by Sosie Frost
Of course it didn’t work that way.
I pulled off the highway an hour later as Dad’s check engine light flicked on.
Lindsey mumbled from the back seat. “Why are you slowing down? What’s wrong?”
I knew as much about cars as I did pregnancy—and I learned too late what would happen if I let Nate’s dipstick check my lubrication.
“Um…” The car clunked. That probably wasn’t good. “I think it’s breaking down.”
Lindsey’s supersonic scream awakened the passed out bridesmaids. I doubted her shrieking would push the SUV the remaining twenty miles to the cabin.
“What do you mean we’re breaking down? We’re in the middle of nowhere! There could be bears outside!”
“Bears?”
“Or murderers!”
I eased off the highway. “Maybe they’ll kill the bears.”
“Haha. You’re always so funny. Well I’ll be the one laughing when you’re skinned alive first!”
“Jesus, Lindsey. You’re a friendly drunk, but you’re a monster with a hangover.”
“Don’t start, Rapunzel. This is your fault.”
“How can you be mad at me?”
“I’m mad because every single time you have some responsibility for the wedding, we end up with indigo invitations or no flowers or broken down on the side of the road!” Lindsey kicked her bridesmaids to free herself from the mass of purses, luggage, and bottles. She crawled into the passenger seat and grimaced as her skirt hiked up to just under her bra. “Save the apologies for the cabin. I don’t want to hear them now.”
“Good, cause I wasn’t giving you any!”
“Don’t make me call Mom.”
“Go on. Call her.” I bluffed. “We’re in our twenties. Even she’ll tell you to grow up.”
“You grow up.”
Lindsey stole my water and chugged it. She made a face, grabbed for the car door, and barely opened it in time to throw up.
The splash against the asphalt twisted my stomach.
And I had done so well battling the morning sickness tonight. The baby didn’t like his or her aunt tossing her bouquet.
I opened my door and threw up too.
“Oh you little faker.” Lindsey ripped her cell from her pocket. “I can’t believe you’re so desperate for attention you’d fake vomiting.”
I reached for my water. Lindsey stole it and drank the rest.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
“Bryce.” She pointed the phone at me. “I’m getting us out of here. Someone has to be responsible.”
“I’m not trying to start a fight—”
Lindsey thrust a finger in my face to silence me as Bryce answered the call. She put him on speaker-phone and called his name until he groggily awoke from a dead-sleep.
“Yeah, sugarplum?” He grumbled. “What time is—”
“I need help. Dad’s worthless SUV broke down. Of course he didn’t check to make sure it’d get us to the cabin. I can’t believe he’s so careless.”
I bristled. “He let us borrow it, Linds. And he loaned it to us with a full tank.”
“I don’t see Dad out here, pushing the car for us.” Lindsey grunted. “No wonder Mom left him.”
The irritation swelled inside me. Baby or no baby, I’d walk home if she was going to be that ugly.
“You have no right to talk about Dad like that,” I said.
“Oh, I forgot.” Lindsey rolled her eyes at her bridesmaids. “Mandy takes Dad’s side.”
“I’m not on anyone’s side!”
Bryce’s connection crackled. “Angelkiss, where are you—”
Lindsey ignored him. “You are too on a side. You’ve always believed Dad over Mom.”
“What’s there to believe? They hate each other!”
“For good reason.”
“No. There’s no reason. I don’t know why we’re supposed to be happy they separated.”
Tears welled in my eyes. Great. Now I was crying over my parents’ divorce like I was a ten year old latchkey kid caught in a custody battle.
Lindsey groaned. “Oh, Mandy, grow up. Dad’s worthless and Mom kicked him out. Just be glad the holidays will be less insane.” She flicked her phone. “Bryce, we’re on the highway somewhere. Drive until you find us.”
He preemptively apologized. “But, tootsie, I’m not at home…”
“What?”
“I told you. You were going to the cabin, so I went with Rick to—”
“That lecture? In Ironfield?”
“He wanted company, and since he’s still hung up on Jada—”
“You’re leaving me stranded?”
“Call AAA.”
“I have a better idea. What if I just get eaten by bears?”
“There aren’t any bears near the cabin—”
I sighed. “Don’t bother, Bryce. Lindsey thinks we’re gonna get Texas Chainsawed up here because every serial killer in a hundred-mile radius wants to ruin the wedding.”
Lindsey sneered. “You are such a little brat.”
Bryce cleared his throat. “Look, I’ll call Nate.”
My stomach dropped.
Lindsey sighed. “Fine.”
“No!” I didn’t mean to shout. “We’ll be fine. Don’t call Nate.”
“I am not going to sit here alone for some skeevy tow-truck driver,” Lindsey said. “It’s dangerous. We’re too pretty to get trafficked, and I am not above trading one of you—” She pointed to the blitzed bridesmaids. “—So I can escape and get married.”
“Really, we’ll be fine without Nate.”
My sister took the phone off speaker. “We’re like twenty minutes from the exit. Tell him to hurry.”
She ended the call. I said nothing.
“What?” Lindsey crossed her arms. “What? Just say it.”
“We could have handled it ourselves.”
