The Wedding Affair (The Affair Series Book 2) (3 page)

“Don’t suppose you have anything like that laying around?”

Andi eyeballed her for a long moment and then grabbed her hand and pulled her along as she made for the bedroom of her suite.

“Take off whatever the hell it is that you have on. I’ll be right back.”

And with that, her friend disappeared into the massive walk-in wardrobe crammed with her wedding dress and honeymoon outfits.

Toeing off a pair of low chunky heels, Sam kicked them aside and made quick work of wriggling out of a drab gray skirt and lightweight peplum jacket. When Andi came back with an outfit draped over her arm, her friend stopped abruptly and gestured at Sam’s underwear. “What the hell is that?”

She looked down. “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “A bra and shapewear pants?”

“You are a hot mess, Samantha Evers.” Putting down the clothing she’d brought out, Andi shook her head and tsk’ed. “How the hell do you expect to get lucky wearing underwear your mom has?”

Sam was barely able to keep the laughter from her voice. “Sorry but getting lucky wasn’t on my agenda until five minutes ago. Before that, I had this crazy bride to babysit.”

“Well, the crazy bride hates your K-Mart underwear and demands you change into something more appropriate.”

Sam started to say something, but Andi was one step ahead. “There’s a whole section of still-with-the-tags-on lingerie in the closet. Matter of fact, there’s a lace bra that’s all stretchy and sexy. It will be perfect for the dress I picked out. So grab that and then pick out some panties that match. Lace. Red or black.”

“Anything else?” she snidely asked before heading into the closet.

“Yes,” Andi barked as she passed by. “Shoes. Luckily, we’re the same size. I’d go for the black Jimmy Choos.”

Mumbling, Sam picked through her friend’s impressive collection of daring lingerie. “All this stuff is so impractical.”

Finding the red stretch lace, she eyed it dispassionately and managed not to roll her eyes. Sam might have an unremarkable figure, but she did have boobs. Boobs that she kept strapped in and underwired at all times. Letting the fleshy mounds jostle freely with no support in a daring shimmery lace bralette wasn’t something she was entirely comfortable with.

Same for panties. Snorting with disbelief at the sheer number of minuscule thongs her BFF had, she spent several minutes digging through the pile to find something within the realm of reason. It seemed like a stroke of luck when she found an almost matching pair of stretchy lace boy shorts. Not much better but a lot more coverage.

“Will these do?” she asked waving both in her friend’s face after rejoining her in the bedroom.

Andi was busily tapping away on her cell phone and did nothing more than briefly glance her way. “Perfect,” she said with an approving nod. “Now get dressed. And hurry! Kyle and his best man are waiting for us on the terrace by the waterfall. “

Dismissed, she heard Andi laughing quietly as she wandered away. Kyle was the last to arrive, so this would be the first time she’d see her bridegroom in more than a week. Sam was happy for them. Andi and her golf pro hottie were the perfect couple. They shared the same goofy sense of humor, and Kyle clearly thought his fiancée walked on clouds of pixie dust. He’d take good care of her, and that was what really mattered.

Fifteen minutes later, she stood in front of the full-length mirror and stared at her reflection. Completely made up in an outfit only Andi would choose, she wore a sleeveless cocktail dress with a gold sequin bodice and a short pleated chiffon skirt. The open cut-out back and black satin bow barely covered the useless bra. A pair of strappy Jimmy Choo sandals completed the look.

The image of a young but far-from-innocent woman stared back at her. Quite a change from the dependable, no-nonsense visual she was used to.

Biting her lip, Sam studied the high-heeled sandals.
Damn, these things are sweet
. Mimicking every show-offy runway trick she could think of, she pirouetted and posed until nearly out-of-breath with excitement.

Andi strolled in just as Sam was stuffing a few necessities into a tiny clutch purse. The flabbergasted expression on her dear friend’s face bolstered her confidence better than a room full of magic mirrors. Though the bride was the fairest of them all, her maid of honor came in a close second.

“Samantha May Evers. You look gorgeous.”

