by Ward, J. R.
The man behind the cash register—like the place would have a computer anyway?—was sixty and pruned like a topiary, his pin-striped suit and jaunty orange-and-black tie a seasonal advertisement for his wares.
“And here’s the lovely bride,” the guy said as he came around. “I’m Mike Junior, and I’m here to help you—oh, you brought your groom.”
Anne shook her head. “No, we’re not, I’m not, this is not—”
“When’s the special day?” Mike asked.
“It’s not, I’m not—”
“This Saturday,” Danny said as he put his arm around her shoulders. “I’m such a lucky man.”
“That doesn’t give us a lot of time.” Mike tugged at his cuffs, pulling them down like he was ready to get to work. “But we can take care of you. It’s the Mike guarantee—”
“We are not getting married,” Anne said as she pushed Danny away.
“So you’re eloping.” Mike clapped his hands. “Exciting. Now, let’s see, you’re a thirty-six long—”
“That’s right.” Danny smiled. “God, you’re good.”
Mike frowned. “Haven’t I seen you before?”
“We are not getting married!” Anne cut in.
As Mike fell into a shocked silence, she wanted to elbow Danny in the gut.
Instead, she announced, “I need a tuxedo for the Miller wedding to match all the ones that have been ordered for the groomsmen.”
Mike looked at Danny. Looked at her. “You know, women aren’t groomsmen usually.”
“Yes,” she said as she glared at Danny. “I know.”
* * *
All things considered, Danny took it as a good sign that Anne had missed the mark and gone into that flower shop first. Her detour suggested the conversation in the car might have gotten to her a little, and maybe . . .
Hell, he didn’t know.
“You want to rent a tuxedo,” Mike repeated.
Anne went over to a rack of suit jackets that had satin collars. “Yes. I mean, you must fit small men? Or boys, what about a boy’s tux?”
When Mike glanced in his direction, Danny manned up. “What if you measured her, and we find something that works?”
“Ah . . . I usually only work with men.”
“Gimme the tape. I’ll do it.” As Anne wheeled around, Danny put a hand out to the guy. “She and I work together. We’re friends.”
The truth was, if he had to watch Mike, Jr.—or any other man—measure up the inside of Anne’s legs? A hundred thousand Fiber One bars weren’t going to do shit to keep him from ripping some limbs off and burying the rest of the body where the groper’s family would never find it.
Man, he was such a charmer, wasn’t he.
“Yes,” Mike said. “Okay, that would be better.”
As a cloth tape measure was pressed into Danny’s palm, they were directed to go behind a black curtain where the dressing rooms were.
“Come on, Ashburn,” Danny said. “Let’s do this quick and move along. Painless, totally painless.”
For her, at least. Him? He wasn’t so sure because she had that hostile look in her eye again—the one that made him pray to God he didn’t pop an erection.
“I can do it myself,” she muttered.
Mike pushed a pad and a pencil at them. “Each of the measurements on that list. Just write ’em down.”
Danny pulled the curtain aside. “I’ll only help if you need it.”
Anne snatched the tape measure and walked into the rear area. As she stopped dead, he bumped into her—and then he totally got why she’d pulled up short. He’d been kinda shocked too when he’d first seen it.
“Did they think paint wouldn’t stick to the ceiling?” she whispered as he let the curtain fall back into place behind them.
Shag carpeting, the kind that Scooby-Doo would have appreciated, started at the floor and climbed the walls and ceiling on an up-and-over that was utterly inexplicable. And that was before you got to its harvest-gold-and-orange nap.
“Now you know what it’s like to be in a bag of Cheetos, right?” Danny murmured.
“I wonder if it has adhesive qualities?”
“You want to throw me against a wall and see if I stick?”
Plastic runners, like highway lanes, had been laid out for people to walk on, obviously to protect the stuff from being worn down by foot traffic in and and out of the three cubicles.
