by Stacey Keith
To her relief, Priscilla had stationed herself next to the bar and was complaining loudly to Aunt Polly about how awful things had been so far. Maggie threaded her way through an army of catering staff in the kitchen and found the utility room, which about was the size of her entire apartment. It struck her again how greatly her sister’s fortunes had improved. Let’s just hope it lasts, she thought. But if Cassidy and Mason did divorce, Cassidy would at least get this place and—stop thinking, Maggie. Just stop.
The utility room was divided into two rooms, separated by a door. Maggie found a stain stick and sat in the farthest room next to the big industrial-sized washers and dryers. It was pleasant in here, away from the noise. A window gave onto a small forest of utility flags where Mason planned to build a pool.
Maggie heard the door in the front room open, a man’s voice, low, and then a woman giggling. She froze. The stain stick tumbled from her fingers and then rolled across the floor. The giggle was arch and flirtatious, clearly an invitation to do something naughty. Omigod, really? What kinds of grownups had sex in a laundry room? Not just any laundry room, but her sister’s laundry room!
Anger swirled hotly through Maggie as she got to her feet.
“Are you sure we’re safe in here?” the woman asked.
“Well, there’s a lock on the door,” the man replied.
That voice. The hair stood up on the back of Maggie’s neck.
You’ve got to be kidding.
Burning with indignation, Maggie threw the tux jacket on a table and marched around the corner, prepared to drink blood. Jake’s blood. He and his girlfriend couldn’t wait until they got home to act like horny teenagers? And why did the idea of Jake having sex with another woman make her feel as though there was a party she hadn’t been invited to?
Maggie found him in a lip lock with a woman, all right, but it wasn’t the one he’d been with at the bakery. She couldn’t believe it. Her fingers flew to her lips as though it were Jake who kissed her there with such lazy, dangerous purpose. But as she stood in the doorway with her heart racing, anger burned in the pit of her stomach.
“Have you lost your minds?” she exclaimed.
Jake looked up. He’d clearly been about two seconds away from unzipping his pants. Maggie tried to murder him with her eyes. He didn’t seem at all repentant. Instead of fumbling for excuses like any other man, any decent man, he just shook his head and chuckled.
The woman gave a nervous little yip and pushed up a fallen bra strap. Maggie couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was. Blond, like the last one. Blond like the endless line of beautiful women who probably filled his past.
Despite hating him, she was angrier with herself for responding to the gleam in his eye. For noticing that beneath the tux, he had the kind of lean, muscular body that might give any woman hot flashes. For noticing that he looked at her with the keenness of a man who saw something he wanted.
“Go wait for me in the pavilion,” he told the woman. She slid her eyes in Maggie’s direction and then left without a word.
They were alone now.
Maggie had a sudden urge to say something cutting and hurtful, although she didn’t know what it could be. Jake didn’t look like a man who wounded easily. Plus, he stood between her and the door, which made any dramatic exit impossible.
The muscles in her face quivered with the effort to keep her expression carefully neutral. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking that he mattered to her in the slightest.
His gaze wandered over her unhurriedly before returning to her face. “Well, aren’t you a vision,” he said softly.
“Don’t even try,” she said.
“I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me.”
“Oh, so you weren’t trying to have sex in my sister’s laundry room?”
He moved around the corner of the table with predatory ease, which made her take a few steps backward. “What part of that bothers you, Magdalene? Or do you prefer Maggie?”
His use of her given name threw her a bit. Nobody called her Magdalene except the grandmother she’d been named after. “How—?”
“I asked Mason.”
Mason was friends with this guy?
Then another thought occurred to her. A terrible thought.
“You’re wearing a tux,” she said lamely. “You’re the new best man.”
“It was fun watching you put that together.”
Mason’s friend, Jasper, had been his original best man. She liked Jasper. But Jasper had broken his leg during the preseason and Cassidy had told her there’d been a replacement, only with all the late nights, bridal registry debacles and drunken bachelorette parties, it had dropped off Maggie’s radar.
Now that radar was blipping just like her pulse, and she thrust out her chin in an effort to conceal it.
“How are you friends with Mason? You don’t play football,” she muttered.
“You’re right. I don’t.”
He offered no further clarification and was close enough now for her to feel his body heat. It worried her how his gaze just seemed to reach inside you and browse around, examining first this thing and then that, turning everything over with a kind of selfish, cynical amusement.
God, how it infuriated her.
“I’m surprised,” she said. “A man like you using his friend’s wedding to sleaze around for women. The one I saw you with earlier—where’s she? You didn’t get tired of her already, did you?”
A muscle flared in his jaw. For the first time since they’d met, she might have gotten an emotion out of him that didn’t involve his hateful smile. “Quite the opposite,” he replied.
“Oh, I see. Well, that worked out nicely for you then, didn’t it?”
Jake positioned himself in front of her, arms crossed. Tall as she was, Maggie had to tilt her head back to see him. He smelled really good, like some kind of heady mixture of sandalwood and tobacco and…man.
