A Kiss For You

by Rachel Van Dyken

  “That, they are, smarty-pants.”

  “Hey, Em,” Kimber said, pulling me in for a hug.

  “Hey, Kimmy.”

  “Rough day?” she asked.

  “You could say that.”

  I dropped Lilyanne back onto her feet and opened the trunk. Kimber hoisted the smaller suitcase out of the trunk, and I wheeled the larger one into her ginormous house.

  “Em! Do you want to see my new dress? It has dinosaurs on it. Dinosaurs say rawr!” Lilyanne said.

  “Not now, Lily. We have to get Emery into the guest room. Can you show her where to go?” Kimber asked.

  Lilyanne’s eyes lit up, and she raced for the stairs at lightning speed. “Come on, Auntie Em. I know the way.”

  Kimber sighed, exhausted. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Me, too. She’s a handful. But it’s good to have her. How else would I be able to find my way around here?” I joked as we made our way up the stairs after Lilyanne. “Seriously, are we in Beauty and the Beast? Is there a west wing I should avoid?” I gasped.

  Kimber snorted and rolled her eyes. “It’s not that big.”

  “Never too big for a library with ladders, of course.”

  “Of course. We might have one of those.”

  “I knew it! Please tell me all the dirty romance novels we read in high school are proudly on display now.”

  Kimber dropped my suitcase in the guest bedroom, which was approximately the same size as my loft back in Austin. “Noah would kill me,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Most of those books are on my iPad now anyway. I’ve converted to e-books.”

  “Fancy,” I said, fluttering my fingers at her. “I could use an iPad. Just throwing that out there in case Noah needs gift ideas for Christmas.”

  Kimber laughed. “God, I’ve missed you.”

  I grinned devilishly. Noah worked at the Texas Tech Medical Center. He worked long, long hours and made Scrooge McDuck–level dollar bills. He and Kimber were high school sweethearts and possibly the disgustingly cutest couple I’d ever encountered.

  “Come on, Lilyanne,” Kimber called. “We have cookies in the oven.”

  “Cookies?” I asked, my eyes lighting up. “Mom’s recipe?”

  “Of course. Are you going to go see her?” Kimber asked, as if she didn’t care. But I saw her glance nervously in my direction.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t get along with my mother. It was more like…we were the exact same person. So, when we were together, our stubborn heads butted, and everyone ran for the hills. But there weren’t hills in Lubbock.

  “Yeah…probably.”

  “Did you even let her know you were coming into town?”

  Kimber picked Lilyanne up and dropped her down into a seat by the sprinkles. The timer dinged for the cookies, and Kimber pulled them out of the oven. Fluffy golden brown Christmas cookies, just the way we liked them.

  I shot Kimber a sheepish look. “No, but…”

  “Gah, Emery! She’s going to kill me if you stay here without telling her you’re in town. I do not want to deal with that while I’m pregnant.”

  “I’m going to tell her!” I said, reaching for a cookie.

  Kimber slapped my fingers with the spatula. “Those are too hot. Wait for them to cool.”

  “You don’t want a boo-boo,” Lilyanne said.

  I sucked my finger into my mouth and made a face at my sister. “Fine.”

  Kimber dropped the subject, and we spent the rest of the afternoon making cookies. Lilyanne and I got to cut out the shapes with Kimber’s cookie cutters, and then she placed them on the tray and into the oven. Once they cooled, we iced and added Christmas sprinkles on top of them.

  By the time Noah was home, earlier than usual for him, we were covered in flour with sugary-sweet hangovers. It was a welcome relief from the drama I’d endured with Mitch. It was a known fact that Kimber’s cookies cured heartaches.

  I pulled Noah in for a big hug. “Missed you.”

  “You, too, Em. I heard you were having some trouble.”

  My nose wrinkled. “Yeah. Thanks for letting me stay while I figure things out.”

  “You’re always welcome here. It’ll be good to have you around for Kimber, too. She’s home a lot with this one, and I know she’s ready to get back to work.”

