The Sweetheart Game

by Cheryl Ann Smith

  “Are you ready, honey?” Irving asked.

  She smiled and kissed his cheek. “I love you,” she said softly. Tears came to her eyes as he grinned back at her. “You’re my favorite, you know.”

  “I know,” he said. “Everyone knows.”

  Fifteen minutes later, and with promises to love, honor, and cherish, Summer became Summer O’Keefe-Parker. And just before they kissed to seal their vows, Summer pulled back an inch and said on a soft whisper, “Did you know that Christians once believed the wedding kiss was an exchange of souls between the husband and wife?”

  He grinned, his face full of love. “I did not know that,” he said and then he kissed her.

  If you enjoyed

  THE SWEETHEART GAME

  By

  Cheryl Ann Smith

  Don’t miss the next Brash & Brazen, Inc. title—

  THE SWEETHEART KISS,

  Available May 2017.

  Coming to you from Lyrical Press

  Read on for a special sneak peek!

  Chapter 1

  Alcohol. The one thing guaranteed to get Jess Lucas through a wedding that she didn’t want to stand up in, with a bride she intensely disliked, and a headache that had spiked through her skull the moment she slipped the hideous bridesmaid’s dress over her head. Yes, alcohol.

  And the clear liquid called to her with a sweet siren song from within the dark mysterious world at the bottom of her oversized tote bag.

  There had been speculation among her friends that Amelia Earhart—and her aircraft—could be found in the tote along with Bigfoot and Dodo Birds, if the right team of explorers took on the search. Laying that rumor to rest would have to wait until Jess finished soaking her throbbing brain with fermented potatoes and ethanol.

  Jess was certain a quick dash into the changing room wouldn’t go unnoticed as the groom hadn’t yet taken his position at the altar. Maybe the clueless sap had wised up and taken a run for the Ohio border.

  No luck. She caught a glimpse of him talking to the minister and smiling. She didn’t know him well, but felt sorry for the guy. He was so dumbstruck by love that he couldn’t see past the big teeth and enhanced boobs to the character within his future wife.

  But that wasn’t her problem. The ceremony was not to start for three minutes and she was quick, despite a slight buzz from previous shots. Without any impediments to block her path, she could be in the bride’s room, down the 1.5 ounces of vodka left from a raid on the minibar during a trip to Vegas last summer, and get back in line before anyone noticed her missing. She just had to shake off groomsman number three.

  She’d brought a variety six-pack of those little booze bottles, knowing that in order to survive the wedding of Mandy Mae Smith—soon to be Jones—she’d need liquid courage.

  Though she was not much of a drinker, she’d still managed to chug down five of the bottles already without getting caught, but her duties had kept her from the sixth.

  So she grabbed a fistful of drees and hiked it up, ready to bolt. Moving in any form was torturous.

  The stiff white bodice of the wide fifties-inspired bridesmaid’s dress was already rubbing off the top layer of skin of her left arm pit. By the time the evening came to a thank-god-it’s-over close, she intended to be ripping drunk and naked with a groomsman in a coat closet at the reception. After all, wasn’t a single woman like her entitled to be cliché at least once in her life?

  “Ready?”

  “Er, what?” Jess looked way up at tall groomsman number three, Dodger Drake. Yes, that was his name. His fake tanned orange face grinned down at her from a foot above her, his teeth so white that she became convinced that he ate, slept and probably had sex while wearing teeth whitening trays.

  “It’s time to line up,” Dodger said and his eyes dipped unapologetically to her modest cleavage, pushed up under her chin by the bone-corset bodice of the dress.

  Gawd, she hoped that Dodger was a nickname and not some sick joke his parents had heaped on an innocent baby to toughen him up on the playground.

  By the way he was measuring her cup size, he was clearly angling to be her next sexual misadventure. Heck, her first sexual misadventure. She was too smart to jump into anything without weighing the pros and cons beforehand.

  For the last several very long weeks, she’d been weighed down by gloom over a very serious health scare. After getting good news, she’d taken a look at her life and wasn’t happy with what she saw reflected back at her.

  Outside of work, she’d been kind of going along without much purpose. Her social life was boring and she hadn’t had an adventure since she and her friends had been kicked off the team bus three years ago and almost eaten by buzzards.

