Once Upon a Wedding

by JoAnn Ross

  “Having been a detective in a previous life, I happened to have noticed that you failed to mention a salient fact,” Bodhi said as they stood in the doorway, watching Honeymoon Harbor’s ninja disguised as mild-mannered mayor drive back down the tree-lined road toward the coast highway that would take him along the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Honeymoon Harbor.

  “Which would be?” But Aiden knew exactly what he was referring to.

  “That the guns for drug deal we were on was going to be your last one. You were getting out and transferring to the youth gang suppression unit.”

  The unit had been established to try to keep kids from turning to gangs in the first place, so cops like him and Bodhi wouldn’t have to be re-arresting them. And it would hopefully save the lives of the kids, innocent bystanders, and police officers.

  “That was the plan.”

  “After the clusterfuck, you were also offered a police shrink and paid leave to get your head back together.”

  “I didn’t want either one.”

  He’d already been on the brink of burnout. That night had continued to play through his mind and pushed him over the edge into the deep dark pit he’d finally begun to crawl his way out of. But he hadn’t done it alone. Because damn if somehow Bodhi hadn’t shown up as backup.

  “Would you rather have ended up being the dead guy?” his partner asked.

  “What the hell kind of question is that?” But Aiden knew. And yeah, given a choice, he would’ve willingly changed places and been the one having “Amazing Grace” played by a kilt-wearing, bagpipe-playing homicide detective at his gravesite.

  “You always talked about how your father’s spent years serving your hometown. And how that big brother of yours is such a boy scout. But guess what, dude? You’ve got the same blood running in your veins. You may have joined the Marines because your only other choice at the time was juvie, but we’ve dealt with enough kids back in the ‘hood to know when a basically good teenager is acting out. Which you definitely must have been to get the judge to force you off that dangerous path everyone thought you were headed down. But the deal is, deep down inside you’re a standup guy. The kind who’d stand up for your fellow jarheads—”

  “You weren’t there.”

  “I didn’t need to be. I’ve watched you in action. It was like you had that protect and serve motto tattooed over your heart. How many funerals of gangbangers and their victims did you go to?”

  Aiden shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”

  But he did. Because every damn one of them was embedded in his mind. He went to the funerals of the teen bangers, not just to watch for the killer to show up, that happened more times than you’d think, but also in respect of their friends and families who’d loved them. The same with the victims, but those had been harder, because many had been so damn innocent. Like the toddler shot sleeping in the tub—the one place her mom thought she’d be safe—during a drive-by shooting at the wrong house.

  “Getting back to my question, would you have rather have had your parents burying their son in that flag draped casket instead of mine?”

  “That’s an impossible choice.” Struggling out of the quicksand pit of despair those memories triggered, Aiden opened another bottle of the winter ale and wished he hadn’t dumped all the real stuff down the drain thirty days ago.

  “Aren’t you glad it wasn’t your choice to make? Or mine either? Life’s out of our hands, dude. All you can do is ride the wave you get, and stay upright as long as you can. Then, if you’re lucky enough to survive the wipeout, then you get back on the board and wade out into surf again. No one makes it through alive, Mannion. And to quote the great Mark Foo, ‘It’s not tragic to die doing something you love.”

  “Isn’t Foo the guy who died surfing? “Although Bodhi had a degree from UCLA in philosophy, of all things, mostly all he’d ever talked about was someday quitting the cops and joining the pro surfing circuit.

  “Yeah. He bought it on his first ever session at the Mavericks Big Wave competition at Half Moon Bay. That made it kind of a sucky omen, but he wouldn’t have wanted to go out any other way.”

  “So you’d rather have drowned than gotten shot?”

  Tanned shoulders shrugged. “It’s six of one, half a dozen of another. I got the same rush from chasing bad guys down a dark alley as I did doing barrels in shallow water.”

