The Worst Wedding Date, page 6
And I do care that Bean & Nugget is in trouble.
It affects Emma. It affects her friends. It affects the whole town.
“Why didn’t you ask Laney?” I repeat.
Sabrina sighs and rubs her palms into her eye sockets. “Already did.”
“You know your lip does this funny thing every time you lie?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
It doesn’t. But I’m not telling her what her actual tell is. And she is definitely lying. “Can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”
“You’re not going to help me anyway. Even though it would be helping Emma too.”
“If Emma wanted my help, she’d ask for it herself.”
Sabrina pulls another face and looks off toward the lights of the other bungalows glowing in the darkness down the way.
I bite my tongue to keep from asking if Emma knows.
She knows Chandler.
She knows what she’s getting herself into. Says all the time that they don’t keep secrets. Which means she probably doesn’t want to tell me because she knows I don’t like him, no matter how much I try to hide it. Or, if he’s keeping secrets from her, I’m still the bad guy if I let it slip.
Just when I think Sabrina’s gonna mutter something about finding someone else to loan her the money to get Bean & Nugget back in the black, she makes eye contact with me and scowls. “I can’t ask Laney because my family won’t take things from her family. That’s all you need to know. But if I have the cash to save the company, I can buy it off of Chandler and fix this.”
My dad runs a taxidermy empire that’s grown in the digital age, much to Emma’s credit for getting Dad on the internet and managing his sales and advertising. But it doesn’t have the same impact in the community as Bean & Nugget.
If Rocky Roadkill went under, no one would care. They’ve never really cared. Why would they?
But if Bean & Nugget goes under, the Tooth loses one of its primary hangouts. A bunch of people lose their jobs. Em would deal with the stress since Chandler would be dealing with it, even if she can support herself with her own accounting business.
She can support him too.
But she can’t dig the café out from its debt. She doesn’t have that kind of cash.
“We have maybe two months, Theo,” Sabrina says. “Think of the wedding gift this would be to Emma.”
And the gift it would be for Sabrina too. It’s her life, even though her mom sold her share in the café to Chandler’s parents so she could send Sabrina to college. The triplets’ parents sold their share to Chandler’s parents too. And they handed the reins to him not long after Grandma Sullivan passed away.
“If Emma wanted my help—” I start.
“She wouldn’t ask you for it, because she knows you don’t want anyone to know you can afford it, she knows you don’t want people knowing why you can afford it, and she knows how much Chandler would hate knowing you’re the reason he’s no longer in debt.”
I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin.
If Bean & Nugget’s time came to an end, some other enterprising person in Snaggletooth Creek would open a new shop.
We wouldn’t be without coffee. People would get jobs back. There’d be a new kind of hangout.
Some people hate change.
I love it. It has a scent of possibility. Of surprises. Of fun.
But I don’t like knowing that change hurts in the middle of it. Especially when it could hurt my sister.
And I don’t like feeling trapped and blackmailed.
One more checkmark in why I don’t want people knowing my bank account—the one not kept at the Tooth’s local bank—is as large as it is.
“You gonna sit out here all night?” I ask Sabrina.
“For Emma and Laney? Yep. Also, I scattered broken glass on the ground under your porch on the other side, so if you’re thinking of going out the back way, I’d advise you to reconsider.”
I know she knows that I know she’s lying, but I also know if I leave here and run into Chandler and anything goes wrong again, she’ll probably do worse. I grunt a noncommittal noise and turn back to my bungalow door.
I can handle being trapped inside for one night, even if it makes me testy as hell.
Chandler will get his head out of his ass for Emma’s sake—much as I don’t like him, I can admit that he treats my sister right and gets along with me for her sake too—and tomorrow will be fine.
“And go easy on Laney,” she adds softly. “She will fix anything to make sure Emma has the wedding of her dreams. It’ll be easier on everyone if you just avoid Chandler until after the wedding. No matter how unfair it is that you don’t get to enjoy this week the way you should.”
Hell. Does she know I paid for the wedding too?
“Do not tell Emma,” I say.
She scowls, but she doesn’t tell me I can buy her silence by saving her family’s café.
Two points to Sabrina. We might stay friends beyond this week after all. And not because she’s borderline blackmailing me for money.
“And I’ll think about it,” I mutter.
Two months.
I don’t have to decide today.
The café has two months. Emma can get back from her honeymoon. We can sit down and talk. Clear the air. I can ask her what she wants me to do.
How to do whatever she wants me to do.
Or if she wants me to do nothing at all.
I tell Sabrina goodnight and let myself back into the bungalow. Both bedroom doors are still closed. The balcony doors off the living room are open though, letting in the sound of the surf and the scent of the ocean through the screens.
Not a bad way to sleep.
And I’m honestly ready for sleep.
Run hard during the day.
Crash hard at night.
It’s crash time.
I head to the couch and toss the cushions aside to pull out the hide-a-bed.
Or try to.
I get the thing halfway out, and it sticks.
