Blissed (Misfit Brides #1) (21 page)

Insanity. Right.

Recovered. Right.

She’d seen him a few times this week. Once out jogging, which had set her not-anywhere-near-dormant-anymore parts all atingle. Once stepping into the tea shop across the street with his brother. And once at the Rose and Dove, where the QG had hosted a welcome reception for him in one of the private rooms that doubled as wedding chapels. Natalie had been leaving the country club after another janitorial committee meeting, and she’d glanced into the room just in time to catch the QG singing Kimmie’s praises to him.

Also just in time to watch him notice her walking by.

Three days later, she could still feel the intensity of his gaze.

Not that she should’ve spent any time thinking about it. The panicked Husband Games e-mails and calls had tripled this week. She was working on Gabby’s dress late into the night after dealing with shop issues and Knot Fest issues, and today, Dad was nowhere to be found. Maybe he was having another secret meeting with the QG. Natalie had seen him with Marilyn a couple more times this week, and there had been something off about the way they had their heads tucked together.

Not comforting.

The QG was probably practicing mind control tricks to convince Dad to sell her the boutique. He’d interviewed some brokers this week, but until Mom’s shop was sold—Natalie’s heart withered some more—the QG still had a shot.

But since today’s schedule was full, the parking lot was finally open, and nothing had gone obviously wrong, Natalie told herself Dad was above mind-control tricks. That he was probably keeping the QG out of Natalie’s hair so Nat could do her job.

And her other, secret, self-appointed Husband Games job.

And keep her mind off CJ.

Mostly.

Sort of.

Who was she kidding? Every time the doorbell chimed, she looked up to see if he’d stopped in. Not that he had any reason to. But she looked anyway.

As she had all week long.

Noah trailed Natalie everywhere. When they both started getting cranky with each other, she realized they’d missed lunchtime. She stopped in the middle of the floor and turned around so fast he ran into her hip. “Hey. You want ice cream for lunch?”

Noah pumped a fist in the air. “Yeah!”

“Me, too.” She flagged Amanda, mouthed
lunch
, and went to the office for her purse.

When they pushed out the back door two minutes later, Noah shrieked with glee. “Grandpa! Guess what! Mommy’s taking me to the Milked Duck for ice cream cones! You want to come?”

Natalie blinked. Dad was leaning against the side of the building between Bliss Bridal and Heaven’s Bakery. He straightened quickly, eyes wide, face flushed.

The QG stood beside him in the alley.

“Hey, little buddy.” Dad knelt down to Noah’s level. “You being a big helper today?”

“Yeah. Amanda sat on my crayon, and then this girl called another girl a quarter word, and then I let her play with my dinosaur so she would feel better, and we’re having ice cream for lunch.”

“Sounds like a good lunch,” Dad said.

Natalie paused. Dad had never been the nutrition expert in the family—none of them were—but normally he would’ve commented on ice cream for lunch.

Something was off. Abnormally so.

“Crazy busy in there today,” Natalie said. “We should get going.”

Marilyn made a commanding noise.

Dad’s ears went red. He whispered something to Noah, then grunted and creaked while he pushed himself back to standing. Only when he again stood several inches above her did he look her in the eye. “Natalie, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Natalie’s pulse skittered. 

He’d succumbed. The Queen General had done her best, and Dad hadn’t been strong enough. He was right. Natalie should’ve stood up to her too. Natalie should’ve fought back differently—the right way, whatever the hell that was—so that Dad never would’ve been in this position.

The QG had brainwashed Dad, and now she was about to destroy the shop that three generations of her mother’s family had built.

Natalie’s stomach clenched.

She didn’t want him to sell the shop. She wasn’t ready. She had to stall him. 

“Yes?” Natalie said.

“I’m entering the Golden Husband games.”

“Please don’t—
what
?”

He hadn’t sold the shop to Marilyn. She still had time. Later, she’d think about why she was letting herself get delusional about her future. But now—she shook her head. “You want to play?” She looked between him and Marilyn. “That’s what you two were out here talking about?”

He nodded once.

“But you’ll need a stand-in wife,” Natalie said. Someone to take Mom’s place.

No.

They were
not
having this conversation.

They couldn’t be. He couldn’t replace Mom.