  Aiden had learned that surfing move was more dangerous than in high water because—not that he’d ever intended to try it himself—sand apparently was like concrete when you hit it, which left more than a few surfers with broken necks.

  “You never really loved being a big city cop,” Bodhi pressed his case. “It was too impersonal. That’s why you went to all those damn funerals. To make a connection. But, bro, those were some really effing painful connections.”

  Aiden didn’t answer. There was no need. Sometimes he figured he’d gotten more than a lifetime of violence in Afghanistan, which was why he’d only lasted six months on the SWAT team before asking for a transfer. SWAT had felt too much like war.

  The Gang and Narcotics unit working with Homeland Security had been just as bad, triggering nightmares he wouldn’t classify as full-blown PTSD, but had made him so edgy he couldn’t stop wondering if maybe he had slipped up somehow that night Bodhi was killed. Clusterfuck, indeed.

  Hell. Maybe his dad was right. Maybe playing Sheriff for a few months might not be such a bad thing while he figured out what to do with the rest of his life, now that drinking his way through it hadn’t turned out to be a viable option.

  “Women like men in uniforms.”

  “So?”

  “So, you could try it out on that redhead from the wedding.”

  “Are you talking about the bride?” Who, if Bodhi hadn’t been able to tell from the two Wonder Women on top of the wedding cake, wouldn’t be the least bit interested in him.

  “No, the other one. With the sexy streaked, auburn hair. The one you were pretending not to be scoping out. While she was doing her best to pretend to not notice you.”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” But he did. At the time he’d tried to tell himself that long, deep burgundy hair with the sunlit copper streaks was as impossible to miss as a flashing red stop light. The fact that it was tousled in a way that looked as if she’d just gotten out of bed had caused the numbness inside him begin to stir.

  “Dude, there were so many sparks flashing back and forth between the two of you, I’m surprised that flowered arbor over those two brides didn’t burst into flames.”

  “That redhead is Jolene Wells. She grew up here too. But I was a year older so we didn’t move in the same crowd.” That part was true. Especially since Jolene hadn’t belonged to any clique.

  The mean girl queen bees had called her out for being trailer trash; the nerdy girls hadn’t seemed to notice anyone else around them, given that their noses were always stuck in books; and the girl jocks were always out on the field, doing their own, energetic athletic things. Being a guy, Aiden hadn’t missed noticing that sweaty, super fit girls could be hot and had dated enough to know that they could be every bit as energetic in the back of his truck as they were running, kicking soccer balls, shooting baskets, and slamming each other’s shins with field hockey sticks.

  “Jolene and I barely knew each other.”

  It was a flat-out lie.

  Aiden had never forgotten those secret nights when they’d lain on the deck of his boat anchored in Serenity Cove, talking and looking up at the stars. There’d also been a lot of making out, that had, on more than one occasion required a cold shower when he’d gotten home, but as the daughter of a former teen mom, Jolene had had no intention of risking pregnancy. Also, although having sex wouldn’t have been illegal, he’d been trying to stay on the straight and narrow to avoid going to lockup, where the actual juvenile delinquents would probably lo
ve nothing more pounding on the guy whose mom had kept sending them to detention.

  Granted, he’d screwed things up with her, but he’d been about to try to fix that until another fateful night years ago, when time and tide had literally shifted and...

  Nope. Not going there.

  “Okay. If you’re not really into her, which I’m still not entirely buying because there sure as hell was something going on there, the redhead wasn’t the only fox there. Like that cute brunette who had the sexy librarian glasses, pinned up ponytail, and pencil skirt thing going on.”

  “Chelsea Prescott is a librarian.”

  “So I overheard when she was talking about cataloging romance novels with your sister. Who’d have thought the Dewy Decimal system could be so sexy.”

  “Life isn’t all surfing and sex.”

