by Molly Harper, Stephanie Haefner, Liora Blake, Gabra Zackman, Andrea Laurence, Colette Auclair
A giant eraser descends from the ceiling and rubs away everything around us with its pink tip. And I watch him, basil between my teeth and an arrow wedged between the chambers of my heart.
Susan stands on her tiptoes to throw her arms around Charlie’s neck. He smiles into her frizzy hair, then smooths it as she pulls away. “Sorry I’m late,” he says, setting a fist superhero-style on his hip. “Flight got delayed.”
Susan turns to me, a hand on his shoulder. “This is the missing groomsman, my little brother, Charlie. Just in from California. Charlie, this is Piper Brody, bridesmaid extraordinaire.”
He gives me a look I pray is saying, Well, helllooo there! One side of his mouth curls upward, and it feels like he’s evaluating me. Did his California roommate draw a series of would-be Pipers on an apartment notebook? If so, I hope I’m blowing them out of the water—I imagine their little cartoon limbs flailing as I vanquish them. I say a silent thanks to Lin for helping me choose tonight’s warm-autumn-friendly attire.
I extend my hand, but Charlie reaches down and wraps me in a hug. A little piece of salmon is stuck in my throat. I swallow it and pat his back. Dashing? Check. Smells good? Check. Taller than me? Sweet Jesus, check.
“Great to meet you, Piper.” He pulls back, disheveled hair falling across his eyes. His face is slightly flushed. “I hear I’m going to be your escort on the big day.”
Susan laughs. “I hope you won’t mind humoring him a little, maybe dancing with him a time or two at the reception?” Charlie elbows her.
“I guess I could manage.” I sneak another look at Charlie. He grins at me (holy dimples!) and runs a hand through his hair, rearranging it into another erratic pattern. Shit! Now I’m blushing, too.
Having finished her meal, Lisa offers Charlie her seat. Before she ambles over to the other side of the table, she wiggles her eyebrows at me. Still flustered, I pass Charlie the breadbasket. “You gotta try this cheese bread.” I close my eyes so my internal ninja can deliver a swift roundhouse kick to my brain. Cheese bread? Why don’t you just pop a zit in front of him and ask him to clip your toenails, Brody? Sexy and alluring! Think sexy and alluring! “So, California, huh?” Okay, so not exactly a sex-kitten conversation starter, but it definitely beats cheese bread.
“I work at a Starbucks in L.A. You know, the standard bachelor of arts fare.”
“I’m an airport bookstore employee, if it makes you feel any better.” I take a drink, hoping the wine will give my lingering blush a better justification than schoolgirl attraction and self-consciousness.
“Groovy,” he says, then flinches as if hit by an internal ninja of his own. “Sorry—I must be jet-lagged. My only conversation partner on the plane was a seven-year-old who told me the plot of literally every Thomas the Tank Engine episode.” He raises his glass. “Anyway, cheers to us and our illustrious lifestyles.”
We clink glasses, maintaining eye contact as we withdraw our hands. I attempt a demure sip of wine while simultaneously imagining myself splashing half the glass down my sienna top.
Charlie drinks, too. “Much better,” he says, setting his glass down and resting one elbow casually on the table. He cocks his other elbow on the back of his chair so his upper body is on full, glorious display. “I haven’t had anything but PBR for months. I mean, nothing against PBR, but part of the reason I was looking forward to this wedding was the free booze.”
“Me, too.” I’m relieved to be honest for the first time this evening.
“What’s your drink of choice?”
“Well, my roommate has a thing for classic cocktails, so lately I’ve been drinking a lot of sidecars. He also makes a mean Tom Collins.”
Charlie nods politely, but he’s frowning. “Is he— Is it just you two? Living together?”
“Oh! No! I mean, yes, it is, but—” I take a breath. “What I mean is, he plays for Team Tom Collins, not Team Shirley Temple.”
“Ah.” Charlie smiles into his drink. “I see. What’s in a sidecar, anyway?”
