Bad Boy's Bridesmaid (3 page)

“I wanted
ivory!
”
Lindsey punctuated her pout with a stomp. “You
knew
I wanted ivory!”

“So did the
designer. I made sure to tell them your colors when I sent the mock-up. This is
just a mistake.”

“We only have
eight weeks until the wedding! We don’t have time for mistakes. Those should
have already gone
out!
” Lindsey collapsed onto a chair, a rush of tears
spilling over her cheeks. “This is a disaster! We can’t have
indigo
invitations!”

Bryce glanced up
from his phone. He frowned, sifting through Lindsey’s purse for the packet of
tissues that came standard as part of their wedding planning.

Two types of men
existed in the world.

Some thought
marriage was a pixy-stick dreamland of endless love-making, searching for
homes, and sharing life’s adventures together.

The rest of us?
We had our fun, fucked our way through a relationship, and then cut when the
girl left her toothbrush overnight.

Smart men listened
to their dicks. Sure, we fucked the wrong girls, but at least we didn’t settle
down and fuck ourselves. The world was harsh, and survival of the fittest in
the dating world meant staying independent, unbeaten, and ready and willing for
the next mistake with full lips and an ass made for spanking.

Bryce put a ring
on Lindsey’s finger, and now he carried her purse. It was times like this a man
needed a good drink to grieve for a friend. My pub was open to him, day or
night. I even brewed a special beer specifically for him that’d stay as cold as
his feet.

I sensed the
mistake before Bryce made it. He peeked at the invitations and tried to be
helpful.

Rookie mistake.

“I don’t mind
the indigo,” he said.

I patted his
shoulder. It was good knowing him.

“Are you
insane?” Lindsey shoved the paper into his chest. “
Indigo
? This is
probably the gloomiest, most depressing, most
hideously
obscene
invitation I’ve ever seen! This isn’t a Jane Austen romantic fairytale, this is
like…Edgar Allan Poe’s wetdream!”

He didn’t know
when to quit. “I…think it’s a nice color.”

“It doesn’t
match
anything we’ve done with the decorations—which you would know if you spent even
one second
caring
about the most important day of our lives.”

“I do care—”

“You absolutely
do not. I’m doing all this planning by myself, and now you want me to change the
colors.” Lindsey pointed at Mandy. “And
you
. You
love
this, don’t
you?”

Mandy guzzled her
ginger ale, but she spat half of it back into her glass. “What did I do?”

“You always
hated
the ivory!”

“That’s not
true. I thought the cream might make more of a contrast—”

“Why can’t you
be
happy
for me?”

Sandra soothed
her daughter. “There, there. Mandy knows she has to try harder. We’ll sort it
out.”

“I don’t want to
have a purple wedding and look like a
grape!
”

Bryce cleared
his throat. “Indigo isn’t really purple—”

I elbowed him.
He got the hint, taking Lindsey into his arms before she called off the damn
party.

“We’ll fix it,”
he said.

“There’s no
time!
”
Her nails turned into claws, nearly shredding the groom. “We won’t have time,
and we’ll never get the invitations out, and no one will come to the wedding,
and we’ll be all alone, and I haven’t even finished doing my registry yet!”

Mandy’s eye
twitched with every word. Poor thing needed a little more help.

I smirked. She
didn’t trust it. I didn’t blame her, but I wasn’t letting my two friends stay
miserable.  Someone had to prevent Lindsey from stroking out—or worse, forcing
her mother to disown Mandy.

“Tell you what,
Linds,” I said. “I’ll get the other groomsmen here to try on their tuxes while
Mandy re-does your ivory invitations in Photoshop.”

“While I do
what
?”
Mandy squeaked.

Wasn’t sure what
I liked more—the warmth of her touch or the burn of her stare.

“Sure,” I said.
“We’ll double-check the design, run them down to a Kinkos, and we’ll order a
pizza for everyone. We’ll get the groomsmen to help stuff the envelopes tonight,
address them ourselves, and send them out tomorrow.”

Lindsey peeked
over Bryce’s shoulder. “You mean it?”

I winked at
Mandy, prepared to duck away from any wayward can of soda she decided to pitch
at my head.

“Okay.” Mandy
surrendered. “I can simplify the design a bit and we can add the tissue paper
and rsvp cards ourselves.”

“And…and the
bows on top?” Lindsey asked.

“We’ll hot glue
them on, but that means a stop at the craft store, and it might take a lot
longer—”

“Fantastic!” Lindsey
fanned the tears from her eyes. “Oh, you guys…what would I do without you?”

She grabbed her
sister and squeezed her tight. Mandy softened. Unfortunately, Lindsey’s voice
hardened, and the hug shifted into a thinly veiled headlock.

“But I want
two
pieces of tissue paper, in
ivory
. And I want
card stock
, not
regular paper. And I
need
gold envelopes. If I don’t get gold envelopes,
I’m going to—”

 “We’ll get
them.” Mandy glanced at me, probably to gauge the distance between her hands
and my throat. “Promise.”

“Good.” Sandra
hugged Lindsey. “See, this family always pulls together.”

Lindsey smiled.
So did Mandy.

Sandra frowned
at her daughter.

“You ought to be
thankful, Amanda.” She pulled Lindsey from the kitchen under the pretense of
checking on the guest list. “I never had a family to bail me out of my
mistakes.”

Mandy had the
patience of a saint.

She also had the
lips of an angel, the hips of a dancer, and the ass of a goddess.

I pissed her
off, but Mandy couldn’t hold a grudge for long. She grumbled and opened her
laptop at the table to work on the invitations.

Once Bryce freed
himself from Lindsey’s clutches and returned to a shade of his former
personality. I followed him upstairs. He shoved a tux in my arms and pointed to
the guest room.