  Aiden’s mind, distracted by an unbidden memory of Jolene Wells stripped down to a thong and a barely-there lace bra, had him automatically falling back on the line he’d repeated so many times. Just to yank his partner’s chain because they both knew that despite his laid-back attitude, Bodhi had been the sharpest, and most successful undercover cop in the unit. Aiden had often thought that was because bad guys never bothered to look beneath the stoner surfer act he was able to slide into like a wetsuit.

  “Maybe life would be better if it was all about surfing and sex,” Bodhi shot back, on cue. “Seriously, though, Mannion, have you considered that part of your problem is that you need to get laid?”

  “Maybe I don’t have a problem. And maybe I don’t need to get laid.” He hadn’t even thought about sex until that damn wedding. When a certain bed-head-tousled redhead started invading his dreams. Despite leaving him hot and bothered, they were an improvement over the nightmares that had driven him deep into the bottle.

  “Said no guy ever. There’s also the fact that you also told me how your dad worked his tail off to save you from landing in corrections.”

  It had been a long night on a stakeout down the street from a major gun dealer’s house, where they’d stunk up the car with takeout from a food truck.

  “So?”

  “So, maybe you owe him.”

  “What, did you learn that guilt card from watching my sister while we were out at the farm?”

  “It worked didn’t it? She got you to sober up for two days in a row so you could go to that wedding where you and the redhead connected.”

  “We didn’t say a word to each other.”

  Jolene had seemed as eager as he’d been to avoid any memories of that night. Not that he hadn’t thought about her. A lot. Especially when, during those long, lonely nights as a Marine sniper when he’d spent hours lying as still as a stone waiting for a shot and she’d filter through his mind. Memories of her pressed up against his body, even though she’d only ever let him get to second base, had helped keep him determined to get home alive.

  On the way home from basic training, he thought back on all those rom-coms his sister made the family watch when it was her turn to pick a film for movie night and had, for a fleeting moment, considered holding up a boom box outside her window, like John Cusack in Say Anything.

  Or, he could make a fool of himself by serenading his girl from the high school bleachers, like Heath Ledger, in Ten Things I Hate About You. He couldn’t overcome his fear of heights to climb up a fire escape in Pretty Woman because one, he didn’t have a fear of heights, and two, there was only one fire escape in Honeymoon Harbor, and that was on the courthouse.

  With all those things going through his head, before leaving for basic training, after stupidly breaking up with Jolene, he’d been headed to the beach, where he’d heard she was at a party. That wasn’t his first choice, because if he was going to make a fool of himself, he’d rather do it in private. But if he could talk her into taking a walk, or even better, a midnight sail with him, he’d do whatever it took to make things right. Be honest about his feelings and, although it was selfish, and looking back, Aiden realized that they’d been way too young to be thinking about forever-afters, ask her to wait for him.

  “I noticed the zone of silence between you both. Which only made it more obvious something was going on.”

  “Maybe to you. Because you’ve got this ghostly superpower thing going on.”

  “That’s true. But others noticed, too. Your sister and that red-haired bride were talking about it.”

  “You eavesdropped on my sister?”

  “I was just kind of hanging around and overheard the conversation. And by the way, you never told me your sister was so hot.”

  “She’s marrying my best friend. And besides, a player who goes through women like tequila shots isn’t allowed to say anything about Brianna. Not even when you’re dead.” Aiden dragged a hand through his hair.

  “For the record, my playing days are over and I didn’t say I wanted to do her. Sorry,” he said as a storm moved across Aiden’s face. “Wrong choice of words and I apologize if you thought I disrespected your sister.”

  “I didn’t just think it. You damn well did. And if you were real, I’d have knocked you on your ass.”

  “I was merely pointing out that she’s got a cool blonde Hitchcock vibe going for her. The kind that makes a guy want to muss her up a little.”

  Which, dammit, had Aiden thinking of Seth messing her up on a regular basis. There probably wasn’t enough Clorox in the state to wash that image out of his head.

  “Correction. You are not allowed to so much as think of my sister. Period.”

