“We should stay until Jenny and Brandon head up to their honeymoon suite.” His imagination filled with a picture of Keely lying naked in the middle of a pile of green pillows. “I hope to God that’s soon.”
13
KEELY HAD NO SOONER rejoined the party than Jenny, Tina, Sharon and Barb pounced on her and dragged her away from Noah.
“Something happened, didn’t it?” Tina said, her dark Italian eyes sparkling. “You were gone a very long time.”
“And that was the plan,” Jenny said. “Brilliant of me to send you off together, if I do say so myself.”
“After the way he pulled you down on his lap during the game, I knew things were progressing nicely.” Sharon grinned. “So here’s what I think. You two have known each other since you were kids, right?”
“That’s right,” Keely said.
“Then it’s fate, you two meeting like this in Vegas,” Sharon continued. “I’ve seen Noah with a lot of women, and I’ve never seen him so totally preoccupied with any of them. I’ll bet he’s been pining away for you all these years without realizing it.”
“Oh, I doubt it.” Didn’t she just wish, but she’d be a fool to let herself believe that. Maybe she had a sexual hold on Noah right now, but that was the extent of it. “We’re having fun being together this weekend, but that’s all.”
“I think there’s more to it,” Tina said. “You have that certain glow whenever you’re with him, too. And—”
A roar of male laughter cut off whatever else Tina had meant to say. They all looked over at the crowd of guys standing by the bar. Noah held an empty glass in his hand, and from the looks of things, he’d spilled the contents of it down the front of his tux, including his pants.
Keely couldn’t help smiling. She had a pretty good idea that he’d done it on purpose for camouflage. Apparently his friends thought so, too.
“Lame, totally lame!” Clint chortled. “Nobody thinks that was an accident, buddy.”
Brandon clapped him on the shoulder. “Just give it up and admit there was frisky business going on while you and Keely were AWOL, and you came back with a little evidence on your clothes. It’s happened to the best of us. Even me.”
“Yeah,” Greg said. “Shirts buttoned up wrong, underwear on inside out, suspicious wet spots—we’ve seen it all. Come on, ’fess up.”
Keely didn’t mind the good-natured teasing because it meant that Noah’s friends had accepted her. But she wasn’t sure how Noah would take it. He hadn’t intended to include her in this event, yet she’d accepted Brandon’s invitation, anyway. Then she’d become chummy with the women in the bridal party, and then she’d dressed for the wedding in an outfit to drive him wild. Now he was suffering the consequences of her actions.
To her surprise and relief, he grinned. “What are you guys, nooky narcs?”
“Hell, no,” Greg said. “I hope you did do the nasty. We made bets on it, and I want my money.”
“You should know better than to bet on an outcome you’ll never learn,” Noah said. He glanced in Keely’s direction. “I don’t intend to satisfy your curiosity or settle your bet. Unlike you morons, we have too much class, right, darlin’?”
“Right,” she called over to him. Thank heavens he wasn’t furious with her. She’d only meant to have some fun, not make him uncomfortable. Obviously he wasn’t upset if he’d call her darlin’ in front of everyone. She couldn’t help feeling warm and special, and for one tender moment she imagined what it would be like to be his darlin’ for more than a weekend. But she wouldn’t be, and she needed to cool it around his friends so she wouldn’t embarrass him any further.
“I was all set to claim my money on circumstantial evidence,” Greg grumbled, “until you threw a piña colada all over Exhibit A.”
“I’m willing to testify to what I saw before that suspicious event,” Clint said.
“Yeah, me, too,” Brandon added.
As the men started to wrangle about what they’d seen or hadn’t seen, and the size and position of the spot, Jenny looked at her girlfriends and lowered her voice. “I think it’s time to give those monkeys something else to think about before they mess up this budding relationship. They’re starting to get a little crude.”
“Agreed,” Sharon said.
“It’s not a budding relationship,” Keely said.