She glanced at the bridesmaids. I didn’t trust her smile. “I know what this is.”
My stomach twisted. Could I get sick without her noticing? “What what is?”
“Nate.”
“There’s nothing about Nate.”
“Of course there is. I’m not blind, Mandy.”
I swallowed, but nothing made it past the rock in my throat. Instantly my body broke out in a cold sweat, and the morning sickness surged in the middle of the night.
“Lindsey, it’s not what you think it is.”
“I’ve known for a long time.”
“You have?”
“Everyone knows. And, quite frankly, we’re too nice to say anything. But not now. I think it’s completely inappropriate.”
I hadn’t had a single drink, but I felt like I got smacked by the empty whiskey bottle. I stared ahead at the dark highway, struggling with a breath that hurt to take.
“You hate Nate,” she said.
My eyes widened. Lindsey crossed her arms, smug.
“I hate him?”
“Of course you do. You always have. You’ve been nothing but a bitch to him these past few months, even when he’s trying to be nice. You’ve resented that he’s so involved in the wedding, and it’s selfish.”
Well, that was a freebie. “You’re right. That’s it. I hate Nate.”
“I can’t believe you’d just agree like that.”
“What can I say? I hate the both player and his game.”
“Do you want this wedding to fail?”
I gritted my teeth. “I have done nothing but support you.”
“You don’t support me. You never have.” She shook her head. “If it wouldn’t destroy Mom, I’d kick you out of the wedding.”
“Because of Nate?”
“Yes!”
I laughed. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Fine. You’re out of the wedding!”
The SUV silenced. I should have argued. I should have told my sister she was stressed, tired, and drunk, and that she didn’t mean it.
But after
spending three hundred dollars of my own money on her bachelorette party, I was done. I didn’t have the alcohol to blame on my rage, but I had a baby twisting my hormones. I was pretty sure the kid was on my side in this.
“Sounds good.” I tore the seatbelt off me. “You’re on your own.”
“And I’ll do a better job than you.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!” Lindsey crossed her arms. “Hogface.”
Childhood insults now? I kicked the door open. “Feetmuncher!”
“Douche Canoe!”
I slammed the door before I said the real insult on my mind. Lindsey couldn’t roll the window down without the keys.
She screamed instead.
“Twatwaffle!”
“I’m out of the car!”
“Get in here before you’re eaten by a bear!”
“Oh my God, Lindsey, there are no bears!”
I sat on the guardrail and ignored her insults. After ten minutes she gave up and yelled at her bridesmaids. They lowered their seats and tried to sleep.
Not a soul passed us on the highway. The wind whistled through the wetlands below the guardrail. I swallowed. Whatever lurked in the grasses and shrubs rustled a lot and got too close. I smacked at imaginary bugs and pretended I didn’t have to go to the bathroom.
A long hour passed before headlights pulled up. Nate parked and got out of his car. That cocky smile was saved just for me and my desperation.
“You look like you need a rescue,” he said.
After an hour in the damp and chill, simmering in rage, and planning how best to turn my maid-of-honor dress into rags for waxing my car, I didn’t have the energy to argue with a man I was supposed to hate.
Except I didn’t hate him.
I didn’t hate his cocky smile.
I never hated the intense and perfect green of his eyes.
And there was no way I’d ever hate the feel of his body pressed against mine, either between the sheets or sitting at my side on the guardrail.
“Rough night?” he asked.
I couldn’t look at him, but I could enjoy how warm he felt next to me. “Can you take us to the cabin, please?”
“I’ll do you one better.” He kicked a bag of tools at his feet. “I’ll fix your car.”
“Think you can?”
“Only one way to find out.” That confidence amazed me. “I’m not going to leave you stranded out here all night…not without someone to cuddle at least.”
“If you fix the car, you’ll get a lot more than cuddles.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Better get under that hood.”
I didn’t regret my words. After twenty minutes, the SUV’s engine purred like a kitten. Nate tossed me the keys. The bridesmaids and Lindsey thanked him and begged me to drive. I walked him to his car.
“You girls should be more careful.” He crossed his arms, and I could only imagine what fantasy twisted his lips into a smile. “Never know what kind of creep might want to take advantage of a stranded, beautiful woman.”
“I’m well-aware.” I bit my lip. “You’re not going home, are you?”
“Where else would I go?”
“To the cabin?”
Nate narrowed his eyes. “You sure?”
No, but I had a bad enough night. “Someone should be there to protect me from any creeps following us in the woods.”
“No one would bother you if I were around.”
I stared at his lips. “Then you better follow close.”
“Mandy—”
“I’ll meet you there.”
I knew he watched me walk to the car. And I knew where he stared, what he wanted, just where his thoughts wandered because mine was already there.
Nate once thrilled me with a night of simple pleasures and dark fantasies.
And tonight, we’d do it again.
Nine
Mandy
A mistake was something that happened once.
What was it called when it happened twice? Idiocy? Insanity?
Luck?
It didn’t matter. The last time I was overwhelmed by the wedding and my family, I turned to the wrong man to make it right. And he had—at least, in that moment. Now I wanted more of the same, knowing the consequences.
