by Anya Nowlan
BUCK ME… FOR ST PADDY’S
FROST BROTHERS’ BRIDES
BY
ANYA NOWLAN
A LITTLE TASTE…
“So, am I winning some major brownie points here for being the hero you need, and the one you deserve?” he asked as they walked along, a slight blush of either cold or mortification on Kelly’s cheeks.
Whatever was causing it, he liked the way it looked. Made her pretty face light up a little.
“Well, it’s either that or I should be worried that you were stalking me in the middle of the night, right?” she countered.
“Stalking? Come on! I’m a stag, I don’t ‘stalk.’”
“You prance, then?”
Pran laughed, trying to mask it behind an actual coughing fit but failing horribly, considering the look Kelly gave him. She was not far off target, this one.
Better be careful, she’s clever, he thought with a wide grin on his lips.
“You could say that.”
Copyright © 2016 Anya Nowlan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Buck Me… For St Paddy’s
Frost Brothers’ Brides
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use. This book may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Anya Nowlan. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.
Cover © Jack of Covers
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
A LITTLE TASTE…
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
EPILOGUE
WANT MORE?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Pran
“No, that’s fine Ru, I found it,” Pran said, his hand hovering over the little button on his headset that would end the call as he took a sharp right on one of the busy streets of downtown Boston.
“You sure? You’re about as good at navigating city streets as Nick is at keeping a diet,” Ru responded, the makings of laughter in his voice.
“Yeah, I miss you too, smartass. This is my last drop and I’m out for the weekend after this. Be my guest and rub it in for the other guys over comms, will you?”
“Yeah, because the vast majority of the Frost household are extremely jealous of you being in Boston for St Patrick’s, obviously. But fine, I’ll send them your regards. You could have at least gone for Dublin.”
“Dublin doesn’t understand the soul of this holiday as well as Boston does though,” Pran retorted with a chuckle, glancing at the numbers on the brick buildings, searching for the one he was after.
“Which would be?”
“To get blackout drunk and make out with someone wearing industrial amounts of green accessories, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
The call ended and it was just in time as Pran pulled the large, garishly red-and-white truck up at the backdoor of Callahan’s Shamrock, an Irish pub situated right on the path of destruction this coming weekend. And by destruction Pran of course meant St Patrick’s Day with all of its parades and shenanigans and quasi-Irish traditions that seemed to bleed into one large drinking fest.
And it’s four days this year, too. Damn, good time to be off-work, he thought with a grin, grabbing the tablet from the passenger’s seat and hopping out of the truck with the trained ease of a man who had spent far too much time of his life getting in and out of large machinery.
He walked to the back door whistling a jaunty tune, looking forward to emptying out his truck from the unseemly amounts of alcohol that Callahan’s Shamrock had ordered for the weekend and Pran had the good fortune of delivering to them. While ELF—Elevated Logistics by Frost—saw most of their business obviously during the Christmas season, they supplemented their income the rest of the year by helping out with the less cooler holidays. A buck has got to make a living, right?
In any case, Pran Frost was squarely of the opinion that he’d pulled the high card that time, getting time off during St Patrick’s and also getting to spend it in one of the best cities for it. The stag shifter’s airplane, one of the hulking Big Reds that the nine Frost brothers used to get around, was sitting comfortably under tons of camouflage at Logan International, waiting for his vacation to end and for one of the younger Frost brothers to get back to work.
He knocked on the back door with a quick rapping motion, waiting patiently for a few moments while surveying the alleyway he’d pulled his truck into. It was small and sort of dark, even though it was daytime, but he was pretty good at fitting big things into tight spaces if he did say so himself.
One more knock later he gave out an exasperated sigh and stalked around the building to the front, finding the large glass-paned doors already decorated with green stickers and advertisements telling passersby that the Lucky Irish Slammer Shots would be half off during the festivities. Ahh, good old commercialism, how Pran loved it! Especially if it came in the form of good drinks and the continued growth of the Frost family fortune.
He stepped in from the chilly wind, finding himself in a large, cozy, and somewhat empty pub which looked exactly like he assumed it would. There were some large booths with wood paneling and green leather, a long bar of dark, lacquered timber, and a seemingly endless row of seats with an equally endless length of glasses hanging above them. It wasn’t the interior itself that caught his interest though, but the woman running the place.
“Hey! Can I talk to the owner?” Pran called good-naturedly, stomping his somewhat muddy boots at the front door before tracking in a few paces.
The stunning redhead at the bar looked up at him with the greenest eyes he’d ever seen, a smattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks making her quirked brow look kind of impish. Her gorgeous long locks were held back in an easy ponytail and she was wearing a green-and-black checkered shirt, tied together at her waist over a black tank top and some jeans. Even without seeing her lower body he could tell that she had curves. Exactly the kind that a shifter liked—plentiful!
