Three Simple Words (Kingston Ale House)

by A. J. Pine

  He nodded.

  “The only thing I almost wasn’t cool with was the beautiful woman who’d left me to fend for myself with Cousin Gary. Luckily, the guy was fascinating. Did you know he has issues of Cranes magazine dating back six years? And I don’t mean Craines, like the Chicago business news mag. I’m talking skyscraper building, lift-a-car-into-the-air-with-a-giant-magnet cranes. The guy fucking loves cranes.”

  Now her eyes narrowed into slits. And her lips pursed into something between a pout and possibly the initiation of a kiss. Shit, he wanted to kiss her again.

  Annie cleared her throat. “Right. I’m glad that worked out so well for you.”

  She relaxed back into their movement on the dance floor, and Wes pulled her closer. He dipped his head so his lips brushed her hair just above her ear.

  “Gary was a good enough tablemate, but don’t think for a second that I didn’t watch you walk away. I’m not sure if you realize this, Annie, but I have a hard time taking my eyes off you.”

  She laughed softly, and he could see the goose bumps peppering her arms.

  “You didn’t…watch me the whole time I was over there, did you?” she asked.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Would have been rude to ignore Gary like that just to see you shoot yourself with a soda gun.”

  She gasped and took a step back.

  “It’s because your Bond girl made me drink vodka, and I don’t do hard alcohol. I’m a beer and wine girl. Period. But the vodka burned, Wes. It freaking burned.”

  He tried hard not to laugh, but it was a losing battle. And soon they were laughing together and making their way off the dance floor. Thankfully, Gary and the gang were still cutting footloose. So Wes collapsed happily into the seat next to Annie.

  Annie chugged a glass of water and then gave him a pointed look.

  “What?” he asked.

  She pursed her lips. “So, I didn’t realize how much of your book was autobiographical fiction. I mean, I know what you said about research and whatever at the signing. It was just—interesting to hear it firsthand.”

  She drew out that last word, and Wes exhaled a long breath.

  “Is that a hint of judgment I hear?” he asked, a brow raised.

  She groaned. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s not any of my business. Especially not after—”

  “You told me you hate my book?” he completed. He grabbed his untouched glass of water from the table and drank it down until there was nothing left but the ice hitting his nose. Why did one person’s opinion seem to matter so much when there were hundreds of thousands who felt otherwise?

  When his eyes met hers again, her arms were crossed and her head was cocked to the side. She looked at him like he was a new species at a zoo exhibit.

  “I was going to say it wasn’t my business, especially not after you’ve been the perfect gentleman all night—coming to my rescue when Brett and Tabitha showed up and, well, coming to this wedding in the first place. I’m not sure you understand what it meant to Doug and Dan that you said yes.”

  “I’m more interested in what it means to you.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up. The rest of the evening hinged on this—on her not caring about autobiographical fiction—on him being able to let go of the fact that this great girl who wanted to spend the night with him hated his life’s work. Annie lifted her hand slowly and let it fall softly on his cheek. On instinct he turned and kissed her palm.

  “What was that for?” she asked.

  “Reflex? Teen me living out a fantasy? Because I couldn’t not kiss you? Take your pick.”

  She leaned forward but stopped before she was close enough to do whatever it was she was about to do. Wes turned and looked over his shoulder to follow her gaze.

  The grooms were finishing their meet and greet with the table next to theirs and had just spun in their direction. And now they approached.

  “Annie! Wes!” Doug cried.

  He scooped Annie into a bear hug while Dan did the same to Wes.

  “We have been telling everyone—everyone—that our favorite author is here. You have to let us parade you around a bit!” Dan said.

  Wes laughed, and Annie whispered something into Doug’s ear. The man’s eyes widened.

  “Get out!” Doug yelled, giving Wes a playful push. “Oksana is Natasha? I’m so going back and rereading chapter six.”

  Dan’s eyes brightened. “I have my signed copy in the suite.”

