Wedding Manner by C.G. Macington
The Ice King. The Trauma Cowboy. And a wedding so disastrous that it is going to require a surgical team to save the reception.
Maxwell York lives his life by a strict, six-page, colour-coded protocol. As a world-class cardiac surgeon, his ‘Standard of Care’ is more than a professional code: it is the only way he can navigate a world that has always inexplicably been too loud and too fast. But when his mother, Catherine, turns his wedding into a royal coronation, Max’s carefully maintained “Ice King” mask begins to shatter under the weight of 1,200 guests and a cathedral full of unpredictable variables.
Jax O’Connell is used to the noise. Between his years as an Afghanistan war medic and his current role as Chief of Trauma, he has built a life on hyper-vigilance and split-second decisions. He knows his fiancé is not cold: he is just calibrated differently. But between a hijacked 747, an Enzo-designed “Tactical Tuxedo,” and the ghosts of his own past, Jax is realizing that eloping might be the only way to keep them both from flatlining.
As the York family’s rigid legacy faces a hostile takeover, the chaos reaches a fever pitch. While Max and Jax battle sensory overload and PTSD triggers, Max’s father, Alistair, is hiding a secret of his own. His uncharacteristic behaviour and strange tropical interests are about to drop a sudden shock on the family at the worst possible moment.
When a long-buried secret about Max’s childhood reveals the lengths Catherine went to “sanitize” his history, the merger of the century becomes a mass casualty event for the social elite. Amidst triple vows and a flock of confused doves, Max and Jax must perform the ultimate life-saving procedure: building a future where they do not have to be “cured” to be whole.