“At least it’s seasonal?” Danny said as he reached out and petted a wall.
“Does this mean he switches it out to red and green for Christmas, then gold and black for New Year’s? Pastels for Easter?”
“And beaver brown for Groundhog Day.” As she shot him a look, he shrugged. “What?”
“That’s nasty.”
Going over to a cubicle, he opened the flap door. “I wonder if it started as an area rug and then metastasized.”
“How we doing in there?” Mike called out from the far side.
Anne winced. “Your decor is . . .”
“I know, isn’t it historic,” Mike chimed in. “This shop was my father’s. He was way ahead of his time.”
“Well, time has caught up and kept right on going,” Anne said under her breath. Then, more loudly, she offered, “It’s unusual for sure.”
Danny nodded at the fitting platform. “Stand on that thing and let’s get to taping.”
“I’d rather do it here. I’m afraid of getting any closer to that ceiling.”
“I’ll play secretary.” He checked the pad. “We need your arm length first.”
Anne held one end of the tape to her shoulder and let the thing fall to her wrist. “I’m twenty-six?”
He scribbled on the line. “Let me do shoulders across the back.”
“Yeah, that is going to be tough without bending everything out of shape.”
She gave him the tape measure, and he put the pad and pencil down. Stepping close to her, he became completely and utterly aware of her: how tall she was, how her waist dipped in before her hips flared out, how her long, long legs were so damn shapely in those running tights.
Swallowing hard, he stretched the tape over the top of her shoulders—and as it slipped out of his hold, he nearly shoved his hand down her fleece to catch it.
“Sorry, I’m sorry—”
“Here you go.” She caught it and handed the roll back to him. “Slippery little devils.”
“Yeah.”
Danny slowed. Then froze. Across the way, there was a floor-length mirror, and he couldn’t help but stare at their reflection, him standing behind her, her focusing down on the wall-to-everything carpet.
I want to fuck you, he thought—with such stinging desperation, that he prayed he hadn’t said the words out loud.
“You got it?” Anne prompted.
“Yeah.”
Except he didn’t. He didn’t have shit.
Her pale eyes lifted, and locked on his own in the mirror. As her lids flared, he knew there was too much hunger showing on his face and he hated the position he was putting her in. But he had run out of patience, out of pride, out of sanity.
All he was, as he stood behind her, was need.
Anne’s chest rose and fell as she took a deep breath. “You need to measure me,” she said in a low voice.
Oh, I am, he thought, as his stare drifted down her body.
Her head shook back and forth, but she didn’t step away and she didn’t stop looking at him. “This can’t happen.”
It sounded like she was trying to convince herself, and he took that as a good sign.
“Yes,” he growled. “It can—”
“Danny—”
“I can’t pretend anymore. It’s killing me, Anne.”
The shock on her face was open to interpretation: Was it because he’d offended her? Or was it because she’d been fighting the attraction, too?
“How we doing in there?” Mike said from the far side of the curtain.
Talk about shattering a moment.<
br />
Without any prompting, Danny measured those shoulders, noted the number, and then went around and got down on his knees. Lifting his eyes, he stared up her body.
“I won’t fuck you over,” he said. “I promise.”
Annoyance crossed her face. “I won’t let anyone fuck me over, so don’t worry about that.”
You’re so hot, he thought.
But he didn’t want to press his luck. “I can do this measurement for you. And I won’t get—you know, inappropriate.”
“Little late for that,” she muttered. But then she widened her stance. “If that hand of yours goes anywhere it shouldn’t, you’re going to get put on disability. Permanently.”
As a wave of lust shot through him, Danny swayed, but caught his balance. “Put your heel on the end.”
Tucking the tape under her running shoe, he stretched the length up inch by inch, passing her tight calves, and her knees, and the teardrops of her thigh muscles.
Inside her legs . . . inside, toward her . . .
Anne stepped back. “Let’s just estimate that. What have you got so far?”
