by Ashlyn Brady
Her thoughts drifted to the sad, empty woman she’d been when she’d ordered her first drink at the bar tonight. Her twenties had raced by, leaving her a cynical thirty year old whose romantic hopes and dreams had been battered. When she did meet the guy who set her heart on fire, he was a rotten, spying Mr. Wrong.
There was a lesson to be learnt from blindly giving into Joe’s seduction, but stuff it. Tomorrow she’d give herself a flogging for being an air-head.
“Cheers.” She raised the glass to end the conversation with the young barman.
When he left, she poked the straw through the delicious chocolate sprinkled cream to reach the underlying rum mixed with coconut juice. A door clicked open in the background. She half-turned on the seat to see Elin walk through the front bar door and head straight over. Kyra clasped her hands together, vice-like to wait for her bestie’s arrival.
“Hi Elin, sit down and talk to me.” Kyra dredged up a pleasant voice from goodness knows where as her friend sat down beside her. “Has Maddy finished organizing the alternate entertainment for the night?”
“No, she hasn’t.” Elin buried her fingertips in the wispy blond tendrils at the side of her face and shook them to add more bounce to the curls. “Maddy says she’s sorry you’re upset about Sergeant Paul, but you’ll have to suck it up. She refuses to waste money and spoil the fun because you don’t like him. She’s already paid him for a double-booking. We have the hunky-dory policeman at the party for another hour.”
So it was true that Elin was oblivious to the Joe-mole drama and was still stuck on the stripper gig. Kyra’s gaze swept over Elin’s pinched face. It showed tragedy—the loss of the radiant, bridal bloom—and it was Kyra’s fault for wiping out her friend’s joy just half an hour ago.
Kyra threaded her hair behind her ears. She took a paper napkin from the holder and curled up one end with her fingers. Joe the spy wasn’t around to watch the next gig. She plonked her purse on top of the serviette to stop herself fiddling with it. Enough of Joe’s deception, and the unhappiness Maddy created. There was no reason to deny Elin the entertainment she wanted to have on her girls’ night out.
“Do you really want to watch the he-man strip off his police uniform?” she asked, watching her friend’s face for any signs of hesitation.
“Yes, I do,” Elin said, her arms hugging her waist. “I want to remember being surrounded by my girlfriends and having a crackerjack party before I give it all up to make Marco happy.”
Kyra could argue that Elin shouldn’t sacrifice her happiness to please Marco but why bother carrying on like a judgmental wet blanket? “When you’re a senior citizen, you’ll have some fun times to remember, huh?”
“Yes, when my Vadge needs tightening cream, I’ll remember the night I didn’t need it.” Elin giggled.
Kyra looped her arm through Elin’s. “Bestie, I can’t think of a comeback to that.”
“Bestie, stop being so uptight. Don’t you want to be the happy boss of your lady parts?” Elin asked.
Kyra met Elin’s baby blue eyes that were lit with mischief now. “Yes, I do, but I can’t hit the cherry spot humor like you can.”
“First, you have to try to let it out.” Elin ran her tongue across her lips. “With lots of practice at being funny, your Vadge will become a happy home for a guy’s Peen to call his own.
Kyra burst out laughing. “Ditch the marital advice. I won’t need it, ever.” She covered her flushed cheeks with her hands.
Elin leant in close, shoulder to shoulder. “Think down low now. What are you waiting for?” she asked in a whisper. “Earlier on, I saw the yummy-looking guy trailing after you like a puppy dog. Oh yes, I did, miss.” She bobbed her head up and down to emphasis her point. “Maddy said to me, ‘He’s my top shelf pick for Kyra but she won’t believe me until she works it out for herself’.”
Kyra managed a black-humored chuckle at Maddy’s dating theory about Joe.
“So what do you think about Maddy’s prediction that you’ve found the guy who’s smitten with you?” Elin said.
“Not much at all,” Kyra said, forthright. “He’s a whole lot of trouble, and I give him a zero score out of ten as a potential boyfriend.”
“Where is he anyway?” She glanced around the room.
“Forget about him. He’s gone. He’s history.”