I smile, thinking of Lin brandishing his stainless steel cocktail shaker. I actually have no idea what Lin puts in a sidecar, so I make a noncommittal gesture and ask Charlie about his favorites. We chat a bit more until the table draws us into another discussion about Susan and Brandon.
Their families seem so nice, so sitcom-wholesome. I shudder to think how my extended family would behave at an event like this. No doubt my aunt would wander away to the bar, my parents would find something wrong with the food and holler for the waiter, and my cousins’ kids would tie my shoelaces together under the table to make sure I had a nice fork puncture below my eye in time for wedding photos.
Susan’s family has a grace I can’t comprehend. Charlie seems to fit in well enough, but there’s a tightness around his mom’s eyes when she asks how things are going “out west.” That look reminds me of the slightly stilted conversations I’ve had with my parents since graduation. I turn to cast an empathetic glance at Charlie to find he’s already looking at me. His gaze makes me feel like I don’t know what to do with my limbs, like I might burst into an eighth-grade show choir move at random. I feel simultaneously frozen in place. To my horror, I wink at him. I wink at him!
His cheeks flush again, and then he winks back. He winks back!
Before we can embarrass ourselves further, Susan and Brandon begin reviewing tomorrow’s schedule. Susan walks around the table, handing small bags to several guests. She has a secret smile for me when she hands me my bag. The tag reads, “I’m glad I called you. Thanks for saving my wedding.”
I open the rectangular black velvet box inside the pink sheer bag. She’s given me a pair of pearl earrings and a matching necklace. I look up, about to protest, feeling like an impostor for yet another time this evening. Then again, I bet I could pawn these and eat for a month. Or longer, if I stick to ramen and peanut butter.
I slide the bag into my purse and take a last bite of key lime pie as people begin to push back from the table, breaking off into groups of two or three and ambling toward the door. I rest my napkin on the table and smooth it out, focusing diligently on inanimate objects. Before I can stand up, Charlie catches my wrist. “I need your help,” he says, leaning close.
His tie is slightly askew from numerous hugs; the red heart symbol between “I” and “Yeats” rests on the left side of his chest above his actual heart. Inadvertently, I picture him flexing those lean-muscley pectorals one at a time. Pec winking.
“Okay,” I say, forcing my gaze back to his eyes and giving him a smile that threatens to spill off the sides of my face.
“Here’s what’s going to happen at my parents’ house. I’m going to get grilled on job prospects as my parents sip brandy and my grandparents ask me if I’m married while their crazy three-legged Chihuahua named Gus humps my leg. Have you ever been humped by a three-legged Chihuahua?”
I shake my head.
“Would you like to save me from such a dire fate?”
“What do you have in mind?” I try to be coy but fail. I’m one breath away from humping his leg myself. His hand is still on my wrist, and I can feel his pulse beating against mine.
“How would you feel about getting out of here?”
“Good.” Really good.
He pulls his hand away to push back his brown suit sleeve, which is tasseled by loose threads dangling off the cuff. This motion exposes a naked, freckled wrist. He studies it, then looks back at me with a conspiratorial grin. “It’s happy hour in California. Can I buy you a drink?”
The madcap, heartwarming adventures of a working bridesmaid!
Borrow-A-Bridesmaid
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CHAPTER ONE
So this was where jock straps went to die.
Kinsey Taylor’s nose twitched at the aromatic combination of sweat, dirty laundry, and an unhealthy abundance of testosterone. Three stinky brothers had inured her senses to the more disgusting habits of the male species, so s
he remained largely unfazed as she marched through the makeshift gym of Engine Company 6’s quarters on Chicago’s north side.
Judging by the slack jaws and horrified expressions of the men she passed, her composure wasn’t catching.
“Hey, lady, you can’t be in here,” a Popeye-gunned lug said as he reset dumbbells he’d been curling with ease.
Ignoring him and the supporting grumbles of his workout crew, she continued to her destination—the locker room of Chicago’s oldest firehouse—for a showdown with a man she had never met, but who had already pissed her off so much she was ready to set his head on fire. The guy might have a reputation as one of the bravest and most decorated firefighters in the Chicago Fire Department, but she’d like to see how Mr. Luke Almeida would handle that particular conflagration.
