“Brother.” Suddenly, Dexter was enfolded in his own bear hug. Even if he hadn’t seen it was Luke, his nose would’ve known. His recently married brother always smelled like chocolate these days, thanks to his Hershey-employed wife, Natalie. “Congrats. We’re all in shock.”
“That was our plan,” Dexter replied.
“You fooled us all.” His brother Danny was now slapping him on the back. “Sneak-attacking at the eleventh hour while hiding a legit, respectable girlfriend. Why does that sound like you?”
“Right?” Dexter forced a big smile, waiting for everyone to get the congratulatory BS out of their systems.
“Well, well. Brother,” Vince said, coming up from behind. “I should kick your ass right now. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Dude, no.” Dexter’s muscles clenched. He’d joked with Jules earlier about Vince being pissed, but never considered he’d really care. “It’s not what you… Let me explain—”
All three of his brothers busted out in laughter.
“We’re just giving you hell, man.” Vince grinned. “When did you become such an easy target? I tell ya, though, if it wasn’t Jules, I’d think this is a setup so you’d win the bet, but she’s one girl who can’t be bought, and she’s the worst liar ever.”
Though Dexter was still miles away from feeling comfortable, they hugged again, while he offered his own wedding congratulations. After all, not screwing up Vince’s weekend was the whole point of keeping the Vegas mistake a secret.
At the thought, he scanned the patio. He’d kind of forgotten about Jules.
She was still with Roxy, smiling, though she looked a little freaked around the eyes. Roxy was touching Jules’s hair, pointed at her skirt. Girl-talking about what Jules had worn to the wedding.
The same outfit she has on now.
“Dexter.”
After plastering on another smile, he turned toward the voice and stepped forward. “Mom,” he said, bending down to kiss his mother’s cheek.
Before he could unbend, she had his face between her hands and stared him straight in the eyes. “How could you do this?” Her tone was harsh, exactly like the time he’d been busted for throwing an all-night pool party. “I can’t believe it.”
“Mom, I’m…” he stammered, ready to apologize for…something.
“Dexter,” she said, voice catching. He was horrified when she blinked back a tear. “Oh, Dex. I’m so happy.”
“You are?”
“Of course!” She pulled him into a hug and squeezed tight. His mother hadn’t hugged him so close or so hard since high school graduation when he’d been valedictorian. Something about that gave him pause.
Had Mom not had reason to be proud of him since then? Not until he came home married to Jules?
“Dex.”
The knee-jerk, infantile reaction to the new voice was to emotionally cower. But Dexter was a grown man who made grown-man decisions, so he squared his shoulders and stepped up.
“Hi, Dad,” he said, not sure if he should hug him or offer his hand to shake. They hadn’t spoken since that phone call a week ago when Dexter had told him he was leaving ET.
In the end, Dexter didn’t have to decide how to greet his father, because Dad stuck out his hand—the cold, formal greeting he’d dreaded. Disappointed and swimming in irrational guilt, Dexter forced a smile and civilly shook his father’s hand.
“Can we talk?” he asked, leaning forward and dropping his voice. But Dad shook his head an inch and looked the other way. Dexter might’ve forced the conversation, but Luke and Vince were pounding him on the back again.
So much for no one paying attention.
For the next few minutes, he smiled and bumped fists, accepted more slaps and “you had us so worried” congratulations. Even people from town offered congrats. Eventually, it was just the family again while the rest of the party guests returned to their conversations on the other side of the lawn. The family, except for his father, who’d disappeared.
Dexter had to get him alone sometime in the next two days.
“So? How did this happen?” Mom asked, sparkly eyed.
“How did what happen?” Dexter asked. Like a moron.
“You know.” Mom patted the side of her hair. “You and Juliet—Roxanne,” she snapped across the patio. “Stop monopolizing your new sister-in-law. They’ve only been married one day, I’m sure she’s missing her husband.”
Husband? Their eyes found each other. Jules looked as weirded out as Dexter felt. He hadn’t even thought the word “husband” yet. Let alone “wife.”
Holy hell—he had a damn wife.