Jenny smiled at her. “Sometimes the people in a budding relationship are the last ones to pick up on what’s happening.” Then she raised her voice. “Garter toss, guys! The bride has spoken!”
Brandon snapped to attention so quickly that Keely laughed. “That’s impressive, Jenny.”
Jenny grinned at her as Brandon started over toward them. “Oh, we came to an agreement. I get to be the boss during the ceremony and the reception. He gets to be the boss all during the wedding-night playtime. It works out.”
“I’ll bet it does.” Keely saw the glow of love in Brandon’s eyes as he took Jenny’s hand.
They laughed and leaned against each other as they walked toward the center of the reception area where Greg had already placed a chair for Jenny to prop her foot on. During the removal of the garter, both Jenny and Brandon joked with the guests, but most of their teasing was directed at each other.
They’ll have fun being married.
The thought zoomed through Keely’s mind, startling her. She’d never considered that marriage and fun belonged in the same sentence. She hadn’t had all that many examples to go by, but most of the marriages she’d known had seemed extremely boring and restrictive compared to the excitement of the single life. Both her father and Noah’s father had been widowed fairly young, and neither of them had chosen to remarry, so she’d concluded that they must not have enjoyed matrimony all that much. From all reports, her mother hadn’t, either.
In high school the parents of her friends had never seemed to have anything resembling fun. Mostly they’d spent time trying to spoil any fun their kids had wanted to have. A few of her high-school friends had acted interested in the concept of marriage and some had even gone through with it, but once she’d relocated to L.A., nobody in her city-girl circle had considered it an option until after they felt too old to party.
But Jenny and Brandon gave a new dimension to her concept of marriage. For that matter, so did the others—Tina and Greg, Clint and Sharon.
In Keely’s world committed couples were unusual. In this gathering they were the norm. For the first time in years she felt out of step. That would be cured once she left this group and returned to her own life, of course, but she was strangely reluctant to do that. She’d been given a different perspective and she wasn’t quite ready to shut the door on that.
But the door might be shut for her. She didn’t fit into this cozy scene. She never had and she was foolish to think she ever would. These people accepted her as a childhood friend of Noah’s because that’s all they knew about her. True, she wasn’t as wild and racy as Noah imagined, but she was definitely a bad girl compared to Jenny and her friends. She doubted that any of them had ever posed for a centerfold.
A cheer went up from the assembled guests as Brandon held the garter aloft. He started to throw it toward the small knot of bachelors clustered by the bar, a group that included Noah, but Jenny caught his arm. Then she pulled him closer to whisper in his ear.
He straightened and turned toward the bar. “The bride wants to change the routine, and I’m sworn to give her absolute power during the ceremony and reception. If she wants the routine changed, then it’ll be changed. There will be no throwing of the garter.”
The bachelors looked relieved, even Noah, and here Keely had thought he was more than ready to catch a garter and be the next man in his group to walk down the aisle. But the married men weren’t having any of it and they started complaining.
“Hold it.” Brandon raised both hands. “I’m not going to throw the garter, but we can’t let a perfectly good wedding garter go to waste. One of you single guys needs to end up w
ith it. Jenny has asked that in this case I bestow the garter, so we don’t leave the results to chance. It seems she has a particular person in mind.”
Keely had a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach. Oh, well. It was only a silly superstition, anyway.
Brandon twirled the garter around his index finger as he walked toward the bachelors who were watching him nervously. Sure enough, Brandon stopped in front of Noah. “Sir Noah, you are hereby dubbed the keeper of the wedding garter. Cupid’s got you in his sights, son.”
Noah made some effort to protest, but in the end, with the not-so-gentle help of his friends, he was wearing the garter as an armband. He avoided Keely’s gaze.
Of course, he wouldn’t give her soulful looks, she thought. He wanted only one thing from her, and he didn’t need a wedding ring to get it. That was fine, because she only wanted one thing from him, too. That was her story and she was sticking to it.