  My sister owned a kick-ass bakery right off of campus called Death by Chocolate that made the best cookies, cupcakes, and doughnuts in town. But, with the new baby on the way, she’d taken a step back and turned more to management, so she could work from home. But her true passion was baking, and I knew she’d love to get back into the thick of things as soon as she could.

  “Thanks Noah.”

  When it was Lilyanne’s bedtime, I finally left their house and went to meet my best friend out for a drink.

  When I pulled up to Flips, I was shaking from the bitter December cold that had sprung up out of nowhere. I rummaged through my backseat, extracted a black leather jacket, and then dashed across the parking lot.

  I handed the bouncer my ID and then pushed through the hipster crowd to the back of the bar. As expected, I found Heidi leaning over a pool table and making eyes at a guy who thought he was going to make some easy money on a game against a chick. His friends stood around with smirks on their face, as they drank Bud Light. Lubbock was big enough that there were still enough idiots for Heidi to hustle, but the regulars steered clear.

  “Em!” Heidi called, jumping up and down at my appearance.

  “Hey, babe,” I said with a wink.

  “Guys, I’m going to have to finish this game early. My bestie is here.”

  The guy’s brow furrowed in confusion. She leaned down and knocked the rest of her balls into the holes, hardly paying any attention. He and his friends’ jaws dropped, and I just laughed. I’d seen it happen one too many times.

  Heidi’s dad had owned a pool hall when she was a kid, and her skills were legit. I was pretty sure pool was the start of her love affair with geometry. She’d gotten into civil engineering at Tech, and she now worked at Wright Construction, the largest construction company in the nation. I thought it was a waste of her talent, but she liked to be the only female in a male-dominated industry.

  “You hustled us!” the guy yelled.

  She fluttered her long eyelashes at him and grinned. “Pay up!”

  He tossed a couple of twenties on the pool table and stormed away like a sore loser. Heidi counted them out and then stuffed them into the back pocket of her destroyed jeans.

  “Emery, baby,” Heidi said, flinging her arms around my neck. “I have missed your face.”

  “Missed you, too. You buying?”

  She laughed, removed one of the guy’s twenties from her pocket, and threw it on the table. “Peter, shots for me and Emery!”

  Peter nodded his head at me. “Hey, prom queen.”

  “That was Kimber. Not me!”

  “Oh, right,” he said, as if vaguely remembering that had happened to my sister and not me. “You dated that Wright brother though, right?”

  I breathed out heavily through my nose. Nine and a half years since Landon Wright had broken up with me on graduation day, and I was still recognized as the girl who’d dated a Wright brother. Awesome.

  “Yeah,” I grumbled, “a long time ago.”

  “Speaking of the Wright brothers,” Heidi said, pushing a shot of tequila and lime toward me and adding salt to the space between her thumb and finger.

  “Nope.”

  “Now that you’re newly single after you kicked that jerk to the curb.”

  “Oh God, Heidi, can we not talk about Mitch?”

  “I promise I won’t talk about the skeezeball if you hear me out.”

  I sighed heavily. “All right. What about the Wrights?”

  “Sutton Wright is getting married on Saturday.”

  “She is?” I asked in surprise. “Isn’t she still at Tech?”

  Heidi shrugged. “She found the one. It’s kind o
f a rush job. They only got engaged on Halloween.”

  “Shotgun?” I asked.

  The entire Wright family was riddled with scandal. With billions of dollars to throw around and no moral code, it was easy for anyone to get in trouble. But the five Wright siblings took it to a new level.

  “No idea really, but I’d guess so. Either way, who cares? I am not missing a chance for an open bar and a swank party.”

  “Have fun with that,” I said dryly.

  “I’m taking you with me, bitch,” Heidi said.

  She raised her shot glass to me, and I warily eyed her before raising mine to meet hers.

  After I downed the tequila and sucked on the lime, I finally responded, “You know I have a rule about Wright siblings, right?”

  “I know you’ve been jaded against the lot of them after Landon, yes.”

  “Oh no, you know it’s not just Landon.”