“Aww, look at them,” Roxy cooed. “They’re so cute, staring at each other like no one else exists. Jules, you’re shaking. You must sincerely not want to be away from Dex. That’s so adorbs, I might vomit.”
“Um, yeah,” Jules said, hiding her hands behind her back.
Dexter noted the pink marble flush creeping up her neck, so he quickly moved to her side. “Babe, um, sweetheart, I’m here,” he said, putting an awkward arm around her, like he’d never touched a woman before. He didn’t know what to do next, so he glanced at Luke and Natalie, then at Vince and Maddie, to see how real couples behaved.
Following their lead, he let his arm drop to Jules’s waist, pulled her into his side, and absently kissed the top of her head. “All better now?”
“Um-hmm,” she exhaled, but he could tell she was biting the inside of her cheek, felt her shaking.
Hold it together, Flower Power.
“So,” Luke said, “tell us everything. None of us knew you were dating. Hell”—he paused to chuckle—“I can’t think of a more unlikely couple than you two.”
“No doubt,” Roxy added.
“And I thought we were friends,” Vince chimed in, pointing at Jules. “You’ve been totally holding out on me.” He scratched his head. “How long have you been together?”
“Uh.” Dexter ran a knuckle over his chin, no idea what to say. He and Jules hadn’t discussed their backstory. Like an idiot who didn’t know his own family’s tendencies, he hadn’t counted on the relationship twenty questions game. “Since, um…since…” He glanced at Jules, who’d gone pale.
“Yeah.” Roxy grinned. “When did you first hook up?”
“Roxanne,” Mom scolded. “Don’t pry.”
“Mom, it’s fine. We’re family. Right, Jules? Tell us all the romantic details.” Roxy lowered to sit on the grass, eyes glowing. His twenty-one-year-old sister needed to stop watching chick flicks. “Come on, dish!”
“Well,” Jules began, “we ran into each other in…in—”
“Vegas,” Dexter cut in, figuring they should stick as close to the truth as possible, less chance to slip up. “I was there on business, and we just, kind of, were both there.”
“When?” Roxy asked.
Jules opened her mouth, but for a moment, no sound came out. “Sept— um, Oct—Noctober!” she blurted.
Oh, man. This was not good. Jules had warned what a bad liar she was. Here they were fielding questions from the nosiest people in Hershey, and they hadn’t come up with fake dating tales to feed them.
Stick close to the truth.
“Last November,” Dexter said. “At the airport. We kind of got, um, tangled up.” He gave her a squeeze, hoping it would get her to stop shaking. “Remember?”
She nodded noncommittally at first, but then he felt her release a deep breath, tense muscles relaxing. “His cufflink got caught on my shirt.” She snorted a little laugh, right on cue. “We couldn’t get separated.”
“A shirt like you’re wearing now?” Roxy asked, pointing at Jules. “With the fringe?”
Jules tugged one of the strings. “Kind of.”
More like the exact shirt she had on. There were still fragments of those fringes around his button.
“Did you ask her on a date right then?” Natalie asked, looping an arm through Luke’s.
“We went to a ba
r.”
“Restaurant,” Jules was quick to correct. “Tex-Mex.”
Dexter couldn’t help chuckling. “Tex-Mex,” he agreed. “Will you ever forget that drink the bartender made for us?”
Jules rolled her eyes dotingly. “How could I?”
“That was potent stuff.”
“I’ll say. What did the bartender call it?”
“Vegas Sunrise. But it should’ve been called the great black hole.”
Jules snorted again, charmingly. “You could wallpaper a room with that stuff.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “We kind of did. I think. Shoopy,” he whispered with a wink.
“Shoopy,” she whispered back, smiling, her creamy fair cheeks turning an enchanting shade of pink.
Dexter traced his fingers up her spine, under her hair, until he touched skin, until he knew she’d stopped breathing.
Out of the blue, he had a memory flash. Not of the airport or the bar, but of that same square of skin, and how he’d swept her hair away so he could touch it with his mouth. The image was so vivid he had to blink hard to clear it.
