Her Brother's Billionaire Best Friend

Chapter 1

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CHARLOTTE

To take the pink bikini or not to take the pink bikini...

"You're taking the pink bikini, right?"

I turned my dropped-jaw expression to my best friend. "Are you reading my mind?"

Sarrah shrugged, looking as effortlessly cool as ever as she lounged on the sofa that provided a line of demarcation between my bedroom area and my living room area. She tossed her glossy black ringlets, and the beads of her dangly boho earrings clicked together. "I'm just here to play costume designer."

"I'm packing for my brother's wedding. Not playing Madison Square Garden." I turned back to the mound of clothing on my bed. I didn't need a costume designer, but I definitely needed someone who could stop me from trying to take every item of clothing I owned to my brother's destination wedding.

Sarrah sighed her patented fed-up-with-Charlotte's-bullshit sigh. "Packing for your brother's wedding at a tropical resort—"

"It's in South Carolina."

"Packing for your brother's wedding at a resort where there is still going to be a pool and an ocean and plenty of opportunities to wear the tiniest swimsuit you own," Sarrah amended. "Believe me, you need to look hot. Twenty percent of married people met at other people's weddings."

"That's not true." I picked up a much safer pink gingham one-piece—when one lived in one's parents' pool-house-slash-guesthouse, one tended to have enough swimsuits to choose from.

"It's probably not," Sarrah conceded. "But you do know that at least one eligible bachelor will be there."

"Ah, yes." I snorted a laugh. "The elusive billionaire my brother mooches off."

"Says the woman who lives in her parents' guesthouse," Sarrah pointed out. "Besides, if you had a superrich best friend to finance an amazing destination wedding at a four-star resort—"

"Which he owns, okay?" I kept reminding everyone of that; it wasn't like Matthew Ashe had dug deep into his pockets and saved his pennies to pay for the thing.

"I'm just saying, we take what we are offered." She finished with a satisfied flourish of her wrists.

She had a point. My parents weren't hurting financially—a guesthouse, for Chrissake—but they definitely didn't have resort-wedding-on-Hilton-Head money.

They would have, if you hadn't wasted it. The closer the date of my brother's wedding got, the more critical of myself I became. I didn't want Sarrah's evaluation of my situation to sting, but it did. I'd dropped out of college. I'd wasted a huge chunk of money that could have paid for a beautiful wedding for my brother. I had nothing to show for my frustrating, on-and-off relationship with college. They might as well have used it on the non-disappointing child.

"Isn't the bride's family supposed to pay for the wedding?" I grumbled under my breath.

"What?" Sarrah asked.

I shook my head. "Never mind. I think you're probably right, though. Scott does have a lot of rich friends. Maybe it's time to consider the life of a trophy wife."

"Right, better get hitched before you're an old maid." Sarrah gave me two thumbs up. "You're twenty-five and unmarried. You're a burden to your parents."