  Wes shook his head. “Guys?” Both grooms turned their attention to Wes. “You’re not helping me impress my date.”

  This time Doug pushed Annie. “Get out. This is, like, a real date?”

  Annie shook her head. “No—I mean. I don’t know.” She gave Wes a pleading look.

  “Okay,” he said. “Should we do this parade thing you mentioned?”

  Not that he wanted to leave Annie’s side, but he’d do anything to change the direction of this conversation.

  “Right,” Dan said. “Let’s go to the parents’ table first so I can show my mother that big things do happen for coffee shop owners.”

  Doug hooked his arm through Dan’s. “Leave it to me to find a husband with mommy issues,” he said.

  Dan’s eyes brightened. “I will never get tired of you calling me that, schnoodle.”

  “No, you’re schnoodle,” Doug said.

  “Uh-uh,” Dan singsonged. “You are so, totally my schnoodle.”

  It was like Wes and Annie had suddenly been forgotten as the happy couple lovingly argued—emphatically, lovingly argued.

  Wes followed while they did the rounds, table to table. Some well-informed guests even had paperbacks for him to sign. Then, before he knew it, he and Annie were dancing in a circle to Hava Nagila as the wedding party raised the grooms in chairs above the crowd.

  He was exhausted. Spent. Yet he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so much fun. When the dance floor cleared, Annie looked at him and raised her brows. He didn’t need any further encouragement. So he grabbed her hand and glanced toward the lobby. She bit her lip and nodded. “Come on, schnoodle,” he said as they slipped out the ballroom doors. They both doubled over in laughter as soon as they were outside.

  “Please,” he said. “Please tell me you and Brett—or any guy, for that matter—were never each other’s schnoodles. Because I don’t think I could ever see you as a schnoodle.”

  She shook her head, trying to rein in the giggles, but snorted instead. This only made her laugh harder, and the sound of it was infectious, like a virus swirling through his veins. This was the most he had smiled in over a year.

  “Brett didn’t—” she said, then hiccupped. “He obviously didn’t care for me enough for silly pet names,” she added.

  As quickly as it had started, the laughter between them stopped.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said, backhanding him softly on the shoulder. “I already told you this isn’t a pity party.”

  How was he looking at her? Because what he was saying in his head was What kind of asshole didn’t fall for this woman if he had the chance to? Not that he would have the chance to, but still. He’d been with her for a couple of hours, and already he’d composed a full dictionary of endearments for her.

  Okay, fine. He hadn’t. But he could. He was a writer, after all. And he’d think of something much more fitting to call her than schnoodle. What was that, anyway? Sounded like a cross between a small, yippy dog and a fruit-topped pastry.

  “You’re not a schnoodle,” he said.

  He smiled softly, and she shrugged.

  “I’ll get my happily ever after,” she said. “Maybe not with Brett in a whole town built on weddings, but it’s out there.” She tried but couldn’t even force a smile, and Wes felt something in him crack. Maybe she’d judged his book, but he’d gone and judged her right back. Even if he didn’t think love conquered all, who was he to make her feel like shit for thinking it could?

  Annie Denning wasn’t so
me high school fantasy anymore. She was real and a little broken and right here in front of him, and he wanted to tell her that he was broken, too, that love—or the lack thereof—did that to people. But she had already turned from him and was headed toward the bar.

  “Emerald City,” he called after her, and she stopped, her back still to him. So he strode up behind her and tucked her hair behind her ear, dipped his head, and spoke softer this time so only she would hear the rest. “That’s what you should be called instead of schnoodle.” He grinned. “Not just because I’ve never seen eyes more beautiful than yours but because out of all the shit life throws at us, only one guy will be lucky enough to come home to you, to his Emerald City. Everyone else would get black-and-white Kansas. But not the guy who gets you.”

  Christ, what the hell was he saying? He may not have asserted himself into the scenario when he spoke it out loud, but wasn’t that what he was envisioning right now? How many times was he the asshole who told a girl he wasn’t commitment material, and here he was with the one girl who made him wish that he was.