When he opened his eyes, Jules’s chin was tilted up at him, causing unexpected heat to burn through his chest.
“What about your second date? The big follow-up?”
Dexter blinked again. For a second there, he’d forgotten where he was. He’d been in a bubble with Jules, with just the moment of that memory. He glanced at Roxy, racking his hungover brain for an answer to her question.
“Tell us about it, Jules,” Roxy added, a gossip-hungry look in her eyes. “Where’d he take you? Did he come to Vegas or fly you to New York?”
Jules bit her lip as that betraying marble crept up her throat.
“I bet New York,” Luke said.
“No, babe,” Natalie retorted. “Ten bucks says he took her to Paris on a private plane.”
“You think?”
“Wouldn’t you do that if you had access to the company jet?”
They both turned to Jules, waiting for an answer.
Dexter was no help, since he couldn’t think of the last time he’d been on a proper date, let alone a second date.
“Was it Paris?” Natalie asked, leaning into Luke’s side.
“Um,” Jules tried again. “Um, yeah. Well, no it was…uh, yuh—yoga.”
“Yoga?” Roxy said. “Like a class?”
“In Paris?” Natalie added.
“Mmm.” Jules nodded.
“You took her to a yoga class on a date?”
“Hold on, back up,” Vince said. “The more important question is, Dexter can do yoga? That I can’t believe.”
“Of course he can,” Jules said with sudden energy in her voice. “I’d never be with someone who doesn’t love yoga as much as I do.”
Everyone was gawking at Dexter now, wearing expressions of pure bafflement. Not like he couldn’t go along with it now, not after what Jules just professed.
“I love yoga, obsessed with it.” He gave her shoulder a pat. “I’m an expert at those, ya know, poses.” He quickly flipped through his memory files. “The crane, the warrior, and the uh, the bridge pose.”
“The bridge?” Roxy said. “Isn’t that the one when you lay arched on your back, and your pelvis is all the way up? Like you’re the bridge?”
Yikes. Had Dexter just admitted in front of his brothers that he could arch his damn pelvis?
“Exactly,” Jules said, linking her arm through his. “That’s his most advanced pose. Right, sweetie?”
Dexter could be a gym rat, but he seriously doubted he’d ever be flexible enough to do that.
“Let’s see it,” Roxy said, clapping her hands like a happy seal. “Do the bridge pose on the lawn, Dex. Show us!”
No way in hell.
Dexter pinched Jules’s back until she squirmed. “Not without my sensei spotting me,” he said.
“Guru, not sensei, honey pie,” she whispered. “Sorry, we’re, uh, we’re both pretty tired from last night. Isn’t healthy to strain any more muscles.”
Roxy’s eyes went dinner-plate wide. “What muscles did you strain on your wedding night?”
Jules’s face drained of more color. So…when the tables were turned, maybe she wasn’t as free-speaking about sex as she claimed.
“Our third date was the important one.” Dexter jumped in to fill the silence.
“Really?” Roxy grabbed a drink off the table and rose onto her knees. “Why?”
Ugh. He really needed to sit down with Jules and come up with a story. Their first ten dates should get them through this weekend.
Think, Elliott. Think. Where would a normal guy take a normal girl on a third date? “We went ice-skating. Jules loves ice-skating.”
“In Las Vegas?” Mom asked.
Dexter swallowed. “Um, yeah. See, I flew into town really late, as a surprise, and the only place open in her neighborhood was an ice rink. It was just closing, actually, but…but I paid the guy to stay open for us, for just an hour.” Dexter talked faster, on a roll, the details spilling out like he was watching them in a movie. “So there we were, in the ice rink, all by ourselves except for the Zamboni. Jules laced up her skates and got all bundled up, but since they didn’t have my skate size, I jogged beside her around the rink.” He high-kneed in place to demonstrate, terribly proud for coming up with something so original on the fly.
“That’s a scene from Rocky,” Luke said.
Crap.
“I did that on purpose—for the date. It’s Jules’s favorite movie.”
“It is?” Mom asked. “A film about boxing?”
“Mmm,” Jules said. “I love when he wins at the end.”