Well, she’d just have to stop breathing.
“You know, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, Magdalene.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Maggie doesn’t really suit you. It’s a good name for a dog, perhaps—”
“You really love to hear the sound of your own voice, don’t you? The ringtone on your phone is probably just you saying your own name.” Oh, she liked that. That was a good snap.
“You almost make me wish I were spending more time in Cuervo,” he said.
“Why?” she replied. “So you could try to get my clothes off, too?”
Jake gazed down at her with his glacier-blue eyes, 007 tux and intoxicating maleness. “I have a feeling there’s a lot there to see,” he said.
It didn’t sound like he was being in the least sarcastic, and her body betrayed her by responding to the rough hot caress of his voice.
“I have things to do.” Maggie brushed past him, glad to have the last word, glad to be heading toward the door.
He caught her by the arm. She felt the sensation of contact sizzle through her. The smirk on his face was replaced by something more serious.
“Save me a dance.”
* * * *
So far, it had been one hell of a day.
Jake Sutton sat on the back porch and smoked another cigarette, his fourth and way more than his daily allotment. Vices, if you didn’t manage them, managed you.
He let the silky texture of the smoke glide over his tongue as he gazed at the rolling hills of Mason’s ranch. Maybe there was something to the idea that Texas bred a special kind of woman. He thought of the actress he’d snuck into the laundry room. Then he thought of Maggie Roby.
No comparison.
Maggie heated his blood. The actress merely heated his imagination.
Jake reckoned he knew a real woman when he saw one. They were a lot mor
e complicated than the artificial variety. But then complications, in life or in business, were nothing more than an opportunity to figure things out.
He liked figuring things out.
The ranch sat on more than a hundred acres. From the veranda, he could see the fenced-off pastureland in full bloom. Bluebonnets carpeted an open field on the south side, thinning out around a grove of huisache trees. Even the trees were covered in April flowers, orange pom-pom-looking things they didn’t have up in Dallas. Of course, it was kind of hard to tell when you were on the phone all day inside a glass tower in the middle of downtown.
Jake patted his tux jacket to make sure his phone was still there. He wanted to check his messages, but had promised Mason no phone calls, no texting, and no losing the ring. He patted his other pocket. Yep, the ring was still there, safe and sound. See? He totally had this.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding.”
Jake looked up and saw Mason step outside on the porch. Mason paused to take a deep breath of sunshine and ranch life, or so it seemed. He turned toward Jake with a grin.
“Are you trying to avoid anyone in particular or are you just out here being your usual dick self?” Mason said.
“Probably both,” Jake admitted.
“Aren’t you supposed to be inside best-manning or something?” Mason sat in the white wicker rocker next to him. The chair was too small for his big frame, which forced Mason to stretch out his tuxedoed legs. “I just stopped security from shooting down a drone over the pavilion.”
Jake flicked the ash off his cigarette. “Being famous…it ain’t for pussies, is it?”
“Well, you can’t blame the poor bastards for trying.”
Jake studied Mason out of the corner of his eye. He looked happy and—Jake struggled to place it—sure of his place in the world. “You’re not even nervous, are you?”
“Nope. When you know, you know. Cassidy is my best friend. She’s my everything.”
“I almost envy you,” Jake said. “I haven’t met that woman yet.”
Mason scooped a handful of pebbles out of the planter next to him and pitched them one by one into the tall grass. “Where’s your date for the wedding?”
“Not talking to me. So I offered to send her back to Dallas and she accepted.”
Mason shook his head. “See, I don’t get that.”
“Get what?”
“Why you go out of your way to piss people off.”
Jake crushed his cigarette stub into something pink and shell-like that he hoped was an ashtray. There was no point in denying that he was an asshole. Especially since Mason had known him since their University of Texas days when they were fraternity brothers.
“What can I say?” Jake said. “I have exceptional people skills.”
He actually regretted the way he’d handled the argument with Tara, even if her endless self-absorption had bored him out of his mind. She’d asked where their relationship was going and he’d been stupid enough to tell her.
Hey, the mistake was his. He knew the rules: never bring a date to a wedding.
“So what do you know about Maggie?” Jake asked, happy to move onto a more exciting topic. “She’s a real spitfire, isn’t she?”
“Maggie?” Mason echoed. “Oh, no. She’s off the menu.”
“But I like that menu,” Jake said, remembering the way she stood there, quivering with lust and indignation. “I’m pretty sure the chef’s specials are on that menu.”
“She’s Cassidy’s sister, Jake. And you’re my best friend from college. If you do to Maggie what you do to most women you date, I’ll never be able to invite the two of you to the same party again.” Mason aimed, fired and nailed the fencepost. “Besides, Maggie wants kids. Do you want kids?”
“About as much as I want leprosy.”
“Exactly. So leave her alone.”
Jake started calculating probable odds of that ever happening. He was not a man who brooked interference or suffered fools or backed down when somebody told him to. Maybe Maggie was the kind of woman who was looking to feather a nest. That didn’t mean she wasn’t up for something a little more…diversionary, did it?