  Silence rolled between them for several seconds, and she still wasn’t looking at him. So he waited. Whatever happened next, it was up to Annie.

  “You should write that down,” she finally said, still staring straight ahead. “Your readers will eat that up.”

  “Annie—”

  He placed both hands on her shoulders and gently urged her to face him. She did.

  “I mean it,” she said. “The story with those words? It’s a happily ever after.”

  “You read my book,” he said, brows raised. “I don’t do—”

  “Right, I know,” she said. “You don’t do happily ever after. You wrote one book, though, Wes. Are you sure you want to make that sort of blanket statement this early on? Isn’t there a tiny little voice in your head that has some hope?”

  He chuckled. “I usually try to silence that voice.”

  “Why?”

  “Ah, yes. The age-old question.” The one everyone wanted an answer to. But what if Wes didn’t have all the answers? What if he just wrote what he knew?

  “Maybe I’ll be your muse,” she added, giving him a playful smile.

  “Maybe you’ll be trouble,” he said.

  He knew they were both avoiding any further real talk, now. But he didn’t care. He wouldn’t know how to do real, anyway. Not that it was an option with Annie. But tonight? Well, tonight they could be whatever the other needed, and where was the harm in that?

  “Trouble,” she said. “That’s something I haven’t been called before.” She grabbed his hand, lacing her fingers with his. “But I think I’d like to see what that’s like.” She tugged his arm and started walking toward the lobby, looking back at him as she did. “I want to go to the front desk and get my room key.”

  He nodded and followed, for the first time this evening at a loss for words.

  We shouldn’t. But he knew they both wanted to.

  Jeremy would flip out. But Annie was twenty-eight years old, three years Jeremy’s senior. And his, too. She could make her own decisions.

  This can’t go beyond tonight. That was the one he knew they both agreed on.

  So he walked with her to the check-in desk and waited.

  “You would like a room for one night with a king-size bed. Is that correct?” the hotel employee asked.

  Annie squeezed his hand and nodded to the woman.

  “That’s correct.”

  “Checkout is at eleven, but if you’d like to extend it until one o’clock, you can do so for an extra thirty dollars. Are you interested?”

  The woman looked at Annie, then Wes. Annie looked at the woman, then him. He did his best to keep his expression unreadable. This had to be her decision. He didn’t want to influence her any more with his stupid notions of happily ever after. But a silent prayer or incantation or whatever you wanted to call it rang out in his head.

  Yes. Say yes, Annie. Make this night last as long as humanly possible.

  “Can we decide that in the morning?” she asked, and the woman behind the counter nodded.

  “You can just call down and let the front desk know.”

  Annie let out a long breath.

  “What the hell.” she said. “It’s thirty bucks. Put us down for late checkout.”

  Wes kept quiet throughout the entire transaction and all the way to the elevator. He waited until they were inside, alone, ditching the wedding at least an hour before anyone else. But as soon as the doors closed, it was like a fuse had been lit, and if he didn’t do something about it soon, he would fucking explode.

  “I need to kiss you,” he said. “Like, really kiss you. Before we get to the room. Because if we wait until we’re behind closed doors—in that room for the night—and it’s an epic disaster, I don’t know if I’ll recover. I need to know now.”

  Nervous laughter bubbled from her lips.

  “You think kissing me is going to be a disaster?” she asked. “An epic disaster?”

  He grinned and took a step closer.

  “For me, Emerald City? No fucking way. Kissing you will be nothing short of spectacular. I have zero doubts on that front. But I want to give you the chance to make a clean getaway.” He glanced at the numeric display above the door, slowly rising to five—the top floor of the hotel and the floor where Annie’s room was—where their room could be. But he needed to give her one more chance to be sure.

  “So what do you say?” he asked, closing the distance between them. “Am I gonna be as much trouble for you as you are for me?”

  Chapter Ten

  Seriously. Who is this guy?

  Wes and Jeremy were fourteen when they started hanging out. Annie never gave him a second glance. She was a senior and he—he wasn’t even shaving yet. He was her little brother’s little friend.