“Well, for lack of a better option, you’re looking at her,” she replied with a grin, the smile lighting up her face.
She had dimples. He fucking loved dimples.
He sauntered to the bar, leaning on it with one elbow and giving her his most dashing smile, which she seemed to brush off with the careful skill of a bartender who has seen and heard every line in the book. Good thing she hadn’t been introduced to the Frost family playbook yet, then.
“What are you willing to bet on the fact that I could beat you in a friendly game of alcohol accommodation?” he asked, waggling his brows playfully.
She—Kelly, as he could read from the tag on her shirt—stopped what she was doing, setting down the glass she’d been polishing, and leaned over the counter so close that he could feel her hot breath on his skin.
She paused for a moment, fluttering her lashes as their lips hovered only inches from one another, and Pran’s brain skipped at least one, if not several seconds of prime thought-processing time.
“You…” she started, all breathy and sexy. “Brought the booze, didn’t you?”
“Um, yeah,” Pran admitted, feeling a bit deflated as she pulled back.
She grinned, making those dimples appear again and his cock twitch uncomfortably in his jeans, and shook her head as she hiked a thumb to her left.
“If the door’s closed you’re going to have to get someone to open it for you. But I don’t think that kind of bravado will get you very far, my friend.”
“Oh yeah? Why not? You like the sweet and loving kind?” he asked, batting his lashes at her and dropping his chin on two hands, giving her his sweetest, most uncorrupted look that he could imagine.
It must have looked at least as ridiculous as he hoped it would, because Kelly burst out laughing and it was the prettiest sound he’d ever heard. Sort of high-pitched, but flowing nicely with little dips and valleys. A sound he couldn’t get tired of.
The hell are you thinking.
Pran stood up straight, shaking his head as he rolled his shoulders back a bit to get the blood moving again. Obviously it must have all been pooling to his dick if he was getting all mushy about this girl he’d just met, and who was giving him the cold shoulder for all it was worth.
“Yeah, maybe I do. You got a problem with that, buddy?”
“Oh, no, of course not. See, I am a tortured, delicate soul deep inside. It’s simply that no one sees it, no one understands, so I’m left to hide behind this calloused, jaded shell of a cocky asshole. You must understand, right? You must see right through me, Kelly!”
He pouted a little as she rolled her beautiful eyes, setting down the glass again and leaning over to grab a set of keys from somewhere under the counter.
“Sure thing, wiseguy. Nothing I like better than diagnosing the many neuroses of the delivery boys right before the busiest weekend in Boston,” she called over her shoulder as she walked out from behind the counter, motioning for him to follow.
Pran had no objections to that because it meant he could get a better look at that heavenly figure of hers, all wide sweeps of hip and thick thighs he bet would look absolutely gorgeous wrapped around his waist. He wetted his lips for a moment before shoving one hand in his pocket, moving his cock slightly so his unfortunately uncooperative hard-on wouldn’t be too obvious.
“I’ll let you know I’m a pilot, not a delivery boy.”
“You’re here with a truck full of booze, buddy. What am I supposed to think you are? Did you leave your airplane at home?” she teased, grabbing a coat from a hanger and throwing it on as she unlocked the back door and they stepped out together into the windy evening.
The draft seemed to get stuck in the pocket of the alleyway, seemingly blowing in relentlessly without the wind having anywhere to go. It threw around her hair in lush curls and Pran had to physically stop himself from reaching out and tucking one of those locks behind her ears.
“At Logan International, actually. Maybe I should give you a ride at one point, show you what Boston looks from the best vantage point,” he said, handing her the tablet with the information regarding the order.
“I don’t think so,” she said as he headed toward the driver side of the truck again to key in the commands that would open up the loading ramp.
“Yeah? Why not? Am I too much man for you, Kelly? It’s Pran, by the way,” he said over his shoulder as he hopped up into the truck and turned the key before pushing the right buttons and then jumping back out again, wearing his roguish smile.
“Nice to meet you, Pran. And I’m sure you’re almost too much to handle for any li’l ol’ non-flying gal like me, but we have a strict rule around these parts, especially around St Pat’s.”
“And what’s that?” Pran asked, scaling the back of the truck so he could hop into the cargo area and grab the handtruck, stacked high with bottles of alcohol in every variety.
He walked them onto the ramp and after poking at another few buttons on the inside of the truck, the ramp lowered itself down to the ground. Pran pushed the handtruck onto the wet pavement, looking expectantly to Kelly who motioned him inside in front of her. Maybe she wanted to get a better look at the merchandise too, but not exactly the one that Pran Frost was delivering that day.
“Well, are you Irish?”