She rounded a corner with purpose and crashed through the swing doors at the end of a corridor flanked by gray, paint-peeling walls. The smell in here was slightly better, which Kinsey attributed in part to the scent of shampoo and soap, but mostly to the broad-shouldered specimen standing before an open locker.
He turned slowly, his eyebrows veeing over a face more weathered than handsome.
“This isn’t part of the tour, miss.”
Miss.
That word flicked across her sensitive brain like a fingernail over a raw wound. She should have been Mrs. David Halford for almost a month by now, and the painful fact that she wasn’t apparently still had the capacity to surprise her. Oh joy. Now she had to steel her mind against the word miss along with other nuggets like incompatible and nonrefundable deposit. Her vocabulary of not-words had expanded considerably since her cross-country move from San Francisco to Chicago four months ago.
“I’m here for”—the head of—“Luke Almeida,” she said to the man before her.
The slight twitch of his mouth acted like a lever for his eyebrows. “Luke. Visitor,” he called out in a tone that said Luke hosted a lot of visitors.
Kinsey had a truckload of reasons to dislike Luke Almeida. Any man who instigated a bar brawl involving half his firehouse and a vigorous complement of the Chicago Police Department was already at the top of her shit list. When that same man refused to return three phone calls from the mayor’s Media Affairs Office, he was on his way to carving out a special place in her affections for his about-to-be-reamed ass. Now that smirk from Tall, Dark, Whatever confirmed what she had suspected the moment Almeida’s file landed on her desk at city hall four days ago: he thought he was all that and a bag of chips.
“You must be lost, sweetheart.”
A low rumble spiked every fine hair on the back of her neck to attention. On four-inch heels she pivoted and encountered a plume of steam, which, like a magician’s cloud, dissipated to reveal a half-naked man.
Whoa.
The clearing mist had the opposite effect on her rapidly fogging brain. Bye-bye, Tall ’n’ Dark; this brute streak of male had that guy beat in the masculinity stakes six ways from Sunday.
Across his broad chest, the slogan of the U.S. Marine Corps, Semper Fidelis, formed a rolling script that joined forces with the tattooed cuffs on his biceps, the letters of which she couldn’t quite make out, short of staring.
And she wanted to stare because this just got better.
On lean hips, a towel draped threateningly low, highlighting cut indents on either side of his abs. Was there anything hotter than that V shape? As if the killer bod wasn’t enough, he had eyes so fiercely blue she wondered if they were natural. Surely those things had come out of a lab.
Then again, the whole picture was one of a genetically engineered firefighting machine. Or fighting machine, considering his fondness for hitting first and to hell with the consequences.
He rubbed a towel through damp hair, returning life to mink-brown waves that framed strong cheekbones and more jaw than was strictly necessary. The movement showcased the tattoo on his right bicep: Logan, combined with the intertwined letters of the CFD. She would bet the two-carat engagement ring she had hurled in her ex-fiancé’s face that the ink on his left arm spelled Sean, the name of Luke Almeida’s foster father. A renowned fireman who had been awarded every medal in the book, Sean Dempsey made the greatest sacrifice during a high-rise fire eight years ago. Logan, the oldest brother, had also died during the blaze.
A smudgy ocher bruise around Almeida’s left eye webbed out to his upper cheek. No need to inquire how he came by that. It was why she was here.
Snapping back to the reality of her mission, Kinsey held his now curious gaze. “What did you say?”
“I think you’re a little lost.” He enunciated each word as if she was some sort of dimwit who had never seen a man’s naked chest before. “Tours of the firehouse are every other Wednesday.”
“I’m not here for a tour of the firehouse.”
He streaked the towel he’d been using to dry his hair across chiseled pectoral muscles, then a meaty swatch of scar tissue covering his right shoulder.
“Okay,” he said, parting his lips to reveal straight, white teeth and a gorgeous smile. So the city dental plan was a winner. “Other types of tours can be arranged. How does tomorrow night sound?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I just got off my shift and I have forty-eight hours free ahead of me. Usually I sleep the first twelve, but if you need me sooner, sweetheart, I suppose I can rework my schedule.”