Luke rubbed his chin. “Rocky loses in the first movie.”
“Oh, right. I know.” Jules waved a hand. “But I love it when he…he eventually wins. You know?” Her neck was getting alarmingly marbly. What did she say would come next? A hiccup attack?
He needed to end this fast.
“When did you know you were in love?” Roxy asked, toying with the straw of her iced tea. “Who said it first? And how did Dex propose?”
Since his sister had addressed Jules, Dexter figured it was her turn to come up with something. Hopefully not a scene from Rambo.
“Well, we knew we were in love at the, uh…” She ran both hands through her hair and held it back from her face, displaying her bright red ears. “And when he proposed, he just sort of…” Her sentence was cut off when she hiccuped three times in a row.
“Dear,” Mom said, reaching a hand out to Jules. “Do you feel okay?”
“She’s fine,” Dexter said.
“Yes, fi—” Another set of hiccups shook her body.
She didn’t sound fine, or look fine. The marble was covering her chest and throat, and if she had another hiccup attack, she might start hyperventilating.
“Dex, get her some water—she looks peaked,” Mom said. “Have you eaten?”
Jules shook her head.
“For heaven’s sake. Vincent, pass me that plate of canapés. Have one, dear.” Mom picked up a cracker with something white and orange on top. “Open wide.”
Then Dexter stood there and watched his mother literally hand-feed Jules.
“Better?”
Jules nodded as she chewed, but suddenly she slapped a hand over her mouth and dashed into the house. Silence hung in the air as they stared after her.
“We didn’t eat on the plane and came straight here,” Dexter explained, sliding his hands in his pockets. “She’s just hungry or tired or…” Or what? “I’ll go check.”
He left his family and followed where Jules had run into the hallway. She was pacing in a circle, shaking out her hands and muttering at the floor.
“You all right?”
“No. I’m not.” Her voice was so loud it echoed off the walls.
“Shhh. Come on, don’t blow this.”
“I told you I’m a terrible liar—it makes me physically ill, you saw that. I especia
lly don’t like lying to my friends. I had no idea what to say to them.”
“That was my fault. We should’ve talked first.” Now he was shaking out his hands like Jules. “We didn’t take the time to figure out a story to tell them.”
“Well, I can’t do that now,” she said, getting pink-faced and twitchy.
“I couldn’t agree more. It looks like you’re having a meltdown. We can’t let them see you like this.” He thought for a moment. “Are you stable? Okay to drive?”
“Drive?”
“Come with me.” He put an arm around her and ushered her to the front door, grabbing a set of keys from a long panel of hooks. “My car is the black Bimmer out front. Take it and drive around for a while, clear your head. Better yet, go to your lawyer’s office. That’s a logical excuse, at least, for why you’re gone.” He placed the keys in her hand. “Meet me back here and we’ll find a private spot to figure out what to do next. Okay?” He waited for her to nod. “Go now before someone else comes to check on you.”
The strain on her face relaxed, and she wasn’t nearly as flushed. Though he did kind of like that flush.
“Thanks.” She took the keys, grabbed her purse from another hook, and walked out without looking back.
Dexter watched from the front porch. He only cringed a little when she ground into second gear. After his car had disappeared down the driveway, he let out a long breath, brushed down the front of his jacket, squared his tie, and went to face the family. By now, they should be back to fawning over Vince and Maddie—the honored couple.
But the second he stepped onto the patio, he knew he was wrong. His parents and siblings, along with their significant others, stood in a line, staring at him.
“Sorry about that,” Dexter said. “She’s a little…we’re both overwhelmed. I think it’s best if you keep me and Jules and, um, everything a secret for now. Is that cool?”
His mom stepped forward from the group, holding both hands over her heart. “Dexter,” she said, breaking into a smile. “Why didn’t you tell us Juliet’s pregnant?”
Chapter Five
Once Jules was down the hill, she finally took a deep breath, a few of them. In through the nose, expand the belly, fill the chest, out through the nose. Since no one else was on the road, she put the car in park at a four-way stop and just sat.
Wife for the Weekend Page 6