  “Yeah, so they’re all a bag of dicks. Who cares? Let’s go get drunk on their dime and make fun of them.” Heidi seductively placed her hand on my thigh and raised her eyebrows up and down. “I’ll put out.”

  I snorted and smacked her arm. “You’re such a whore.”

  “You love me. I’ll get you a new dress. We’ll have fun.”

  I shrugged. What could it hurt? “Fine. Why not?”

  Chapter 2

  Jensen

  “My whore sister is pregnant again, and this time, she wants to keep it,” I said to no one in particular as I expertly knotted the red bow tie at my neck.

  “Yeah, that’s kind of the point of the wedding today, Jensen,” my brother Austin said. His bow tie still hung loose around his neck, and he was already on his third glass of whiskey. At twenty-nine years old, he was already shaping up to be the one who tarnished the Wright name. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up just like our father—a raving alcoholic up until the moment he was buried six feet under.

  “Can’t believe we’re fucking doing this today.”

  “She’s in love, man,” Austin said.

  He raised his glass to me, and I fought the urge to call him a sentimental dick.

  “He’s looking for a paycheck. A paycheck that I’m going to have to provide because there’s no way he’ll be able to take care of our little sister.” I finally got the bow tie straight and turned back to Austin.

  “Have a drink. You’re being too uptight about the whole thing.”

  I glared at him. I had to be uptight about this shit. I was only thirty-two, and I was the one in charge of the business. I was the one who had been left with all the money and responsibilities to take care of my four younger siblings. If that made me uptight, then fuck him.

  But I didn’t say any of that. I just strode across the room and refilled his glass of whiskey. “Have another drink, Austin. You remind me so much of Dad.”

  “Fuck you, Jensen. Can’t you just be happy for Sutton?”

  “Yeah, Jensen,” Morgan said. She stepped into the room in a floor-length red dress with her dark hair pulled up off her face. Her smile was magnetic, as usual.

  Morgan was only twenty-five and the most normal one of my family. We all had our issues, but Morgan gave me the least amount of grief, which made her my favorite.

  “Don’t you start in on this, too,” I told her.

  “Sutton is her own person. She always has been. She does whatever she wants to do, no matter what anyone says,” Morgan said. Taking the drink out of Austin’s hand, she downed a large gulp. “Don’t you remember that time she decided she was a princess superhero? Mom couldn’t get her out of a tutu, cape, and crown for almost a year.”

  I laughed at the memory. Sutton had been a handful. Fuck, she still was a handful. Twenty-one and already getting married.

  “Yeah, I remember. I’d be happier about the whole thing with what’s his face if he wasn’t such a completely incompetent dipshit,” I told her.

  “His name is Maverick,” Austin cut in. “And you can’t fucking talk, man. Your name is Jensen,” he drawled my name out, exaggerating the second syllable. “It’s a fucking weird name, too.”

  “It’s not a weird name. Maverick is a douche name, especially since he goes by Maverick and not Mav or Rick or something.”

  Morgan rolled the big brown eyes she’d inherited from our mother. “Let’s drop it, shall we? Where is Landon anyway?”

  As if on cue, my twenty-seven-year-old younger brother Landon schlepped into the room. His wife, Miranda, followed in his footsteps in the same dress as Morgan. My eyes slid over to Morgan. She returned the look, saying a million things in that one glance.

  “Hey, Landon,” Austin said when he realized neither of us were going to say shit since Miranda was here.

  “Hey,” Landon said, sinking into a seat next to Austin.

  He looked beat.

  Landon was the only one of us who didn’t work for the company. Austin and Morgan both worked for me at Wright Construction, and Sutton would once she graduated—or that had been the plan before she got pregnant. Now, I’d probably have to hire Maverick in her place, so she could take care of that baby.

  Landon had graduated from Stanford—unlike the rest of our family who had attended Texas Tech since the school’s founding in the 1920s—but instead of putting his business degree to good use, he had joined the professional golf circuit. That was when he’d met Miranda. They’d dated for only six months before he proposed. Just like we were doing with Sutton, we’d all sworn that Miranda was pregnant and using him for his money. But when she hadn’t had a baby nine months later, we had all been fucking baffled.

