Free Wanderlust: A Holiday Story (A Heroes and Heartbreakers Original) by Kitty French

Chapter One
    “Ford’s coming to the wedding?”
    Ruby didn’t look up from Emma’s pedicure, mostly because she didn’t want her friend to see the panic that would no doubt be obvious in her eyes. Ford wasn’t supposed to be coming to Emma and Niall’s wedding. He’d RSVP’d as much. She’d seen it herself several weeks back. As manager of a three-hundred-year-old Cotswolds country hotel, Ruby had happily taken control over the arrangements for the New Year’s Eve wedding of two of her oldest and best friends.
    “Yeah. He emailed Niall a few days ago. Seems the Caribbean can manage without him for a few days after all,” Emma said, laughing.
    Ford had always been the dreamer of their close-knit university group, the one with champagne wishes and lemonade pockets. Most of them had ended up scattered across inns and hotels around the UK when they graduated the hospitality management course that had drawn them all together. Not Ford. There was a hotel chain out there with his name on it, and he was set on finding it; somewhere glamorous and warm, probably with a bevvy of bikini-clad beauties on the beach outside his window if he was still the outrageous flirt he always had been.
    Ruby screwed the top onto the bottle of nail polish and looked up at Emma with an overly bright smile. “That’s good. Really good.” She ignored the assessing look in her friend’s eyes. “Niall must be thrilled.”
    “He is. It’s been too long. Keeping up with Ford on Facebook has been like a whistle-stop world tour, hasn’t it?”
    Ruby lifted a nonchalant shoulder, not prepared to confess how often she checked in on Ford’s profile page. Drinking beer with the locals in Barcelona, his ever-present guitar propped on his knee. Getting a tattoo in Thailand. Surfing in Fiji. Playing football on the beach in California. He’d worked his way around them all over the last few years, but he seemed to have settled his restless backside in the Caribbean for longer than his usual stay of residence.
    It had been hard to take her eyes off the latest photo tagged of him by a beautiful sun-tanned girl. He was sunbathing in a hammock, shirtless and barefoot in low-slung jeans with a Stetson pulled down to hide his dark curls and laughing green eyes. The Caribbean obviously suited him. Tanned to olive brown and naturally lithe, his body seemed to have filled out in all the right places in the years since she’d last seen him. They’d chatted online every now and then, strained Facebook messages that were mostly at breakfast time for Ford and bedtime for Ruby. It was hard to have a real heart-to-heart knowing that he was on the flip side of the world eating his cornflakes while she was on her third glass of wine and in danger of saying something she’d regret.
    She’d recognized his handwriting as soon as the RSVP had landed on her antique desk, her heart in her mouth as she’d opened it. She wanted him to come. She didn’t want him to come. She wanted him to come. He wasn’t coming . Her heart had deflated like a pin-pricked balloon. She hadn’t heard his voice in over eight years, but that was all about to change.
    She settled her eyes on the window, unsure how she felt about the news that he was coming back. Frost glittered on the deep wooden windowsills outside, and the forecast said heavy snow to ring in the New Year was highly likely. Maybe Ford wouldn’t make it after all. Ruby wasn’t certain if she hoped he’d make it all the way to England or if she hoped he’d get stuck halfway around the globe.
    “When does he get in?”
    Emma laughed again, her knowing blue eyes sparkling as she glanced down at her watch. “About two hours ago.”
    Ruby flicked through her desk diary a little later, the words not really sinking in as her eyes skimmed over them. The Christmas rush was over, and the hotel and its few remaining guests seemed to be sagging under the weight of excess. There was an air of slumber, a pre-New Year