He found himself welcoming that prospect with a keenness he hadn’t felt in a while.
“Now might be a good time to give you something.” Jake reached inside his jacket and produced an envelope, which he handed to Mason.
“What’s this?” Mason asked.
“Best man stuff.”
Mason opened the envelope and peered inside. “What am I looking at here?”
“Two weeks’ worth of anywhere in the world you and Cassidy want to go,” Jake said grandly. “My private jet is at your disposal.”
Mason gave a kind of war whoop. “Cass is going to go crazy. She’s never set foot outside of Texas.”
“Stay where you want, buy what you want. The cards in there have no fixed spending limit. I recommend you begin your honeymoon in the Maldives.”
“Don’t you own property there?”
Jake shrugged. He owned a lot of things. It was hard to keep track of them all. “Just don’t tell anyone, okay? I like it better when people think I’m an asshole.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Maggie Roby was the Grinch Who Stole Weddings.
To her relief, the opening bars of the wedding march began. The sooner they got this show started, the sooner it would be over with. All she’d have to worry about then was getting through the reception. Tomorrow, she could go back to her pug and her bakery and her nice comfortable life where the only thing constituting a crisis was the milk spoiling.
“You’re first, sweetheart,” she told Lexie, who stared up at her with palpable anxiety.
“I think I forgot everything you told us at the rehearsal, Aunt Maggie,” Lexie whispered.
“You walk. You throw the flowers. You stand all the way to the left. Got it?”
She nodded.
“Smile till your face hurts.”
Lexie started down the aisle, tossing rose petals, her little shoulders held so high, they practically quivered. Maggie waited a few seconds and then directed the next couple. Giving orders kept her from having to think too much. Thinking was bad. It led to feeling as though everyone was insane here except her.
Then it was just her and Jake. Her heart gave an annoying flutter.
He looked amazing in that tux. The boutonniere, made of eucalyptus and tallow berries, she’d put together herself with her own two hands. His blue gaze fell from her eyes to her lips and then back again. “I haven’t been to church in a while,” he said in the devil’s own voice. “I wonder if the walls will crumble.”
“It’s not a church,” she snapped. “It’s a barn.”
“You can’t really expect a barbarian like me to know the difference, can you?”
Suppressing an eye roll, she fell in beside him and did the step-together, step-together walk down the aisle. People craned their necks to look at them. She forced herself to smile. The smile didn’t fit right, like maybe she’d put it on at the last minute.
Reverend Macauley stood beaming, one hand cradling an open, gilt-edged Bible, his robes immaculately pressed. They were all like a bunch of well-dressed cattle in here, she thought. The barn seemed deathly hot. Her hands holding the bouquet were practically dripping. The candles, maybe? There must have been a thousand of them, glowing like fireflies against the old dark wood of the barn.
Cassidy started down the aisle, head held high, luminous and unearthly beautiful. Her long train trailed behind her, gathering rose petals as she went. When Cassidy reached the altar, Maggie hurried to take the spilling cascade of white orchids. She returned to her post, still smiling, still perspiring, and now suffocating under an armful of flowers.
Her heart was racing. She felt a little faint. Her vision went fuzzy around the edges
.
My God, she thought, am I having a panic attack?
Maggie locked her knees but even that couldn’t keep her from weaving on her feet. The heat, the lack of space, the crazy amount of perfume and aftershave and flowers and candles and Reverend Macauley droning on and on, his voice becoming dimmer as the roaring in her ears grew deafening.
No!
Maggie forced herself to breathe. It felt as though something dark and terrifying had crawled inside her. She shoved the panic back. She was not going to faint. Not at her sister’s wedding. She was going to stand here and hold these damn flowers if it was the last thing she ever did.
Yet memories kept flooding back of her own wedding, of finding her ex-best friend Avery sobbing in the ladies’ room and not understanding why. So many clues, yet she’d managed to miss them all because Todd Banister had stood beside her in a place a lot like this one and said I do while pretending to mean it.
That was the problem with good-looking men like Todd and Mason and Jake—women threw themselves at them all day long. Who had the willpower to say no forever?
She drew a deep breath. Better. Faces came into focus again. Her heart slowed down to legal limits. Wow. All that because…what? A wedding? Who on earth had panic attacks at a wedding?
She still felt shaky during the vows and the ring ceremony, but then, thank God, the worst part was over and they were all heading out, first Cassidy and Mason, then the children, and now she and Jake. The triumphant wedding music crashed around her ears.
“You look a little stressed,” Jake said to her under his breath while they were waving to the guests. “That high-powered guest list getting to you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Maggie muttered through a brittle smile, “which is why I’m ignoring you.”
“Hard to step out from behind the counter, isn’t it? All these people staring. Only thing on your mind right now is how fast you can get the hell out of here.”
How did he know this stuff? Was she that transparent? She tried glaring at him, but got distracted waving to Mason’s parents, whom she’d known most of her life. They’d been divorced recently and seemed a little forlorn standing there next to each other. It was hard not to feel bad for them.