“Not my idea.”
“That’s fantastic. I love it. What does Jay say?”
“Wanted to know what you said but he’s good with it.”
“Okay that’s great.” She climbed off the bed. “I should go out there and help her get ready.”
Grip stood in front of the door. Not about to let her skip out. “So you’re calling it off. What am I supposed to tell people?”
“That it’s just not the right time for us.”
“That’s not good enough. No. Fuck that. Jay fucking loves you enough to give up marrying you because he thinks he’s going to trash your career.”
Evie took a step back and sat on the bed. “He said that?”
“Yeah, he said that.”
Her bottom lip got bent out of shape. “I love him so much.”
“Too much to risk that you might hurt him.”
She nodded. Grip sat on the bed and the black lab wandered over and put its head in his lap. “What am I supposed to do now?” he said. Other than pat his dog he was running low on clear next steps.
Evie leaned into him. “I’ll talk to Jay. He’ll understand.”
“Not about that. About me?”
Evie pushed away with an annoyed grunt. “This is very much not about you.”
He stroked the dog’s ear. “I get that, but Evie, you and Jay and Teela and Haydn, you guys were the reason I stopped hooking up, stopped treating relationships as entertainment. You’re the reason I want to be with Mena, like permanently. All the noise in your lives, all the distractions and you guys found each other. Haydn moved to Sydney for Teela. Jay looks at you as if you are his own personal earth, wind and fire. You’re in here with dogs instead of out there marrying the only man you ever loved and it’s not like you didn’t try to get over him. If you guys can’t get it right, me,” he tapped his chest, “I’ve got no chance, and I found someone I want that chance with.”
Evie opened her mouth to reply and there was a knock at the door before it opened and the one-eyed poodle walked in, Jay at its heels.
“Hi,” Jay said to Evie as the poodle sniffed the lab’s arse.
Incredible that despite the dog antics, the way Jay looked at Evie, the way his voice dipped low on that one word, the way Evie’s face lit up, it was a fucking romantic moment. Made Grip get all thick in the throat.
“What do you want, Evie?” Jay said.
“You first?” she hedged.
“You, always, anyway you want to serve it up,” Jay said.
Evie made a sound like a wounded thing.
Grip coughed into his closed fist. “Am I in the way?”
“We’d probably be fucking now if you weren’t here,” Evie said, “but this is Teela’s bed so just as well you are.”
He sighed. “You told me all I had to do was hold the ring, give the signal you were both ready, cue in the celebrant. You did not tell me you were going to burn the whole thing down. I don’t have instructions for that.”
“We’re not, we’re just—”
He cut Evie off. “Chicken shit. You’re chicken shit and I’m chicken shit too.” He pushed the lab’s head off his lap and stood. “Wait here, all of you.” He went to the door and tossed over his shoulder. “And don’t be fucking when I get back.”
He tried not to look hassled when he got to the deck. He tried not to look anyone in the eye, because he had one mission, and Abel foiled him by grabbing his shoulder and grinning at him. He wore a slick black suit with his own label designer sneakers and vampire teeth.
“Whath the hold up,” he lisped.
Arrayed behind him were Isaac and Oscar, also wearing vampiric grimaces. Oz had gone all out with a red cape.
“What’s with the—?” Grip tapped his own teeth. Nothing he’d read about bridesmaid and best man duties said anything about guests wearing fake teeth. They didn’t tell you how to call off a wedding either.
“To make Evie laugh,” Abel said, following it up with a horror movie cackle that had heads turning and made his plastic teeth fall out. He shoved them back in and said, “Theriouthly, whath going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Thomthing.”
Over Abel’s head Grip spied Mena’s bestie Vera in a gold lame Snuggie.
“It’s a dress thing,” he said and stepped around Abel making for the shimmer of Vera, hoping Mena was close by because talking to Vera without sunnies on would be a challenge.
Mena got to him before he was voluntarily blinded. She put one hand in his and the other on his cheek. “Are you all right?”