  Thinking back, she realized how much time she’d wasted just existing. But she was healthy now. It was time to start living.

  Perhaps she should do something reckless.

  It was time to make a plan.

  “Jess?” Dodger nudged her.

  “Oh, okay,” she said, and let Dodger lead her into the line. Damn. The bottle would have to wait, she thought, as she tugged at the torturous gown. Really, who chose mustard yellow corseted dresses with lime and red sashes for a wedding anyway?

  Mandy, that’s who.

  Dear lord, why had she agreed to this epic mess? Jess hated Mandy. Oh, they’d been friends once. Then Mandy blossomed after getting her severe overbite corrected, became promiscuous during the last two years of high school, and slept with Darren, Jess’ boyfriend of two years.

  A long winded weepy apology had tamped down Jess’s desire to kill her, and they’d left high school as frenemies. After all, by the time Jess found out about the cheating, Darren had already done it with half of the girls in their town over the legal age of sixteen, so what was one more, Mandy had said?

  As if that made Jess feel any better.

  Besides the ex-boyfriend-best-friend relationship didn’t last much longer than the time it took for Darren to untangle Mandy’s lacy thong from his braces the night the cops found them parking behind the elementary school. His head had popped up and he was grinning like he’d won the lottery, with red lace snagged on silver metal.

  He’d been an overeager virgin, saddled with a girlfriend who wasn’t ready to go past second base, and full of raging hormones. After Mandy, his new reputation as a stud had gained him a following of would-be-non-virgins who were ready to see if braces were indeed better than a vibrator on certain areas of the female anatomy.

  And dear Mandy had spent their senior year in high school orally copulating her way through 25 percent of the males of the senior class. Senior photos that year were particularly chipper. The young men had a lot to smile about.

  This kind of behavior would lead psychologists to suspect childhood trauma or some sort of mental malady. But no, she just liked sex. And she would have made a dent in the other 75 percent if not for that dreaded event known as graduation.

  So when the call from way out of left field came three weeks ago, begging her to be part of Mandy’s big day, and Jess had been unable to come up with an excuse quickly enough to get out of it, she became bridesmaid number three.

  But what ticked her off most was that Mandy was so happy with Chad Jones that it was sickening. If karma had blessed Mandy with a taste of her own medicine, Chad would be currently doing it with the maid-of-honor behind the pulpit instead of high-fiving his best man and heading to the front of the church with a bounce in his step.

  Not that she was bitter or anything, Jess reminded herself. High school was nine years ago. They’d all moved on.

  Sure.

  Mandy had trotted off to college, became a lawyer, and was now marrying the man of her dreams. This was completely unfair to the good girls of the world.

  Jess glanced up the aisle to the groom and wondered if he knew his bride had questionable morals. Of course he did. He was grinning like a dope who had won a life-long ride on the easy train; ‘easy’ being the key word.

 
Jess sluffed off jealousy. The odds of the marriage lasting past five years were nil. The last she’d seen of Mandy before she’d fled the bachelorette party two nights earlier was the future bride heading into a bathroom stall with a well-endowed stripper named Chaz, and he probably wasn’t helping her look for a lost contact lens between her breasts.

  “Do you think the marriage will succeed?” Dodger whispered and for a second, Jess felt her cheeks warm. Was her skepticism that obvious?

  “Of course it will,” she replied without much enthusiasm. It wasn’t nice to say negative things about a bride on her wedding day. “Why would you think otherwise?”

  Dodger looked around then bent down. Some of his spray tan had rubbed off on his starched white tuxedo shirt, leaving an ugly smear. He smelled of beer and cigarettes.

  “I slept with her two months ago,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “This morning before we left the hotel, I saw her leaving Mr. Jones’s room, carrying her shoes.”

  Jess’s mouth dropped open. “Mr. Jones? As in the father of the groom, Mr. Jones?” She glanced to the front of the church. The older but still handsome Mr. Jones was speaking to his half-his-age date, Chandi, and the girl was giggling.

  What was it about weddings that sexually charged some people up?

  Dodger grinned. “The same.”

  Brushing aside that Dodger had also slept with Mandy, Jess frowned. “Wait. I thought he was sharing a room with Chandi?”

  Dodger tipped his head left and lifted his brows. “He is.”

