Free Christmas With the Best Man by Ari Thatcher

even though she couldn’t see them in the darkness. She felt the heat deep within her heart. This was one dream she never wanted to wake up from.

    ~*~*~*~

    I hope you enjoyed Jasmine and Joey’s story. If you’d like to know more about Chaz’s wedding that wasn’t, and how he and Kenzi got together, look for The Rock Star’s Wedding. I’ve included an excerpt here.

The Rock Star’s Wedding

    Chapter One

    Her first cup of coffee had never tasted so good. With the warmth of the tropical early morning sun beating down on her, Kenzi Packard inhaled the rich hazelnut aroma while watching the rolling waves in the distance. After several years of vacationing locally, she and the girls had splurged and dusted off their passports.
    Sitting at a hotel on St. Thomas with a view of the ocean, she had her best friends there to share this week in heaven, and no work phone calls to deal with. What more could a girl want?
    “Chaz Marino is here,” Jasmine Wright said with a gasp. “On the island.”
    Kenzi rolled her eyes. “Where did you get that info?”
    Jasmine held up her smartphone. “It’s all over Gossip Ho’s website. He and Vanessa Edwards are getting married Saturday.”
    Bree Simmons stretched her arms in the air and yawned. “How can you read that crap? Do you honestly believe if Chaz was getting married he’d have told anyone?” She tipped her face up to the sun, closing her eyes with a sigh.
    “The part that I don’t get is why he’d marry her after she and Harry Cabrera were so hot and heavy on the set of Drifting 3. Talk about foolish. I mean, he should have dumped her ass when those naked pictures first appeared.” Jasmine tapped and scrolled her way to who knew where on her phone.
    Kenzi rose to refill her coffee from the little hot-drink maker the hotel provided, pausing with one hand on her hip. “I have two things to say about that. A, there’s no proof they slept together, and B, maybe he’s the forgiving type who believes in second chances. Isn’t that sort of romantic?”
    “Romantic, or door mat?” Bree questioned back.
    Kenzi walked away before she could hear what else they said about Chaz. She wasn’t about to admit she still had feelings for him-she hadn’t even admitted to knowing him, much less dating. When he’d dropped out of college at the end of their sophomore year to pursue his music career, she’d been sad, but not heartbroken. They’d talked and accepted the fact they wanted different things from their careers. She loved programming, anything to do with computers, and he lived music. Ate, slept and dreamt it. Now she had a job she loved, working for a gaming company, and he…well, he was Chaz Marino .
    Her friends would freak if they ever found out she and Chaz had been a couple long before he and Joey Hughes formed their band, Marino. It wasn’t something she could just throw out there in the middle of a conversation, like, “Oh, you know, I used to do him.” And when they talked ex-boyfriends, there’s no way she could bring him up. He wasn’t some creepy-ass, cheating schmuck she wanted to forget. On the contrary, he’d been so good, he still showed up in a lot of fantasies. And damn, he was superhuman there!
    Yeah, she definitely was not mentioning her relationship with him.
    After her second cup of coffee, she was ready to run. Moving through her stretches in their room, she called out to the balcony, “Who’s running with me?”
    Her question was met with groans and gripes, but they both came inside to stretch with her. They took the elevator to the lobby and stretched again when they reached the street. The air smelled so good, clean and salty. The air in Oakland was probably just as clean, with it being so close to the Pacific Ocean, so maybe it was just the idea that she was in the Caribbean that made her think it smelled better here.
    The three were silent as they gained their stride. Then they broke into the usual complaints.
    “You’d think on