Mr. Accidental Groom Read online

  Mr. Accidental Groom

  Jet City Matchmaker Series: Knox

  Gina Robinson

  Copyright © 2018 by Gina Robinson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Gina Robinson

  http://www.ginarobinson.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Jeff Robinson

  Mr. Accidental Groom/Gina Robinson. — 1st ed.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Also by Gina Robinson

  About the Author

  Mr. Accidental Groom

  A wounded veteran

  A beautiful bridal model

  When they’re paired on a wedding fashion photo shoot, the chemistry between them is undeniable.

  Knox Emerson has been in love with his matchmaker for far too long. After he rejects one too many highly compatible matches, she pauses his matchmaking campaign until he gets serious about finding a bride. A bride who isn’t her.

  After years of struggle, Callie Campbell’s modeling career is finally taking off. Everything is perfect. Until she meets Knox. He’s hot, enticing, and off-limits. Playing bride to his groom on a photo shoot makes it hard to resist him, but falling for him could kill her career.

  1

  Knox Emerson

  Seattle, WA

  I’m a villain in the game of love. Hopelessly loyal to my late buddy, Ruck. Against all odds, determined to keep the extreme promise I made to him. I owed him my life. But even if it weren’t for that minor little debt, I’m a man of my word. Always have been. I don’t make vows lightly. And once given, I don’t go back on my word.

  I’m also frustratingly stubborn, though I prefer to think of it as being patient. Ashley, my beautiful, seductive matchmaker calls me closed-minded, at least when it comes to dating anyone who isn’t her. She’ll tell you those are my finer points.

  Why hire a matchmaker if I’m not interested in finding a match? Especially a matchmaker I’m in love with?

  I gave Ruck my word that if anything ever happened to him, I’d be Ashley’s second husband. And my mistakes and her billionaire fiancé aside, I meant to keep it.

  I’d made a couple of strategic mistakes already. One in waiting too long after Ruck’s death to make my move on her. Another by signing up for her matchmaking service. When you make a desperate move, it’s too damn easy to be blindsided by your own hasty plan. In retrospect, I wondered how I could have been so stupid.

  Once I signed up as one of Ashley’s matchmaking clients, she wasn’t going to let me—Ruck’s best friend—down. She’d made her own promise to Ruck—to look after me. But the way she saw it, that didn’t include throwing over her billionaire fiancé for me.

  I’d only signed up for Ashley’s services to have a legitimate reason to get closer to her after too many years away. To see her regularly. To tell her intimate things. To make her aware of what I wanted in a woman. To make her realize she was everything I wanted. And that there was no way in hell I’d ever break my promise to Ruck.

  Lazer Grayson

  I’d gotten into the matchmaking business to prove a point to my single friends—when applied properly, money can buy love. Or at least facilitate finding it. And to get Ashley Harte, that hot matchmaker I’d hired to find women for my friends, back into bed with me. Long story there.

  I hadn’t planned to fall in love with her. Until I met her, I’d never been the committed type. But once I found Ashley, the woman who perfectly complemented me, being monogamous was the only way I could be. She was my heart, my soul, my passion, my best friend. I couldn’t imagine life without her. Monogamy came as naturally to me now as making money. And I discovered I had a damned good ability for matchmaking.

  I own many homes around the world. Multiple home ownership was one of the perks, and absolute requirements, of billionaire-ship. If you only own one home, they pretty much throw you out of the club. But of all of my houses, with their many and varied charms, my eponymous mountain retreat in the Cascade Mountains, Lazer Lodge, was my favorite escape. At the top of the tree line, accessible only by helicopter part of the year and a narrow, private road when it wasn’t snowed under, Lazer Lodge had a precious commodity that was rare in my world—privacy. No journalists. No cameras. No snoopers or stalkers. I could relax and walk my extensive property assured of my safety and solace.

  The air smelled fresh, clean in a way only the forest can, like fir and freedom. The high altitude cleared my head, allowing me to think more productively and creatively than I did anywhere else. I retreated to my mountain home when I needed a big idea. I needed a gigantic idea now. A devilish, devious, beautiful, romantic idea.

  The lodge sat on a steep slope, nestled among the trees, with an open helipad for landing my private copter. I had a custom-designed heated infinity pool off the back deck, with a view of the surrounding mountains. Sitting in my pool, it feels like you could swim off the edge and simply fly.

  Sitting on the deck gave much the same feel. In the bracing late spring air, I was invigorated. Because I needed such a huge idea, I’d brought the guys with me. A diabolical idea if I was going to get what I wanted without arousing suspicions. And I always get what I want.

  I sat at the head of a table on the patio, surrounded by the finest, brightest, most creative minds I knew—my college buddies: Austin, Cam, Dylan, and Jeremy, my friend and partner in online fashion flash sale site, Flashionista, Justin Green, and Dex, Justin’s cousin-in-law. All of them business, tech, computer, and programming geniuses with broad capabilities and varied specialties.