Totally, completely frozen.
I tug.
It doesn’t move.
Tug again.
Still doesn’t move.
It’s just hanging out, sticking out of the couch at a forty-five-degree angle.
So I push it back in, except that doesn’t work either.
Try unfolding the lower half of the bed.
No dice.
No matter how I push, pull, tug, lift, or do anything else, the damn thing will not move.
“Are you kidding me?” I mutter to it.
I don’t go looking for trouble.
I don’t.
Not anymore.
But it’s apparently finding me this week in all kinds of inconvenient places.
Mama cat meows loudly inside the primary bedroom.
“You’re right, Miss Doodles,” I answer, knowing it’s not an invitation from the cats to join them. They’d scratch me all to hell, Emma would notice, Laney would notice, Laney would turn me in for the cats, and then everything will go to hell. Better to let them decide they like me before risking them eating my face off in the middle of the night. “I am paying for this place.”
Mind made up.
I have three beds in this suite, and I’m sleeping in one of them.
No matter how much it’s going to suck.
5
Laney
A noise pulls me out of a sleep so hard and deep that I barely remember lying down at all or where I am.
“I fixed the naked man!” I gasp.
“Must’ve been a sight,” a deep voice replies.
Hawaii.
Emma’s wedding.
And Theo. Looming in the doorframe, backlit by the soft glow of a night-light somewhere beyond my room, shirtless, pants-less, and definitely broader and harder than I remember him.
More tattooed too, though I can’t see them in the dark. It’s just the memory of the ink all over his chest and stomach and arms.
And what the hell am I doing, thinking about Theo’s body and tats?
“A large corporation ordered three thousand mugs with their logo and the artwork got switched and they were sent three thousand mugs of a guy with a Santa hat covering his—” Shut up, Laney. He doesn’t care why you were delayed getting here. Or that you’re dreaming about work. Or rambling because your baser instincts are overruling your better sense. I clear my throat. “What are you doing?”
“Scoot over,” he replies.
“Scoot…what?”
“Over. I get this side.”
“You…huh?” I am one hundred percent fully awake now, but his orders have scrambled my brain and made actual sentences impossible.
“The fucking couch broke. It’s a king-size bed. Scoot. Over. Or go sleep on the floor.”
No is on the tip of my tongue, but it won’t come out. “I’ll fix the couch,” I stutter.
“Knock yourself out.”
His answer puts my teeth on edge.
I’m trying so hard to be nice to him. And he’s being an utter ass.
I should be glad he’s being an ass. His personality should compensate for my hormonal reaction to his body and his voice.
Except it doesn’t.
My nipples are hard and there’s a frantic anticipation deep in my belly at the idea that I might have to sleep in the same bed as Theo.
It’s been over a year since I broke my parents’ hearts when I declined Christopher’s proposal, which means it’s been over a year since I’ve realized that their image of what my life should be and what I want for my life don’t line up.
Work is fine. Work is great, in fact. I’m fully in step with what they want for the company professionally, and honestly honored that they’re letting me prove I can do what it takes to run things when they retire.
Not because I want to please them with what I think, but because I believe they’re taking it in the right direction to continue growing and thriving.
It’s outside work hours that things get tense. They really want me to get back into the dating world with someone safe. Someone respectable. Someone with good genes for making the next generation of Kingston babies, preferably two or three in case the first one isn’t a perfect clone of me.
So, basically, they want me to live a gender-reversed Victorian-era dream.
Instead, I’m nearly thirty and finally hitting my teenage rebellion stage.
Which is a bad time to have my hormones reacting to Theo Monroe.
There’s a difference between dating someone I meet at a bar and become infatuated with and telling my parents that I’ve been sleeping in the same bed as Theo.
I flop out of bed, realize I’m only in my tank top and panties, squeak, and lunge for the neatly folded pajama shorts I left on the nightstand. “Turn around.”
“Seen naked women before, Laney.”
“Turn. Around.”
You know what’s most aggravating about Theo Monroe?
When we both surfaced in the pool, he was wearing the biggest grin known to man. I remember that from high school. He was always smiling. He was always having fun. Even when he was in trouble, he’d find a reason to smile about it. Clearly still does. Which must be really nice.
But he never smiles at me.
Not then.
And only briefly today before he realized my job here is to make him miserable.
Or at least, that’s how I assume he classifies my task of being a buffer between him and Chandler.
I hide behind the bed and yank my pajama shorts on. “I am doing my very damn best to make the most of this situation. Would it utterly kill you to acknowledge that I’m doing your sister a favor, and you too for that matter? That I’m not trying to make your life hell? Is it that hard to be as pleasant as you can be about this too?”
He doesn’t answer, and instead, flings himself onto the left side of the bed, face down in the pillow, and mutters something.
I take a deep breath and sigh loudly out of my nose.
He mutters something else in his pillow.
Forget this.
I march out to the living room. If I can’t sleep, I might as well sleep on the couch.
