The Wedding Affair (The Affair Series Book 2) (10 page)

Feigning disappointment, he went for the gold. “Well, shit,” he muttered. “The only reason I came along on this mystical love boat to marital happiness was because I was promised naked breasts and a lap dance.”

Her shocked gasp was priceless.

“Looks like you’re up, Ms. Evers. Sun’s out,” he said with a glance at the sky, “so tits out. And we can negotiate the lap dance. There’ll be none of that bridesmaid dress crap, though. I want ass, legs, and preferably no panties.”

Ryan expected her to come back at him with typical female outrage. She wasn’t typical by any means and what he got was fucking-a priceless.

“Sorry, Ry,” she simpered, “my dance card is full. You should have been here days ago if you wanted a shot. Too many hot tropical guys in skimpy sarongs, ya know what I mean?”

He was enjoying this immensely. “Fuck. Seriously?” he muttered. “Damn. Had a moment there when imagining those legs of yours wrapped around my head took things to an eleven. Or a twelve.”

“Is that like more cowbell?” she drily quipped.

“Something exactly like that,” he answered.

The rest of breakfast rushed by in pretty much the same way. She was smart. And interested in everything. How to fold an origami napkin. Why Tarzan lived in the jungle but never had a beard. It was as if life unfolded for her as a never-ending narrative about every little thing.

A guy would have to stay on his toes to keep up with a woman like Samantha.

She also asked questions. Lots of them. Some were serious and specific; others were lighthearted and slightly blonde. When he used the partial blonde observation, she swatted him with her napkin and pointed out that she was far from blonde.

He was bummed when breakfast was over. With no more wedding details to pour over and pick apart, they had a schedule to keep. To make himself feel better while helping her from her chair, Ryan took advantage of her nearness to breathe her in.

Maybe not a good idea,
he thought after it was too late to stop. Life clung to her skin. He smelled bacon and pineapple. Vanilla and something spicy. Her hair held a sweet, fruity scent. And it all blended with her natural essence and was made more potent by the setting. The sun, the warm air, the ocean nearby.

It occurred to him quite suddenly that she hadn’t said what the ladies were doing while the men were off playing golf and having lunch, so he asked. Anything to delay their farewell.

She let him take control by slipping her hand through the crook of his arm as he led them slowly from the outdoor restaurant. He liked having her close.

“Why, we’re going shopping, of course!” Her merry chirp was delightfully female.

Women could be ready to jump off the ledge from a life crisis one moment and then be ready to bounce ten seconds later at the notion of going shopping.

“All the girls,” she told him while filling in the details. “Both your moms. Alianna too, I would imagine. There’s a boutique nearby, and Andi’s photographer is meeting us.”

He snorted with laughter and warned her as best he knew how. “Watch out for Ali. I hear she found the island’s only sex shop. A place where she can happily cause all sorts of chaos.”

“Oh, no. Really?”

Ryan was amused that she sounded so worried. It was just harmless fun. Ali Morgan style.

“What?” he teased. “Sex toys and naughty nighties not your thing?”

“Huh?” she asked with a distracted grunt. “Oh, yeah. Whatever. Never been to one. And it’s not me I’m thinking about.”

They came to a bend in the path. The ladies were on one side of the resort, while he and Kyle and their families were on the other.

“It’s Andi’s mom who worries me. She’ll faint dead away.”

Frankly, he didn’t give a shit about Andi’s repressed mom. But for Samantha, he’d stand there and pretended to care. Until she called him out.

“Men.” She giggled. “You’re all alike so don’t act like you care. I bet you haven’t heard two words I’ve said since the subject turned to sex.”

With a hand on his heart as if she’d shot him, he chortled. “Give a guy a break, would you? Never been in a for-real sex shop.”

“Too scared?” Samantha lightly taunted.

“Men do not shop,” he drawled with manly affront. “We order. It’s only women who need the endcap displays and sale signs.”

“Guilty.” Her face split into a wide grin.

“What’s your favorite color?” he asked quickly.

With no opportunity to censor or customize her answer, she blurted out, “Rose. Not red.” She shuddered adorably and stuck her tongue out. “
Blech!
I’m not a stop sign. But a nice dusty rose or a bright rose—yeah. Love.”

It would have been weird to continue to linger—they had places to be.

“You’d look beautiful in rose. And my illustrious modeling career means I should know.” He smirked.

She blushed and made his point.

“Find something rose and wear it for me tonight.”

She elbowed him and pushed Ryan aside. As she started to walk away with a wave and a smile, she laughed. “Dream on, Mr. Charming.”

He watched her sexy ass walk away and grinned.
Uh-huh. We’ll see
.

T
he golf cart zipped along as his and Kyle’s laughter rang out. He’d just read aloud a snarky text from Andi that should have been headed—Mom behaving badly.

“Jesus, Ry.” Kyle chuckled. “Ali was on fire today! Did you slip her a bribe to stir up trouble?”

As if that was ever necessary. Ali had a unique way of making people crazy without expending much effort.

“My fingerprints are not on this fuckery, dude. This one’s all on her. Bet you anything she had her assistant research the quickest way to start shit. Luckily, the sex store turned out to be a high-end underwear shop.”

A thundering bark of laughter erupted from Kyle as he shook his head. “Bet my credit card is shooting flames. When my fiancée leads the charge, no bits of silk and lace go unnoticed. Not complaining, mind you. Especially not when she needs an entire suitcase just for that shit.”

Behind them, their fathers were laughing too. He’d bet anything that their moms were also texting. The Sommerfield family had a quirk when it came to laughing at the wrong stuff.

“Sam’s a keeper, huh?”

“Conversational whiplash much?”

