Whose Bride Is She Anyway

Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509 Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © 2006, Dakota Cassidy. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Liquid Silver Books

http://LSbooks.com

Email:[email protected]

Editor Terri Schaefer

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

With heartfelt gratitude, this is for Linda and Mike of Liquid Silver Books. Two people who gave me my first shot out of the gate and welcomed me back with open arms after my life had taken one of those crazy turns called disaster. Also, to R. A one-liner snark king, the other half of my brain and the whole of my heart.

Evanston High 1992—You want a piece a this?

A
n ass kicking…

Could one actually smell it when it was upon them? Cuz her nose was twitching with the scent of one.

The thick, acrid smell of a can of whoop ass being popped open

Yup, she was in for a licking. A serious tongue-lashing, and there was no escape. The predator was loose and on the prowl, just waiting to pounce on her with freshly polished nails and hair that shone so bright it made your eyes tear up looking at it.

The hunter?

Kelsey Little.

The hunted?

Tara Douglas.

Tara fought the onslaught of fear and panic that settled in her gut as the pack of Junior Miss America wannabes gathered around behind her in the girl’s locker room. The scent of her own perspiration lingered in her nose and her hands trembled as she fought to open her locker, trying to pretend that Kelsey and her crowd of perfectly flawless, rah-rah compadres weren’t cackling at her. She tucked the towel tightly between her breasts and popped open her gym locker with a jerk, keeping her back to them and her flushed cheeks hidden in the cool recesses of her locker.

Breathe … they’re just a bunch of stupid girls
. That didn’t soothe her much. That “bunch of girls” were prettily disguised barracudas, looking to chew up her well-rounded flesh and spit it back out.

“Well, well, look at Tara Douglas, girls. What are you looking for in that locker? More condoms so you can help Jordon
study
?” Kelsey crowed, sarcasm dripping like a melting ice cream cone in the hot summer sun with each venomous word she spat.

Ah, the ever popular Kelsey Little
, Tara winced. Captain of the cheerleading squad and head bitch on wheels at Evanston High, doing what she did best … reign supreme.

She clenched her eyes shut as the small crowd of pom-pom queens twittered at Kelsey’s reference to Jordon Sanders, Kelsey’s boyfriend, and Tara’s
supposed
squeeze.

Yeah, like Jordon Sanders could squeeze anything more than his biceps while admiring himself in a full-length mirror.

Like Tara Douglas could
squeeze
anything that belonged to Kelsey.

She ignored Kelsey’s hot breath on her neck and continued to root around in the locker for her underwear and bra. The palm of Kelsey’s hand slapped her locker shut with a sharp bang, just missing her fingers. She leaned forward into Tara with imposing menace, so close she almost choked on the smell of Love’s Baby Soft perfume. Tara jumped, cringing at the confrontation she knew was about to happen and was helpless to avoid. Her heart raced as impending doom lurked.

Kelsey loved a good show, especially if she had her fellow, brain-sharing goons to egg her on and participate in a little dork bashing.

Feeling none too brave, but just shy of chicken shit, Tara turned to face Kelsey, refusing to give in to the overwhelming need to push her way past the humiliation patrol and run. Kelsey had been belittling her at every turn since she’d began tutoring her stupid jock boyfriend, and she was sick and tired of being the butt of her jokes.

Not to mention—she was sick of her butt being made into a joke.

It was big.

So?

Tara didn’t need anyone to openly share that for her in large groups. She had a mirror. It came in double wide, thank you.

Yes, she was overweight—as if it wasn’t obvious. Clearly Kelsey didn’t opt for the startlingly original when it came to taking potshots. And wait, big surprise, she couldn’t wear short skirts or tight jeans. Not if she didn’t want rolls of doughy flesh bulging from every available outlet, anyway. Her mother told her she’d grow out of it, but she was almost eighteen and at five foot four, six foot two was looking less and less likely. Growing a foot or so was the only thing that would put her in proportion to her current weight.

Her options were becoming sorely limited according to her tape measure.

And finally, to seal the geek deal, she didn’t wield pom-poms and a flaming baton.

Sometimes, for the sheer joy of making Kelsey’s brain cells flutter, she just wanted to walk up and stick her face in Kelsey’s perfect one and yell, “I’m fat—fat, okay!”

Big deal. What was so special about being skinny anyway?

Tight jeans in a size four… A date every Saturday night … underwear that didn’t look like they belonged to Omar the tentmaker… Being on the cheerleading squad.

Whatever.

