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Mother of five beautiful children, but by far more than just that. T. A. Moorman is an artist, a violinist, a seamstress, a crafter, a writer, a blogger, a reviewer, a dark confidant and a darkly dangerous, fiercely protective friend. And currently broke, so go buy something of hers. Lol.
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Destination: Wedding
Melissa Shirley
Copyright © 2017 Melissa Shirley
All rights reserved.
Destination: Wedding
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Sophie...
I cannot be married to Harley Crawford. Aside from having a fiance waiting for me at home, Harley is my best friend, my Man of Honor. But the ring on my finger, the video of a Las Vegas Michael Jackson singing "I'll be There" and--did I mention the ring on my finger--all say otherwise. But I'm a lawyer and more than well versed in the procedure to undo an epic mistake. But those abs...that smile...the way he looks at me...certainly my drunk self wouldn't anything that my sober self didn't secretly want. Right?
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Harley...
Okay, I married my best friend, but I couldn't let her marry that two-timing fiance of hers. What kind of friend would I be? So, when she suggested a trip to Vegas to heal my newly jilted, semi-broken heart, I might have had an ulterior motive, I might have even orchestrated a wedding. But Sophie isn't just any girl. She's the one. Now, all I have to do is convince her before I lose her forever.
1
Sophie
I would have punched Harley Crawford in the face if not for the fact that he’d been my best friend since we were seven. But best friends or not, waking up naked in his bed—well, the bed in his room at some random Las Vegas hotel—was more surprise than I could work through enough to clench a fist. I checked my memory. He’d called on Friday morning, upset that his bimbo of the month had dumped him. I suggested a trip to Vegas. I remembered the phone call, the trip through the metal detectors. Even boarding the plane. Unfortunately, everything else, from the inflight drinks right up to the current moment, was nothing but a blur.
“Come on, Harley. You hardly knew her.” Drink.
“Sophie, she was amazing. She could cook, and she cleaned my place…and the sex. Oh my God, the sex.” Make it a double, bartender.
“You’ll find someone, bud. But for now, let’s get drunk and have some fun.” Drink. Drink. Drink.
Okay. Maybe the drinking had been my idea. But the hangover tilting me sideways was clearly his fault.
While he snored next to me, I snatched my phone off the table. The first thing to strike me with any sort of mind-blowing clarity was that it was Sunday. I had two days of memories to recover. The second detail to smack impress upon me the great lengths of my own stupidity was the size of the rock on my finger—the third finger of my left hand. Instead of shaking Harley gently awake like a good friend or wife would, I shoved him off the bed.
Rock. Third finger, left hand. Dead best friend.
There’d better be an explanation. Or Harley was going to that big place in the sky that God reserved for fools and drunks—of which, if we’d done what I thought we’d done, he was both—and I was going to jail.
He looked down, and as soon as he saw that more than his high ideals were hanging out, he snatched a corner of the blanket to cover himself. “Woah. Sophie. Where are my clothes?” He glanced at me. “Where are your clothes? What did we do?”
Now that he’d spiced the words with regret, I wanted to punch him harder. Instead, I held up the ring-bearing hand and pursed my lips as his eyes went wide and he jumped to his feet, blanket forgotten. He yanked my hand closer for an inspection, while I gave him a thorough once over—okay, twice over the good parts. And oh, there were plenty of good parts—broad chest, ripped abs, and everything below his waist was more than worth a double glance. I’d never really checked him out before. Make no mistake, I took an extra moment or two to check now.
“And a fine morning to you, too.” Okay. I sounded like I was three lines deep into auditioning for a phone sex line—throaty with enough rasp to make it seem as if I needed a lozenge.
He twisted my hand one way then the other and the light caught in the three or four-carat diamond. “Holy shit.”
While I generally didn’t mind cursing, and at times engaged in it as if every single sentence I breathed needed naughty enhancement, it wasn’t going to help now. We had to figure out what happened and somehow, try to undo whatever it was we’d done. And fast. I had a fiancé at home who hadn’t been very excited by the idea of this spur of the moment trip with another guy. If it hadn’t been Harley, Andrew would have pitched a tantrum worthy of a Kardashian, but instead, he’d grumbled just enough to let me know he was conceding with doubt. Then, when it was clear I’d already made up my mind, and my call was nothing more than a courtesy, he’d relented in the face of my devotion to my friend.
Hmm. He wasn’t going to be throwing cartwheels now either.
Andrew aside, marriage was not something Harley and I could sort while all the best pieces of him were—almost literally—in my face. “Let’s get dressed and get breakfast. We can…”
“Breakfast? We’re naked. You have a ring on your finger the size of a small country and…” Sophie pulled the sheet up to her shoulders and tucked it under her arms. “We’re naked.” He smiled and tilted his head. “I’m thinking breakfast can wait.” The mattress dipped under his reclined weight, and he leaned up on one elbow to point the full force of his…um, smile my way. When he didn’t bother with a blanket, I blew out a breath that I hoped didn’t kill him with the smell of sleep and stale alcohol.