Greg turned on the microphone again and took charge of the proceedings. “And now for the throwing of the bridal bouquet,” he announced.
That was her cue to duck out, Keely decided. No way was she catching that thing, especially after Brandon had tagged Noah with the garter. Maybe it was only a superstition and meant nothing, but she didn’t care to test it. If she ever did get married, it wouldn’t be to a man like Noah who lived in Saguaro Junction. These friends of Noah’s had made marriage look more attractive to her than it had in the past, but she was still a country mile away from the altar.
As she edged over to the sidelines, Tina caught her arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I, uh, need to go to the—”
“You can wait.” Sharon grabbed her other arm.
“But—”
“Let’s go, girl.” Barb grabbed her waist from behind and pushed.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Keely tried to pull away from them as they tugged her over to an area where a small group of single women stood. A very small group. Four, besides her. Those were terrible odds.
“We have our instructions,” Tina said. “Bride’s orders.”
Keely struggled in vain. “Look, I like all of you heaps and heaps, but you’re about to be my new ex-best friends. I don’t want to play this game.”
“It’s the hand of fate.” Sharon gripped harder and kept pulling.
“Fate is a hell of a lot stronger than she used to be!” Keely tried her best to get away, but these were three determined women. “Have you girls been working out?”
“Oh, we rodeo from time to time,” Tina said. “It’s rough on the nails, but good for the ego.”
“Rodeo? I thought you were all about Nordstrom’s!”
“Those two interests aren’t mutually exclusive, chick,” Sharon said.
“Incoming!” Jenny yelled and sailed the bouquet in the air.
“We’re on it!” called Sharon. “Excuse us, ladies,” she said to the hopefuls standing nearby on the grass.
“What on earth are you doing?” She hadn’t wrestled with females like this since she was eight, and finally the episode became funny. She began to laugh as Tina, Sharon and Barb shoved her over to the spot where the bouquet was coming down.
It hit her on the head, and while she giggled helplessly, Tina and Sharon made sure the bouquet fell neatly into her arms. Then they released her, leaving her standing alone with a sweet-smelling bouquet clutched in both hands. She’d never held a bridal bouquet before, and damned if the experience wasn’t turning her to mush. But she couldn’t get all sentimental and let Noah in for even more teasing.
Jenny turned, a huge grin on her face. “That should do it.” Then she walked over and exchanged high fives with her girlfriends before turning to the deejay. “Music, maestro, if you please. It’s time for the owner of the garter and the owner of the bouquet to dance.”
Keely knew she should refuse to do it, but instead she stood as if rooted in the grass while Noah slowly walked over to her and took her hand. “Sorry,” she murmured as he led her to the circle of smooth concrete that served as a dance floor.
“About what?” He swung her into his arms as the deejay played a waltz.
“Catching the bouquet.” She rested it on his shoulder and gazed at the cluster of orchids and roses so that she wouldn’t have to look at Noah. He waltzed very well, which surprised her. There were many things she didn’t know about him, apparently.
“It appears you didn’t have much choice about catching it.”
“I shouldn’t be here in the first place. From the beginning, you didn’t want me to be part of this wedding, but I had to be my usual obstinate self and accept the invitation from Brandon. Now here you are, dancing with me in front of all your friends.”
“I don’t mind.”
She figured he was just being nice. She could tell from the way he was dancing with her, keeping a good three inches’ distance between them, that he didn’t want to give anybody ideas about their relationship. “I know they’re all trying to be matchmakers,” she said, “but you don’t have to worry. I told them this was a fun weekend, but that was all there was to it.”
“You did, huh?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “So don’t think I’m going to embarrass you out here by trying to snuggle closer or anything. I won’t do that.”
“I would love you to snuggle closer,” he said. “But I have piña colada down the front of my tux and it’s sticky stuff. I’d hate to get it all over that dress. I doubt if you have enough little white packets to take care of that.”
She glanced up at him in surprise. “That’s why you’re keeping a space between us?”
