“Hello, everyone. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed your stay here at the Wedding Ring. If you’re happy, Kingman Enterprises is happy.” Audrey had to hang onto the edge of the table. Her vision was going gray, her head spinning, and she wavered on the verge of hyperventilating. Whatever Dave said next went over her head until Kelsey shook her.
“Audrey!” she hissed. Her name brought her back to the present. “What in God’s name is wrong with you?”
All Audrey could manage to do was shake her head. “I’m okay, Kels,” she whispered back, swallowing hard.
“I know you don’t want to listen to me rattle on any longer, so I’m turning over the microphone to our star tonight. Travis Guidry, fresh from a smash hit tour in Vegas! Trav, let’s have some music we can dance to.” Dave stepped back from the microphone.
“You got it, Mr. Kingman. All right, ladies and gents, time for fais do-do! Laissez les bon temps rouler! Let’s par-TAY!” With a riff from his drummer he launched into his signature hit, “Pickin’ on the Front Porch.” Audrey looked up toward the stage and saw Dave staring directly at her. He came down into a cloud of admirers, but shook them off as he headed directly for her table. She heard Kelsey make a little choking noise as he held out his hand.
“Dance with me, Audrey?” he asked.
“Oh, gosh! Of course.” Only belatedly did she gather her scattered wits.
“Come on, what’s the matter?” he asked, sweeping her into his arms. He still smelled like Dave, a heady mixture of soap, sunshine, and, most especially, man.
“You never told me…”
“I know I didn’t. That was on purpose. But I didn’t lie to you, Audrey. My father’s name is also Bradley, so I’ve gone by my middle name since I was a kid. All my friends call me Dave.”
“You’ll have to forgive me. This is a little bit unsettling.” She fell easily into the rhythm of his two-step. He had obviously learned to dance from the best, but she would not have expected anything else.
“I never misled you,” he reiterated. “I did what I did because when people know who I am they see Kingman Enterprises, not Dave. I wanted to meet a girl like you, honest and smart and unpretentious, who’d accept me for who I am, not slobber over the size of my bank account. I want a real woman, not one of these plastic valley girls with fake boobs, fake hair, fake nails, a fake face, and a fake attitude. I’ve waited a long time for you to show up.”
“But I’m a nobody, just a little out-of-work computer nerd.”
“I like little computer nerds.”
“Well, whatever.”
That made him laugh. He threw his head back and abandoned himself to it for a moment; the sound made wonderful little tingles in her blood. “Can I still come to Houston and see you? Kingman Enterprises has a hotel there, and I have a Gulfstream at Tacoma Industrial all fueled up and ready to go.” She found herself tongue-tied for the second time. “Aren’t you going to say ‘whatever’?” he teased.
“No. ‘Whatever’ isn’t really appropriate.”
“How about forever, then?” She looked up into his marvelous hazel eyes and abandoned all caution. There in the middle of the dance floor, in front of her sister and at least twenty-five millionaires, she kissed him, firmly and soundly.
A word about the author...
After a long and varied work life in which she began as an English teacher and ended as a computer support technician, Lael Neill, retired to a new career: becoming a full-time author. She began writing somewhere around age eight and has finally fulfilled this lifelong dream.
A transplant from the Pacific Northwest, she lives on two wooded acres in rural Central Texas with deer, bunnies, armadillos, hawks, and a resident roadrunner for company. In between stints of writing, she decompresses with volunteer work, knitting, and music.
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