by Lindsey Hart
She turned to him, a sweet smile lighting up her face. “A happy way of course. I just- I mean, you said when we were kids that you wanted to get married in your parent’s backyard. I just feel like they’ve gone to all this work and we haven’t really done anything.”
“You bought a dress. That’s all there really was to do. They just have to set up lawn chairs and make sandwiches.”
Syd hesitated again. He hated the speck of doubt he saw in her eyes when they flicked back up to his. “Do you think that- well- that if anyone gets a photo of Philly’s most eligible bachelor getting married like a hobo in a tiny ceremony with ten people as guests that- that people will- think…”
“I don’t care what people think.” He stalked over and dropped his hands to her waist. “And we live in Houston now, so I’m not Philly’s most eligible bachelor. That title has shifted onto some other poor bastard. This- you- this is everything that I want. It’s everything I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember, so no, if some photos get leaked or someone says something, I don’t actually give a shit, because you, Sydney, are going to be my wife. The most beautiful, wonderful, amazing, smart, caring, kick ass marketing woman in the world.”
“Kick ass marketing?” she giggled. “Seriously, I don’t think that’s a thing.”
“Oh, it’s a thing. I should also add, sexiest on that list.”
Her eyes sparkled with happiness as she looped her arms around his neck. He marveled again that she’d chosen him. Him. It had taken a damn long time for them to get their stuff figured out, but when they did, even they were surprised at how strong they were going. At how everything just kind of fell into place and it just seemed… easy. Turned out people were right when they said having a solid friendship as a base first, really helped.
“Looks like your parents are going to get everything they want.”
Jesse stared into Syd’s face, because her smile was kind of weird, a little lopsided, and her eyes were really glowing. Like they did when she had a secret.
“Uh- I- like… like the wedding?” he asked, confused. “Because they want us to move back to Philly and that is definitely not happening. We have to keep working on them to come out here. The winters are so much better.”
She giggled, higher pitched and more girlish than normal. Which was also confusing.
“No, like everything, everything.”
And then it hit him. Because it wasn’t like they hadn’t been trying. She’d been off the pill for six months after they both decided that being parents would complete the happiness that they’d found in each other. She’d always said she didn’t know if she wanted kids, but half a year ago, when he’d asked her again, he was surprised to find that her face softened and she got this far away look in her eyes, and she said that maybe, just maybe, she could imagine herself as a mom.
“Syd… really? Because if you’re not, you shouldn’t make jokes like that. I might have to hand you my man-card, because seriously, I feel like I’m going to faint here.”
She nodded, her smile faltering. “You’re happy, right?”
“Happy?” he laughed, astounded. “Are you serious right now? I’m happier than my mom will be, and I’m sure she’s going to do a triple backflip when we tell her.”
“Just a triple?”
They stared at each other for a second longer, letting the shock sink in, and then he scooped her up in his arms and she wrapped her legs around his waist and he kissed her breathless.
After he came up for air, panting, a huge dorky grin splitting his face no doubt, he glanced from the woman he loved most in the whole world to her suitcase on the bed. “You know, if you take half that stuff, we’ll make it through the airport in double the time, which means that we might have time for five minutes of pre-marital bliss…”
She snorted, but her eyes trailed to her suitcase. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. There is seriously no science backing that up.”
He arched a brow. “No?”
She hesitated. Looked at the suitcase again. Looked back at him. Her hands came up to cup his face and her eyes darkened with hunger. “Yeah- on second thought, I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. I don’t need half that stuff anyway.”
She dragged his face back to hers and kissed him hungrily and he kissed her back. Their life wasn’t perfect but… actually, no. Their life, problems and all, the occasional fight they had, the morning breath, the growing pains… all of it was pretty damn perfect.
“Did I ever tell you that I love you, Mr. Samson?”
“I think so. Maybe a couple of times. I can’t wait to tell you that I love you. As Mrs. Samson.”
And it was all about to get that much better.
Because she’d picked him, and he picked her. Right from the start. It had taken them a while to get on the right track, but he’d keep picking her and she’d keep picking him right until the end.
The End
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lindsey Hart specializes in sweet to extra hot and dirty romances and strongly believes in happily ever after. If you are looking for a page turner, then you are in for a wild and naughty ride with feisty heroines and alpha male heroes.
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ALPHALICIOUS BILLIONAIRES
The Dating Game
Available in Kindle HERE
She has no idea I’m just playing a game with her.
That everything I say is a lie.
She thinks I’m a nice guy struggling to make ends meet. If only she knew.
To win, I have to seduce her … and then leave.
But I’m so hooked.
Personality, beauty, curves, she has it all.
I always play to win. But this time if I win, I will lose Big Time.
PREVIEW OF ‘THE DATING GAME’
CHAPTER 1
Muffy
It must be nice to be born with a sweet, normal name. A name that doesn’t ruin everything because it’s so incredibly god-awful.