“What, is there some sort of long-lasting feud between your people and my people?”
“Depends. Who are ‘your people’?” she asked with a laugh, making a happy shudder roll down his spine at the sound of it.
“I’m from Idaho,” he confessed, trotting into the storage room as Kelly instructed.
“Then no. But the problem remains.”
“Aw, you’re going to let a little thing like our ancestry stand in the way of true love?” Pran asked, pouting as he turned to face Kelly.
She was a good foot shorter than he was, but that was no surprise. At six foot four, Pran was used to most people being shorter than him and his brothers. Still, when he found himself standing real close to her in the cramped warehouse, he almost felt like he was the one shorter than she was for how hard it was to look at anything but her.
“Sorry, Pilot. I guess our romance must end this way,” she said with a flourished sigh, scribbling in her signature with the pen attached to the tablet and then giving it back to Pran.
He shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly enough and brushed past her out of the warehouse, getting so close that their bodies touched and his hand grazed over hers as he took the tablet back. It was then that it hit him, the sweet and sour, hot and cold punch right in his gut. It almost doubled him over but he gasped instead, his blue eyes going wide with surprise.
What the hell was that?
He looked back at Kelly incredulously, who was still standing in the warehouse, looking a little bit surprised.
“Don’t you need your handtruck?” she asked finally, seeming to regain her composure slightly faster than Pran did.
“Nah, you keep it. I’ll come pick it up after the weekend,” he said with a wink, managing a smile as he turned to leave again, clutching the tablet so hard he thought he might break it in half.
“I won’t go out with you just because you come and ask again, you know!” she yelled after him, a tinge of that laughter in her tone.
“We’ll see about that!” he hollered back, letting the back door fall shut behind him.
It was only when he’d gotten into the truck, closed up the ramp, backed out of the alleyway, and made it onto a street that wasn’t in clear sight of Callahan’s Shamrock that he allowed himself to actually think about what had just happened. And the more he thought about it, the more confused he became, until Pran almost drove into another truck in front of him.
“Shit,” he muttered, shaking his head. “What the hell just happened?”
CHAPTER TWO
Kelly
“Who was that?” Liam Callahan called as Kelly strolled out of the collection of rooms they could affectionately call a warehouse with a perplexed look on her face.
“No one, Dad. Just the delivery guy. The extra order got here,” she answered with some dullness in her tone, walking back to the front of the pub and getting behind the counter.
“Took his sweet time,” Liam grumbled, running a hand through his reddish hair as he strolled with heavy steps past the bar and headed somewhere further into the pub, greeting an old friend he found there with a loud, boisterous hello.
Kelly grinned to herself, shaking her head as she resumed the work Pran had interrupted. She picked up the rag and started polishing the beer glasses and steins, knowing that no matter how many she could get ready for the weekend, there wouldn’t be enough and she’d spend far too much of the next four days cleaning and scrubbing and shining. It came with the territory, especially if the territory included some few thousand d
runk Irish or Irish-adjacent revelers dressed in flamboyant green and trying to sing songs their tongues could not twist to pronounce.
It happened every year and Kelly Callahan loved it.
The youngest daughter of the Callahan family, she’d always been carefully protected and doted on by her six brothers, her loving parents, and her two sisters. Lately, however, that protection had become almost overwhelming though and it didn’t take much to figure out why.
Cadence, you screwed me over good, she thought with a smirk, shaking her head at the thought of her older sister.
While most of the rest of the Callahans had chosen to stay in Boston, Cadence had decided on a life of adventure, choosing to trek through the Amazonian rainforest. With her pale complexion and red hair, she was constantly at the risk of dying of sunstroke. Or at least that was what her mother constantly claimed and reminded the family of as well, no matter how much Kelly tried to assure the woman that she had raised a perfectly capable daughter who would not croak quite so foolishly.
That alone had been enough to spark an outcry of protectiveness for the youngest Callahan—what if she left too!?—but it was only recently that it had all come to a boiling point. Cadence had found a husband and gotten married, a burly Texan by the name of Deke who was certainly not Irish. Not even a little. Suddenly, that which had never really been a notable problem for the Callahan kin had become all that was discussed at dinner tables and at the pub.
Kelly still didn’t quite get it. Who cared? She’d dated plenty of guys who weren’t Irish and her family had always been nothing but welcoming, aside from the friendly joshing around what six brothers could bring with them when dealing with their little sister’s new boyfriend. She still cringed when she thought of the faces those poor guys had made when the very large, very imposing Callahan brothers had asked about their intentions with her.
The best response she’d ever heard had come from a geeky guy from Oklahoma, who had promised to take her out for apple pie and nothing else. And he’d held true to his word and never called her again. The power of older brothers.