The Wedding Fling

by Meg Maguire

He shook his head and smiled. “Want some grub?”

  “Sure.”

  He found Leigh a plate and she foraged at the grill. All the makeshift seats were taken, so they sat on the sand, off to the side with a view of both the ocean and the party.

  “This is really lovely,” Leigh said between bites. “Just what I needed.”

  “Good.”

  “I know you weren’t supposed to let me hang out, so thank you.”

  Will shrugged. “I’ve never done what I’m supposed to. Just par for the course.” He studied her as she took in the scene. Her face had gone from pretty to sexy in the firelight, those grayish irises looking dark and liquid now, reflecting the flames.

  “This must just be the same-old, same-old to you.” She glanced at him suddenly, too quick for Will to pretend he hadn’t been staring.

  He cleared his throat. “I guess. But it’s the same-old because we choose to do it nearly every night. Nothing much better I can imagine.”

  He looked at his friends of the last few years, his muscles melting with the easiness of this strip of sand. “In fact...” He trailed off, afraid of sharing too much with a stranger. She’d be the first he told, which felt far too familiar, far too soon.

  She poked him with her elbow. “In fact what?”

  Impulse had the words tumbling out before Will could stop them. “I, um... I’m going to buy a place on the mainland. In just a few weeks, I hope.”

  “Oh? You’re going to move?”

  “Eventually, yeah.”

  “But you’ll still do all the flying out here?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’m going to buy this run-down old vacation home, right on the beach. Sort of a shady part of town, but I’m looking to change that a bit.”

  “How?”

  “I want to turn the place into a club.”

  “Like a bar?”

  “Nothing fancy. Like this,” he said, waving at the partygoers. “Bonfires on the beach, simple food, cold beer. Put in a patio for dancing, string twinkly lights everywhere.”

  “For locals only?”

  “Nah, for everybody. Locals, tourists, runaway brides.”

  She smiled down at her plate.

  “Just someplace to hang out. No pretense, no gimmicks.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  It did. And until last week it had seemed ages from realization, his father’s doomed dream. The property Will could nearly afford to make an offer on, but to transform it into what he envisioned... Then after renovations there was staff to hire and train, licenses to procure, and of course the endless bribes that needed tendering to get the neighborhood’s residents on his side. It’d take years on his stipend, and Will was even shorter on time than he was on cash. But with just a few innocent scraps of gossip sold to the tabloid, he’d be sitting pretty. He liked Leigh, though. He wouldn’t share anything unflattering, and no photos. Still, the proposal sat heavily in his chest now, his golden opportunity having grown sharper and rustier barbs as he’d gotten to know this woman, uncertainty punching holes in his resolve.

  “I’d like to see it sometime. Your club.” Leigh’s voice was airy, as though she was far away or half-asleep.

  “It’s not much to look at. Not yet. Just a tumbledown ruin on the beach.”

  “Do you ever visit it, and sit there and daydream, imagining what it’ll be like? Like, ‘hang a hammock between those two trees, a bar along there for people to set their drinks on’?”

  Will felt himself blush, an unfamiliar sensation. “Yeah, I’ve done that.”

  “What will you call it?”

  “Billy’s.”

  “Is that your nickname?”

  “No, it’s my dad’s.”

  “Oh. You guys are close?”

  “We are. Close as you can be, living that far apart. He’s been pretty sick, the last year or so.”

  “Oh, no. Like, cancer, or...?”

  Will shook his head. “Armed robbery in his cab, shot in the stomach.”

  Leigh’s hand flew to her lips. “Oh, my God.”

  “Three months before he’d planned to retire.” All those years’ careful savings, gone in a flash of gunfire. Will felt anger boiling in his gut, but kept his voice steady. “He was stuck in the hospital with infections for ages, and Jesus, it took a toll. He’s sixty-two, but the last time I was home he looked about a hundred. I can shell out to see him and forfeit a week’s pay here, or keep working and keep our necks above water on the medical bills.”