Dad and Marilyn shared a look. “We’ve been talking about possibilities,” Dad said.

Natalie couldn’t catch her breath.

He could never replace Mom.

He couldn’t. And yet there he was, plotting with Marilyn Elias—
Marilyn Elias
, the woman who’d declared outright that she’d go to whatever lengths necessary to get her claws into Bliss Bridal’s business space—about how best to do it.

Natalie latched on to Noah’s shoulder, squeezing too hard to cover the shake in her bones. “Great. We have to go.”

“Natalie—”

“It’s seriously busy in there. I have to get back ten minutes ago.”

“You want to come, Grandpa?” Noah said.

Dad looked like he’d rather swallow a bolt of starched muslin. “I can’t today, sport. Maybe tomorrow, okay?”

“Ice cream today
and
tomorrow? Awesome!”

Awesome. Right.

Nope. Not even close.

N
ATALIE’S SATURDAY night plans hadn’t included finding Noah a last-minute sitter so she could have an impromptu girls’ night at Suckers, but today called for it. Gabby’s dress and all the Knot Fest stuff and this week’s payroll at the boutique could wait.

She wanted a drink.

After Dad’s bombshell—and her subsequent realization that his #1 Grandpa mug and the Keurig had disappeared, which meant he was running his tryouts for Mom’s stand-in out at his cabin—Natalie not only wanted a drink, but she was just masochistic enough to want to see CJ. Possibly it was more rebellion against the Queen General, but more likely, she was too weak to resist the ideas that her accidental visit to Suckers on Monday had prompted.

And tonight, watching him behind the bar, she wanted more of what she’d sampled in the Suckers kitchen. She was either incredibly stupid or incredibly lonely.

Possibly both.

CJ tossed bottles and glasses, filling orders with Jeremy and Huck for the waitresses handling the normal Saturday night out-of-town-wedding crowd. But unlike Jeremy and Huck, CJ was also flirting with six women vying for the opportunity to be his partner in the Games, and then flirting with Lindsey and Kimmie and Natalie with an easy grace. He looked like he owned the whole damn bar.

He owned the atmosphere, that much was certain. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Especially when his back was turned.

His jeans hugged the curve of his ass, and she couldn’t help a sigh of admiration. His was the nicest butt in Bliss. She remembered—vividly—that it felt even better than it looked.

She gulped her whiskey sour. The bar was hot tonight.

CJ circled back to check on them. “You ladies doing okay?”

“Define
okay
.” Natalie’s whiskey seemed to be talking. Because the whiskey was the only thing that could’ve put that husky, suggestive tone in her voice.

Yep, that was all the whiskey.

He propped his elbows on the bar, which put his face level with hers, and fixed his undivided attention on her.

There went her lady bits fanning themselves. With a few added whimpers.

They
remembered what his hands and body and lips felt like too.

“Content.” His voice was low and raw, his gaze penetrating and unwavering. “Happy. Completely, one hundred percent satisfied.”

Her mouth went dry while the rest of her went up in needy flames that made her want to scratch the all-but-gone rash he’d tended so well on Monday. “Nope,” Natalie squeaked. “Not okay then.”

His eyes crinkled in the corners. Her feet flexed, ready to push her up over the bar so she could taste the smile on his lips. But even with the whiskey for courage, she couldn’t overcome the weight of her responsibilities or her habit of keeping to Bliss’s shadows. His gaze swept downward to her peach printed v-neck.

Lindsey—Nat’s designated driver tonight—cleared her throat. “How about some refills?”

CJ’s gaze went back up to Natalie’s face, lingering on her lips. “Sure. How about you?”

Natalie blinked. “Me?”

“You want another?”

“Oh, yes.
Please
.” Another kiss. Another taste. Another chance to feel hard male muscle and hot male skin. Preferably with all requisite precautions in place, and preferably with a satisfying conclusion.

Her libido was so totally out of hibernation she was surprised people weren’t staring at the hungry growls coming from her long-neglected body.

His eyes went a darker shade of green. “Coming right up.”

She wanted something else
up
. Her cheeks flared, and she felt a pull low in her belly—the kind she hadn’t experienced since—well, since they’d made out here on Monday.