Kinsey didn’t hold much truck with cocky. Or with men who called women they had never met “sweetheart.” Luke Almeida seemed to be under the mistaken impression that . . . Did he actually think she had crawled into this stink pit to get a date?
“You haven’t returned any of my messages. I called three times—”
Tall ’n’ Dark snorted. “Shit, Luke, they’re chasin’ you down now.”
“Who’s chasing Luke down?”
Another man had entered, wearing board shorts and a ripped CFD shirt, through which his extremely defined muscles played peekaboo. Tall and blond, with a fresh-faced Thor vibe, he looked like he’d stopped off at Engine 6 while on a break from his modeling gig for GQ. Truly, she must have missed the entrance to the hot-man laboratory on her way in.
“Luke’s takin’ a leaf from your book,” Tall ’n’ Dark said to Baby Thor. “As if we don’t already have enough of that with your castoffs showing up every other week looking to clean your hose.”
Baby Thor grinned, a little lopsided, a lot sexy. “Can I help it if I’ve broken half the hearts in Boystown?”
Boystown. Chicago’s gay neighborhood, which confirmed that Baby Thor played for the other team. The gorgeous ones always did, though in all honesty, it looked like there was gorgeous to spare. The other two members of the triple threat were still taking up all the space and sucking up all the oxygen.
Greedy.
Almeida stared at her, the cogs of his Neanderthal brain clearly working overtime as he tried to piece together when and where they had met, and exactly how much trouble he was in because the memory refused to take shape.
She decided to help him along.
“So you didn’t get my calls?”
He lifted a broad shoulder. “Sure I did, but I’ve been busy. Puttin’ out fires.”
More like busy leading a fistfight that had turned him and his firefighter brothers into YouTube sensations and prompted the mayor to action. Now it was Kinsey’s job as the mayor’s assistant press secretary to create solutions to a media nightmare. Almeida wasn’t even supposed to be on duty. He had been placed on presuspension administrative leave, but when he hadn’t shown up for a meeting with Media Affairs at city hall, she had called the number she had on file for him and left a message. And another. And another.
“Ignoring phone calls is incredibly rude.”
“Yeah, bro,” Baby Thor said. “You were brought up better than that.” He offered his hand. “I’m Gage. The handsome, sexy, interesting, and well-mannered one.”
Kinsey shook, enjoying the firm grip. According to
his file, at twenty-four, Gage Simpson was the youngest of the Dempseys, a family of foster siblings who had all followed their late foster father into the service.
“And this is Wyatt.” Gage jerked his strong chin at Tall ’n’ Dark. “He usually only opens his mouth to criticize.”
Wyatt Fox, oldest of the brood at thirty-three, threaded burly arms over his chest and clamped his mouth shut. Kinsey supposed she should be grateful.
There was also another brother, Beck, and a sister, Alexandra, one of only 120 female firefighters in the CFD. None of the foster siblings bore the same last name or were related by blood, but their bond—the Dempsey bond—was strong enough to ensure they were all assigned to the same firehouse. It was unusual, but then so was the family.
“And you already know Luke,” Gage went on, amusement sparking his silver-gray eyes. “Though how well you know him is another story. Are we talking fluids exchanged or just phone numbers?”
Almeida eyed her with interest. This moron really thought they might have hooked up in the not-so-distant past, and that she had rushed down here at 7 a.m. on a Monday when he hadn’t made good on his sweetly worded promises to call.
At her pointed look, Luke spoke into the pause she had no intention of filling. “She knows me well enough to think she can walk into my firehouse and get results. Pretty ballsy, sweetheart.”
“Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands, and after the other night . . .” She twisted the toe of her pump, as if she was terribly, terribly unsure of herself. Time to kick this up a notch. “I thought we had something special.”
Those electric blues widened as he moved into her personal space, and while she wasn’t a small woman, she felt curiously diminutive in Firefighter Almeida’s mountainous presence. Her former fiancé, David, had barely three inches on her. He hadn’t liked when she wore heels that made her taller than him.