“I need to change my name. It’s because of my name that Steve dumped me.” Muffy dumped her car keys on the table and sank down beside her BFF, Carla. She swiped at her puffy cheeks. She was well aware that her pale skin looked blotchy as hell and her tear ducts were so empty, they’d probably never produce liquid again. Her swollen tear-stained eyes felt like she’d stuck her face in a bad science experiment and the acid was currently eating away at all her vital tissues.
Her heart felt a little like that too. Or maybe that was just her pride. Getting dumped over something she had no control over didn’t exactly give a big self-esteem boost. Steve was the kind of guy a person could take home and introduce to their parents. He was the kind of guy who had a decent job, drove a nice car and owned his own place.
The small apartment she shared with Carla was a safe place. Carla herself was like the apartment. Safe. Loving. Caring. And currently, Carla had her hair wrapped in a blue fluffy towel that matched her extra blue, extra fluffy robe. Her cheeks were flushed pink from her bath earlier. It was Friday night. Carla, avowedly single, liked to light a candle, kick back, and dump half a bottle of bubble bath into the tub. Which should have been hell on her skin, but her skin was always perfect.
Despite Muffy’s world-ending news, Carla went right on stuffing popcorn into her mouth at an alarming rate. She wasn’t very good at it either. She missed her mouth and a few kernels dropped to the floor. She rolled her eyes at Muffy’s outburst, the way that only best friends who detest said man can roll their eyes.
“Did it ever occur to you that Steve breaking up with you was the be
st thing that could have happened?”
“No!” Muffy wailed. “I spent a year with him! A year of my life!”
“A year wasted on wrinkly old balls. You never did tell me if his pubes were grey or not.”
“Carla!”
“What?” Carla waggled her brows and stuffed another hand of popcorn into her mouth.
“His balls weren’t old or wrinkly. They were nice balls. Like, really nice ones. Like, perfect balls. And he didn’t have any pubes. He manscaped down there.’
“He ever dragged them across your face?”
“What?” Muffy’s mouth dropped open.
Carla shrugged. “I just don’t see the point in shaving your balls if you’re not going to drag them across a person’s face. Did you like- when you- you know- did you lick them?”
“No! Dear lord god, what is wrong with you?”
“See. No point in making them hairless. Speaking of balls… we have to take Mr. Twinkletoes to the vet tomorrow morning, so no food for him tonight after ten.”
On cue, their new rescue cat, a huge orange tabby that followed Carla home the week before, sauntered into the kitchen. The guy was the size of a house. He was missing both ears, from frostbite or ear mites or something. He only had half a tail and the end was covered in scars where the hair no longer grew. His body was flappy and saggy, and his coat was dull. In short, he was a mess. It didn’t stop him from having the kindest green eyes that Muffy had ever seen. Carla was a sucker when it came down to animals. She couldn’t stand lost causes in men, but cats- that was a different story. She’d scooped the ancient street cat up and promised him a better life.
“Mr. Twinkletoes!” Muffy extended her hand, but the cat sniffed at her and hissed before sauntering off. She turned back to Carla, shocked. “What’s gotten into him?”
“Oh, I told him this time tomorrow he’d be ball-less and flawless.”
“Carla! You can’t tell him something like that. You’ll scar him for life!”
“Nah.” Carla shoved in a handful of popcorn. She licked the butter off her fingers before dipping them back into the huge baking bowl for more. “Have you seen him? He looks like he can handle finally losing his baby-makers.”
“You’re terrible, you know that?”
“No way. I could have left him out there on the street in the frigid cold, but now he’s living the life. I was thinking about rescuing another and getting him a friend.”
“Well… the apartment does have a limit of two pets per place. We could get another.”
“You mean you wouldn’t be angry?”
“No, of course not. Maybe it would cheer me up. If I can’t get a man to stick, I’ll just turn into a crazy cat lady. God. I can practically feel my ovaries shriveling up as we speak.”
“You’re better off without losers in your life. Especially ones who insult your name. There isn’t anything wrong with your name.”
“He said he couldn’t take me seriously because I was named after a seventies-style vagina. I swear I could kill my mom some days.”
“I like your name. You can do all sorts of fun things with your name.”
“No. Guys don’t want to date me at all because the first thing they see is my name and it makes them think of seventies bush and rotting old beavers in a time when people still called boxers beavers and it’s just a huge turn-off.”
“You could always give in and do online dating.”
“I’d rather invent a time machine and go back in time and force my mother to give me a normal name.” Muffy sighed. “God. Why does it cost so much to get all your ID changed? I would totally pick a normal name. Something like Deanne or Stephanie or Amy.”
“Yeah, well Carla sounds like a name for the evil aunt, the kind who dyes her hair neon orange and gets a perm every other week and borrows her husband’s Hawaiian shirts.”
“Carla is a nice normal name.”
Carla shrugged. “Does it smell like burning in here?”