“You can try it
on, but don’t get any crumbs on it,” he said.

This coming from
the man who once passed out in a gallon of spilled milk and two boxes of Lucky
Charms. When we were kids, Bryce was always the first in the mud, gunk, stink,
or whatever trouble we found.

Was he planning
to wear a wedding ring or handcuffs once this was over?

“I’m not eating
anything,” I said. “Safe from crumbs.”

Bryce wasn’t
smiling. “Doesn’t matter, man. No crumbs. No ink. No wrinkles. No nothing. Got
it? Lindsey will have my balls if something happens to the tux.”

“Think she
already has ‘em.”

“Name of the
game. Just gotta power through until the wedding. That’s when the shopping and
planning and the decorations and the stress stops.”

I laughed.
“No…that’s when it
all
begins.”

He shrugged.
“You wouldn’t understand. I don’t think you’ve been with a girl long enough to
put her number in your cell.”

“But I don’t
have to worry about crumbs, do I?”

Bryce left me to
get dressed. “I guess. But it’s worth it. That’s what Lindsey says.”

Right
.

I suited up in
the formal garb, tossing on the pants and shoes. Those fit, but I didn’t think
the shirt was supposed to be mine.

The shirt stretched,
but I’d rip the material over my biceps and pop the buttons over my pecs if
they expected me to wear it. While it’d make for a good show, Lindsey already
warned me to keep my ink hidden. Apparently, both the Prescotts and my family
thought the tattoos meant trouble. I was twenty-eight years old, and nothing
changed from when I was a kid. The entire neighborhood had always worried for
their daughters when I came around.

Well, only one
girl had to worry.

And she was long
past saving from my intentions.

So why the hell
couldn’t I get her out of my mind? I still tasted her on my lips, felt her
clinging to my shoulders, and shuddered with the memory of her pussy milking my
cock.

Maybe it was
because I knew her? We grew up together, though back then she was just the
annoying kid her sister used to babysit. Lindsey, Bryce, and I had five years
on her, so it was a surprise to see her become a beautiful and sexy woman with
dangerous curves and a sweet smile.

The bedroom door
kicked open. I held my hands up.

“I don’t have
any fucking crumbs, Bryce!”

Mandy slammed
the door behind her.

Oh, this wasn’t
a friendly visit, and it certainly wouldn’t end with me pushed back onto the
bed with her grinding against my lap.

A man could hope,
but he also had to protect his boys in case the girl of his dreams happened to
kick.

I grinned at
her, half-naked. My arms crossed over my bare chest, flexing everything hard
and inked for her inspection. My pants felt too tight, even with the button
undone and the zipper down.

She took one
look and stilled, eyes wide.

Perfect.

I winked. “If
you wanted to undress me, all you had to do was ask, baby.”

“Don’t you
dare
.”

Mandy reached
for the only weapon she could find—my tie. I laughed as she whipped it at me,
flapping my chest with the black silk.

It wasn’t her
most impressive showing, especially since I remembered her at five years old,
making a
summer snowball
out of white legos. She’d pelted me, pitching
it over the fence separating our yards.  Still had the scar on my eyebrow.

I grabbed the
tie in mid-air and tugged. She fell forward, and I wrapped the silk behind her
back. Mandy gritted her teeth as I pulled her into my chest, but she couldn’t
hide her quick little breath. Her hands danced over my chest, trying to settle
on skin that wasn’t marked by a tribal tattoo.  

Why wouldn’t she
admit to wanting me too? It had been weeks since we spent the night together,
and our game of hot and cold frustrated me.

“You did it on
purpose
!”
Mandy hissed and untangled herself. “Do you have
any
idea what you’ve
done?
Making
the invitations? Sending them
tomorrow
?”

“Thought it’d be
fun.”

“Nate, by the
time Lindsey fire-breathes her demands for these invitations, we won’t be able
to find a UPS store or Kinkos in one hundred miles that will let us through the
door. And, if we’re lucky enough to print them, we’ll be up all night trying to
finish.”

I wrapped the
tie around my neck and shrugged. “If I remember correctly, we had an
all-nighter last time we were together. You didn’t complain then.”

“Is everything
about sex to you?”

Was that a trick
question? “Baby, you gotta know that was the greatest sex either of us has ever
had.”

“It was a
mistake.” Her voice hardened. “We never should have done it.”

“We never should
have stopped.”

Every emotion
looked good on her—anger, indignation, even shame, though I had no idea why
she’d feel ashamed, or how desperately she’d try to hide it.

Christ, this
woman was the best lay I ever had, and now she gave me balls bluer than the damn
wedding invitations.

Those pouty lips
clamped over words she refused to speak, and her honey-amber eyes averted to
avoid my gaze. No matter how much of an edge she added to her voice or how
stiffly she squared her shoulders, Mandy’s bluff was weak.

So why did she
fight me?

“You’re still
chasing me,” she said. “Why?”

“Because I love
to see those hips wiggle when you run.”

“You already had
me, Nate.”

“I took you for
one night. I never
had
you.”

“Well, one night
was our agreement, remember?” Her voice weakened, losing some of the fire that
nearly scorched the pants off me. “You promised me one night, no strings.”

I stepped
closer, watching as her lip trembled over a lost breath. “You think I could
forget that night?”

“You forgot the
rules
.”

“No. I broke the
rules.”

“Why?”

“Because one
night with you will never be enough.”

Her eyes focused
on my chest, my neck, the muscles of my shoulders. Her gaze traced everywhere
she’d kissed that night. Her lips had trailed over my every muscle, and her
tongue flicked along the tattoos over my pecs. She’d done wilder things as her
lips pressed lower. She was inexperienced, but raw enthusiasm and natural
talent was better than any practiced mouth.