“Harley…” But what could I say while he was looking at me with those warm caramel-colored eyes and just the slightest hint of a grin, when all that smooth, broad chest was within licking—erm, touching—distance, when all I could think of was using the heat coursing through me to melt our bodies into one.
The lawyer in me kicked in with some logic I couldn’t argue. Unless my drunken-self had turned saintly and found the power to resist what, at that moment, appeared quite irresistible, we’d already soiled the sheets, so there probably wasn’t any harm in doing it again. Not that it took much to convince me. Not more than the fingertip he feathered from my shoulder to my wrist. The very thought of his tongue following the same innocent path had my body tighter than my size five pants on my size seven ass.
Before I could consider one other thing, he threaded his fingers through my hair and nudged me toward him. But I couldn’t. This was Harley. My best friend. The man who… His lips touched mine and his tongue traced a slow path from one side to the other. There wasn’t much point in trying to formulate excuses not to do this when sensation after sensation rippled through me, and I wanted this moment with him. We’d practiced kissing as kids, but since then the boy had become a man and his skill level…shot from meh-okay to wowza.
Inching closer, I lost my bearings to the passion, the perfection of his mouth and the hands that guided me on top of him and now rested at the base of my spine, curling in and out of a massage that did anything but relax me. I was made of nothing but liquid now, pliant to whatever he had in mind. And all it took was one kiss.
He turned so I was beneath him then he pulled back. “God, you’re beautiful.” Holy hell. That was hot. His mouth melded to mine and everywhere our skin met burned with passion.
I couldn’t touch enough of him, from the bands of muscle in his shoulders and back to the slope of his tight, firm ass. How had I never noticed his physical perfection before
? Was I freaking blind?
As I urged him on with moans and mewls and sounds I never made, he leaned his forehead against mine. “I don’t have a condom, Soph…which means—”
“It’s okay. We’re covered.” I got a shot every few months. It wasn’t like we shared every detail, so him not knowing this kind of private gynecological detail wasn’t out of the ordinary.
“Beautiful and smart.”
This kiss was deeper, accompanied by a moan that shot through me from my heart straight south.
The first time my cell rang, I ignored it. The second time, I reached behind me to flick it off the table, but when it trilled a third time, I turned to glower at it as if by that alone I could silence the sound. “God dammit.” I pushed Harley—who had the good sense to spoon behind me and trail kisses down my spine—and almost fell over the edge of the bed trying to hit the ignore button. Untimely with either bad luck or bad karma, or good vibrations from his tongue on my skin, I accidentally hit answer. “Shit.” I slapped the phone to my ear. “What?”
“Hey, babe.”
I snapped to attention as if I’d just heard Reveille. “Andrew.” Oh my God. What am I doing? What have I done?
Harley’s cheeks puffed full of air that he blew out slowly as he flopped backward and threw an arm over his eyes.
“How’s it going? You get Harley’s broken heart all put back together?”
I was a disgusting human being. I’d cheated on a man who took a moment out of his busy day to check on my friend. Not his friend. There was no love lost between the men in my life.
“Uh, um, we’re working on it still.” This was too much. I couldn’t sit in bed naked with Harley and talk to Andrew like I hadn’t gone and married Harley and I wasn’t ready to seal the deal without the aid of alcohol two seconds before the phone rang. “Can I call you back? Harley’s waiting for me.” At least that part was true. There didn’t seem to be a need to mention naked, or well-kissed, or…naked.
“Yes, absolutely. I just wanted to hear your voice. Love you, babe.”
I felt sick. And despicable. And…horny. I ignored the last one in favor of sick and despicable. “You, too. Bye now.”
Behind me, Harley sat up and pressed a kiss to my shoulder. “Hey. We didn’t do anything. We’re still okay.”
Didn’t do anything? Was he serious? I held up my ringed hand. “This isn’t nothing, Harley. This is…” For the first time, I looked down at the diamond, at the silver of the band dotted with baguettes. “Actually quite beautiful.” It was just the ring I would have picked had I been given the choice.
I rolled my neck trying to clear away some of the guilt, and Harley’s hands smoothed across my shoulders. He was trying to massage the tension away, but his fingers kneading my skin had the exact opposite effect. Sexual frustration tightened my coils, and I sprang from the bed.
What the hell was wrong with me? This was Harley. But somehow, after all the years of friendship, I suddenly couldn’t be near him without wanting to pull him on top of me. Since that wasn’t a truth that would strengthen my relationship with my fiancé, I had to figure out how to stop it. And what this ring meant for us—Harley and me—and Andrew and me. And most importantly, how I could keep Andrew from finding out any of it.
In self-defense, and to give me a few minutes to sort the events of the morning—and whatever memories I could conjure from last night—into some kind of workable order, I barricaded myself in the shower where I could berate myself in privacy. Where the only lack of clothing to deal with was my own.
