“No,” Maddie said, rolling her eyes. “That’s my blunt way of saying I’m not here to cramp your style, and I’m sure you’ll extend me the same courtesy.”
Jamison inclined his head, casting a glance behind Maddie to where her friends were unloading the van. “So I guess that means those three are off-limits?” he asked in a low voice.
“If you want to go home with all your man parts intact, yes,” Maddie whispered, flinching when Jamison laughed.
Even his laugh was sexy, a sensual expression of mirth that showcased even, white teeth and that delicious neck Maddie knew smelled better than fresh bread, lavender-scented candles, and a pan of recently fried bacon combined.
“Got it.” Jamison winked at Maddie before lifting a hand to the women behind her and backing away with a husky, “Good day, ladies,” that triggered a sigh from one of the weaker members of the company.
Maddie spun back around to find out which of her friends had become tangled in Jamison’s smolder-web to find Shelly and Dawn leaning against the van with slightly dazed expressions and Piper wiping drool from her chin.
“Are you drooling?” Maddie asked, glaring at the athletic brunette she knew Jamison would have made a play for if Maddie hadn’t made it clear that her friends were off-limits. “Tell me you aren’t drooling, Piper Youngman.”
“Who was that?” Piper asked with a grin, not even bothering to deny the accusation. “I like.”
“Me, too,” Shelly added with a sigh that stirred the fuzzy blond curls falling into her face. “But you can have dibs, Piper. Since you drooled and all.”
“No, she cannot have dibs.” Maddie propped her hands on her hips. “Jamison is off limits.”
Dawn’s pierced eyebrow rose. “Oh, it’s like that, is it? Back off ladies. Studly’s already spoken for by the birthday queen.”
“No, it’s not like that,” Maddie said. “I just—”
“And what the birthday queen wants, the birthday queen gets,” Piper interrupted, lifting her hands into the air. “I withdraw my claws. Pounce away, sister.”
Maddie rolled her eyes. “I am not going to be pouncing anyone, especially Jamison Hansen.”
“But that’s the whole reason we’re here!” Shelley’s full lips pushed into a pout. “This weekend is for pouncing. It’s like Virginia is for lovers except it’s a weekend instead of an entire state.”
“Jamison is my sister’s fiancé’s brother,” Maddie explained. As non-residents of Summerville, her friends weren’t privy to the intricate details of her and Jamison’s relationship. “It would be like incest.”
“No, that’s when you marry a cousin or something,” Shelly said. “I know because my stepsister married her first cousin. She lives in Arkansas, but they went to Tennessee to get married because it’s legal to marry your first cousin there.”
“That’s it,” Dawn said, frowning as she pulled her shiny blue-black hair into a low ponytail, showcasing the mermaid tattoo on her upper arm. “I’m officially divorcing Tennessee as my birth state. I mean, what is the world coming to when something is illegal in Arkansas but not in the Volunteer State?”
“Tennessee is simply volunteering to perform a cousin-marrying service other states won’t,” Piper said as she grabbed her pack from the van and swung it onto her back. “I think you should be proud of them. Love is love, after all.”
“As long as you don’t have inbred children,” Dawn said, while Maddie shook her head, wondering how this conversation had gone so far astray.
“But I think you should go for him, Maddie,” Dawn continued. “He’s yummy and he was looking at you like he already had you half-naked in his mind.”
Maddie scoffed, ignoring the way the thought of being undressed by Jamison—mentally or otherwise—made her skin prickle all over. “You’re crazy.”
“I am not crazy,” Dawn said. “I’m thirty-two years old, unreasonably excited to be away from my precious children, and dangerously horny, but not crazy.”
Dawn and Piper both had kids—Piper two boys she had full custody of after her ex took a job overseas, and Dawn a nine-year-old boy and seven-year-old girl she’d been raising alone since her husband ran off with his secretary four years ago. Both of them needed this singles retreat every bit as much as Maddie did, but they had insisted Maddie was the queen of the weekend.
They were sweet friends, such sweet friends Maddie promised right then and there not to do anything to ruin their good time. She wasn’t going to let Jamison’s presence spoil her fun, or anyone else’s.
She managed to keep the promise right up until her third Jack and Coke, when skinny dipping suddenly started to seem like a good idea, and skinny dipping with an old friend an even better one.
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