  It didn’t take her PI skills to figure that one out. Apparently, Mandy had upped her game.

  For some reason, Jess found this funny. She squelched a snort-laugh behind her hand. Suddenly, she didn’t need the last bottle of booze. This was going to be fun.

  “Should we raise our hands when asked if anyone protests the wedding? It sounds like carnal knowledge of the bride would qualify you as an expert and she slept with my high school boyfriend. We both have good reasons to object.”

  The guy chuckled. “Ouch. Chad slept with my college girlfriend. I say we let this play out.”

  Interesting. Did she think this wedding would be a snooze? “They deserve each other,” she said, and he nodded.

  With a new appreciation of groomsman number three, she hooked her arm in his and smiled. “Agreed.”

  The music started and off they went.

  In front of Dodger, Groomsman Two was shellacked and polished down to his gleaming fingernails. He hooked his arm through that of the giggling Shelby, who looked up at him in a way that promised that she wasn’t wearing panties if he wanted to check.

  “I’ve been to three weddings this summer and I have to say, you’re the hottest bridesmaid so far,” Dodger said.

  “Thanks.” Jess wasn’t sure if that was some sort of awkward come-on, or whether she wanted to take it as such. The man looked like an over-sized Oompa Loompa. But after surviving a recent cancer scare, and deciding life needed to be lived to the fullest, she hadn’t yet ruled him out for the coat closet.

  Sex was a distant memory and she wasn’t sure if she remembered how. None of her recent dates had made her want to shave her legs or put on sexy panties. Maybe it was time for a no-commitments romp for fun?

  Yep, the pheromones were flying and she wasn’t immune.

  Besides, Dodger was pretty funny with an evil streak. She admired that in a co-conspirator.

  “Save me a dance later,” she said and shot him a flirty look. At least she hoped it was flirty.

  “Yes, ma’am. How can I refuse?”

  The way he responded definitely had a sexual overtone. The way he turned his attention down her scooped neckline left no doubt that he had the coat closet all picked out for them. She just had to say yes.

  Could orange be her new . . . something?

  “Off we go,” said the elderly usher/uncle of the groom and shooed them through the open double doors.

  The likelihood of her actually sneaking off to the coat closet with Dodger was slim, but he made her laugh and she did enjoy his company. It was the good girl in Jess who was still clinging to the hope of a real romance.

  Outside of Summer’s wedding last weekend, it had been weeks since she let herself have some fun. Her health crisis had killed her enjoyment of anything. Now that she’d been given the all clear, the doom cloud following her around was gone.

  And Dodger couldn’t be the only single man in attendance. Maybe she could find someone with substance? Someone long term? The possibilities were endless and she was seeing life through new eyes. It was time.

  The music swelled with the beginning notes of some wedding song as Jess stepped over rose petals and Dodger grinned forward at the bride. Mandy kept her eyes averted from his.

  It turned out that neither Jess, nor Dodger—who was enjoying himself immensely—had to object to the marriage. They were steps away from the altar when a shout sounded from the back of the room and brought the procession to a halt.

  “Mandy wait! Don’t do this! I love you!”

  Jess knew that voice. It was the sound of the unfairness of life taking one last stab at kicking her back to reality.

  Darren, aka cheating-scum-bag high school boyfriend, had arrived to steal the bride. Figured.

  The flower girl stopped, sending the adults behind her skidding to a halt and everyone swiveled in the pews with collective gasps. Jess was halfway turned around, both disbelieving and shocked that Darren was still tangled up with Mandy after all these years when a loud snap echoed through the old church, followed by a scream, and groomsman number two dropped at her feet!

  A fan of romance fiction since the dark ages, Cheryl Ann Smith loves to throw her heroines into danger, just to see what they’ll do. She’s currently working on an exciting a new contemporary romance series that mixes her crazy sense of humor with the adventures of a trio of female PIs who are the kick-ass heroines Cheryl has always wanted to be.

  Cheryl lives in Michigan with her family and when she isn’t writing, she dreams of living in a grass hut on her own tropical island. Since that’s unlikely to happen, she looks forward to any vacation that gets her near an ocean. If you’d like to learn more about Cheryl or her books, you can visit her website at www.cherylannsmith.com, or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cherylannsmithauthor