Exclusive FREE READ
You read it here first folks! PHS's exclusive Free Read is an extract from Kristina Knight's Moonlight Match.
This month PHS's free read column is a sneak peek at Kristina Knight's Moonlight Match, the first book in Resort to Romance series. Get ready for ten weeks of romance in the Bahamas with a new series brought to you by some of the best authors in the inspirational and sweet romance genres… Ten delightful—and standalone—novellas linked by one matchmaking week. You’ll want to devour each one!
Aster Harrington believes in love but love doesn’t seem to believe in her. She’s hoping Goldie and Ginny, the matchmakers who’ve matched on two generations of Harringtons, can work a little love magic for her…
Some call Ethan Talbot rigid, but he prefers to think of himself as prepared. Unfortunately, when he’s matched with Aster Harrington at Joy Island’s Matchmaking Week, all those carefully prepared plans go out the window. He can get back to finding a suitable wife once he’s home in New York. After all, how much damage can one week in the Bahamas do to his plans?
She was going to be late.
Aster Harrington squeezed her eyes closed as the helicopter began its slow ascent into the late afternoon sky. Lateness was not the first impression she wanted to make at Joy Island’s Matchmaking Week, but she didn’t have a choice.
Despite her father and mother reminding her they’d been dealing with her sister, Marigold’s, transgressions longer than she, she couldn’t leave the Park Avenue apartment until the last reporter from the clamoring bunch downstairs had gone, giving her parents a little peace. At least, Aster hoped they were feeling peace. She clenched her hands in her lap. What she felt, what she still felt six hours later, was anger. At Marigold. At the aging Hollywood star who was likely using Marigold as some kind of panacea to make him feel younger. At the reporters and tabloid photographers. At herself for getting sucked into her sister’s drama once more.
Thanks to Marigold she had, indeed, missed her flight to Miami and the connecting flight to Nassau and the last of the ferry boats headed to Matchmaking Week at Joy Island. Even if this helicopter broke air-speed records, she wouldn’t make it to the island before the meet-and-greet started. She’d already called to let Goldie and Ginny know she would be late and the twins, as always, had asked if there was anything they could do. The two of them had such sweet, caring hearts, and that only made Aster feel worse about being late. She didn’t want to reflect badly on the two women she thought of as great-grandmothers.
Goldie and Ginny had been family friends for longer than Aster had been alive, having first matched her grandparents and then her parents. She hoped they could work that same magic on her because she was through with the New York dating scene. Her last boyfriend had been more interested in her family name and connections than in her. Aster sighed. What she wanted was to fall in love with a man who could love her just for being Aster, not Aster Harrington, heiress.
Aster blew out a breath. “Is there any way you can go just a little faster?” She asked the pilot through the headset he’d handed her when she boarded the chartered the helicopter that would take her from Nassau to Joy Island.
“We’re going as fast as we can, Miss,” the pilot said, his voice sounding crackly through the headsets. “I’ll have you on the ground in forty-five minutes.”
Forty-five minutes. The meet-and-greet mixer would be well under way. This week was supposed to be about fresh starts. No phones, no social media, no sex. Just plenty of one-on-one time with the man of her dreams. Whoever that man might be. And she was definitely not going to make a good first impression.
She had a successful business as a wedding cake designer. Great parents. Good friends. Mostly married friends now that she was nearing thirty. She wanted the connection those friends had in their intimate relationships. Having a best friend was great. Having a best friend who was also her lover? That was the pinnacle and no matter how many blind dates, dating apps, or set-ups she’d tried, New York and the harried pace there always seemed to get in the way. Before she could fully connect with a man, she got busy with work or he had a new project and one broken date led to five and the inevitable “it isn’t you, it’s me” conversation that made her want to scream.
Because it wasn’t just the guy’s schedule or hers. It was the city. The frenetic pace at which everything seemed to move, the constant connection to social media and cell phones and email. This week at Joy Island would force her to slow down. Would create a kind of intense speed dating in which the only thing she and her potential love match had to do was spend time. Maybe they’d take a cooking class or sail around Joy Island looking for the perfect, quiet spot. And they’d read poetry to each other and talk about things that mattered without being interrupted by an email ping or an instant message.
She focused her gaze on the horizon and setting sun, willing it to slow down. Just a little bit. Willing the helicopter to bring Joy Island on to the horizon line faster than any copter had flown the distance before. This weekend was it. If Ginny and Goldie’s tech-free week of match-making couldn’t help her find her soulmate, she might as well get used to being the only friend without a date at New Year’s Eve parties, to making the perfect wedding cakes for everyone except herself. To being the perennial bridesmaid but never the bride.
The pilot had to get her there faster. He just had to.
Kristina Knight's latest book, Moonlight Match is available for preorder now. You can find more information about Kristina's writing, check her out on Instagram and Facebook, and at KristinaKnightAuthor.com.
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