When Honey Got Married (19 page)

“Hey, Griff,” Honey’s sister, Nina, drawled as she danced past. “Be good now.”

“Right back at ya.”

With a wink and a swish of her skirt, Nina disappeared around the corner, and once again they were alone. Only now Pippa had a hand flung over her eyes. And the twisted strap of her silken black dress was an inch out of place. Enough that Griff knew if he didn’t fix the thing, he’d do the opposite.

The thought of having her breast in his mouth, his hands on all that soft warm skin, took him from half-hard to all the way. It was only his promise to help Pippa in her efforts not to become the talk of the wedding that made him do the noble thing.

“Don’t reckon you have to worry yourself about saboteur rumors anymore. The Dixons will have news of this all over the wedding before we even hit the bottom of the stairs.”

Pippa’s laughter was ragged. “There is that.”

He pried her arm from her eyes, needing to see them. Needing for her to see him.

But she ducked under his arm and headed down the hall, fixing herself as she went. “Come on Delacroix, you can’t miss your brother’s wedding now. Your parents might have forgiven you for giving up the family business, but they’d never forgive you for that.”

Unfortunately she was closer to right than she knew.

Nearly ten years since he’d given up the family company to strike out on his own, and it had taken this long for the shell shock to wear off.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit pants and followed. Knowing he and Pippa weren’t finished yet. Not by a long shot.

Chapter Five

Griff had kissed her. Again.

Only this time it wasn’t some overwrought, late-night, heat-of-the-moment, pity kiss. Griffin Delacroix had on purpose tracked Pippa down, and
kissed
her until her knees had turned to water and her brain to mush.

In an effort to help her stop the rumors that she might yet try to break up the wedding?
No
, Pippa thought. He’d devoured her, like a man who’d not had a full meal in a really long time.

Back in their chairs on the lawn, Pippa risked a quick glance Griff’s way, to find him looking straight ahead. Her gaze grazed his deep-set eyes, so blue they made her chest hurt, down his straight nose, the dip above his top lip, the flat planes of his mouth. That mouth could do things to her every other man she’d ever known wouldn’t have come close to doing with their whole bodies and an instruction manual.

This
man had always had a thing for
her
? The woman behind the ever-optimistic
P.S.
blogs puffed out her chest. Yeah, baby! The big fat fraud thought it utterly impossible.

Beside her Griff laughed, and Pippa came to and remembered that Honey and Brent were getting married. Right then and there. Up beneath the arbor, with hundreds of their nearest and dearest—and those they hadn’t seen in a decade—looking on.

This
was why she’d come back. And she was missing it all.

Because all she could think about was Griff. And the kiss. Kisses, plural. What they both meant. How they made her feel. How compared with every other romantic experience of her short life, they were like fireworks against a clear sky.

“Does anyone know why this man and this woman should not be joined together in holy matrimony?”

The question sneaked through Pippa’s subconscious as loudly as if someone had held a foghorn to her ear and shouted. She glanced around to find near a hundred pairs of eyes turn her way. It seemed the Moreau cousins had been too busy actually doing their job as Honey’s bridesmaids to do their job spreading the news about the kiss. Or maybe her beautiful black dress was so offensive it didn’t make a lick of difference after all.

She swept her eyes to the pastor, only to find he’d homed in on her too. Enough that she actually shook her head.

“Pippa?” Griff’s deep voice rumbled beside her. Not him too!

“Good Lord! I’m not here to break up the wedding!” she said loud enough that she drew laughter. Then more quietly added, “Would I have kissed you like that if I was?”

“I was going to say you’re cutting off the blood supply in my thigh.”

She looked down and realized she was in fact gripping his thigh with fingers that resembled talons. Her hand sprang open. But he grabbed it and put it back. His big, warm hand trapping hers.

“Gently,” he said, his voice sliding down her arm and into her fingers, which were now lying flat against the soft, expensive fabric of his suit pants. His warmth bled through the fabric, and she swore she felt a pulse beating in the general area.

His other hand settled around her shoulder, tracing little circles down her upper arm, sending ribbons of pleasure all through her that ended up pooling in the one low spot.

“Griff?” she said, her voice a little weak.

“Shhh. The Ladies Auxiliary is watching.”

He leaned back and Pippa’s focus shifted to find a row of women in a rainbow array of dresses all turned her way, beady eyes pinned on her. And Griff. And the fact that she was all but in his lap.

Her eyes caught on Lady Calliope, who watched her with a small smile. An understanding smile. As if she knew exactly what was going on. Pippa wished she could take a quick second to go ask her, as she suddenly wasn’t so sure anymore.

