Seduced by Stratton (The English Brothers Book 4) (27 page)

Val laughed softly. “I wish I’d turned around to see his face!”

“It was shell-shocked,” said Emily.

“Fitz told me about you two the week before last,” said Daisy, smiling at Val. “You do know that Stratton was a total wreck after you told him to leave you alone, right?”

“You told him to leave you alone?” asked Jessie, giving Val a concerned look as she shoved her empty glass to Emily.

Val nodded. “We spent several days together in January. While we were making out at one point, he said another girl’s name. That was it for me. I told him never to bother me again.”

Her friends cringed, and Emily poured another round.

“He was a wreck,” said Daisy. “He was already in love with you.”

Val grinned. Stratton had told her this, of course, but she had to admit it was good to hear it from a secondary source too.

“So?” demanded Jess. “How’d you get things back on track?”

“He sent me black calla lilies and wrote me love letters.” Val took a deep breath and sighed. “And . . . he’s Stratton. I wanted him so badly. I would’ve waited for him. I was just mad.”

“Waited! Could’ve fooled me,” said Emily. “Poor Joe.”

“Who’s Joe?” demanded Jess. “Wow. A girl goes to England for a few weeks and misses a year’s worth of gossip.”

“The Italian Stallion,” said Daisy, dreamily.

“Hey, cuz!” said Emily, poking Daisy gently in the side with her elbow. “You’re getting married in forty hours!”

“I choose Fitz forever,” said Daisy, “but Joe certainly had his charms.”

“
Who’s Joe
?” yelled Jess.

“Joe’s not in the picture anymore,” said Val, giggling at her friends. “He and I weren’t right for each other anyway.”

“That is one hundred percent correct,” said Stratton, appearing out of nowhere, dimples denting his handsome cheeks as he stood at the end of the table. “The only man who’s right for Val . . . is me.”

Valeria looked at him and felt her whole face explode in a smile.

“
What are you doing here?
Don’t you have a bachelor party to attend?”

Jess stood to give Stratton a kiss hello on the cheek, and Val slid out from her place by the wall to let him draw her into his arms. She kissed his lips, then drew back to look at the handsome face she loved so well.

“Reservation isn’t for . . .” he flipped his wrist behind her head and checked his watch. “. . . twenty more minutes. Plus, it’s right around the corner. And anyway,” he added sheepishly, “I missed you. We’re usually together by now.”

“Falling in love has turned you into a total sap,” said Alex from behind Stratton. “We had to crash Girls’ Night Out. . . or it wouldn’t be Girls’ Night Out.”

Stratton tucked Val into his side, and she smiled hello at Alex, who leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “Nice work,
bella Valeria
.”

“Don’t whisper in my girl’s ear, Casanova,” warned Stratton.

Alex rolled his eyes at Val, but an admonishing look from Jess made him swallow whatever teasing comment was on the tip of his tongue.

“Why do you put up with this?” asked Weston, who’d finally made his way back to their table, flanked by Barrett and Fitz. Looking deeply disappointed, he shook his head at Emily and Daisy, who were still seated. “You should choose another bar and keep the name under lock and key.”

“Wouldn’t work,” said Fitz, grinning at his fiancée. “Since Daisy got knocked up, she talks in her sleep.”

“How you doing, Emmy Faith?” asked Barrett. “Class go okay?”

Emily grinned up at her fiancé. “I got hit on by a freshman . . .”

Barrett tensed visibly.

“. . . girl.”

Barrett relaxed.

“I told her that I’m taken.”

“I love this woman,” said Barrett to no one in particular, eyes tenderly fixed on Emily.

Somehow Alex finagled a larger table in the back of the bar and two pitchers turned into six in short order as all nine of them sat down together. With Stratton’s arm around her, surrounded by his brothers and her best friends, Val, who’d felt like a third wheel for ages, sighed contently.

Stratton leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s perfect,” she answered.

“Sorry we crashed your Girls’ Night Out.”

“I’m not,” she answered. “We met at Girls’ Night Out, you and me. That’s the first page of the story of us.”

“True,” he said, nuzzling her ear.

She looked across the table at Weston, who participated in the conversations on either side of him, but was obviously the new third-wheel.

“What are you thinking?” asked Stratton, the low tone of his voice tickling her ear in a way that made her want to say goodnight to their friends and drag him into a dark corner.

“I’m thinking I’ve got you, and Emily has Barrett. Daisy has Fitz, and Jessie has Alex. You know what that means?”

He shook his head no. “But I know you’re going to tell me.”

She turned and grinned at him, her heart swelling from the love she found in his eyes.

“It means it’s Weston’s turn. I’m thinking it’s time for some sweet girl to be wild about Weston.”

THE END

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(Excerpt from
Wild about Weston
, The English Brothers #5)

CHAPTER 1

Molly McKenna loved her family and her friends and her parent’s beagle, Lady. But, if she was asked to name three more things she loved, on any random day she might answer:

1.  
   Watching her students get excited about reading.
   
2. The smell of fresh-cut wheat straw.
   
3. Weddings.
   

When Molly took a job as an English teacher at a middle school in downtown Philadelphia, she knew it was going to be an uphill battle to get her students interested in reading. And yet, after six months of teaching, she knew that while the rewards were intermittent, they were also more satisfying than she could have imagined. The first time her class got into an organic debate—arguing whether or not the characters in
Ninth Ward
, should have stayed put or evacuated during Hurricane Katrina—the rush was more powerful than anything Molly had ever experienced.