  A boy.

  Not the man standing in front of her, at least a head taller than she was, his hand braced on the elevator wall as she leaned against the rail protruding from it. Not the man whose mouth was inches from hers, so close they were probably fighting for the oxygen molecules between them. That ridiculously sexy five o’clock shadow was enough to convince her that he had made it past puberty—and then some.

  He wanted to kiss her now, right here, to make sure she didn’t want to back out? Annie was the one leading him to her room, the one with one bed. She was the one convincing him to blow off whatever guy code existed between him and her brother for one night of whatever this was.

  Either he was an example of the utmost in chivalry, or he just wanted this as badly as she did. So why the hell wait?

  She grabbed his tie just below the knot and tugged him past those last few inches.

  “What do I say, Wes?” she whispered, echoing his question. “I say show me what the hell you’ve got.”

  If there was magic in words other than the ones the professionals put to paper, it was in everything he said to her tonight, and everything left unsaid yet spoken with this kiss. She felt a tender ache in her chest as his tongue slipped past her lips, his movement deliciously slow and driving her mad all at the same time. His hips pressed to her belly, and she cursed her broken shoes that would have given her the advantage of extra height. Now she moaned softly against him, rising on her toes in an attempt to slide up his hard length.

  “Christ, Annie,” he whispered. Then his hands were on her hips, and he was lifting her so she now sat on the small railing. There was no way she could sit there on her own, but he pushed her knees open and hiked her skirt up to the top of her thighs, holding her there with his weight, his erection firm as she throbbed against him.

  “Is this what you want?”

  His voice was rough in her ear, and the only thing she could do was squeak out a small yes.

  His hand slid up her thigh, his thumb skimming the seam of her panties. Oh God, did I wear good underwear? Annie thought she’d had her mind made up about Wes before he’d shown up tonight, so much so that what she
had on under her dress hadn’t crossed her mind. Because no way in hell was the evening going in this direction when she’d convinced herself he was Ethan, the not-a-romance hero.

  But now it was, and come heaven or hell, she did not want him to stop. She did, however, need to do a panty check before things went any further. But Wes’s lips were on her neck, hot and full of need, and one of those thumbs had just slipped under the panty seam, and Annie lost her train of thought as he swirled that thumb over her wet, swollen center.

  She cried out softly, thankfully quiet enough that she still heard the ding of the elevator reaching its destination.

  Wes withdrew his hands so quickly that she nearly toppled off the railing, but he caught her in his arms and even had the forethought to smooth down the skirt of her dress so her—yep—pink, Lydia Bennet YOLO boy briefs would not be on display for all hotel patrons to see. She supposed she’d have some explaining to do later, but for now she had to focus on staying upright.

  The doors opened to the fifth floor and a young couple waiting to head downstairs.

  Scratch that. It wasn’t just some random couple.

  “Annie,” Brett said, and Tabitha smiled uncomfortably beside him. “You’re on the fifth floor, too? Of course.”

  His expression was pained, and Annie could only imagine what she and Wes looked like. Her lips felt swollen from his kisses, and her lipstick had probably gone the way of scary clown at this point. Wes’s stubble had rubbed against her jaw and neck, which had surely turned her pale skin a bright red.

  “We’re room five-eleven,” Annie said, wondering what the karma gods had in store for her—or Brett and Tabitha.

  Brett closed his eyes and shook his head. “We’re five-thirteen.”

  “Next-door neighbors!” Tabitha cried with a grin. She must have quickly realized the circumstances were horrific rather than fortunate because her smile fell almost as quickly as it had appeared.

  Annie stretched her arms and feigned a yawn.

  “Well, we better get to our room. I’m beat after all that dancing. But you two enjoy the rest of the wedding.”

  Wes gave the other couple a silent nod, and Annie grabbed his hand—the one that had just snuck inside her underwear—and led him out of the elevator. She needed him behind closed doors again. And fast.