He would be. He felt his face unfold, all the frown lines, the squint eye and jaw tension melted away. He could make this work because he could make anything work when he was close to Mena.
“You look amazing in that suit. I can think of ten things I want to do to you while you’re wearing it and none of them include tying you up or maiming you,” she said.
“How many include Florence?”
She shifted closer and he bent to let her nuzzle his face. “As many as you want.”
How did he get so lucky to find Mena not once but twice? He was the luckiest guy in the world that she wanted to be with him. But luck was for pants, not love and he wasn’t going to chicken out and risk losing her again.
“You look beautiful.” She always did, no matter what she wore.
“You tell me all the time and what’s even better, you show me.” She rested her palms on his chest. “I love you. You’re the sauce on my spaghetti.” He laughed, but she saw through it. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
He took a fortifying breath. “If I was to ask you if you wanted to marry me, would your first thought be stars on fire, I love him but not that much and I really don’t want to change anything because what we’re doing now is great and why spoil a good thing and besides I’m super busy at—”
She put a hand over his mouth. “Stop talking.”
He blinked at her. She stared back with very wet eyes. He didn’t know how to interpret the wet eyes. Could be Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” good. Could be emotionally nobble him forever bad. His organs got ahead of the game and interpreted it as under attack and flooded his system with nausea-making poisons.
“My first thought would be yes,” Mena, said, taking her hand away.
He could’ve gone to his knees in relief. “What would your second thought be?”
“Grip, would you marry me?”
He took a step back in shock as if a monster had leapt out at him from a wardrobe.
Mena said, “I just want your first thought because I know all your other thoughts will be about how we make it work because that’s who you are.”
He slapped each of his cheeks, one, two, making them sting, unsure he heard correctly. “Did you just ask me to marry you?”
“Yes, I did.”
He reversed that distance between them. The only thing chasing him was his own heartbeat. “Just like that?”
She smiled and it made the wet eyes easier to interpret, that, and his were wet too. “Just like that,” she said.
“Fuck. Is that allowed? I mean, I guess it’s allowed and it’s fucking fantastic. I was going to,” he gestured at the ground, and said, “knee,” and then, “ring,” gave up trying to make sense and just answered the question, “yes,” and reached for her.
It didn’t matter if he wasn’t the one to do the asking and there were way more fun things they could do from their knees. He didn’t feel sick with nerves anymore.
“You don’t want to do it today, do you?”
It was Mena’s turn to startle. She jumped as if a spider had crawled up her leg. “No, much as I do love you, I don’t want to do it today.”
Of course not. She’d want her mum and Caroline here. She’d want Vera to make her a dress, and his folks would tear him a new one if he got married and didn’t invite them.
“Just checking. I love you. We can get married whenever you want. I want to kiss you but if I start, I won’t want to stop, and I need t
o get a wedding back on the rails.”
She gave him the kind of smile that promised the lingerie she wore under her sexy little dress was spectacular and he’d get to watch her strip it off before they played with each other’s piercings. And so he kissed her anyway, because what was a man supposed to do when he was proposed to, but demonstrate his extreme appreciation, even if it meant he could not take two handfuls of her gorgeous arse because there were fifty other people on this deck and he wasn’t sharing that. He contented himself with palming her hip where his tattoo was because she was extraordinary.
“If we like this wedding, we can have one just like it,” he said when they both needed air, and then he left her because they were really way off schedule now and he had a job to do.
He cruised by Haydn and Teela, and gave them the okay, sent Teela scrambling to change, found the celebrant and clued her in and then went to tell Evie and Jay they were off the hook. There’d be a wedding as promised but whatever form of being together they chose, hitched with the paperwork or without, wasn’t anyone’s business.
At the door, he knocked and waited until he heard Jay’s voice. Last surprise he needed was to see them at it. What he got was three dogs on the bed and Evie in the dress, stepping into shoes before Jay zipped her up.
