Bad Idea

by Bella Love

  Bad Idea

  Bad Boy Christmas Romantic Comedy

  Bella Love

  Kris Kennedy

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Also by Bella Love

  Excerpt - Spin

  Newsletter & Online

  Alter Ego Kris Kennedy

  Bonus Excerpt-Leigh LaValle

  BAD IDEA

  © Kris Kennedy

  ISBN: 978-0-9895498-3-7

  bellalovebooks.com

  Dirty. Sexy. Fun.

  Sign up for the newsletter to get news & deals!

  She’s the best bad idea he ever had.

  Former Ranger Trey Dante is cutting ties with his past. Out of the Army and ready to move on, he’s got one last mission: attend his childhood best friend’s Christmas wedding. No problem.

  Get in, get out.

  But getting out with his heart intact becomes real complicated when his best friend’s little sister is there too. He’s already been warned off sweet, upbeat Cassidy James once, but now she’s all grown up and looking sexy as hell, and she might be worth one night of a bad idea.

  But when one night isn’t enough, can Trey man up and hold onto Cass for the long haul?

  © 2017 Kris Kennedy

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part or the whole of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form (now known or hereafter invented, discovered, beamed down to Planet Earth…you get the idea) without prior written permission of the author.

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is not only illegal, it makes it difficult to make a living. This is my job. If I don’t get paid…I don’t get paid.

  Help an artist out—buy from reputable booksellers only. If you’re dying to read the book and can’t afford it, contact me. We’ll work something out.

  BAD IDEA is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and/or are used fictitiously and solely the product of the author’s ridiculous imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, places, businesses, events or locales or interesting ideas is purely coincidental, or intended fictionally.

  BAD IDEA is brought to you by:

  My family

  Seriously, they let me write a lot.

  Leigh LaValle

  Who, as always, gives great ideas and lots of laughter. I popped an excerpt from her book Breathless in the back. Go see!

  Em Dashes & Ellipses

  Vodka

  2 a.m.

  3 a.m.

  1

  “AND OF COURSE THERE WILL BE PEACOCKS.”

  Clothed in heels and a slinky, crimson-red bridesmaid dress, I stared at my brother’s fiancé. “Peacocks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Today? There will be peacocks today? At the wedding?” I couldn’t control the higher pitch my voice took on. Ben’s soon-to-be-wife was a glam queen and always aiming for show, but this was a little nuts.

  I was only in the wedding party as a favor I hadn’t asked for, but as Ben’s sister, I assumed the role the way you assumed the mantle of power: warily.

  Amber shot me a look. “Of course not at the wedding.”

  I relaxed a little. “Oh good.”

  “At the reception.”

  I stiffened again. Amber pointed to the huge, chandelier-laden banquet hall that would host the gala reception. Over two hundred wealthy guests would be mingling there later, after the garden ceremony that was due to commence in T-minus a hundred and eighty minutes—I’d taken to referring to the whole thing in military terms—and she wanted everything to be perfect.

  Which is why she got…peacocks?

  “We got special permission for the birds,” she explained.

  She meant her father had got special permission. As one of the richest men on the eastern seaboard, he got all sorts of special permissions.

  “They’ll be brought in the back door, and I was hoping you could…”

  Her voice faded into the background as we stared into the darkened hall, festooned with about nine thousand metric tons of evergreen garland and tiny white twinkle lights and deep crimson bows. I knew each and every one of those bows and bulbs, and had made the acquaintance of lot of the evergreen needles too. I’d been up until one in the morning putting them up after the wedding planner’s assistant came down hard with the flu and I’d volunteered my services. They were extremely pokey and extremely gorgeous.

  I, on the other hand, was a little bloody.

  On the plus side, I was scented with cedar.

  “You want me to wrangle peacocks?” I said doubtfully.

  “You’ll be good at it.”

  I don’t know how she knew that. I’d never wrangled peacocks in my life.

  She met my eye. “You could think of it as a gift.”

  I pictured the crystal ‘toasting flutes’ I’d wrapped in decorous silver-grey paper, sitting in the gift room behind us, at a hundred dollars a pop.

  She smiled her winning smile—Amber was vice-president in her father’s investment firm, and she was excellent at schmoozing. “You’re good at managing chaos,” she told me. “Really good. Nothing gets you flustered. You’re low-key and easy-going and…”

  Forgettable. She meant I was forgettable. Which was true. I was background music.

  Except in my own, funky little coffee shop, where I ruled like a benevolent dictator, ordering the best beans, hiring the best baristas, and booking local musicians for live music. My coffee shop was awesome. People came from miles away.

  Or had come.

  Because even five dollar lattes made with Kona peaberry beans hadn’t been enough to save it when they raised the rent last month and priced me out of the market.