  It was one thing to marry a girl like Miranda for a baby. You had to take care of the kid. That always fucking came first. No matter who the mother was. It was another thing to marry a girl like Miranda because you liked her—or, fuck, loved her.

  “Well, what a happy reunion this is,” Miranda said. She eyed us all like she was trying to figure out how to wiggle more money out of the Wright family. There might as well have been actual dollar signs in her eyes.

  “Miranda,” Austin said. He stood and gave her a quick hug. “Good to see you.”

  “Thanks, Austin,” she said with a giggle.

  Austin, the peacekeeper. That used to be Landon but not anymore. Not since the wicked bitch had sunk her claws into him.

  As a man who had been through a brutal divorce already, I couldn’t figure out why Landon hadn’t handed over the paperwork. Being around Miranda for a solid five minutes was too much for me, and it made Morgan lose her shit. I hated that Landon always looked like someone had kicked his puppy.

  I’d been there. I knew what that was like. I did not want him to have to go through the same thing I had. Or end up with the same consequences.

  “Come on, Morgan,” Miranda trilled. “I’m sure Sutton will need us with the other bridesmaids.”

  “I’m sure. Why don’t you head over there and tell her I’ll be just a minute?” Morgan said, using the slow voice she typically reserved for small children.

  Miranda shot her an evil glare. Or maybe that was her face. I could never tell.

  Then, she grabbed Landon’s arm. “I’ll see you at the ceremony, honey. Kiss?”

  Landon turned his face up to her, and she latched on to his lips like a leech.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he said automatically.

  When she was gone, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Bless her heart,” Morgan drawled.

  “Y’all,” Landon groaned, “don’t.”

  Morgan started humming the theme song for the Wicked Witch of the West.

  “Are you ever going to give it a break, Morgan?” Landon asked.

  “No, probably not.”

  “We’ve been married for two years now.”

  “I can’t believe you’re staying at a hotel,” I said.

  Landon shrugged and reached for the bottle of whiskey, pouring himself a glass. “Miranda wanted to stay downtown.” />
  “And, before we start World War III by bringing up Miranda,” Austin cut in, “I feel like someone should grab Sutton. We’re about to suffer through a couple of hours of pictures with eighteen of her closest friends. Might have some time, just the five of us.”

  “I limited her to nine bridesmaids,” I said.

  “That’s a limit?” Morgan asked with a huff. “I don’t think I even like nine people.”

  “You weren’t in a sorority either,” I reminded her.

  “I don’t like people. I certainly wouldn’t like to pay for new sisters. Sutton is above and beyond.”

  Austin and Landon laughed, and that sound finally made me relax. It was nice to have all my siblings back in one place. With Sutton in school and Landon living on some beach in Florida where he could golf year-round, it just wasn’t the same. Some people thought the Wright siblings were…odd. They thought we were too close, but we had to be. With both parents gone, we were all each other had.

  “You want to go see if she’s decent?” I asked Morgan.

  She groaned. “This is what I get for being the only other girl.”

  I opened the door for her, and she hiked up her dress and stormed out. I knew she wasn’t happy about having to spend the next twelve-plus hours with seven other girls she didn’t know or like, plus Miranda, but there was nothing I could do about it. Trying to convince Sutton to do anything was like trying to move a mountain. She might be tiny, but she was a firecracker.

  I grabbed the bottle of whiskey out of Landon’s hands before he and Austin could finish it. Leaving the two of them alone with alcohol would guarantee a disaster. Then, I rummaged through my bag and found the group of shot glasses I’d brought with me. I was setting them up right when Sutton returned with Morgan.

  “Hey, y’all!” Sutton said, flouncing into the room with a skip in her step. “Morgan said you needed me for something important.”

  I hefted the bottle of Four Roses Single Barrel whiskey at her. “Your brothers tried to drink the bottle before you got here, but I thought, a toast?”

  She sagged in disappointment. “You know I can’t have that.”

  I grinned devilishly and then grabbed a bottle of apple juice that I’d tucked away, knowing she couldn’t drink. “How about this?”