  A warm palm alighted on Will’s knee, drawing him from his thoughts and back into his body.

  “That sounds like an awful choice. I’m sorry.”

  He stared down at his hands. “Fingers crossed this unexpected gig I got offered will pan out, and solve some of those problems.”

  “Fingers crossed.”

  She felt close suddenly, and welcoming. Warm and soft as the fire’s glow. It’d take so little to dip his face to hers. Such a tiny movement, yet such a huge nerve on Will’s part, considering his arrangement. And even if his already questionable ethics took a hike, here was certainly not the place, not with all these witnesses.

  Yet he could feel her inviting him, could see it in the way her gaze flicked from his eyes to his mouth to her hand on his knee. He could feel it as surely as he could feel his own body begging him to accept the invitation. There was something reckless and needy in her eyes, something that resonated inside him and brought his own impulsive, bad-idea desires to a steady boil. He wanted her, as badly as he could recall wanting any woman, the ache made deeper by his conflicted conscience and the impossibility of the setting. His brain felt fuzzy and he swallowed, his attention focused on her lips.

  Loud laughter from the party woke him from the trance. Realizing things were taking a sharp turn in a dangerous direction, Will sat up straight and cleared his throat. “So.”

  For a split second he saw disappointment tense her pretty face, then Leigh withdrew her hand, her tone turning light. “So?”

  “Got it out of your system now? Bit of slumming to wash away that Hollywood glitz?”

  “I’m not slumming.”

  “But you’re going back. Back to your parties and premieres? You say you want to be a nobody, but come on. You’ll miss that, right? Not today, but eventually.”

  “I’ve had my time to play dress-up and be the center of attention. Now I just want to be this, you know?” She stretched out her legs, digging her heels into the sand. “Just plain old me.”

  Will did the same, flexing his feet beside hers, intrigued by how small and pale hers were. “And so this is plain old you?”

  “Yup. This is the most I’ve felt like myself in ages. Being around all these people who don’t already have some idea about who I am, based on some character I played in a movie.”

  Will stole a glance at her profile, liking plain old Leigh. When they first met, he’d thought she must be a glutton for attention, to bail on her wedding day. Now he suspected it was more than that. Some awful mess she’d decided to tackle, not merely a dramatic near-miss with a silly, youth-clouded whim. Not a cowardly mad dash toward freedom and away from regrets and responsibility, as his mother’s flight had been.

  “What’s your ex like?” Will asked. “What does he do, back in California?”

  “He’s a musician. Or was. When we met he was in a band.”

  “Rock star?”

  She laughed, a weak sound. “Not quite. But his band was sort of an indie hit. They could go really far if they wanted, but he got bit by the Hollywood bug after we’d been together the first year. Now he’s really ambitious about the scene, more than actual music. He was talking about producing. And he wants to open a club. Just like you.” Leigh turned to stare at Will, her eyes narrowed with curiosity. �
�Actually, nothing like you.”

  “No?”

  “He wanted to open a club, and make it the trendy new place to be. You sound like you want the opposite of that.”

  “Booze plus sand plus music,” Will agreed. “Pretty basic formula.”

  “Sounds more my speed than what Dan wanted.”

  Dan.

  “Sounds very nice,” she added with a yawn. “I’ll be sure to check it out when it opens.”

  “You do that. First round’s on me.” Actually, all her rounds ought to be on him, if his funding came through as he hoped. “You look bushed. You want me to walk you back to your place?”

  Leigh frowned, but nodded. “I haven’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in days. But I’m sure I can find my way back by myself. The moon’s nearly full.”

  Will stood, helping her to her feet. “Can’t let guests wander around in the dark unchaperoned. I’ve broken enough rules for one night. I should at least pretend to be a decent escort.”