I invited him to the cabin and tossed the bridesmaids and my sister into the guest bedrooms.
I told him to wait while I quickly showered the night off and grabbed a warm, fuzzy blanket.
And we planned to repeat that wonderful mistake.
It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t safe.
It wasn’t fair to him.
But I couldn’t share the secret about the baby yet, not even with him. My family already danced around total annihilation. The drama would ruin the wedding, drive a wedge deeper between my parents, and destroy any relationship I had with my sister.
That sort of news wouldn’t be seen as blessed or joyous. It’d be scandal and shame, and no baby deserved that.
Once the wedding was over, I’d tell them.
And him.
I shut the cabin door behind me. I expected the night to be completely silent this far away from the city, but the chirping frogs and buzzing locusts muffled the click of the door’s latch. The cabin overlooked a field of wildflowers in the front. In the back, it stood watch over a lake, mirror-flat and still, reflecting a sky littered with thousands of stars.
Nate leaned against the porch railing. Was it possible for him to look better now, waiting in the dark stillness? The shadows struck the hard angles of his jaw, and his eyes absorbed the mystery of the night. Green gave way to midnight tones of blue and silver. I stared, imagining everything we had done and had yet to do.
“Everyone asleep?” His voice rumbled, low and cautious.
“They will be,” I said.
“You okay?”
“I will be.”
Nate crossed his arms. The tattoos creeping along his biceps and under the t-shirt edged black in the low light, too dark to hide anything but their intent. He wasn’t a man who saved damsels in distress, but he was the type to accept their gratitude however they wished to award it.
I cradled the blanket to my chest. Nate didn’t ask any more foolish questions. He offered his hand.
I took a breath.
My palm fit within his, and the heat coursed over me, through me, inside me.
He guided me along the dirt path leading from the cabin to the lakeside dock. I hadn’t been to the lake since I was little. Back then, the water seemed huge and impossible. Now the stillness was safe and serene. The lake lapped the dock, and the sky above stretched in brilliant shades of blue and the darkest purple. I almost giggled. The sky looked indigo.
We didn’t need to speak. I wasn’t sure what we would say. Nate had pushed, and I’d denied him so many times. But we ended here together, staring into each other’s eyes like it was the first and last time we would touch each other.
Nate laid the blanket over the wooden planks of the dock. My breathing shuddered, and I had no idea how to stand or protect myself or what to do.
But he showed me, just like he did before. I was so inexperienced then, and I was still inexperienced now. Despite the twisting in my stomach as the baby swatted at all the butterflies, I’d never felt safer.
Nate reached for me, his hand caressing my cheek. He pulled me in for a kiss and let his fingers tangle in my hair.
“It’s shorter,” he whispered. “You cut your hair.”
“You weren’t the only one who noticed.”
“It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
His lips met mine. Why did I ever fight his kiss? He nibbled the words I couldn’t speak, soothed the fears I breathed, and hummed absolute comfort in every draw of his lips.
“Simple pleasure?” My whisper broke the silence, too softly for anyone but him to hear.
“If that’s all you want…” His voice caressed me like another hand. “That’s what I’ll give.”
> “…What else could you give?”
“Anything you wanted.”
He seized me again. His touch became ferocious, conquering, but still so very gentle.
Since when was Nate Kensington gentle?
That wasn’t his reputation or his real desire. But he did it for me.
Because of me?
He tucked me against his body. The delicate press of his fingertips into my hips wasn’t the fierce grip my instincts expected. He touched slow, steady. I abandoned my hesitations and fell into heaven. My arms fit over his neck, and I drew myself to my tippy-toes to kiss him deeper.
It shouldn’t have felt so good. I had no idea if the connection between us was real or a trick of my heart. Nate was the only man who could soothe everything jumbled inside me—because he was the one who tangled it.
At first I dove against him and eagerly swept my lips, mouth, tongue on his, like the last time we tossed in a bed and the passion overwhelmed us in hours of frantic excitement. But this touch deftly tickled over me. Soft. Leisurely.
Nate was patient, and I knew why.
“I’m not a virgin anymore,” I whispered.
I broke the kiss. He chastised me with a tightened grip on my hair. A thrill of excitement trapped me in his arms, and he tipped my head back. He nipped my neck and claimed that soft hollow he knew I loved so much.
“You deserve to be spoiled with pleasure. To learn from someone who takes the time to show you how great sex can really be,” he said.
“I already had a thorough lesson.”
“No.” His voice could command and comfort in the same breath. “That night was selfish and quick. I thought you wanted to blow off steam.”
“I did.”
“That’s not how we’re doing it this time.”
“It’s…not?”
His smile might have stopped my heart. “No. I’m going to show you everything tonight. How you should feel. What you can take. This night is all about your pleasure.”
My voice weakened in amazement. “Mine?”
“I’ve been chasing you for a reason, baby. Once wasn’t enough to sate either of us.”
His fingers teased over my blouse, and his adept hands worked the buttons without struggle.
“I was satisfied,” I said.
“I can do better. I will do better.” He promised me with a kiss. “That first time, I thought I wanted a night with you so I could get off and silence my own desire. I was wrong. I realized my only desire is to give you pleasure.”