“At least I waited till the ‘rents weren’t listening. Aunt Hannah would freak if she thought for one second that you had your eyes on a girl.”

Was that how Ky saw this? Ryan hoped his interest didn’t come off as casual. Or predatory.

“I like her.” He had more to say, but the words didn’t come.

“Wow,” Ky sneered. “Man of few words? Gotta tell you, bud. Your face last night when you first saw her was a surprise. I’ve never seen you like that.”

“Never felt like that,” Ryan grumbled. After a tense second or five of silence, he mouthed, “Fuck,” took off his sunglasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Thought that at first sight crap was just that. Crap.”

He expected Kyle to give him a raft of teasing shit—but he said nothing. Because the silence struck him as odd, he swiveled his head to peer at his cousin.

“Say it,” Ryan muttered. “Whatever it is, just let me have it.”

Instead of a string of expletives about what a pussy Ryan had become, Kyle knocked him sideways with a blunt confession. Listening thoughtfully, the artist inside him created a visual to go along with the story he was hearing.

“I was scoping out a course redesign at a club in Florida and being my usual jackass self. You know how it is—everyone from the valet to the golf pro treated me like royalty, and that particular day, my ego was definitely running wild.”

Ah, yes. The ego-driven jackass. He remembered his own days as a public person and how easy it was to get sucked into the celebrity spectacle.

“The club was hoping for my endorsement, so the management team was running me around, showing off their fancy bells and whistles. Along with the new course, they were upping the wow factor in the clubhouse. Frankly,” he opined, “I couldn’t have cared less.”

A pause let Ryan know something key was on board and about to be explained.

“The clubhouse director was a woman—big surprise—who made little effort to hide her interest, if you know what I mean.”

Oh, fuck yeah, he knew what Kyle meant. Nothing opened the floodgates of barely respectable behavior faster than a good-looking, rich guy with a
People
magazine smile.

“So anyway,” Ky continued, “ she was showing me her office and yes, feel free to embellish that statement with a wink-wink. I commented that it seemed strange that the view from her window was that of the parking lot. She babbled something stupid about how distracting she found men in golf pants. It was a classic wind up to a balls-out proposition. All of a sudden this quack of snorting laughter rang out. Seemed we weren’t entirely alone.”

Kyle slowed the cart as they made the last turn that would lead them back to the clubhouse.

“Caught off guard, the director had to do some fancy footwork to clean up the mess she was making. Two more minutes and the staff would have had plenty to gossip about.”

“Would this gossip include someone on her knees?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Kyle snorted. “But before it got that far, the amused cackle brought her to a screeching halt. She’d apparently forgotten an appointment with the designer of the club’s interior.”

Ryan held in a laugh and tried to appear as though he wasn’t mentally mocking Ky.

“While Ms. Wanna-Be-A-Celebrity-WAG was eyeing up my junk for her lunch, the designer was waiting patiently in the room’s seating area. With a fly on the wall view of the proceedings, I might add.”

“Holy shit, man.”

“Wait”—Kyle snickered—“it gets better. In the span of a few seconds, I went from cocky jackass to stunned fool. Seriously, Ry.” He chuckled. “It was like a goddamn scene from a movie. Out of the shadows came this snickering enchantress with a wicked twinkle in her eye and a sexy swagger that almost sent me to my knees.”

“Andi?”

“In all her snarky, stuck-up glory. She looked at me like I was bubblegum on a hot summer day stuck to her best Jimmy Choos. There I was, trying to act all cool and studly, and she basically dismissed me. Shot through the heart, man. That fast.”

“Cue the Bon Jovi?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

“Is there a moral to this story?”

“Yeah, ya dumb fuck. Read between the lines, would ya? Sometimes, it just happens that way. One look, one word, one smile, and wham.”

“Wham.”

Kyle pulled the golf cart to a slow stop and turned to look at him. “Not to be confused with wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. Understand the difference, Ry. With someone like Samantha Evers? She’s the ultimate girl next door. Whatever worked before her will not work now.”

“Word.” He snorted. Swinging out of the cart, Ryan nodded in the direction of their fathers as they pulled in behind them. “Let’s keep this between us, okay?”

Kyle’s rich laugh made Ryan grin. Mimicking the universal gesture for jerking off, his best friend and cousin sneered before slapping him on the back. “Dude,” he drawled, “the minute they see you two in the same room, they’ll know.”

“Well, then tonight ought to be interesting.”

“Tell you what. Because I’m a good guy, I’ll keep the spotlight on my bride and me. Maybe a nauseating make-out session to get everyone groaning. That way, you won’t be blinded by a parental unit, tag team inquiry.”

“Any pointers you’d like to offer? Unless I’m missing something, we have a bit of a logistics and timing problem. In less than a hundred hours hours, Samantha flies to California, and I head home to St. Augustine. Not a lot of time to figure out what the hell all this means.”

Kyle doubled over laughing. “Oh, my god! You dumb fuck. Newsflash, Ry. You never figure out what any of it means. That’s what love is. You really can’t define it. There are no parameters. It’s the most terrifying and exhilarating ride of your life. Just buckle up, man. ‘Cause no matter what—you’re in for a jolt.”

A dribble of sweat was slowly making its way from Sam’s hairline to behind her ear and down the back of her neck. And it wasn’t even hot.

Anxious tension had her insides in a knot. Whatever skills she’d picked up along the way, dealing with celebrity quirks and demands, wasn’t helping her at all. Not with this group. My lord—a room full of prankish high schoolers was easier to handle than a mischievous bridal party coupled with a first-contact encounter between the Sommerfield women and Andi’s stick-up-her-butt mother.