Andi twirled a finger. Sam laughed and did a klutzy spin, ending with a boom-shaka-laka-laka gyration. Licking her finger, she touched her ass and made a hissing sound. “Hot!”

The boisterous laughter and applause from her friend filled Sam with delight.

“Honey,” Andi drawled—nobody had a better snarky purr—“you might be too hot to handle. Those long legs of yours make the skirt look shorter than it is. Girlfriend”—she chuckled—“you need to dress like this more often!”

“Don’t think I have the energy. The hair, the face, the lingerie, the shoes. When do you find time to breathe?”

Andi took her arm and started them toward the suite’s doors. With a surprisingly wistful sigh, she hugged her tighter and said, “I breathe when Kyle sees me, and I feel the rawness in his gaze, Sam. There’s no other sensation like it. It’s like his heart beats for me.”

Sam was startled when she felt a shudder roll through her friend.

“That’s what I want for you too, babe. A man who looks at you and sees. Sees the real you. The you who wants, at last, to be seen.”

Her words would be cryptic to anyone else, but Sam knew exactly what Andi was getting at. They wore masks. Every day. Had to. It was how the world functioned. No one really gave a shit about you as an individual. Hard fact but a real thing. She and Andi were realists. Always had been. Whatever it took to be successful. To be secure. To be a functioning adult in a fast-paced world.

All the
real you
stuff happened in private. And the sad truth for Sam was that as time went on, the private held less and less sway. She was on the sidelines because somewhere along the line, she stopped caring about the real you stuff.

“Until you found Kyle, I started to wonder if those types of guys really existed.”

Andi snorted. “
Pfft.
Word. It’s like you need special glasses to pick out the carefully camouflaged alphas. They don’t like to show themselves, which is why they’re so damn hard to find.”

She smiled. Andi loved that word,
alpha
. The way her friend said it, you’d think she was being risqué. Or talking dirty.

“I’d be happy with a real life m-a-n. Not a boy or a toy. A red-blooded, manly man with hair on his chest and no waxing kit in sight. The alpha thing would be nice,” she offered with a lazy shrug, “but I don’t think a scheduler for an event company, driving a sensible car, living in a matchbox-size house in Burbank who barely scratches by and looks like every other non-surgically enhanced brunette on the planet would hold much interest for that elusive breed of male.”

Clearing the suite, they made it into the elevator and were drifting to the lower floors before Sam realized Andi was silent.

“So tell me about this best man. Is he on the pro circuit with Kyle?

“Oh,” Andi murmured. “Didn’t I tell you? Sorry. So much on my mind.”

She snickered and gave her friend an elbow in the side. “No problem.”

“Damnit, Sami,” her friend grumbled. “I hate that you live so far away.”

The living so far apart commentary she was used to. Her friend pounded out a steady drumbeat when it came to demanding she abandon the left coast and move closer to home. It was the pained use of her childhood name that got Sam’s attention. Only Pop Pop ever called her Sami, and Andi knew what using the reference would do to Sam’s composure.

“Unfair,” she muttered.

“No,” Andi answered with a subtle rebuke in her voice. “What’s unfair is you scraping by in Los Angeles for no good reason besides your ego and the rest of us—me, your family—constantly worrying about you from the other side of the country.”

Sheesh. Sam cringed at the no-nonsense way her friend delivered the scolding. Calling out her clinging to life in Hollywood as an act of ego hit close to home. It was. Moving to L.A. was a knee-jerk fuck you to Rich after their breakup. He’d called her uninspiring. Said she lacked excitement. Her reaction was to set up house in the glamorous entertainment mecca.

Before that, she’d been a busy, overworked admin assistant for the director of a museum and art gallery. She’d loved that job. Being around creative people was Samantha’s personal form of crack. Her forte was creating the right environments. Like when she facilitated the transformation of an abandoned warehouse loft into an artist’s work studio. What a rush that project had been!