  They bade the hosts and guests a good night, and slipped into their sandals at the road. Will was in a sober enough state to drive her, but the walk would do him good. Clear his head, maybe screw it on straight about who this girl was to him. Maybe make an overdue phone call to his tabloid contact and start earning the money he’d been promised. What he’d sold his last few scruples for. Again, a sharp pain stabbed in his chest. But it had to be done, to avoid the far deeper heartache of failing his father. Will wasn’t his mother.

  He stopped at his place to ditch the cooler. He and Leigh went barefoot again for the long stroll along the shore, sandals swinging from their fingers. The rising moon was indeed nearly full, casting its blue-white glow on the sand, across Leigh’s face and the bare arms hugged over her chest.

  “You cold?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Here.” Will stopped and slipped his shirt off.

  She smiled and accepted it, letting him hold her flip-flops as she buttoned it up her narrow frame, pulling her long hair from under the collar. Damn. What was it about a woman in a man’s shirt?

  “Thanks.” She took her shoes back.

  “Looking forward to another lazy day tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. But first I need some real rest. I was so mixed up last night I just conked out on the couch. Now that I’m properly exhausted, eight hours’ sleep in a real bed is my first priority.”

  “Big bed, too. One of those king-size football fields?”

  “Yeah.”

  Will pictured such a bed, its gauzy curtains draped from a canopy carved from some endangered South American tree. Sleepy dawn sunlight, sleepy woman. Bare, slim legs wrapped in cool, slippery sheets—

  Bad chaperone.

  He combed his messy hair with his fingers and wondered for the first time in ages what someone thought of him. What did Leigh think of him? That he was lazy, probably. Enviably lazy, but lazy nonetheless. He had six years on her, but no doubt she was eons beyond him in making something of her life. Then again, he wanted no part of that twisted Western notion of what success was. He didn’t want to wake up at sixty with any regrets. He didn’t want to turn out like his old man, as much as Will loved him. And if that made him unambitious or a layabout or a scoundrel, so be it.

  You could only ever hurt the people who relied on you—by leaving them, by your actions. The best solution was to keep relationships simple, responsibilities few and impersonal. Make no promises, suffer no regrets. If not for his father’s tireless encouragement, Will never would have found the balls to move away and build his own life based on that motto. At first the guilt had eaten him alive, the shame of feeling he’d abandoned the only person he really, truly loved, and the one who’d sacrificed so Will could become whatever he dreamed of. That guilt had faded over the years, only to blaze vividly back to life when his father was shot. All those years Will had spent avoiding making ties, avoiding hurting anybody the way his mother had hurt him and his father... Here he was, a thousand miles away when his dad needed him most. All those good intentions, and he’d wound up the very thing he hated most—a deserter.

  Now he had only one mission: to get his dad down here, to live out in paradise whatever time he had left. Will glanced at Leigh, hoping that perhaps her coming to him this evening might be a sign, proof that the deal he’d struck was meant to be, the right decision. He hadn’t even had to go out of his way to seek her. She’d come to him.

  Her villa appeared in the distance, moonlight glinting off its windows. All at once, Leigh stopped short in the sand.

  Will scanned for danger, finding everything as it should be. “What?”

  She took a huge breath, her chest rising, then falling as she let it go. She stared at her accommodations. “It’s just so...empty. Especially looking at it from here. Like an aquarium or something. Like I might drown in there.”

  Will stared at the water and listened as she took another deep breath, then another. Then her small hand cupped his elbow.

  When he turned to glance down at her, her face was at once set and uncertain. There was a muted clap as her sandals dropped to the sand, his own sharp inhalation as her other hand went to his neck. Without thought he did as her touch commanded, leaning in to accept her mouth with his.

  He tasted salt on her lips from the sea breeze. As he plunged the fingers of his free hand into her hair, she deepened the kiss. The rush of the waves seemed to fill his skull, drowning out all logic.

  She didn’t kiss the way she looked—not sweet, not inexperienced. No girl-next-door. She kissed with ferocity, making Will light-headed. The fingers stroking his bare skin curled, her short nails scraping, and self-control abandoned him.