  I lifted my eyebrows at Amber. “You think the peacocks are going to feel my easy-going vibe?”

  She nodded. “Everyone does. People turn to you. That’s why my father offered you a job.”

  Oy. I didn’t want to talk about the job offer.

  “Animals probably will too.”

  I was skeptical. “People don’t turn to me…”

  A man ran up to us and put his hand on my arm. “Have you seen a puppy?” he asked, his voice frantic.

  Amber raised her eyebrows. I frowned and turned to the guy, who was dressed in a snazzy hotel jacket. “What kind of puppy?”

  “A furry kind,” he said very unhelpfully. “The humane society had him here along with the others for the holiday adoption push. He got out of his cage and now he’s on the loose.”

  I totally understood wanting to get out of your cage.

  “Well, he’s got to be around here somewhere,” I said, turning to scan the lobby, which sat down the hall from the banquet hall doors.

  A huge Christmas tree dominated the huge, open space, which was dotted with large expensive couches and little expensive tables. Beside the tree was a row of cages atop tables, filled with purring kittens and tumbling puppies. Hotel guests sat on the couches and knelt before the cages, while others hurried past, heading for the bank of elevators or the front door. Christmas music drifted over the scene of holiday cheer and chatter.

  “The humane s
ociety is packing up early because of the storm,” the desk guy explained, pointing to the snow falling outside. “And if I don’t find him, that puppy’s going to be here in the hotel all night.”

  “Without food,” I understood grimly.

  “Peeing everywhere,” he said, more grimly yet.

  “At my reception!” Amber cried, flat out furious.

  The employee swung to her. “I swear to you, Ms. Rothsman, no puppy will disrupt your wedding.”

  A valiant vow.

  “He better not,” Amber warned.

  “I’ll keep my eye out,” I promised.

  The guy tossed me a look of thanks mingled with fear and trotted off, eyeing up corners and whistling softly.

  I wrapped my hands around my upper arms as a chill raced through the wide corridor—the lobby was just down the hall, and its electronic doors were silent, so the only sign someone had come in was the swift cold draft.

  The move drew Amber’s eyes to my arms. They slid up. “Is that a tattoo? On your shoulder?”

  I blinked. “Um, yes?”

  She squinted at it. It was a Celtic design, nothing outrageous. Yes, it had been done in a fit of recklessness many years ago, but still, it was beautiful. Swirling and colorful.

  Amber should consider herself lucky it wasn’t something even more nuts. Like the stabbed eye of my ex-boyfriend that I’d planned to get inked on my arm that night thirteen years ago.

  “You’ll have to keep it covered,” Amber said doubtfully and swung back to the banquet hall. “As far as the peacocks, you just need to keep them away from the guests.”

  “Right. Keep the birds away from V.I.P.s,” I said dubiously, and turned my gaze to the huge, many-pillared lobby again, searching for the puppy.

  That’s when I saw him.

  Trey Dante.

  Bad boy best friend of my older brother, and man of my dreams.

  Literally, dreams. That’s all I’d done was dream about him—he’d been my brother’s best friend back in school, and as Ben’s little sister, he’d barely looked at me, whereas I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, all his danger and black boots and scruffed jaw, the dark, slightly dangerous heart to my brother’s amiable, blond-haired, high ambitions.

  Trey had been the Pied Piper, leading my brother and half the high school into all sorts of trouble, but then, Ben had gone willingly. So had everyone else. Everyone went willingly with Trey Dante.

  I would have too, if anyone had invited me.

  Trey and Ben had been a crazy, mismatched, perfect pair until Ben went off to college and Trey went off to war.

  But the years they’d been like brothers had been really good for me and my late-night, wide awake dreams, when no one could see what Ben’s quiet little sister really wanted was a walk on the wild side.

  Bad idea.

  But wow… Trey still looked good. Standing in the huge, gleaming white marble lobby of the Hotel de Grace, he looked like the cowboy who rides up in an old western. Trouble rolling into town. An alpha male storm about to break.

  He was still wearing jeans, but his legs were harder, you could tell, even through the denim. He was still wearing boots, low cuffed ones. He still had a scruffed jaw, and he was still all male sex appeal. Women in the lobby, dressed in thousand dollar dresses, turned to look at him.

  He carried a small duffle bag in one fisted hand, and it swung slightly as his gaze swept the space. The sway stilled when his eyes reached me.

  Real slow, he smiled. “Little Cass.” I saw his mouth move, but couldn’t hear the words.

  I pushed my clipboard into Amber’s hands and started toward him.

  Behind me, Amber called out, “Cassidy, the peacocks!”

  2

  I SAW CASS the moment I walked in. My eyes went to her like a fucking magnet.

  I didn’t need any magnets in my life. I’d been drawn to enough shitty stuff over the years, all of it dangerous. I was done with being drawn. Done with connections and caring.