Elin shook her head. “Why did you lose him without getting to know him first?” Elin looked Kyra straight in the eyes. “You know, keeping out of trouble during our high school years wasn’t our rap, bestie. Do you remember the war cry of the sisterhood? Good girls get a pat on the head if they’re lucky enough to be noticed. Bad-asses who kick away the noose get the attention, the money and the man.”
Kyra propped her elbows on the table. “The war cry was for high school, and it doesn’t work for me anymore. I’m sticking to my relationship values to find a guy I can like before I love. Ding, dong, I’m done with my mushy lady brain and poor choices.”
“Oh Kyra, you sound sad and sixty years old.” Elin’s gaze dropped to the teardrop diamond ring on her engagement finger. “Do you remember in senior high when half the boys were running away scared of you? The other half were fighting over who was going to date you.”
“All the attention from the young Romeos didn’t help me. I’m still a douche magnet,” Kyra said.
“No, you’re not.” Elin used a finger to push a drink coaster around in circles. “For years I’ve watched you rush off to work and stagger home exhausted at the end of the day. At knock-off time, leave the stress behind at the office. Stop your job from draining your energy.”
“I can’t stop worrying about work. It’s my livelihood… my bleak career sliding into a hole.” Underneath the table, Kyra tapped her foot up and down. “The Tisci business is heading toward the red line, and no one will listen to my warnings.”
“Marco will sort out those knobs in the office when he gets a chance. He’ll tell them to shut up when you speak up about issues at the management meetings.”
“Just like he’s going to sort out the refrigeration problems with the Sydney delivery trucks and properly account for the spoiled stock,” Kyra quipped.
“But you know he’s requested the maintenance schedules for the trucks from the Sydney office,” Elin reproached.
Yes, he had, and Kyra had to be patient until the paperwork arrived in the Perth office.
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you. Why are we talking about work anyway?”
Kyra shrugged. “I apologize, too, for being a bore.”
“I really wanted you to come to my party and forget about what you can’t change at Tisci Smallgoods. Loosen up and get ready to enjoy my gorgeous wedding next weekend.”
Kyra lowered her head. “I guess I’ve forgotten how to pick myself up from the ground, have a quick dust off and get running after my dreams again.”
“Well, you can get your joggers tomorrow, girl. I’m counting on you to pull me through the hubbub when the Tisci family roll into town, and find out I’m not a ‘good little wife’ type of woman.”
“I’ll be there,” Kyra said.
Elin’s eyes turned dewy. “I’ve always known you’re my one true friend…Thanks, chick.”
“You’re such a dag, but thanks for caring about me, too.” Kyra rubbed her temples in circles with her fingers. “The Tisci family won’t be putting the good girl nooses around our necks anytime soon.”
Elin laughed. “That’s the way to hitch Mr. Right.”
Kyra poked the ice cubes with her drinking straw. “How about I watch Sergeant Paul get down and dirty with you?”
“Yippee!” Elin squealed. “Wait here while I go and drag Paul and Maddy apart. I won’t be long, sweet pea.”
“Okay, great.” Kyra fixed a smile on her face to please Elin. Then she concentrated on drinking more rum to stop tormenting herself over the guy who’d battered her heart and used her for his own gain.
Her phone beeped with a message. She took it fr
om her purse to read the text.
I’ve got the keycard for the Litton. Thinking of you, x J.
Same, she sent back as the understatement of the year. She was thinking so hard about him now, she ran a search for Marco Tisci and Joe on her phone’s Internet app. Soon after, her pulse jumped as the screen filled with entries. She scrolled down to the bottom of the page and her eyes froze on a business article written two years ago titled, “Jovanni and Marco Tisci—Growing Their Father’s Smallgoods Empire Across Australia.”
The drinking straw fell from her lips as she read on. Thirty five year old Jovanni Tisci was Marco’s brother. Jovanni was the brains behind the traditional Italian meat product expansion into Western Australia. Marco was the financial adviser to the start-up and the man heading the Perth branch.
“No way.” She gulped air into her empty lungs. But, but, but, Joe was a strapping man and Marco was of medium build. How could they be brothers? Did they have a different mother?
