Wild For You (Always a Bridesmaid 3)

by Evans, Jessie

  With any luck, that happy ending might include discovering Nick really did have feelings for her, feelings she’d have to convince him it would be stupid for them to ignore.

  Chapter Five

  The rest of Saturday passed in a blur of running errands—Ever After Catering was low on just about everything and a visit to the bulk store was no longer avoidable—and prepping all the food for the massive wedding Melody and her sisters would be catering the next day.

  In the past year, Ever After had seen a huge uptick in Sunday weddings, which was intensely annoying to the sisters’ Nana, who insisted all three of them should be in church honoring Jesus on Sundays, not working.

  They placated Nana—who claimed she was already on the verge of having a nervous breakdown because Lark and Mason were living together while they were only engaged, not bound by the chains of holy wedlock—by reminding her that a wedding was a holy event and promising to attend the early service with her on days when they had to work later in the afternoon.

  That meant all of the food prep had to be done by the end of the day on Saturday, since there wouldn’t be time to do anything but load the van and drive to the venue after church.

  By the time Lark, Aria, and Melody finished making ravioli, stuffing twice-baked potatoes, and icing everything that could be iced before the big day, it was almost ten o’clock. After her sleepless night the night before, Melody had to fight to keep her eyes open on the way back to her apartment.

  She fell into bed and began to drift off almost immediately, not even her anxiety about seeing Nick tomorrow for the first time since their steamy make-out session enough to keep her awake.

  The more she thought about what Aria had said, the more sense it made. If Nick didn’t care about her, he wouldn’t have left the bar alone Friday night.

  She held tight to that little coal of a thought, letting it warm her as she sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  ***

  Sunday dawned gray and drizzly, but by the time Melody and Lark got out of church—Aria had pled a sleepless night with Felicity, who was teething, and managed to worm out of going to the early service, the traitor—the sun was peeking through the clouds.

  By the time they reached the botanical gardens just outside Atlanta where the wedding and reception were being held, the day was nearly perfect. Although it was a little muggy, it wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the humid events they’d worked earlier in the summer, and Melody could tell both of her sisters were in good spirits.

  She, on the other hand, was a bundle of nerves, her warm feelings from last night going up in a hiss of smoke as the clock ticked closer to two o’clock, when the waiters—and Nick—would be arriving.

  “Relax,” Aria murmured when Melody almost dropped one of the wine glasses she was removing from the carrying crate. “Just be cool and act like nothing happened.”

  Melody’s brow furrowed. “But something obviously happened. That’s the whole problem.”

  “But now’s not the time to discuss it. Just put him at ease today and then take some time to plan your attack.” Aria winked. “Better to make your move when his guard is down.”

  Melody nodded and did her best to appear calm, cool, and collected. She even managed to convince herself she had a grip on her emotions until Nick walked through the rose garden and into the outdoor kitchen at ten after two, and the world stopped.

  Their eyes caught and held and something passed between them, not the familiar wave of attraction, though the hum of chemistry was definitely present. But this was more than chemistry. It felt like Melody was seeing Nick for the first time, seeing past the dimpled grin and the swagger and the “couldn’t care less” persona to the deeper person inside. A person who had the same fears and worries that she did, who sometimes felt lost and out of control and who was still sorting out who he wanted to be.

  He looked like someone with questions, someone who wondered what it might be like to try something new, and for a moment Melody was positive she was that something. She even dared to dream that he’d walk over to her prep station, lean in, and ask her if she wanted to go grab a coffee after the wedding and talk about where they went from here.

  Melody pushed her hair from her face and smiled her widest smile; Nick turned and walked away without a word, following Manny and the other waiters out to the parking lot for their last cigarette before the event started.

  Melody’s heart fell into the burning pit of acid her stomach had suddenly become.

  Nick didn’t even smoke, but he’d rather stand around inhaling cancer-causing fumes than acknowledge Melody’s existence. She was a fool. A dumb, sappy, wants-to-believe-in-rainbows-and-unicorns-and-happy-endings fool.