“Uhh…” Muffy paused mid pity party. She sniffed the air. “Yeah. It kind of does. Why? What were you trying to make before the popcorn?”
For someone who was so successful, had a Masters in Marketing, who ran her own boutique, who was confident being single, who took charge and who others followed effortlessly and looked up to, there were some things Carla couldn’t do. God, she’d burn her takeout even if she didn’t have to cook the damn stuff, she was that bad.
“Oh- yeah. I went through a couple of batches of popcorn.”
“How do you burn popcorn?”
“I think I overloaded the maker. It just came out all black.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t burn the place down. Remind me to call my insurance and up the liability part of it. If you catch the building on fire, the two million dollars isn’t going to go far.”
“We have mine too. So together it would be like, four million.”
“This is Chicago. Four million is going to cover like one single apartment and there are like sixty in here.”
Carla rolled her eyes. She nibbled at the popcorn and talked with her mouth full. “It was the maker’s fault. They could sue it.”
“You can’t sue for that. I think they would claim that it was user error and you’d be hooped.”
“Yeah, well, at least I got you to stop thinking about Steve. The guy was like three hundred years older than you anyway. It’s no big loss.”
“He was forty. I’m thirty. That’s only ten years.”
“Really? Guess I must suck at math.”
“You’re amazing at math,” she deadpanned.
Carla couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Relax,” she assured her, with one of those special Carla eye roll specialties that told the receiver just how much they were really loved. “You’re thirty. Thirty is young. No one has kids until they’re like forty anymore anyway. Not that you want kids. We have too much stuff to do first. You’re a great catch. You’re smart. You make a decent amount of money at the world’s most boring job. Best of all, you still have a tight body. Your tits haven’t even started to sag, so trust me, you’re good. Even with a name like Muffy. Steve is the one missing out.”
“You never liked him. And his old balls.”
Carla visibly shuddered. “Thank god I never had to see his old balls. It would have done me in. Death by balls. I can see the headline now. Death by hairless balls”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. There’s always online dating. We could make you a good profile, take a few grainy pictures, and best of all, make you a fake name. You wouldn’t even have to give them your real name on the date. Then you couldn’t get dumped by grey pubed men over something so stupid they should have their head examined to see if it’s actually hollow. Hey, maybe that’s why he shaved them all off. He didn’t want you to know how white they were.”
The bridge of Muffy’s nose burned again. She blinked so rapidly her eyelashes probably would have flown off if they were fake. But no, they weren’t fake. They were just her own bland boring eyelashes. She never wore falsies. She was an accountant. Accountants didn’t wear false eyelashes. Accountants looked exactly like her. They had brown mousy hair and skin that was a little too pale even in the summer and boobs that were probably a size too small and a flat ass and a skinny body and bland features that no amount of makeup was really going to dress up.
“I don’t want to die an old shrew,” Muffy moaned.
Carla licked her fingers again. Nice, long, tapered fingers with perfectly manicured nails. Carla was beautiful. Blonde. Stacked. Perfectly proportioned in every way that mattered. She had a natural disdain for all men and vowed she’d stay single until the day she died, so her looks were wasted. Muffy wondered if her friend would ever consider doing a body switch in the near future. She wished those things were doable, just like the time machine thing.
“You won’t,” Carla assured her. “Or if you do, at least we’ll die shrews together. We can get old together, you and me. We can watch our boobs
sag down to our waists and our butts expand and-”
“Oh god, stop. I can’t take it!”
Carla grinned. “So… dating profile it is then?”
“I just got out of a relationship! I don’t need to jump back into another one.”
“Darling, dating is one thing. Relationships are another. What you need is to learn how to relax. You’re never going to find the right guy if you think every guy is the right guy and try to force them into being that.”
“Is that what I do?” Muffy asked, horrified. Carla could be pretty darn blunt at the best of times.
“Yeah,” Carla admitted. “You kind of do. You just need to let your hair down and have a little fun. I mean seriously. Let. Your. Hair. Down. Stop doing it up in those super-tight buns that make your eyes look extra-long at the corners.”
“They do not!”
“You know what I mean. You just need to learn how to have fun. Don’t look for something serious. We can put that right in the profile. Some people just don’t want to be lonely. They’re looking for fun and a connection and if they have that, they want to see where it goes. That’s the type of thing I’m talking about.”
“Says the person who doesn’t date.”
“Just because I don’t date, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to have fun. Girls have itches. Urges. Whatever.”
“I don’t even want to know.”
Carla just blinked and offered Muffy a sly smile. “I think we both already know.”
“Yes, yes we do. I know way too much. Sometimes I wish I could bleach my ears.”
“I’m sure you do. But your profile… it’s going to be the best one on there and you’ll be having all sorts of balls thrown your way. Old balls, since that’s what you seem to like. Young balls, hairy balls, hairless balls, tight balls, saggy balls…”