  Dropping to his knees, he pulled her down with him. A groan rose from his throat as he felt her weight, her thighs straddling his as he took her mouth. He tossed his shoes aside and pulled her close by her hips. Her tiny gasp warmed his mouth, and he angled his jaw to taste her. Words flashed across his mind—rebound, tabloid, unforgivable assholery. Abstract collections of letters, no match for the fascinating shapes of her body, the slide of her tongue against his.

  He gathered her hair in his hands and took her deeper, suppressing a moan as her legs tensed around his, hips seeking friction. He gave her more than she asked for, tugging her hard against him, so close there’d be no mistaking that this lapse in judgment was mutual. She sucked her breath in sharply and went still in his arms.

  He swallowed. “Now’d be the perfect time for one of your wows, Miss Bailey.”

  She bit her lip, not hiding her smile. “Call me Leigh.”

  “Call me Captain Burgess.”

  She shook her head, but her grin only deepened. There was something in her expression, something warm and easy that Will hadn’t seen in years. He felt his loyalties growing foggy.

  She cleared her throat. “I really shouldn’t be on your lap.”

  “No, you really shouldn’t. Especially since I’m so clearly trying to fight you off.”

  “This probably entails an exceedingly generous tip.”

  “Thirty percent.” His heart wasn’t in the teasing. It was in his throat, choking him, and in her hands, its resolve torn to shreds. It was also between his legs, blood pounding so hard he couldn’t think straight.

  She brought her face back to his. It became a far different kiss, deep and slow and hungry. It filled his head with smoke, his body with terrible, brilliant ideas. Leigh didn’t protest as he cupped her breast. Her hips locked tight to his, moving in tiny thrusts that set his cock on fire. Curious hands stroked his chest, his stomach. Fingers flirted with the waist of his shorts and with a strangled moan Will managed to pull away, easy as gnawing off a limb. He relocated her hand to his side, catching his breath.

  There was regret on Leigh’s face as she fumbled to her feet. “Sorry.”

 
“Don’t be sorry.” He stood, dusting sand from his shins.

  “I’m... I didn’t plan that.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. If you had, you’d have picked a far more deserving victim than me.”

  That brought a nervous smile to her lips.

  “But you’ve been single for what? A couple days?”

  “Yeah, basically.” She bent for her sandals, not looking at him when she straightened.

  “Hey, trust me, I’m flattered. But I’m sure you’re feeling... Hell, I have no idea what you’re feeling. But I don’t want to be a part of anything you might want to take back, tomorrow or next week or when you land back in L.A.” Liar. It’s your own regrets you’re worried about.

  She nodded, still avoiding his eyes.

  He went to touch her shoulder, but she dodged him, starting toward her villa. Will hurried after her. “Hey.”

  She stopped, unbuttoning the borrowed shirt and thrusting it at him. “Here. Thank you.”

  He tucked it under his arm, jogging to catch up. He grabbed her wrist and she finally turned to face him.

  “I’m not angry or anything,” he said. “I’m flattered beyond belief.”

  “You’re trying to protect me, then?”

  “I guess. But I bet you’re going to tell me you don’t need protecting.”

  Her mouth closed on its ready reply.

  “I just don’t want you to look at me the next time I fly you to the mainland, and see some impulsive regret standing there, overdue for a haircut.”

  She took a deep breath and released it as a sigh. “Did you want to kiss me?”

  “You don’t need me to tell you that. Did you want to kiss me? Or did you just want to kiss somebody who wasn’t your ex?”

  “I’m not sure.” She stared at the sand. “I think I wanted to make a mistake. I’ve spent ten years terrified of screwing up, and you...you have nothing to do with my life back home. I guess you seemed like the right person to finally screw up with.”

  Will rubbed his hands over the bumps rising along her arms, then draped the shirt around her shoulders. “Why’d you run away, Leigh? Did he bore you, or hurt you?”