She searched for Marco’s Facebook page and opened it up to look at his photos. Behind Marco’s thick glasses his eyes were dark brown. Without the spectacles dominating his face, he could be considered attractive, at least Elin thought so. His hair was the same color as Joe’s, and he wore it in a similar neat, cropped style.
The blood turned cold in her veins at the image of Marco’s broad-shoulders. From what Elin had said, he kept his muscular physique in good shape at the gym.
Then she found a launch photo for the western business with Jovanni standing side by side with Marco. The only difference between the two men was height and spectacles. They were brothers all right. The phone slipped out of her hand onto the table.
The Jovanni Tisci she knew, but had never met face-to-face, was the CEO, the supreme boss, who ruled the company from his Sydney headquarters. Sydney—gah! He was nick-named ‘the tyrant in the east’ because he demanded monthly reports be emailed on time every twenty-fifth day. His memorandums were thinly veiled orders to promptly lift sales, achieve better performance and increase the bottom line or go find another job.
She hung her head in her hands. What a gigantic mess she was in. Jovanni was a sharp-minded businessman. If he knew Elin was an employee of the family empire and his brother’s bride-to-be, had he also worked out that she was Kyra Jamieson, notorious for her prompt monthly reports?
She’d made a complete fool of herself with the CEO. Her sweaty hands gripped the table for support as she remembered his kisses, the view of her naked breasts twice in one evening and the temptation to give into the powers of attraction.
Her heart filled with adrenalin and raced faster than the winning horse at the Melbourne Cup. How could she ever recover professionally and emotionally from Jovanni’s charm and sophisticated seduction? Or from him using her to cover up his spying activities for his brother?
What did she have to lose now? She was past being a dateless, friendless wreck. Her career at Tisci Smallgoods was dead, and rock-bottom was just a pit stop on the way down to the devil.
Elin rushed up to Kyra’s table. “Sergeant Paul is coming,” she said and darted off again.
Kyra let out a long sigh, wishing she had a Pandora’s Box to lock away the hen party secrets. The surprise stripper gig Marco shouldn’t find out about. The game plans of Maddy and Jovanni, the two cunning schemers that Elin should remain oblivious to. Finally, there was Kyra’s inappropriate and intense attraction to her supreme boss that must shrivel to nothing.
She rose from her chair. Pandora’s Box must be kept sealed until after Elin’s wedding. Kyra didn’t know how she was going to keep the secrets, but she couldn’t live with herself unless she tried her hardest for the sake of her bestie’s happiness.
Acknowledgements
Hen Party was a wide detour away from the story writing I had planned to do. When the characters, Kyra and Maddy, started chatting in my head, I was busy writing a Victorian Age romance. My thoughts were consumed by a saga about soul mates and the twists and turns in their love affair.
As time went by, the conversations between Kyra and Maddy grew louder and more demanding that I write their story. Eventually, for better or worse, I surrendered to my fate and put the historical manuscript to one side.
It’s taken a few years and a group of women, with a sense of humor to help me sort out the kinks in the story. My heartfelt thanks goes to my fellow writers from RWA (Australia) for their critiques, Justine Lewis, Kate, and Catherine. And also to Cindy. To the three editors who sifted through the chaos and helped polish the words—Corinne DeMaagd, Sarah McNamara, and one other.
Thank you to the many other women who helped me along the way to publish this story.
Finally, my thanks to Amygdala Design for the beautiful cover, and for making my first book cover experience smooth and joyful.
About the Author
As a young teenager, I read my grandmother’s romance books for their exotic locations, adventure, and for their naughty bits. I never imagined that one day I would become a writer. Life swept me up, and I pursued a career in science. After becoming a mother, my creativity flourished and I began the journey to become a romance writer.
I like to write contemporary stories and I also have a passion for stories set in the Victorian Age. My goal is simple—to entertain readers. If I can give readers a laugh or two as they follow the heroine and hero’s path to love, then I’m a happy author.
You can find me on the web at;
Blog Site
http://ashlynbradyauthor.blogspot.com.au/
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Email
[email protected]
Thank you for reading the first novella of Hen Party. The party isn’t over, it’s heating up in Hen Party 2 (The Second Novella), coming in 2016.