  We tapped a keg from a local Seattle brewery. The beer flowed. My personal chef had fed us a sumptuous meal. We were happily sated and pleasantly buzzed. If not for the cool mountain air and the excitement of the challenge I’d thrown down, it would have been easy to grow sleepy.

  “Let me get this straight.” Austin, my redheaded friend who had the good luck to look like a double for a famous Scottish actor, leaned forward toward me. “You want us to find this guy, Knox, Ashley’s late husband’s friend, a woman? Isn’t he your nemesis?” He ended his question with a comical hiss and raised an eyebrow.

  “Not a woman,” I said calmly. “The woman. His soul mate.”

  “You sound like a crazy romantic.” Jeremy elbowed me. “It’s cute, isn’t it, men?”

  “Wait. We’re the guys who couldn’t find women for ourselves. You had to hire us a matchmaker.” Dylan, my great big teddy bear of a friend, frowned in confusion. He was truly the gentle big guy among us. “Aren’t you the expert? The wingman of all wingmen? The guy with the matchmaking business?” Dylan’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t your fiancée the matchmaker? I thought she was on the job.”

  Dylan, all the guys, knew the answer. They enjoyed teasing me far too much to let that stop them. I turn
ed to Jus for help. I’d mentored Justin to greatness. He owed me.

  Jus was no help. He gave me the palms-up. “Don’t look at me. Just because I run an online fashion site doesn’t mean I know women or how to find one. I’m as stumped as the next guy. I’m the guy who accidently married his wife in Reno.” He beamed innocently. Accidently married or not, Justin and Kayla were extremely happy together. He’d lucked into a good thing.

  “Three-quarters of your, our, workforce at Flash is women,” I said dryly. “I’d think you’d have learned something about women by now.”

  Jus shrugged. “Not where I thought you were going with that. I was afraid you were going to ask me to search my employee database for a soul mate for this Knox guy.”

  I rubbed my chin and grinned evilly. “Not a bad idea.”

  “Not a good one, either,” Jus said. “And probably against employment rules. I have no intention of being sued for harassment.”

  “For finding a good female employee a good man?” I teased.

  “If Ashley can’t find Knox the right woman,” Cam said, “it’s not the women that Ashley’s set him up with that are the problem. It’s something else. Something inside him is holding him back. Contrary to the obvious clue of hiring a matchmaker, he doesn’t want to find a wife.”

  Dylan elbowed Cam. “Look at you! You’ve become a philosopher on us. Deep.”

  Cam scowled at Dylan and turned to me. “We all know what Knox’s problem is. It’s time to stop dancing around the obvious. He’s in love with Ashley. Or thinks he is.”

  There was a round of nodding and wry looks among my friends.

  Jeremy pushed back from the table and went to the whiteboard on an easel next to the table off my right elbow. We always solved problems best when we could scribble on a whiteboard.

  He grabbed a marker and began drawing. “We start with the problem—find Knox the woman.”

  He drew a box and wrote the problem in it. His engineering block printing was the messiest of all of us, but somehow we managed to read it.

  “This is where we start. Next we scour through Pair Us’ dating member database, compare Knox’s profile with the ladies, and find a match. That’s what Ashley has been doing. Then she sets them up.” Jeremy drew an arrow from the input problem to a diamond where he put “scour database” and “determine match.”

  “Now, she introduces them to each other.” He drew another line to another diamond. “Knox takes the woman out.” Jeremy turned to me. “He is going out on dates, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” Jeremy said. “We don’t want any faulty assumptions. And then the problem arises. He compares the woman to Ashley, the new woman comes up wanting, and we’re back to searching the database for another match. Ostensibly, one that’s at least as good a match, but ideally better than Ashley. Eventually, without substantially replenishing the database, we’re down to inferior matches. At least on digital paper.”

  Austin popped out of his chair. He took the marker from Jeremy and added to the flowchart. “Ashley is always recruiting more members for the database.” He drew the new input in. “The question is—is she able to replenish it faster than Knox can deplete the pool and with good enough candidates? Better matches than Knox thinks she is for him?” He tapped the board with the marker. “This is the crux. This is where our answer lies. A potential place where we could help.”

  I rubbed my chin.

  Dylan frowned. “You want us to go out and approach women like Ashley does?” He looked doubtful. “Laura wouldn’t like it.”

  “Laura’s the jealous type?” Jeremy seemed surprised.

  “When it appears I’m studying other women and looks like I’m hitting on them, yeah.” Dylan scowled.

  Jeremy shrugged. “Communication, dude. Crystal would be fine with it if I explained what I was doing first.”

  “I’m not saying us, necessarily.” Austin looked at me for help. “But Lazer could. He’s a partner in the business and good—no, talented and exceptional—at approaching women.”

  “Ashley’s not going to like Lazer stepping on her toes,” Cam said. “Recruiting new members is her area of expertise and her part of the business.”