He’s left the folded bedframe half out of the couch, sticking up at a weird angle.
I roll my eyes and tug on the bar at the top, but it doesn’t budge.
I tug harder.
Still not a bit of movement. “C’mon. You can do it. Good couch,” I murmur supportively.
Shockingly, that doesn’t work either.
I tug. I pull. I try different bars on the contraption. I push. I tug and pull and heft all of my weight into it, but the only thing I succeed in doing is making the couch thump and bump across the floor.
And now I’m sweating.
I eyeball the closed bedroom door for the second bedroom.
Something hisses inside.
So that’s a nope. And also a problem for tomorrow.
I can’t get the couch fully open into the hide-a-bed, or fully closed so I can sleep on it. I don’t have the tools to take the hinges apart and investigate this further.
And I need to sleep so that I can be on top of my game for doing everything in my power to keep Theo separated from Chandler for the next few days, which is honestly obnoxious when I consider that I’m positive they were friends in high school.
Crap.
Dammit.
Best way to keep an eye on Theo?
Share a damn bed with him.
I won’t sleep well, but at least I’ll know if he tries to get up in the middle of the night.
Deep breath, Delaney. Deep, deep breath.
This will be okay.
I can do this.
It’s only for a couple nights. Just until Chandler is back in his happy place and Theo’s so tired of me that he finds a way to voluntarily avoid Chandler on his own.
I trudge back to the bedroom. Don’t look at the Theo-shaped lump on the left side of the bed. Climb delicately into the right side of the bed, leaving my shorts on.
Close my eyes.
And immediately wonder if I snore and don’t know it. Or if Theo snores. Or if he sneezes in his sleep. Or if he’s a thrasher.
I know I don’t toss and turn in my sleep. I lay down on my back, close my eyes, fall asleep, and wake up in the morning on my back.
The only time my covers are a mess is when I’m sick.
God, I’m boring.
I clear my throat. “Good night.”
He grunts.
“We’ll call maintenance tomorrow about the couch. If they can’t fix it, they can probably—”
“Good night, Delaney.”
Well.
That was a very direct and pointed shut up if I’ve ever heard one.
I sigh again.
Scoot closer to the edge of the bed. Just in case.
Readjust my pillow.
Close my eyes.
And I feel someone staring at me.
Nope. He’s definitely not staring at me. Definitely not. He’s completely uninterested in anything I’m doing, and it’s all a figment of my imagination that I feel the weight of his gaze on me.
If I open my eyes and glance at his side of the bed, I’ll see that his head is still buried in his pillow and he’s not staring at me and my imagination is running wild because Sabrina has snuck me one too many romance novels that my mother doesn’t know I read with a very similar but entirely different situation here.
Those always involve two people who secretly like each other.
I do not like my best friend’s brother.
And he most definitely does not like me. He’s made that abundantly clear.
Dammit.
I can’t fall asleep.
Brain. Will. Not. Shut. Off.
I need to turn on a meditation app or something, but I don’t want to hear about it from Theo.
I pop one eye open.
Aim it in his direction.
Crap.
It’s just bright enough in here thanks to the moonlight streaming in the window that I can see him. And he is totally staring at me.
I roll onto my side and face the wall.
Tell yourself a story, Laney. Tell yourself a story.
As if that’s going to work.
This is going to be a very, very, very long night.
6
Theo
So this is unexpected.
Thought I’d wake up on the floor. Tied up so I can’t go anywhere. Possibly under a pile of clothes, since while most women would toss you out in nothing but your underwear when you annoy them, Laney is not that kind of woman. She’d want me to put my clothes on before she forcibly removed me from her presence.
Instead, I’m waking up with her hand wrapped around my cock.
She’s curled up right next to me, breathing on my shoulder, with a limp grip under my briefs and on my very hard dick.
Any other woman, I’d be leaning into this opportunity.
But Laney?
Pretty quick she’s gonna figure out she’s making my balls sweat.
And that’s not a good sign for today getting back on the right track.
I don’t know if Emma knows she made the worst possible choice in asking Laney to be my buffer from Chandler. Probably does.
And that stings.
No, it more than stings. It fucking sucks.
Sometime between freshman and senior years, I noticed that Laney’s a girl. A know-it-all, straight-A, silver-spooned pain-in-the-ass, but still a girl.
And a girl who made me feel warm inside every time I looked at her, watched her laughing with my sister, saw her talking to my dad anytime she’d come visit Emma like it wasn’t weird that he was always surrounded by taxidermy animals that he sometimes talked to more than he talked to Em and me.
And then, after being so nice to everyone else, Laney would make me feel like the world’s biggest fuckup whenever I talked to her.
I didn’t want to like her. Why would I? To her, I was her best friend’s lazy, C-average, going-nowhere, waste-of-oxygen brother.
She was always polite. Of course she was. Even in a small town like Snaggletooth Creek, we have folks of good breeding, and the richer her parents got, the more good breeding they insisted they had.