Tara tightened her towel and pulled it self conscious ly over her butt. Kelsey’s teeth flashed in a wicked smile of absolute power, knowing she had Tara where she wanted her and reveling in it. Her long blonde hair jiggled as her head bobbed on her neck and she spat, “Tell me something Tara, does Jordon make you swallow?”

A profusion of color swept over Tara’s face and the heat of embarrassment lingered on her cheeks, pricking at her flesh.

Swallow what?
She bit her lip. Wait, scratch that. Whatever was supposedly being ingested, it couldn’t be anything nearly as enjoyable as a plate of fries smothered in ketchup.

She didn’t have a clue what in all of hell Kelsey was talking about, but she knew it
had
to be sexual by the gasp of the forbidden everyone made. Fear continued to pulse through her veins, rushing in waves that left her knees weak. Her stomach was doing the Highland fling, and her teeth weren’t far from clacking their way out of her mouth, but she fought the fight of the meek anyway. “Get away from me, Kelsey. There’s nothing going on between me and Jordon. I tutor him, that’s all,” managed between tightly clenched teeth.

Oh, God, please don’t let me freak out now. Be calm, stay cool, and try not to notice that Kelsey’s face is so close to yours you could count the blackheads on her pert, upturned nose.

Kelsey had blackheads? The horror…

They might be mingled with a smattering of freckles, but they were there. Interesting. Popular girls got blackheads too. Maybe not as many as Tara, but a blackhead sighting had occurred and she wasn’t feeling nearly as inferior as she and her tube of Clearasil had a minute ago.

Kelsey flicked a stray piece of Tara’s hair with her fingers. “Yeah? That’s not the rumor I’m hearing. I hear you begged Jordon to screw you and he felt so sorry for you he mercy fucked you for helping him. Jordon told us all just last night at Candice Walker’s party, didn’t he girls?” A sea of shiny, Pert Plus heads nodded affirmatively, just as Tara expected they would. What else could they do? They were the Stepford cheerleaders, and no cheerleader worth her weight in cartwheels ignored Kelsey when a group opportunity to taunt a defenseless nerd became available.

Well, if what Kelsey said were true, and it wouldn’t shock Tara, it only went to show what a dipshit Jordon really was. Who bragged about a mercy fuck to a bunch of girls,
especially
his own girlfriend? In front of
his girlfriends’ friends
no less?

Duh.

Jordon was a moron. A waste of perfectly good, functioning grey matter. Sure he was cute, but somehow, frighteningly simple.

Tara stiffened at the implication she’d had anything more than a tutoring session with him. Her response reflected her astonishment, squeaking on its way out, “I did
not
have sex with Jordon. He’s not even my type.”
He would need to at least have a higher grade point average than my pet rock collection.

Tara gripped the towel tighter as her legs trembled and Kelsey’s green eyes narrowed, boring into hers.

“Your type?” Kelsey screeched her grin of malice widening. “What is your
type
? Do they have types for slobs like you? You slut! Why would he lie about something like that? I guess
fat girls
get off too, huh, Tara? Do you really think Jordon is going to actually take you somewhere in public if you screw him? Like maybe you’ll actually get to go to a party with us?”

“We—are—not—
screwing
!” Tara half screamed, panic rising in her throat. “We just study, that’s
it.
Now go away. Don’t you have to practice pyramid building or something?” Kelsey’s pretty face turned ugly at Tara’s rebuttal.

Oh, oh, oh … maybe that might have been a wee bit overboard in the slam department. She swallowed hard, waiting for retribution.
No one
dared crack wise at a cheerleader, especially if the cheerleading wonder of the world was Kelsey Little.

Kelsey suddenly laughed and it wasn’t because she found Tara amusing. It rang with the sound of evil. “I’m not going away until you tell the girls and me what you do while you’re with Jordon. Admit it, you
fucked
him.” The word
fuck
came out of her mouth like sludge from a sewer.

The group of perfect faces that made up the “in crowd ” at Evanston High became a blur over Kelsey’s shoulder, as Tara’s eyes zeroed in on Kelsey’s face, only inches from hers. “I—I told you, ” her voice quivered, to her embarrassment, “We study … that’s all. Jordon ju—just needs help in Trig. ”

Kelsey twisted a finger around a stray black strand from Tara’s ponytail and yanked it. “Do you help him jerk off while he does his algebra?”

Tara might have rolled her eyes if her scalp wasn’t pulled so tight any movement at all was impossible. She might even giggle if Kelsey didn’t yank it harder, so hard tears came to her eyes.
Algebra had nothing to do with trigonometry, you waste of good oxygen.
Like Kelsey would know anything but the formula for mixing moisturizing creams.