  The rest of the afternoon passed with miserable slowness. Nick went out of his way not to interact with Melody—or even touch a glass or plate that she had recently touched—and Melody kept her head down and her hands busy, dreading making eye contact with Nick again.

  How could she have been so stupid? That look obviously hadn’t meant anything except that Nick was uncomfortable being in the same room with her. Melody had let her talk with Aria get her hopes up too high, and now she was going to pay for it with a long, miserable fall back to reality.

  The only bright spot in the entire afternoon was when Seth, the drummer of Ghost Town Double Wide, texted to let her know she had made it past the first stage of auditions. The band was having final callbacks for their top three singers tonight at The Horse and Rider, and wanted to know if she could come by around eight to sing through her set again. The bar was closed on Sundays, so this time they could all have a little more privacy.

  I’ll be there with bells on, Melody replied to Seth’s message.

  Awesome! Can’t wait to see you again, Seth texted back a second later.

  Really? Melody thought, one eyebrow arching as she read Seth’s text. He certainly hadn’t been very warm or inviting the other night—pretty much the opposite, in fact. Seth had given her the coolest reception of all her potential band mates. She’d gotten the impression he wasn’t even close to being in her corner.

  She wondered what caused his sudden attitude change. Whatever it was, she decided to take it as a good sign.

  Holding tight to her happy news, Melody made it through the long afternoon without giving in to the urge to drown herself in the industrial sized container of salad dressing, but just barely. By the time five o’clock rolled around she was more than ready to get the heck out of Atlanta and far away from Nick Geary. Simply breathing the same air as someone who clearly loathed her so profoundly was starting to feel like a violation of her basic human rights.

  For the first time since she’d joined Lark’s staff, Melody took advantage of the fact that her sister was also her boss and begged off helping with final clean-up and packing the van.

  “I have a callback for the singing gig tonight,” Melody said, pressing her hands together as she pleaded with Lark. “Could I please, please leave early so I can shower and get pretty before the audition? Aria said I could take her car.”

  Lark laughed. “Spare me the baby animal eyes. Of course you can go. Get out of here. You don’t want to smell like duck wrapped in bacon for your audition.”

  “I don’t know. All the musicians I’ve known were pretty into bacon,” Aria said, stopping on her way by with a stack full of empty dessert plates to drop her keys in Melody’s hand.

  “Be careful,” Aria added with a stern look. “Don’t go anywhere alone with those guys, don’t drink anything you didn’t see the bartender pour with your own eyes, and don’t leave your drink unattended.”

  Melody smiled and rolled her eyes. “Aria, these are men from Summerville. They’re harmless. And besides, Lily, the girl who plays bass, will be there.”

  “Okay,” Aria said. “But be careful anyway. And remember, if you hurt my new car, I will kill you. Slowly.”

  “Yes, mother,” Melody said, giving Lark and Aria both a quick peck on the cheek an
d heading for the parking lot.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Nick carrying in a load of serving trays to be washed, and picked up her pace until she was jogging toward the parking lot. She hopped into Aria’s new Prius, her sister’s twenty-ninth birthday present from Nash, and turned the key, feeling like the star of an action film roaring off into the sunset seconds before the building behind her exploded.

  As she pulled away, she glanced in her rearview to see Nick staring after her, a strange mournful look on his face, but his pathetic expression gave her no satisfaction. He could keep his broody, confusing, hot-and-cold nonsense. After the way he’d embarrassed her Friday night and made this afternoon an exercise in torture via the silent treatment, she just wasn’t interested anymore.

  Liar.

  The voice in her head was uncomfortably loud. Melody cranked up the radio and ignored it, determined not to let Nick ruin another second of her day. She had an audition to dominate. She planned to leave The Horse and Rider tonight a newly minted lead singer.