“Isn’t that bad luck?” he said.
“We like to live dangerously,” Jay said. “And it’ll probably rot the lining of my stomach but who cares?”
“No, we didn’t have sex in here, the dogs put us off,” Evie said.
“I wasn’t going to ask.” They both laughed at him. Yeah all right, he was going to ask. But they had form. Once did it in a backstage supply cupboard. “What does it mean that you’re in the dress?” It could just mean the clothes she’d had on were covered in dog hair and slobber and she didn’t want to go outside like that.
“That we’re not chicken shit,” Evie said. They couldn’t be lying about the sex thing because Evie had lipstick on and her hair was brushed and Jay didn’t have a button out of place.
Ah. He ran his fingers over his jaw. “About that, I was wrong. You don’t need to be married to share each other’s lives. You don’t need to change anything. You’re good together. You love each other. You’re a tight unit. No one looking at you would doubt it. If you don’t want to change things, you don’t have to just because your friends and family out there expect a show. Just because I made it about me, because I was the one who was chicken shit.”
“Was?” Jay asked. “What’s the story?”
Grip sat on the bed. Two out of three dogs got off the bed and went to queue at the door. “I talked to Mena. Got my head screwed on straight again. Just because you guys got cold feet doesn’t mean she will.”
“She will what?” said Evie.
“Not want to marry me.”
Jay let the dogs out. “Did you just propose to Mena?”
“I was going to, but she got there first.”
The only sound was the lab licking his balls and then Evie threw herself at him. “Unbelievable.”
Jay was there when she let go. “Congratulations.”
He grinned at them. Yeah, that happened. The goth girl he’d fallen for seventeen years ago who became the cool blonde he was obsessed with now, asked him to marry her and it wasn’t a leap year and he felt a little overwhelmed. Happiness flowed inside him like a drumline, but it was overlaid by a guitar wail of concern for Evie and Jay.
“Don’t worry, she doesn’t want to do it today. We’ll leave that to Haydn and Teela. I can make an announcement, tell everyone about the switcheroo. A party is a party, no vampire teeth will have been wasted.”
“I’m not asking about the vampire teeth, but our feet are all warmed up now,” Jay said.
“Toasty warm,” said Evie. “
“Because you were right,” Jay said. “We are a tight unit and we don’t need to change anything, and marriage is more about legal stuff and the symbolism. A bit of paper doesn’t make couples stay together.”
Evie took Jay’s hand. “He’s big into the symbolism.”
Jay used it to pull Evie closer to his side. “She’s hot for legal stuff.”
Grip got to his feet. “Are you telling me I haven’t failed as your bridesman?”
“We want to be together, symbolically, legally and all the other ways there is,” Jay said.
Evie took his hand, joining the three of them, “And you’re the best bridesman a couple could ask for.”
They went out to the deck then, the Labrador on their six, and with Evie’s dad, Errol, Jay’s mum, Janina and his bandmates in their fangs at his back, Grip stood beside Evie and Jay as they said vows they’d written about being each other’s light and strength and truth.
He held Evie’s flowers. He passed over the rings. He had a drum solo playing in his chest, strong, steady, lift the roof off memorable.
And then he stood holding Mena’s hand when Haydn and Teela were married with repurposed flowers and Evie and Teela’s assistant Sophie as bridesmaids, and Haydn’s bodyguard, Rick and everyone’s favorite limo driver, Hassan as best men.
Haydn’s dad, Teela’s mum, and five well-behaved dogs were in attendance. Grip looked at Rick and Sophie and bells started ringing in his head and nearly everyone including the dogs howled because Haydn teared up when Teela said I do, and they could all see the guy wasn’t acting.
Over the popping of champagne corks, Grip pulled Mena into his arms and breathed her heady perfume in.
“Let’s have a wedding as lovely as this,” she said, her arms around him.
He couldn’t agree more. The wet stuff was back in his eyes and he felt no need to wipe his face. He’d just learned what tears of joy were.