Applause broke out, and Pippa flinched, thinking for a second it was for her. But then Griff stood, clapping, and she did too, while Brent and Honey bounded down the aisle, laughing, waving, moving through what seemed a thousand pairs of arms. The Dixon cousins and Nina trailed giddily in their wake, the groomsmen bumping chests and crying, “Let’s party!”

“It’s done?” Pippa asked.

“All done,” Griff said.

Meaning she didn’t need him anymore. It should have been a blessed relief; instead, it left her feeling strangely bereft.

Then Griff held out the crook of his arm. “Coming?”

She thought about thanking him for his help and ignoring him the rest of the night, as she’d planned to from the beginning. But looking up at him in the dying sunlight, so tall, so broad, so beautiful, so strong, so deeply entrenched in the best and worst parts of her life, she knew she couldn’t ignore him for all the money in the world.

She tucked her hand into the crook and tried instead to ignore the frisson of heat and hope incited by their contact, the ensuing warmth that touched every soft place inside of her, and said, “Come on, bad boy. Let’s give them something to really talk about.”

The bridal party had been whisked away for photos, so the crowd was bundled into the ballroom, which was set up for drinking and dancing.

The open bar was already three deep in guests, and hip-high cocktail tables draped in swathes of perfect white linen littered the outside of what would serve as a dance floor. Open French doors let the outside in, with views of the glorious grounds now lit with thousands of twinkling fairy lights in the looming dusk. Inside, the Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band rocked until the walls shook.

Pippa had managed to catch up with the gang she’d gone to school with, many of whom had married one another, most of whom had seen her website, or heard of it at least. One talked about how her niece loved the thing and even thanked Pippa for helping give the once painfully shy girl the confidence to be herself.

As always, they asked where she got her ideas for her raw and honest musings. As always, she smiled and said, “Everywhere, so be careful what you say!”

Truth was, in the early days, she’d waitressed, washed dogs, manned the loan desk at a pawnshop to make money to simply survive. Back then there
had
been times when she’d lived out of her car.

But the extreme quiet, the long silences, of those early days had been everything. No reckless mother making arbitrary decisions about her life, or boyfriends with ten-year plans, or best friends who begged her to stay in one place forever. It had been her, her rust bucket Firebird, café Wi-Fi, and a secondhand laptop. For the first time in her life she’d been able to hear herself think, and she’d started blogging as a way to delete where she’d come from, so she could get where she was going, always with a little
P.S.
at the end, an affirmation she’d learned from the events of her life.

Then her ramblings had found some fans. Then more. She’d scrounged up some advertising dollars. Started to find some traction. To feel like she might be onto something special. To feel like, for the first time in her entire life,
she’d
been heard.

Until one day, her candid words had stopped an eleven-year-old girl who’d been mercilessly bullied at school from overdosing on her mother’s sleeping pills. The mother of that same girl, an editor at
Miss
magazine, couldn’t have thanked Pippa enough for simply being. A month later
Miss
had named
P.S.
one of the Top Ten Websites for Tweens. And that was when things had exploded.

She’d lived in an amazed daze ever since. And then the invitation to revisit Bellefleur had turned up in the mail and her inflated self-confidence had popped, just like that, and Pippa had begun to wonder if she knew what she was talking about at all.

When the pressure of smiling at all the nice things being said about her work began to press against the inside of her skull, it was a relief when she felt Griff’s hand land possessively on her waist. Well, as much of a relief as anything that made her tummy tighten, her thighs clench, and saliva pool in her mouth could be classified as such.

“Excuse me, folks,” Griff said, all smiles and charm that had the other women, even the married ones, fluttering their eyelashes and fixing their hair, “but this is our song.”

Pippa gave her champagne to one of the girls, who watched her with a mix of understanding and envy, as Pippa was hauled out to the dance floor, spun to the tip of Griff’s long arm, and curled back into his embrace.

At the sexy twang of a slide guitar, she turned to the band in time to hear them sing about doing bad things. “
This
is our song? The theme to
True Blood
?”

She felt his laughter as a rumble through her chest.

“If you say so. Now shut up and dance.”

She rested her head against his chest, breathed out long and slow, and let herself enjoy it. She’d made contact with both Honey and Brent and seen them get married with her own two eyes. And from that alone, her world felt lighter. She could do with giving herself a small break.

“Well, well. Don’t the two of you look dear together.” With an audible sigh, Pippa lifted her head to find Lady Calliope shaking her groove thing next to them.