His brain lagged in translating. “Ah. . .”
After he reported some sort of number, she said, “Tack on another three and call it a day.”
“What about your waist? Or your hips, I think it is.”
“I’ll do that.” She snatched the tape and put it around her pelvis. “Thirty-six. And waist is . . . twenty-six.”
“I’ll take these out to Mike,” he said. “And we’ll see what we got.”
As he stepped out of Shag-la-la, Danny was breathing too deep and his head was ten-beers-in fuzzy. Then he doubled back and leaned through the curtain again.
Anne was staring at herself in the floor-length mirror, her brows down tight, her arms wrapped around her waist. When she saw him, she jumped.
“Did we forget something?”
He lowered his lids. “You’re going to the bachelor party, right? Because that’s in the job description of a groomsmen, straight up.”
chapter
3
At eight o’clock, Anne stepped out of her house and locked the door. Shoving her hands in the pockets of her Patagonia parka, she blew out a breath and watched the white cloud disperse into the dark night. Her street was quiet, which was why she chose to live on it. The neighborhood was made up of young families with kids who went to bed early and retirees who kept the same schedule for different reasons—
As a stretch limo turned onto her street, its bumping din was an out-of-place that made her add another regret to her list for the weekend.
And that was before Moose popped out of the sunroof, a beer in each hand. “Siiiiiiiissssssssssssssssssttttttttttterrrrrrrrrrr!”
Everyone at the damn firehouse had a nickname, and she’d gotten hers because she was the chief’s frickin’ sister.
It was just another example of the legacy that hung over her: her father, Tom, Sr., a supposed hero in the department until his death, and then her brother, Tom, Jr., a ball-busting badass who made dealing with a kraken seem like a cakewalk.
The limo lurched to a halt at the end of her driveway, and she hustled down to it on the theory that the faster she got in, the quicker her neighbors would be left in peace.
“What’s going on, groomsman!” Moose hollered. “We gonna do this or what!”
The rear door opened, and old-school Stones blared as Danny vacated the interior and stretched to his full height. She was surprised to see him in slacks and a button-down. He was usually in an NBFD wardrobe whether he was on or off duty.
“Hey,” he said as she came up to him. “I talked to Moose. No strippers. Deandra put her foot down. So we’re just going to hang at the Local.”
The Local was the firefighter union’s meeting hall, and not a place anyone would ever jump naked out of a cake.
Anne shrugged. “I can always Uber home if I don’t like what’s going on. Moose needs to do Moose without regard to me.”
On that note, she ducked down and leaned in. A cheer rose up, eclipsing the rock and roll.
Everyone she expected was there: Jack and Mick, Moose and Danny’s roommates, who were on the SWAT team; Patrick “Duff” Duffy, the 499’s resident golden boy; Deshaun Lewis, the engineer, and his cousin, Ty, who was on Search and Rescue; and Emilio Chavez, who was another member of the 499 crew.
If you counted Danny and the groom, it was well over seventeen hundred pounds of muscle, and she wondered how the limo’s suspension was handling the load.
“How we doing, boys?” she said as she shuffled herself in.
All kinds of “fuckin’ great” rippled around while she parked it in the only vacant space, between Duff and Jack. As a beer was passed her way, Danny squeezed his heft in and pointed at Duff.
“You, move.”
“What?” the blond guy asked.
“Move. You’re in my seat.”
The chatter died down, and Anne had to admit she was surprised, too. But Danny was not joking.
“Come on, Dannyboy, what—”
“Move.”
Duff got up grousing. “Whose lap am I in then?”
“Mine!” Moose said as he patted his knees. “Last night as a single bastard, I want to live it up!”
“Well, if you put it like that.” Duff changed the song. “I might as well put on a show.”
Danny sat down next to her as a hush fell over the crew, and then—
Of course, Anne thought. Like a Virgin.
As the song started, Duff looked over his shoulder at Moose and blew him a kiss. “ ’Cuz I ain’t never did this before.”