Mena touched his cheek. “Oh, honey, you’re upset.”
He shook his head, no. “Just feeling it all.”
He got kissed for that. He got kissed often and well and it was always better than banging things.
He took Mena’s hand, disappeared it inside his. She pulled his head down and kissed him and it didn’t matter that his emotions were wagging all over the place. He was loved by a woman he adored and admired. These new pants weren’t so unlucky after all, and it was a very good day to be a bridesman.
I hope you enjoyed One Wicked Lick from the Drummer
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The other books in The One series are:
One Night with the Sexiest Man Alive
One Kiss from the King of Rock
Read on for the first chapter of
One Night with the Sexiest Man Alive
Bonus chapter from the Sidelined series
Offensive Behavior
ONE NIGHT WITH THE SEXIEST MAN ALIVE
There must be worse ways to be uninvited to the glamorous dinner at the conclusion of the exclusive event you’d spent months of your life managing, but it was difficult for Teela Carpenter to think of one as the door to the function room shut in her face.
Her chance to enjoy an excellent meal and observe Hollywood royalty in an intimate setting closed with a polite, crisp snick.
And it’s not like that was an everyday opportunity. People had paid a small fortune for the privilege.
Not that she was devastated. Exactly. It was just business.
She was thirsty, and her feet ached, and it would be tedious explaining to potential new clients that yes, she had managed the detail of a much-talked-about global forum that brought together household-name leaders in technology, politics, business, and social welfare. And yes, the star of the show, in his first public outing as an activist and not a movie star, was heartthrob, Haydn Delany. And that no, she had not personally met the man dubbed the sexiest alive.
All of which was annoying.
But it was difficult to be too disappointed, what with all the sparky new feathers in her professional cap and the part where she was the architect of her own rejection.
In the seconds after her
client, the event promoter, Lynda Chen, had stuttered in pink-faced panic about her mother, not so affectionately referred to as Dragon One, showing up uninvited, and being a place-setting short for dinner, Teela summoned the last reserves of her grace under pressure and volunteered her seat at the table.
It was the right thing to do.
Her assistant Sophie was unlikely to agree. Harsh.
Carpenter Conference management might have handled everything from venue selection, ticketing and insurance, travel and accommodation to the staging, run order and the fragrant native floral table centers she wasn’t going to get to see in situ, but Teela was the hired help, not a paying guest, and her inclusion at the official dinner had been a courtesy.
It wasn’t going to be easy to explain to everyone back at the office, her family or her bestie, Evie, how she’d willingly missed out on having dinner in the same room as the Sexiest Man Alive, given she’d been in his general proximity for a good part of the day and not managed even the most inconsequential nod and empty smile.
From Sophie there would be a lot of open-mouthed eye rolling and head-shaking indignation. It might well be deserved. There’d been nothing stopping Teela taking the initiative and introducing herself to Haydn. Nothing except an appreciation for how unnecessary to the work they were both doing that was.
And Jesus, Mary and Joseph, his proximity, like everything else about the actor, was sexy. He was the most big-ticket famous person she’d ever orbited. Teela really hadn’t properly prepared herself for that. An oversight in the planning stages. Oh sure, she knew he was hot stuff—who didn’t—nearly everyone on the event team was in a hyper-aware state, but he was also the job, not her long-lost lust object and she hadn’t realized she might need to practice keeping her tongue from lolling.
Haydn had passed her in the backstage area earlier in the day on the way to his on-stage interview presentation, his famous faded baby-blue eyes fixed attentively on Lynda as she gave him last-minute stage instructions. The very ones Teela had meticulously prepared.
If he wasn’t the actually the Sexiest Man Alive—for the fifth time, according to Gentleman magazine’s annual poll—he’d done an excellent imitation of him by simply walking down a dimly lit, slightly damp-smelling backstage corridor.
One Wicked Lick from the Drummer (The One Book 3) Page 19