CJ straightened with a cocky grin. “Anything else? Kimmie—food or anything?”

Kimmie shook her head.

He moved away.

Two sets of inquisitive stares, one on either side of Natalie, demanded she say
something
. She squirmed on the barstool, tugged at her too-tight skirt, then lifted her eyebrows at her companions in turn as if she weren’t the horny elephant in the room. “What? I haven’t gotten drunk since I got pregnant.”

Or laid.

Obviously.

“My mom is going to blow a bread basket when she hears about this,” Kimmie said.

Lindsey waved a hand. “What she doesn’t know won’t kill her.”

“There’s nothing to know.” But even Natalie’s whiskey couldn’t convince her
that
was the truth.

“You have your eyes checked lately?”

“I don’t think she was looking with her eyes,” Kimmie said. “Of course,
my
vagina would know if a guy were watching me like that.”

Several nearby men stared at them.

“Can we leave our vaginas out of this?” Natalie whispered. The whole
bar
didn’t need to know the status of hers.

Kimmie eyed CJ. “I can, but I don’t know if he can. Yours, that is. Although, obviously, you’d have to be a willing participant, which didn’t look like a problem, but—sorry. I know. Shut up.”

“No, no, I’m enjoying this,” Lindsey said.

Kimmie rolled her lower lip into her mouth, eyeing Natalie and Lindsey as though she couldn’t decide whose side to take. “I had a dream last night I had a pet alligator that burped bubbles. I thought about trying to make a cake out of it, for kid birthday parties or something. Except when the bubbles popped, these rabid elves with flaming lightsabers came out and set up battlegrounds in my bathroom, and then these Swiss buttercream monsters came out of the tub. It was kinda weird.”

The guy next to Kimmie flipped out his wallet, dropped two bills on the bar, and left his beer half-finished.

CJ came back and slid fresh drinks to Natalie and Lindsey. He glanced at the empty barstool next to Kimmie.

“My fault,” she sighed. “I said
vagina
. Sorry.”

CJ gave her a brotherly kind of smile that made Natalie like him a little bit more. “His problem, not yours,” he said. “Unless you asked him if he had a vagina. Then you might’ve been out of line.”

Kimmie looked temporarily horrified until Lindsey laughed.

“You’re joking,” Kimmie said. “Right. That’s almost as funny as my mom and their—oomph!”

Lindsey straightened like she hadn’t just reached around Natalie to poke Kimmie in the ribs. “So.” Lindsey waved at CJ’s cheering section across the bar. “You want to know who your best bets are over there?”

Before Nat could turn a glare on her sister, CJ shook his head. “Pass. Thanks.”

Lindsey gave Natalie an obnoxious
You’re welcome
smile.

“You should use her,” Kimmie said. “Not
use
her use her, but use her skills. She’s super good at matchmaking.”

“Preventing unwanted relationships,” Lindsey corrected.

At the R-word, CJ took a not-so-subtle step back.

Natalie’s mood did too.
If
they acted on this—whatever it was—it would be temporary. An itch-scratching. Nothing more. What he
needed
was one of those women in his cheering section.

Not the divorced woman on The Aisle.

Her stomach folded over itself and cramped like someone had tied it in a bow. She should’ve stayed home and worked.

CJ cleared the money and the glass from the place next to Kimmie, already beating a quick retreat. “Let us know if you want something,” he called over his shoulder.

Natalie slouched over the bar. “How do you do it?” she said to Lindsey.

“Do what?”

“Date.”

She meant to add
casually
. Something about Lindsey’s three-dates-or-three-weeks rule. Instead, the single word hung between them.

“He’s interested, Nat,” Lindsey finally said.

“Remember that whole vagina thing?” Kimmie added.

“But he needs a temporary wife, and I—I can’t be it.”

“Yeah, my mom would twist your pastry bags so hard, you’d shoot buttercream out the wrong end.”

“Screw her. If you’re leaving Bliss, go out in style.” Lindsey’s smile turned sly. “By doing something bigger than just calling the health department.”

“
Hush
. How did you—never mind.”

Kimmie clapped her hands over her ears. “I didn’t hear that.”

“Mom wanted her last Games to be epic,” Lindsey murmured. “Guarantee you no one would forget.”

God
.