“That’s J. Cole,” Deshaun said. “Not Madonna.”
“Don’t interrupt the art, my dude.” Duff extended himself out the sunroof and went full-on Pavarotti. “I made it throuuuugh the wiiiiiiiiiiiildernesssssssssssssssss, somehow I maaaaaaade it throoooooooooooooooooooooough . . .”
Duff had a beautiful face and a great body, but dear Lord in Heaven above, he moved like a white boy who’d had both his legs recently broken. And his singing? Not only was he not a candidate for The Voice, she imagined dogs all over town were looking for noise-canceling headphones.
“So how you been, Anne?” Jack asked her while Moose slapped that ass.
As Danny’s roommate looked over at her, she was happy for the distraction and struck by how handsome he was. He had a military haircut that was so tight, his scalp showed around his ears, and he was in all black, from the slacks to the button-down. Heavily muscled, just like Mick, he had the air she had come to associate with trained killers: He was totally calm, as if he knew, from firsthand experience, that he could handle anything that might come his way.
“Good,” she answered. “You?”
Duff tackled the chorus like only a tone deaf, half-drunken, former linebacker could: all volume, no pitch, desecration all around.
“I got teargassed today in training.” Jack wiped his face. “My eyes are still stinging. So if I tear up?”
“It’s not because you’re emotional over Duff’s dancing and singing.”
“Well, maybe I’m a little emotional about that—but it’s not pride or envy, I’ll tell you that.”
As Moose threw his head back and laughed until he was red in the bearded face, she felt sad. He had always been the loud noise with the soft heart, and she was worried about this marriage for him: Such a good guy, and Deandra was not the right match from everything Anne had heard down at the station.
When the limo made a turn, Danny leaned across the aisle to Moose. “I thought we were going to the Local?”
“Change of venue.” The groom grinned. “Don’t tell Deandra.”
“So where are we going?”
“Shhhhh. It’s our little secret.”
New Brunswick was a city on the ocean about forty-five minutes down the coast from Boston. With a population of around a million, it was an also-ran in a lot of ways compared to Beantown, but it had enough density to
support a business district, a state university, and a level-one trauma center that culled patients from Cape Cod.
It also had the Stripper Strip, as it was known.
Back at the turn of the century, New Brunie had been defined by its manufacturing, all manner of wares and textiles being produced around its bay and shipped off or sent by rail across the nation. The boon didn’t last. Over time, as that sector of the economy had gone overseas, the warehouses and plants had tried to transition into other uses, but most had ended up abandoned.
Some businesses had come in to the void, however.
And not all of them were places Anne would go with a bunch of drunken men. On a night when questionable choices were part of tradition.
As the limo came to a stop at a light, Anne wondered whether she could make a break for it. Probably not. She’d have to climb over at least four of them to get to the door—
And now they were hanging a Louie and heading down to the bay.
The Stripper Strip was on the far edge of the warehouse district, a lineup of some ten or fifteen “gentlemen’s clubs” that were interspersed between tattoo parlors, rooming houses, and a blood donation clinic. She’d been down it countless times, although not as a patron: The 499 firehouse was only six blocks to the west, and was the response unit for the entire area.
She knew each of the places by heart and she prayed it wasn’t—
Moose stood up out of the sunroof again. “Cat’s Meow, here we come!”
Oh, dear God.
* * *
Danny was ready to kill Moose. The guy had sworn up and down that the Local was hosting the party—in other words, nothing inappropriate would be going down. No strippers, no sloppy drinking, just a bunch of hardies hanging out and telling stories and toasting Moose.
This re-routing had taken them directly into naked territory.
Danny didn’t judge strippers or sex workers, but he’d never been into that scene. Even when he’d been an idiot in college with more hormones than brains, he’d always preferred to find enthusiastic partners rather than remunerated reluctants, because the objectification had never been something he was comfortable with.