"When a Wellington man knows, he knows."

We have read the stories of the Wellington sons, but this takes it back to the summer of 1980 and the story of their parents...

Amelia is heading back to her family's summer home in Crystal Cove for the first time in four years. She had not been back due to sad memories, but was encouraged to take a break and recharge with her old friends. 

Knox Wellington II is a young work-a-holic, business-man-in-training, and has been ordered to take the summer off before finishing his degree and taking on more responsibility at the family company. He is just supposed to help fix up an investment property and relax. 

One random meeting and the chase is on. Knox is charming, bold, and cocky. He is a cynic about love and is not looking for anything more than a summer fling. Amelia is sassy, sweet, and in the mood for some summer fun. And boy do they indulge in sand, sun, and oh so many sexy times.

They both agree it cannot be anything more than a no-strings fling and has to end when summer does.  They have their futures all planned out. They both have internally warned themselves and each other about not falling or getting attached. But sometimes life cannot be controlled.

This is a sweet, steamy, unexpected-affair-leads-to-life-changes story. The present prologue pulled me in right away, and then we flashback to see how everything happened in the past, and then it loops back into the present.  I will admit that in especially in the first part, it felt a bit long as it seemed to focus on the frolicking and sexy times over and over. But it could have been me being distractible too. I enjoyed the last part more. 

I loved Knox and Amelia together. They really just fit without even trying (while actually trying to resist something real) and they definitely had great banter and chemistry. Despite his denial, Knox might just be experiencing that "Wellington way" himself. I enjoyed her friends Sunny, Joe, Sam, and his brother, Clay. They added fun and support for these two that were sometimes living in denial. 

We already knew how some of their story goes, but we did not really know the full account and ending until now. I enjoyed catching up again with the Wellington boys, Knox III, Branson, and Cohen, and their wives in present-day as well.  It brings it all full circle and ties up all of their stories well. 

This is the story that started them all. The Wellington men love hard and work hard, and they learned it all from their father. This is Knox Jr and Amelia’s story.

Amelia hasn’t been back to her family’s favorite vacation spot since the accident that took the lives of both her parents. But a summer at the lake may be just what she needs to begin to move on. Knox is all work: both in school and learning the ropes of the family business. His mom forces him to take a summer to renovate an investment property, to take a break from the business. Neither anticipates meeting anyone so early in the summer, but the distraction is exactly what they are both looking for. When the distraction shifts to deeper feelings, they struggle to maintain the light no-future promise they made on that first night.

These two just work together. Their chance meeting turns into an opportunity to have some fun, but as they try to keep it light they struggle to not get in too deep. I loved watching them figure out how to keep things light despite the building feelings. And once they realized they couldn’t fight the feelings, there were other challenges in the mix as well.

It took me a bit to get my head into this story because it has been a while since I’ve been inside the Wellington world. But as bits and pieces of their children’s story came back to me I was intrigued to see these younger versions of Knox and Amelia. I am a little young for the 80s references to have triggered nostalgia, so at times they were great for setting the time period but other times they had me questioning what something or a reference was about.

I loved the last half of the book. Things really started picking up for me when their summer situation changed and they found themselves alone again. The events in that last third were even better and had me racing to the end to find how the prologue would play out in the present and to see how they would patch things up to get to the point where they had 3 children and 40 years of marriage.

It was fun to see where this family began, and to get to know Knox before the pressures of running the family business changed him into the man who became.