declan. They knew each other at SMU, but didn’t really spend much time together.

  “I wasn’t aware that arranged marriages were common practice these days.” He looked at me over his glass, humor in his eyes.

  “It wasn’t arranged. We met. We hit it off. We dated. We got engaged. Steven’s not all that bad. He’s a surgeon for heaven’s sake.” I didn’t even know why I was defending our union. For all intents and purposes it was, in fact, arranged. Steven was exactly the kind of man my parents raised me to marry. And I was exactly the kind of girl that Steven was taught to want.

  Declan snorted. “He’s a plastic surgeon. He’s not even the good kind of plastic surgeon. He doesn’t do charity work in Africa, he does nose jobs and tummy tucks on insecure rich women.”

  I rolled my eyes and took another swallow, finishing my first glass. Declan just smiled and poured me another. I needed to change the subject to something other than my fiancé’s shortcomings. “Brice said that you won’t be able to make the wedding, that you’re moving?”

  Declan had started his company, Cueva, right out of college. He was one of the most driven men I’d ever known. He had plenty of family money but was determined to make his own way in life. It was admirable, and sexy as all get-out. Not that Steven, my fiancé the surgeon, wasn’t sexy. It was just that Declan was so different from all the guys I’d grown up around. He was never okay with using his parents for a leg up. He wanted his success to be his own.

  He nodded, slowly. “I’m expanding my business to England. London actually. I’ll be living there for the next two years getting everything up and running.”

  “Expanding the pimps and hoes business across the pond, huh?” I smirked. I knew it irritated him when I referred to his line of uber exclusive and expensive men’s clubs as brothels. In reality, women weren’t even allowed inside, so they said. It was all business deals made over bottles of fifty-year-old scotch and Cuban cigars.

  “I’m sorry I’ll miss the wedding.”

  I snorted into my glass before taking a sip. “No you aren’t. You can’t stand Steven and you think this wedding is a mistake.” Whoa. Did I say that out loud? This was good wine.

  “You’re right.” He dipped his head and smirked before looking me in the eye. “I do dislike that prick. He isn’t good enough for you. And worse yet, you don’t love him. You’re just doing what your parents want you to do, what they expect you to do. Just like you always have.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. “Well geez, Dec, tell me how you really feel.” I may have started this discussion, but he’d gone right for the jugular.

  Declan and my b
rother were the only two people I knew who didn’t like Steven. He was popular, respected, and handsome. Not as handsome as Declan. Steven wasn’t as tall, wasn’t as built. And, unlike Declan’s casual good looks, Steven’s blond hair was always freshly cut and every hair was always in place, never, ever falling over his blue eyes. But my friends all started to drool as soon as my fiancé walked into a room, so there was that.

  “Tell me I’m wrong, Cassie.” He leaned back in his chair, waiting for my rebuttal.

  I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. I wanted to tell him that I loved my life and was excited for my future. But I just couldn’t seem to do it. I didn’t know if it was the wine going to my head or the fact that I was sitting in front of an amazing man I’d known and loved all my life. But I couldn’t lie to him. And really, what was the point? He was about to move to London for two years. Who cared if he knew I was wavering, that I was having second thoughts? Maybe owning up to it, embracing my confusion, would help me see things more clearly.

  “You’re right. You’re right about everything. I’m a spoiled little rich girl who doesn’t have the balls to stand up to her parents. Hell, I don’t have the balls to stand up to anyone. Not for what I want, not for what I think is right.” I laughed humorlessly. “I wanted to study literature at SMU. I was excited about college. You know what my mother said to me when I told her that?” I waited for Declan to shake his head no. “‘Cassandra, darling, no one cares what your degree is in, it’s just bad taste to not have one.’ Then she lectured me for an hour on which sororities were acceptable and which ones weren’t.”

  Declan opened his mouth to talk but I cut him off. I was on a roll now. The flood gates were officially open.

  “After I graduated I told my parents I wanted to move to Seaside and open a little bookstore. I wanted to set up all these great story times for the kids during the summer. I had so many ideas. They laughed at me. My parents laughed. At. Me. Then the next day, they introduced me to Steven. And he started leading my life.”