  In fact, I was about to move on in every way—apartment, career, associations—but seeing Cassidy James, who used to be about four feet tall and wear her long hair in a high ponytail, smiling and laughing, always earnest and goodhearted, tugged a smile to my mouth.

  She still had her hair in a ponytail, high up, which used to be cute but was now sexy as hell, because she’d grown up in a whole lot of other ways too.

  Long neck, curves up high and a tight ass down low, and damn…long legs. But still with that smile that curved her cheekbones and put a flush on her pale face.

  Yeah, she looked good.

  She flew at me and I dropped my bag a second before her body hit me. Her arms went around my shoulders and she hugged me like I hadn’t been hugged in a long time. No complications, no dying wishes, just a big, happy smile, the faint scent of some fruity shampoo or something, and pure happiness.

  Also, breasts. Yeah, they were here too, pushing against my chest.

  “Trey, you came,” she whispered against my ear. “I can’t believe you came. I didn’t know you were coming.”

  I’m not proud of it, but I got hard. Probably because she kept saying all the forms of ‘come,’ and with her breasts and her tight ass that I could see in the wall-long mirror behind her, it was an involuntary reaction.

  “Little Cass,” I said, putting my hands on her arms and setting her back a few inches.

  She beamed at me. “Ben didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  Doubt he had any desire to draw us closer together. Probably because he’d once warned me to stay a thousand miles away from Cassidy.

  That had been the Night of Cassidy’s Tattoo. I thought of it in capital letters, because it was a shitty night for her, a reckless night, and while I hadn’t done anything you couldn’t post on social media, I’d sure wanted to, watching Cass all sweet and drunk, wanting to get a picture of her ex tatted on her shoulder with a dagger through his eye.

  I’d talked her into the Celtic design.

  It looked good.

  But I didn’t need Ben’s warnings, not even back then. I knew very well to stay away from someone as sweet and good as Cassidy. She was sunshine and I was a storm cloud, and I was smart enough to keep my weather system of trouble away from her.

  But yeah…she looked fucking good.

  She tipped her face up, still beaming at me. “Does Ben know you’re here?”

  I shook my head and gestured to the duffle bag. “Just got in.”

  “So I’m the first to see you?” she said happily, like I was a present.

  “You’re the first, baby.”

  The flush on her cheeks got a little deeper and for half a second, her teeth closed around the plumpness of her lower lip.

  More looking good.

  I swung my gaze away from her goodness and scanned the swanky hotel. “Ben’s really moved up in the world, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She blew out a breath and her lower lip popped out from between her teeth. “That was always his goal.”

  “Always was.”

  “What about you? Where have you been? What have you been doing? I haven’t seen you for, what? How long has it been?”

  “Too long.”

  “Yeah. Too long.” Her eyes never left mine. “Ben’s going to be so happy to see you.”

  “I wasn’t sure I would be able to make it.”

  “Been busy?”

  “As a bee.”

  She smiled. I liked what it did to her cheeks. “Buzz buzz.”

  I smiled back. “You?”

  “Oh, jeez.” The animated look on her face dampened and she waved her hand vaguely. “Since high school? It feels like a thousand years ago.”

  Understatement of the century.

  “I haven’t been doing anything worth talking about. But you…seriously, Trey, where have you been?”

  “Nowhere good.”

  She smiled. “That was always your way. Dragging Ben into your trouble.”

  I shrugged. “He was a man wh
o knew what he wanted.”

  She folded her arms under her breasts. I forcibly kept my eyes up. “And you were there to provide it.”

  “I live to serve.”

  She grinned. “So, where’s nowhere good?”

  I really didn’t want to talk about my nowhere good places. There were a lot of them. I paused, thought about lying, then said simply, “Afghanistan. And other places.”

  The brightness in her eyes dimmed a little. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “This whole time?”

  “Twelve tours.”

  “Twelve,” she echoed, an exhale of understanding, or as close as someone who hadn’t been there could get. “That sounds like a lot of tours.”

  “Not as many as some.”

  “And you just got back?”

  Just got back. Just got out. Thirteen years in, a lot of time downrange, lots of fucked up shit under the bridge, and now, I’d left it all behind and dropped myself into this strange, fucking normal American life full time, and I had no idea what I was going to do next. Didn’t much care either. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I was just…done. A towel wrung out, dry and desiccated and pissed off.

  “Just,” I agreed.

  She didn’t say anything for a second, then out of the blue, she reached for me again and hugged me, fast and hard—breasts, ass, legs—but before I could hug her back in confusion, she stepped away and thrust out a hand.

  “Hi, I’m Cassidy James.”

  I laughed, still confused, and reached for her hand. “I’m Trey Dante. Pleased to meet you.”