  Soon Nick Geary would be nothing more than fodder for an ex-boyfriend-revenge-song. Maybe, once she got the job, she’d even write one in his honor.

  ***

  After showering, blow-drying, hot rolling, and a little flat-ironing at the ends of her curls so they weren’t too curly—Melody zipped herself back into the red dress she’d worn for the first audition. It had brought her luck the first time she’d walked on stage; she hoped it would do the same tonight.

  She added brown and white feather earrings, touched up her bright red lipstick, and pulled on her boots before giving herself a critical once-over in the full-length mirror. She was definitely curvier than most of the other girls who had auditioned, but she was curvy in all the right places, and she looked like a girl who knew how to have a good time. She was definitely no longer an uptight baby sister who, until a few months ago, considered watching movies at home with Brian and her parents an acceptable way to spend a Friday night.

  As if summoned by her thoughts, her cell phone chimed, announcing a text from Brian:

  Feeding the ducks and thinking of you. We miss you on the farm. Hope we can get together for ice cream soon. I think we should talk…don’t you?

  Melody hit the keypad to reply, but paused with a sigh.

  She didn’t know what to say. She’d told Brian she wasn’t ready to hang out as friends half a dozen times, hoping he would read between the lines and understand that when she said she wasn’t ready to hang out, it meant she didn’t want to hang out.

  The thought of going for ice cream with Brian turned her stomach. He was a nice guy, a really nice guy in many ways, but his favorite topic was always Brian. That had been fine when they were younger and Melody was as smitten with Brian as Brian was with himself, but as time went by, she had longed for a boyfriend who was interested in her.

  She wanted a boyfriend who was supportive of her hopes and dreams, and she definitely needed a boyfriend who wanted children someday. When Brian had confessed he found Felicity, Melody’s baby niece, “kind of gross” Melody had ended her and Brian’s relationship then and there.

  No one called Felicity gross. She was the most adorable baby in the entire world.

  Deep down Melody knew Brian had been talking about babies in general, not Felicity in particular, but remembering the vaguely nauseous look on Brian’s face when Melody asked him to hold Felicity while she fetched the diaper bag always helped her feel less guilty about failing to respond to his texts.

  “Later,” she mumbled, turning her phone off and slipping it into her purse.

  She was going to have to reply to Brian sooner or later since he seemed determined to keep texting until he got a response, but she didn’t want to think about how to let her ex down easy thirty minutes before her audition.

  With one final look in the mirror and a deep breath, Melody headed for the door.

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later, she was stepping into The Horse and Rider…a very dark and quiet Horse and Rider. The bar was empty and so silent that it was a little creepy. The single row of red lights burning around the edge of the stage added to the creep factor, bathing the dance floor in a hellish light that reminded Melody of a horror movie.

  She paused near the door, fishing her phone out to check the time and her text from Seth to make sure he had said eight o’clock.

  He had, and it was only ten minutes until eight. Where the heck was everybody?

  “Hello?” she called out, her voice sounding high and thin in the cavernous space. She shivered at how small she sounded. “Is anyone here?”

  “Hey! Come on in!” came Seth’s muffled voice from behind the stage curtains. “I’m looking for the lights.”

  Melody’s chest loosened with relief. “All right! Sorry I’m early!”

  “No worries. Just take a seat at the bar and I’ll be out in a second.”

  Melody crossed to the bar, her eyes adjusting to the darkness enough that she found a shiny black stool without a problem. She set her purse on the bar and perched on the stool, nervously crossing and uncrossing her legs. She felt all jittery inside, and there were goose bumps rising on her arms even though it wasn’t much cooler in the bar than it had been Friday night.

  Something felt…weird, but she told herself it was just audition anxiety and forced a smile as the white stage lights flared on and Seth emerged from behind the curtains.

  “Hey,” he said, grinning as he jumped off the edge of the stage, landing with a smooth bend of his muscled legs.