  “Fine.” Bodhi lifted his hands. “Am I allowed to at least say that I didn’t exactly eavesdrop on she-who-must-not-be named, but the way she and her friend kept looking over at Jolene, then back at you, then her again, like they were watching a match at Wimbledon, was a clue that I wasn’t the only one curious about whatever backstory you two were hiding.”

  “There is no story.”

  Not one he’d ever tell. He suspected Jolene would be even less likely to. It was ironic, and crummy that by going to the damn wedding he hadn’t wanted to attend in the first place, he’d probably taken away from her enjoyment from it. Because if there was one person on the planet Jolene Wells undoubtedly never wanted to ever see again, it was him.

  “What the hell are you doing here, anyway Bodhi?” It was not the first time he’d ask the question. He’d yet to get a decent answer.

  “Hanging with you.”

  “But why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if you’ve been sent here to earn your wings by getting my life back on track—”

  “It’s a Wonderful Life was fiction. At least I think it was. But I’m not interested in getting any wings. And no, I wasn’t sent here to fix your life, as fucked up as it is right now.”

  Bodhi frowned and scratched his blonde goatee, that he’d taken to wearing a few months before he’d gotten blown away by that AR-15. “Even though you might as well have been the guy who died, given how you’ve been hiding from life out here, I sure wouldn’t mind seeing you headed in a new direction that’ll make you happy.”

  They’d been partners long enough that Aiden could tell when Bodhi was holding back. He also knew that for all his beach bum vibe, the guy was as tough as steel and impossible to drag anything out of until he was ready to share. So, he could wait him out. It wasn’t as if he had a helluva lot else to do with his days.

  “You’re not real, either. You’re just a hallucination.” He’d gotten a concussion when a round of shots against his chest protector had knocked him off his feet onto the pavement. Head first. It made sense his brains would’ve been scrambled.

  “Would a hallucination tell you to get laid? I bet you don’t even jack off in the shower.”

  Okay. That was admittedly flat out pitiful. Even worse was he’d not only not been thinking about sex, he hadn’t missed it. Until that moment
he’d spotted the one woman he had no business thinking about walking across a summer garden her full skirt swinging like a bell, and felt both his gut and groin tighten in a totally inappropriate way.

  He’d wondered, at the time, if she’d come back to town for good. Although he’d originally planned to return to the house as soon as the vows were exchanged, instead of cutting out, he’d wandered through the crowd who’d lined up to get plates dished up by Italian chef Luca Salvadori, who’d catered the event, listening to gossip, that had been amped up to eleven by news of a home town girl being nominated for an Emmy.

  Not being an awards show watcher, except for occasionally tuning in to the CMAs, Aiden hadn’t even known there was a category for makeup. But he was glad that Jolene had managed to escape Honeymoon Harbor, where she’d been a target for those spray-tanned, bleach-blond mean girls and a subject of what he knew to be bald-faced lies about sexual conquests from guys who would never deserve a girl like her.

  Although Bodhi was right about them circling each other on the fringes of the gathering, there’s been a moment when their eyes had met, causing a rosy color to bloom in her cheeks. Undoubtedly from embarrassment at what had happened the last time they’d been together. That was enough to tell him that she didn’t want to have anything to do with him. For more than one reason.

  Still, as he turned away, Aiden was glad she was doing well. Better than well. He had been surprised to hear from his sister that they’d both been in Los Angeles at the same time. And not only that, she’d been living in Beverly Hills. What would he have done if he’d known? Probably nothing because what would an Emmy-nominated makeup artist from the hills want with a cop living in a downtown studio apartment that had holes in the walls from where previous renters had hung pictures, and was surrounded by city infill construction.

  He’d also been relieved to overhear Jolene’s mother tell his mom that right after the reception, Jolene was leaving for Ireland, to work on a miniseries. That meant their paths probably wouldn’t be crossing again.

  Which, Aiden had attempted to convince himself, was a good thing.