What have I done? If Andrew hadn’t chosen that exact moment to call, I would have been riding Harley like a rodeo horse. I’m a slut. No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t just any man who’d lit my fire. It was Harley. But that didn’t make me less slutty. The fact was I was ready to have sex—probably great sex—with a man I wasn’t engaged to, a man, for all I knew right then, I’d gone and married during a drunken bender. That’s not even mentioning all the things I’d done last night and didn’t remember this morning. Being a lawyer, I was well aware that the things one didn’t remember doing still counted in the points against column, but for this moment, I couldn’t worry about that. Happily, I’d Scarlett O’Hara that away for tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the first day shy of never.
I leaned my head against the tile and closed my eyes. The picture of Andrew I’d summoned to mind looked suspiciously like naked Harley, and I shook it off. But when I tried again to imagine my real fiancé, all I could see was an image—a still naked image—of the man who was going to be mad as hell that I used all the hot water.
As soon as I was dressed in yesterday’s clothes to avoid a still naked and thereby awkward search through my luggage, I opened the door slowly, as if I needed to check for sniper fire before I dared step into the room. Peeking out, I found Harley in his boxers—dammit—sitting on the bed, remote in hand, eyes pointed at the TV. And in living color, a bit more than life-size in the big screen close-up, Harley and I were standing with our hands clasped, gazing at one another. I only had one eye open, and we were both listing a bit, but there was no doubt the video was shot at a wedding chapel, and we were being married by a white-gloved Michael Jackson impersonator.
2
Harley
Extraordinary times required extraordinary deception…but I couldn’t let my Sophie marry that cheating bastard of a fiancé. Before she sat beside me on the bed, I felt her presence, smelled her shampoo—the one my very frugal best friend bought in the dollar aisle at the local big box store. Even on a budget, she was almonds and honey and perfection all in one little bundle of energy. Right now, that energy appeared focused on killing me, but she had her fists clenched at her side rather than in the vicinity of my face, so the danger wasn’t duck-and-cover imminent.
I pointed to the screen where the TV version of her stood in front of the TV version of me with Michael Jackson singing “I’ll be There” between us.
“Where did you find that?” Her voice was scratchy, and her eyes were saucers, but there was nothing in there that said she knew what I’d done. If Sophie Jean Madden had a clue, she would have been elbow deep in kicking my ass and all my fancy FBI training would have been wasted.
“With this.” I handed her the marriage certificate, signed and apparently sealed. If she looked closely enough the jig was up, but as nicely as I handed it to her, I took it back and set it to the side.
“So, we were drunk?” This seemed to make her happy. She breathed out a very audible sigh of relief anyway. “An annulment then. That should fix this.”
I knew the exact moment she decided she wouldn’t have to tell him what she’d done. Every part of her I could see relaxed. Her shoulders slouched, and her back curled. Her face lost the lines in her forehead and around her mouth, and she flexed her fingers, as though fighting the stiffness of her fists. She was beautiful in ways I couldn’t begin to describe.
I swallowed hard against guilt and shame. If this worked, I was going to deserve an Oscar at next year’s ceremonies. “We could.” There was just enough sadness in my voice that Sophie looked up. At least, I thought that was why she turned to gaze at me with a new frown and another set of lines bracketing her lips.
“You don’t want to?” The incredulity straining her voice was something I could have done without, but I shrugged. “Are you out of your freaking mind?” She folded her hands in front of her mouth—probably praying for my long and painful death.
As far as her question…I couldn’t answer it just yet. I hadn’t thought so far ahead as to consider my notions more carefully than to get her out of a situation she couldn’t see was bad. I gave her another jerk of my shoulders and turned away. If there was one thing I couldn’t afford, it was for her to use her eagle eye honesty regulator to spot my mistruth—and yeah, that’s what I was calling it.
“Harley, I have a fiancé. And you have…you have…your own harem waiting for you at home. We”—she waved a hand back and forth between us
—“cannot be married.” I took her sputter as a sign of indecision. And that made what I’d done not so bad. In my mind, anyway.
I looked away because if I had to see the passion sparking behind those emeralds she called eyes, I was going to throw her back onto the bed and finish what we’d started before that asshole rudely interrupted with his “good morning, baby” call.
After a determined sigh, a muttered curse and another sigh, Sophie sat beside me and dropped her hand on my shoulder. “Look, I don’t know what happened last night. I wish I did because I have a feeling it’s a memory I would enjoy.” She smiled and the light in the room grew brighter. “But you don’t want to be married to me.” I didn’t answer because all I could think to do was scream how badly I did want to be her husband. “Remember when we camped out a few summers ago?”
By far, the best weekend of my life. I nodded and continued staring at the floor so she couldn’t see my smile.
“And remember how I hogged all the tent space and you had to sleep outside? I wouldn’t eat beans and franks. We cut the trip short because I was so horrible.” I agreed to cut the trip short because I couldn’t keep my dick from getting hard when she so much as smiled at me. I suffered the same affliction to the point of pain since that trip. I focused on her words midsentence. “…still the same. If I don’t get my way, I pout. If I don’t want to do something, I just don’t do it. I can’t keep house. I eat out of to-go boxes and paper plates because I hate doing dishes. I buy new clothes rather than do laundry and…”
Married. Wait! What? Page 57