“Looking mighty fine tonight yourself, Lady Calliope,” Griff said, bringing out the big guns with his most charming smile.

Lady Calliope had been around the block enough times not to fall for all that. Her eyes narrowed. “How did this come about, then, what with you two livin’ on opposite sides of the country?”

“Have blog, will travel,” Pippa said at the same time Griff came up with, “I build houses all over.”

Then their eyes locked, the air suddenly thick with meaning. Their answers had been so quick off the tongue it was as if each had quietly thought how it might have worked, if it were in fact real.

“Save me a dance now, Lady Calliope,” Griff insisted before moving them gracefully out of Lady Calliope’s vicinity, only to nearly knock into his cousin Rainer Delacroix, who was dancing with Honey’s aunt Opaline, who was by turns simpering at Rainer and shooting daggers at Lady Calliope.

The intricate family squabblings and politics of the place she had
not
missed. She was thankful when Griff curled them past with great grace.

“You got some moves there, Mr. Delacroix,” Pippa said, the lightness of her tone belying the heaviness tugging at her everywhere his hard body pressed into hers.

“You have no idea,” he said, his voice rough as he stopped with the fancy stuff and pulled her close. And there was no mistaking the heat flickering beneath the shards of blue. No denying the hot waves that swept through her in response. No getting away from the way his big body pressed long and hard against hers.

She swallowed. Hard. He noticed. The edges of his mouth curving into a knowing smile. The mouth that all too recently had set her nerve endings on fire. When that mouth moved nearer, as if she was dragging it closer through sheer willpower, she curled her fingers into the lapels of his jacket and hurried him the hell up.

She moaned in frustration as his mouth bypassed her lips for her ear. Though when warm breath scooted across her neck, it sent shivers up and down her spine. Her eyes fluttered closed and she had to bite her lip so as not to moan in pure and utter craving.

And then he whispered, “Pip Squeak, I’ve had the hots for you for the longest time.”

Thankfully she had a hold of Griff as her legs buckled under her.

“It’s been a couple of hours at most,” she just managed. “I mean the rumors always went that you worked quick but—”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.”

She
didn’t
. Well, she couldn’t. Because he couldn’t possibly be talking about—

“May I cut in?”

Griff looked ready to deck any man who dared, until he saw it was his father. And Pippa watched in fascination as myriad emotions shot across Griff’s face. Love, respect, authority. Two giants of the South, who hugged.

Pippa’s heart twisted and melted and yearned the same way it always had with Griff’s family. Forget the money, forget the power, forget the history, and they still made for such a tempting picture.

“Pippa?”

Pippa turned at that voice, with a kind of compulsion she’d never managed to deny, to find Griff’s beautiful mother watching her. Ms. Marie, who’d raised two strapping, ambitious men, both of whom Pippa had found it impossible not to love, though in very different ways. Ms. Marie with tears in her eyes. Oh, hell. Pippa was not going to cry!

Griff’s spectacular mother took Pippa’s face between her garden-roughened hands and looked her right in the eye. Pippa’s heart beat so hard she could feel it in her cheeks. “Pippa, my sweet girl, I am so glad you’re here. So glad you’re back.”

“Thank you for inviting me,” Pippa managed through her tight throat. “Thank you for everything.”

“Thank Brent,” Ms. Marie said with a tender smile. “Smart boy of mine. He wanted you here, for Honey.” She then kissed Pippa on both cheeks, then released her to her husband.

“Nice to see you, kiddo,” Griff’s father said, and when Pippa looked into the smiling blue eyes of Robert Delacroix, a man who could have given Paul Newman a run for his money, she melted into a hug as strong and warm as he’d given his own son.

Her connection to this family was deep and entangled. She hadn’t let herself remember how much so. And now she found herself stunned that she’d managed to pull away from all that temptation when she was young and alone and scared. Now that she understood more fully what she’d turned her back on, she wondered if, in the same situation, she’d have the strength to do it again?

Griff stood at the patio door—some fruity cocktail Lady Calliope had insisted would change his life cooling his palm—watching Pippa. She was still dancing. With the third guy she’d danced with that hour.

And while he itched to dive in, to haul the guy’s hands off her body, to put his own hands and lips everywhere in their stead, he gritted his teeth and kept his distance.

What had he been thinking telling her he’d had the
hots
for her like some randy twenty-year-old? Even if it was exactly how he felt, her small soft body all melted against his, the scent of her everywhere, the taste of that crazy kiss still on his lips while she sassed him like he wasn’t twice her size.