“That’s the only reason, darlin’.” His brown eyes were warm as he looked down at her. “And that distance is killing me.”
“Really?” Her heart lifted, and she couldn’t help smiling. He wasn’t embarrassed by being made a public spectacle with her. “Then to heck with the dress. I’ve never danced with you before, Noah. Let’s make it count.” She slid in tight.
Immediately cheers and catcalls erupted from the crowd.
“Maybe that was a mistake,” she murmured, and started to back away.
Noah tightened his grip, holding her fast. “Uh-uh. I’m not giving up this sensation. Ignore them. Dance with me, Keely.”
She took a deep breath. “All right.” Meeting his gaze, she moved sensuously to the music, allowing her body to meld perfectly with his.
He sighed. “Yeah, like that. Sweet.”
Oh, how they danced. The boisterous comments of their audience faded in the wonder of how perfectly they fit together and how easily they moved over the dance floor, as if they’d been practicing for years.
The corner of Noah’s mouth tilted. “We should have tried this before.”
“Who knew?”
“I think I did.” His gaze heated. “I think I’ve always known how we’d fit.”
Her breath caught. “They say that dancing like this is a lot like making love.”
“Yes, they do.” The flame burned brighter in his eyes. “And if this endless party ever winds down, I plan to test that theory. I wish we could leave right now.”
Her blood pounded through her veins. “Me, too.”
“Damn, that’s the end of the song. With luck, the piña colada has glued us together and we’ll be forced to leave the party to get unstuck.”
Keely backed out of his embrace easily. “No such luck. Must be the material of this dress. I guess it repels everything.”
Noah laughed. “Except me. I—”
“Miss November!” cried a hearty male voice near Keely’s shoulder. “I finally figured it out!”
Horrified, she turned toward Brandon’s father, Elmer. “Excuse me?”
“You’re Miss November!” The festivities and a generous amount of liquor were prompting Elmer to speak much louder than usual. He beamed at her as if sharing the most wonderful news. “Macho magazine, right? I can’t remember the exact year, but I sure remember how you looked, lying on
that Thanksgiving table with all the food, and your—”
“You must have me confused with someone else.” Keely glanced around and prayed nobody else had heard the exchange.
“Hey, Elmer.” Noah hooked an arm around Elmer’s shoulders. “Speaking of food, let’s go get some of that wedding cake before it’s all gone.”
“No, thanks,” Elmer said, ignoring him and focusing intently on Keely. “Listen, I’m sure it was you. I even remember the name Keely. I was going through a bit of a midlife crisis in those days, and so Macho was very appealing to me. I told my wife it beat running out and having an affair.” He laughed and winked at her. “Good excuse, huh?”
“I’m flattered that you think I look like a centerfold,” Keely said. “But you have the wrong girl.” She glanced pleadingly at Noah, hoping he’d support her denial.
But for some reason he didn’t. Instead, he turned his palms up as if to say he was out of ideas other than to continue distracting Elmer. Once again he tried to steer the older man gently away. “You look like a guy who could use another drink, Elmer,” he said.
“Not yet,” Elmer said. “First I want an autograph.” He fumbled in his pocket. “I have one of the wedding napkins in here, which my wife insisted I take for a souvenir. Keely, would you sign it for me? And put Miss November on it, too? I still have that magazine in a box in the basement. Gosh, I wish I had it here right now so you could sign your picture!”
She wasn’t going to talk him out of it. If she refused to go along with him, he might get louder and more insistent. At last she took the napkin and ballpoint pen he held out to her. “Okay, I’m Miss November,” she said.
“I knew it! Here, use my back so you can write on that thing.” He turned around.
“I try to maintain a low profile, Elmer, so I’d appreciate you keeping the information to yourself,” she said as she braced the napkin on his back and signed her name. Considering how tipsy the guy was, she didn’t think there was much chance of his keeping a secret, but at least she’d try.
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