The smell of fresh-cut straw, which she—regrettably—hadn’t had the opportunity to whiff in almost eight months, reminded Molly of her family’s farm in Hopeview, Ohio. Hay baling, which typically took place in June, reminded her of warm sun, longer days, the end of the school year, fresh squeezed lemonade and her mother’s famous blueberry pie, which won the county fair almost every year. It reminded her of innocence and laughter, high hopes and sweet dreams. Yes, indeed. Better than Christmas trees or pumpkin bread or burning leaves in the fall, fresh cut hay was Molly’s favorite smell on earth.

And because Molly was a die-hard romantic, devouring romance novels like popcorn and a veritable expert on every rom-com movie released from 1986 to the present, she loved weddings. She loved being in weddings, she loved attending weddings. She loved the parties, showers and teas that led up to the big day. She loved thoughtfully choosing the perfect gift for the bride and groom, she loved the way the church smelled of fresh flowers, and she was an unapologetic and unabashed wedding-crier.

Staring at the groom as “Here Comes the Bride” swelled on the church organ, her own eyes glistened to see his face soften with awe and devotion at the first glimpse of his almost-wife.  Her tears fell again when the father-of-the-bride’s voice broke a little while giving his baby girl away. If the minister used Corinthians I in his sermon, Molly was a total goner, softly saying the verses right along with him. She sniffled softly and wiped her eyes as the vows were exchanged and rings blessed. And like any other true-blooded romantic, she wept like a spring rainfall when they kissed, then beamed like summer sunshine when they were pronounced man and wife.

Yes. On any random day, Molly would include weddings on her list of three things she loved.

Just not today.

Definitely not today.

Molly rolled over, batting at her blaring alarm clock until she haphazardly managed to hit the snooze button. Desperately trying to hold onto sleep, she clenched her eyes shut tightly. It didn’t help. The warm numbness of slumber slipped away too quickly and a terrible heaviness descended, squeezing her heart and compressing her lungs as more tears—impossibly—filled her still-burning eyes.

“Still-burning” because she’d flown over Ugly Cry land sometime last night around nine o’clock and she was fairly certain that if she looked in the mirror, her bloodshot eyes and pale skin would be well into Walking Dead territory by now.

“That’s what you get for six straight hours of crying, dummy,” she sniffed, blinking her eyes furiously as if that would help. It didn’t. The tears continued to stream as she buried her face in her pillow.

Her cat, Charming, jumped up on her bed and meowed softly by her head before mercifully lying down and purring loudly beside her ear in a passive demand for breakfast. She flipped over onto her back and glanced at him before staring up at the ceiling.

“I shouldn’t have picked up the damned phone, Charming,” she said, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. She tried to take a breath through her nose but between last night’s cry-fest and waking up to more tears this morning, she was good and clogged-up.

“Maybe I’ll e-mail Daisy and tell her I’ve come down with something awful. Or, no. I’ll call her and leave a message. She’ll hear it in my voice.”

Charming opened his eyes and stared at her accusingly, his expression neatly conveying the thought:
Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Using her very worst swear word, she exclaimed, “Christ on a cracker, I don’t want to go! Is that so hard to understand?”

The big old melon-colored tom cat stared at her for an extra beat, then yawned, never taking his eyes off hers. His ennui was unmistakable—he couldn’t care less that her woman’s heart was in turmoil.

“Oh, fine, I’ll go. Darn it, but you’re mean,” she said, whipping off the covers and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “But I’m not going to act like I’m happy. No, sir.”

Taking a ragged breath, she sternly admonished herself to ignore whatever tears still felt like falling, and resolved to move through her day as though her heart hadn’t been broken in half at approximately seven-o-six last night.

Looking straight ahead, Molly’s eyes scanned the framed photos on her dresser: her parents on their wedding day, Molly with her sister and two brothers on the tractor, Molly wearing her graduation cap and gown, Molly standing with a class of minority students against a brick wall covered in heavy graffiti, then a big empty space where two additional photos had resided until last night. She bit her bottom lip, jumped up and rearranged the remaining four photos to take up the space now vacated, glancing into the trash bin where the other two had met their untimely end.

It didn’t make her feel better.

She hoped a long, hot shower would.

Molly did her best thinking in the shower, and right now she needed to think of a way to get through today: to show up at Daisy Edwards’ three o’clock wedding—
stag
—and make it through the ceremony and reception in one piece. Outwardly only, of course. Inside, the million shattered pieces of her mangled heart would still be jagged, still be aching, still need time to heal from the hurt and embarrassment and shock of last night’s phone call.

She padded into the kitchen with Charming trailing behind, and poured him a bowl of cat food, then lifted his water dish and refreshed it. There was comfort in the mundane: feeding her cat, watering the little herb garden on her windowsill, turning on her coffee maker. They made her feel more normal, less like her world had been punched in the throat last night.

Stripping out of her pajamas, she turned on the shower, hotter than usual, and stepped inside the stall, letting the water beat down on her aching body.

When Dusty’s number had popped up on her phone last night, she assumed he was calling to give her his estimated time of arrival. He was driving from Hopeview to Philly so that they could spend Valentine’s Day together and attend Daisy’s wedding.

Though Molly and her fiancé had drifted apart a bit over the past six weeks since they’d last seen one another over Christmas break, that was only because they were both so busy. Dusty was working hard on setting up a new P.E. program at the Hopeview Junior High School, and Molly was almost halfway through her first year of teaching at-risk kids in a low-income neighborhood of Philadelphia.