But hearing herself described as uninspiring ticked Sam off. Instead of sticking with something she enjoyed, her stupid asshole ex-boyfriend’s cutting remarks led to a life change that started with her running away to take a lackluster job in Tinseltown. Here, it was two years later, and the only thing she’d proved was that she could survive. Places like Los Angeles ate foolish dreams for breakfast and shit out the devoured empty shells left behind for lunch.

Stepping from the elevator, Sam turned to Andi and took her elbow to bring her close. She might as well tell her what was going on behind-the-scenes where her very unglamorous and work-a-day existence in the Golden State was concerned.

“I’m only telling you this because I love you, Ms. Frank, but I swear on all that’s holy if you repeat this to my mom or worse, yours, I will personally cut you. Understood?”

Andi’s eyes grew big with surprise. She nodded enthusiastically and whispered, “Have you finally had enough of that crazy town?”

Sam sighed. “The better way to phrase it would be that the crazy town has had enough of me.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means, simply put, that I’m pretty sure when I get back, my job will be hanging by a very tenuous thread. Now that the owner is retiring, his jack-off kids are circling like vultures. When I left to come here, the word around the office was that Bob’s son was taking over, and he intended to fill all the lead positions with friends and family. Chop, chop,” she murmured. “My head’s on the block.”

“Well, fuck,” Andi exclaimed quietly. “Why haven’t you said anything before now?”

She arched an eyebrow at her old friend and snorted in disbelief. “Seriously? You’ve looked in the mirror lately, yes?”

“Oh, right.” Andi chuckled. “Crazy bride aces personal drama. Sorry, sweetie. Now, I feel like shit. But Sam,” she drawled with perfect dryness, “next time you keep something big like this from me, I will kick your skinny ass. Understood?”

A surge of relief rushed through her. It was good to finally tell someone what was going on. But tonight wasn’t about Sam and her dismantling life. She was still in maid-of-honor mode and switched gears with practiced ease.

“Right. So back to the moment at hand. You so horny and Kyle is just down the path. I believe you were about to tell me who my counterpart is. Your hunky fiancé have a caddie holding his hand?”

Andi’s snort of amused laughter sounded as they started walking again. The tap-tap-tapping of their heels on the walkway picked up speed. Suddenly, the Hawaiian night was infused with her friend’s excitement as she hurried to see her bridegroom.

“His caddie has a wife, so no worries there. I’m so excited you finally get to meet Kyle’s cousin. Ryan. Ryan Sommerfield.” Andi laughed merrily. “Ky and Ry is how his parents explained their closeness. They grew up together.”

“Is this cousin a golfer too?”

“Oh god, no. You have to be insane to make a career out of hitting a little white ball and then walking around to find it so you can hit it again.”

Sam snorted with delight at Andi’s mocking description of Kyle’s sports prowess.

“Nope. Ryan runs his own business. Pretty successful at it too. He’s a graphic designer with a couple of print shops.”

A graphic designer with a couple of print shops? Sam immediately envisioned a board-short-wearing hipster kitted out in a custom t-shirt he had made just for the occasion.

“Oh, and remember earlier when you were whining about the lack of alphas in the wild?”

Huh? Alphas in the wild? What the hell was Andi up to?

“This guy takes the term alpha, redesigns it in a spectacularly sexy way, and then sits back and smirks. Hope you have a fire extinguisher in that tiny purse ‘cause, girlfriend, your panties are likely to catch fire once you get a load of this guy.”

Sam dug in and came to a swift halt. “Andrea Frank. You promised me! No friends and no matchmaking.”

“You said nothing about matchmaking.” She snickered. “And Ryan isn’t a friend. He’s Kyle’s cousin. As in family. So there.” Andi ended this statement of fact with a belligerent sniff.

The mischievous glint in her friend’s eyes felt like a jolt of triumph—one Sam was at a loss to fend off.

Dammit.

She was being set up.

Sam glanced down at her outfit.
And set up in full costume.
Her eyes closed, and she let out a defeated groan. “I will murder you for this,” she hissed.

“Save your breath, sweetie. At least until after you get an eyeful of who’s swimming in my fiancé’s gene pool. I think you’ll be stripping down to your birthday suit in no time for a quick dip in the water.”