Shit, she wished she had the guts to actually say that. Instead, she opted for the very-effective-thus-far, “Go away, Kelsey! Jordon needs to pass Trig if he wants to graduate. I’m just helping him. Don’t you want him to be able take you to the prom? ” God, she hated Kelsey Little and she hated her even more because Kelsey was quicker than she was. She hated that she even had to waste time defending herself over something so ridiculous. As Kelsey delivered slam after slam, the side of Tara that shoved those dateless Saturdays and cruel words off into the far recesses of her brain began to emerge like an evil twin who’d been put up for adoption at birth.

Kelsey snorted hard, her nostrils flaring. “I don’t want him, not after he’s screwed with a porker like
you.”
The pom-pom sextuplets all snickered their agreement. Tara briefly wondered if they all shared the same brain, occasionally renting it out to a cheerleader in need.

Her face was now flaming as everyone laughed over Kelsey’s stab at a complete sentence that involved more than “go team, go!” Jerking her head up, she ignored the sting of her scalp and the strands of hair Kelsey lost her grip on as the tendrils pulled free. Her gut burned and for a nanosecond, she saw red. The color represented her last frayed nerve. For every cruel joke Kelsey had made, for each time she walked down a hallway and had to hide behind a corner to avoid her nemesis, it spilled to overflowing and for a mere moment, overwhelmed her. Suddenly, nothing mattered but striking back as hatefully as she could. It didn’t matter that she would pay later, at the moment she could see nothing but the person responsible for keeping her from being free to do as she pleased.

Kelsey Little…

Tara’s thick tongue finally found movement and a sneer came out of her mout h before she could stop its rapidly gaining momentum. “I guess I can’t be
that
much of a porker, can I, Kelsey? Jordon sure didn’t scream out
your
name when he was doing
me
.”

The locker room became deadly silent, seething anger permeated the sweaty stench, and for a mere moment Tara was horrified at her words, seeing their faces change from evil glee to mortification. Her gut heaved as the implication of what she’d just spewed sunk in. She wanted to take it back—sort of—and then, as her courage outweighed sanity … she didn’t want to take it back. Not even
sort of.

Wham! Take that, Barbie!

Ooooh, that was good! Tara silently congratulated her efforts. Whew, where had that kind of rare form of venom come from?

It came from Kelsey taunting her, day-in and day-out, over this stupid tutoring thing with Jordon. Jordon Sanders couldn’t sharpen his pencil without studying for it and most sessions he spent talking about how many inches around his thighs were. Doing anything more with Jordon than imagining how hard it must be to have his tiny brain helplessly floating adrift in his head, was just … well, it just left Tara utterly confounded. Why in the world would Kelsey think she wanted to have sex with Jordon when he couldn’t even
think
without breaking into a mental sweat? Tara liked her boys complete with IQs, please.

Why would Jordon say he had sex with her? It was absurd and most likely a lie Kelsey made up so she had a reason to terrorize someone. Did she really need a reason?

The opportunity to find out never presented itself because Kelsey jammed her fingers into the top of the towel wrapped around Tara as her face turned crimson too. The ugly mottled color crept over her neck and her green eyes turned dark emerald. Tara’s hands were numb from clinging to keep the flimsy towel in place. Kelsey jerked her forward and she began to lose her desperate grip. Her fingers clenched tighter as she dug her nails into the thin terry cloth; they began to bend painfully while she clung harder. “Listen up, you fat, ugly pig! Yo u better shut up, or you’ll regret it.”

Wow, that was insightful—a huge revelation. As if Tara didn’t regret it already. Her ears burned as Kelsey’s words rang in her ears and her picture perfect friends began to chant, “Fight, fight!”

Tara’s stomach heaved. Kelsey wouldn’t physically fight with her, would she? Nah, she might break a nail or worse still, lose the bounce and behave in her flaxen curls.

But Tara would live to regret how wrong she was as Kelsey dragged her forward, and pairs of hateful hands tore at her towel, twisting and turning her until it was yanked rudely away from her body. Naked, she shivered as the cool air hit her clammy, fear-soaked skin and the towel was left in a puddle at her feet.

The throng of girls half-pulled, half-shoved Tara toward the locker room’s double doors. Hands gripped her roughly, digging into the flesh of her arms and ramming into her back. The heels of Tara’s shoeless feet dug into the concrete flooring as she fought to keep from being thrown out into the hall. It loomed in front of her and she struggled violently to stop the shoving. Screaming until she was hoarse, she begged them to stop as the noise around her became a muted roar and in a matter of seconds, she found herself in the outer hallway, confronted by a gawking bunch of Evanston basketball players.