  Seth wasn’t much taller than she was—maybe five-eight to Melody’s five-seven—but he was thick all over. Thick, muscled arms from drumming, a thick barrel chest that reminded Melody of Nana’s pug, Ruby, and bulky legs that strained the seams of his jeans. He had a shaved head and bright blue eyes and Melody knew most girls would consider him handsome in a Rock-N-Roll meets Ex-Marine kind of way, but for some reason she didn’t feel anything remotely like attraction when she met his eyes.

  She just felt anxious, and as shy as on her first day of high school.

  “You look great,” Seth said, leaning in to kiss her cheek, flustering her even further. “I love this dress.”

  “Thanks,” Melody said, cheeks hot and pulse thready with nerves. Seth was standing too close, so close her nose started to sting from the powerful scent of his cologne.

  “So where’s everyone else?” she asked.

  Seth smiled, making the skin around his eyes crinkle. “They’ll be here in an hour. I had you come early so I could give you a few tips on your audition before the others get here.”

  “Yeah?” Melody returned his smile, but her jaw felt tight. She fought the urge to slide off her stool and put some distance between them. “Is that fair?”

  Seth shrugged and dropped a hand to her knee. “Who cares about fair?” His fingers pressed gently into her thigh. “I want you to get the job, end of story. You want a drink before we start?”

  He released her leg and started around the bar, and Melody’s muscles trembled with relief.

  “No, thank you,” she said, her voice breathier than she would have liked. “I don’t like to drink before I sing. I don’t feel as in control.”

  “Sometimes being a little out of control is a good thing,” Seth said, pulling down two glasses and getting busy with the well liquor, pouring with an expertise that said he was at home behind the bar. Melody wondered if he bartended in addition to playing in Ghost.

  “You were great on Friday,” he continued. “But you could stand to loosen up a little.”

  “I thought I was pretty loose,” Melody said, remembering what Nick had said about her having too good of a time onstage. “At least for me, anyway.”

  “Not normally a loose girl?” Seth asked with a grin. He added a shot of soda and a cherry to each drink and set one in front of her.

  “Um…no,” Melody said, unsure whether he meant “loose” in a way that had nothing to do with being comforta
ble onstage.

  “Drink up, gorgeous.” Seth grabbed his glass and clinked it against hers. “We’ll get you loose and ready to be fabulous.”

  Forcing a smile, Melody reached for the glass, fighting off the creeping suspicion that she’d made a terrible mistake.

  Chapter Six

  Aria’s words about not drinking anything she hadn’t seen prepared by a bartender echoed in Melody’s head.

  Seth wasn’t a bartender, but she had seen him prepare the drink. She had no idea how much hard liquor was in the thing, but…

  She lifted the glass to her nose and sniffed. It smelled harmless—like vanilla and cherries—but the first sip left no doubt the drink was strong, too strong for her to feel comfortable drinking the entire thing before her audition.

  “You like it?” Seth moved back around the bar and resumed his too-close-for-comfort position next to her stool. “It’s my own recipe,” he said, easing her hair over her shoulder with a familiarity that made her shiver. “I call it cherry cheesecake.”

  “It’s great,” Melody said, leaning back as Seth leaned in close enough for her to smell the liquor on his breath. “But I think I’d better wait until after my audition. I’m kind of a lightweight when it comes to hard liquor.”

  “Just have a little then. Enough to get you relaxed.” His hand was suddenly back on her leg, higher on her thigh this time, in territory that left no doubt this was not a “just friends” kind of touch.

  Melody put her drink down and shifted on her stool, brushing Seth’s hand away in the process.

  “I think I should go,” she said. “And come back later when everyone is here.”

  “Don’t go,” Seth said, hand coming to her waist, stopping her when she tried to slide to the ground. “You haven’t convinced me you’re our girl, yet.”

  “I thought you said you wanted me to get the job,” Melody asked, brows knitting as she debated whether it would be overreacting to kick Seth in the groin and make a run for the door.