  Jeremy took the marker. “With some thought, we could find a way that would placate Ashley. But that doesn’t solve this. The problem is here.” He tapped the diamond on the flowchart where Knox compared the new woman/match to Ashley. “So far, every new woman has come up short. Why? How do we overcome that? Statistically speaking”—he glanced at me—“eventually a woman that outshines Ashley will have to turn up. No offense, Lazer. I mean in Knox’s opinion only.”

  “None taken,” I said, amused, as always, by the way they worked.

  “Yeah, but how long will it take to find this unicorn of a woman?” Austin pointed to the chart. “You have a classic do-loop there. One that is apparently stuck in an infinite loop.”

  Justin pursed his lips. “We have to break the cycle. We need a priority interrupt. Either we need to feed huge quantities of new women into the system, creating a gigantic funnel, which would up our odds of finding a better match—”

  “Or we need to figure out why these women are failing when compared to Ashley. Or both.” Dex had been surprisingly quiet. He was usually a smartass. He jumped out of his chair and took the marker, looking around the table. “Damn, it’s too bad this isn’t a round table. It would have been so much more fun to be the shining modern knights of the round table. A rectangular table—”

  Cam looked at me and gave me a lift of his chin, encouraging me to chime in.

  I shrugged and sighed. He was right. I couldn’t keep this vital piece of intel from the men who didn’t know. “I know why—Knox promised Ruck, before Ruck was fatally wounded in action, that Knox would take care of Ashley. Specifically, that he’d be Ashley’s second husband.”

  The expressions on the guys ran from surprise to thoughtful.

  “Yeah,” Cam said. “That’s a rough one. What we’re asking is for him to break a vow, a promise to a brother in arms. To go back on fulfilling a dying wish.”

  “Nobody said anything about a dying wish, did they?” Dylan asked. “Just a promise.”

  “He’s taking dramatic license?” Austin said. “But that’s a good point. A dying wish would be stronger.”

  “The answer’s simple, then.” Dex played with a marker, suddenly pointing it at us. “Knox is in a no-win situation. We have to present him with a suitable, honorable out.”

  I folded my hands in front of me. “Which is?”

  A sly grin spread across Cam’s face. “A similar, or identical, promise to a higher authority?”

  “A higher authority than a best friend and buddy who was fatally wounded in action?” Austin’s eyes narrowed. “Not impossible, I suppose. But not highly probable or easy to find, either. Who would that be?”

  “A CO,” Cam said. “A commanding officer. Another fellow soldier. A dying wish, like Dylan and Austin pointed out.”

  Austin looked like he was mulling the idea over. “You really think he promised two different guys, who are now dead, to marry their widow?” He looked skeptically at Dex.

  “I said it was simple,” Dex said, sounding mildly impatient. “That’s not the same thing as easy.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be a widow,” Jeremy said. “Could be a sister, a fiancée, a niece, a daughter—”

  “Yes, but again,” I said, “he’d have to have promised at least two fellow soldiers that he’d look after their women, in the form of marriage.”

  Cam rubbed his chin. “It’s not as unlikely as you’d think with men who are staring death in the face. I can see a situation where the men in a troop promise each other, a group promise, if you will. But how would we find out about it?”

  “And Knox is already in love with Ashley,” Dylan said. “Even if we found another dead soldier/woman pair like this, there’s no guarantee they’d be compatible.”

  Dex rolled his eyes. �
��You guys are so damned naïve and innocent. No promise? No problem. We create one.” His eyes lit up with devilment. He was clearly excited at the prospect.

  Around the table, the rest of the men looked skeptical.

  Dex tapped the endless do-loop with his marker. “We have to break this cycle. Create our own priority interrupt to the loop. Does anyone else have a better idea how to do it? You guys are more creative than this. We can pull this off. It will be fun.”

  “I’m not sure fun is the right word,” Dylan said. “Duping a guy into marrying someone—”

  “You’re framing it all wrong.” Dex twirled the marker in his fingers. “Messaging is everything. Finding Knox his true soul mate and encouraging the match—how is that wrong? We make two lonely, frustrated people very happy for life.”

  I crossed my arms, mulling it over. Leave it to Dex to come up with a devious plan and the justification for it. “The odds seem slim. And pulling it off sounds complicated.”

  “The first idea isn’t always the solution,” Dex said, seemingly undaunted. “Let’s keep brainstorming. What else would cause Knox to break his promise to his fallen buddy?”

  “The right woman,” Austin said. “When I met Blair, that was it for me. I had eyes for no one else. Everyone else could be damned. Any other promises moot. I’d move heaven and earth to be with her.”

  The other men nodded and murmured their agreement. Each of them had been similarly affected when they met the one.

  “The undying, pervasive, persuasive power of love,” I said. “What we’ll do in the name of love, including break a promise.”

  “We’re back to that?” Jeremy frowned. “That’s where Ashley’s been failing, and she’s the expert. How do you expect us to find that needle in a haystack if she’s been unable?”

  Dex shook his finger at the others. “You’re all thinking too small. Are you world-class programmers or not? Think big. Think digital. Think computing power at our fingertips.