“Oh, okay,” Savannah said, sounding about as convincing as they had been with their denials.
The silence came, awkward and a little thick before Allie jumped back into the conversation. “Savannah, I want to thank you again for asking me to be your bridesmaid.”
“Same here,” Bree agreed without adding a smart-ass comment.
“Glad you both agreed. I know how close all of you are with Curt, and we wanted the three of you to be a part of this.”
That wasn’t lip service. Savannah had immediately agreed with Curt’s choice as Ryder for his best man, and the four of them had considered Allie and Bree as honorary best men, too. In the end, though, Savannah had asked Allie and Bree to be bridesmaids and to stand in when needed for Savannah’s sister, Linda, the maid of honor—who was seven months pregnant.
“And speaking of being a part of this,” Savannah went on, “I need to ask one more favor. Curt and I will be leaving for the honeymoon soon, and the photographer wants to get some shots of the wedding party dancing. Linda has to get off her feet—swollen ankles—but I was hoping Ryder and you would dance together.” She tipped her head to Ryder and Allie. “Bree, I was hoping you’d dance with my brother.”
Bree jumped right in to do that, probably because Savannah’s brother, Trace, was good-looking. Normally, Ryder would have jumped to dance with Allie, too, but that blasted thought hit him again.
I just didn’t want to be Ryder’s sister.
Now it felt a little off. Obviously, though, he was the only one who felt that way because Allie did some jumping. She got right to her feet, tugging him out of the chair, and they set their drinks on the table while they made their way to the dance floor to Alan Jackson’s “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow.”
Ryder had never considered himself an especially good dancer, but this was where Allie shined. She’d given both Curt and him lessons before their junior prom, and they’d ended up holding their own with dates whose names Ryder couldn’t actually remember.
Allie held her own now, too, as he spun her into a twirl before pulling her back to him for a little Texas two-step. But the fates seemed to be working against him tonight because the DJ switched tempo and put on a slow tune. The kind of song that squashed couples together and aligned parts that he didn’t want aligned with Allie.
But an especially stupid part of him started to urge him on.
They were a good minute into the squashing/dancing when Allie pulled back and looked at him. “Please tell me you’re not this hard because of me.”
Ryder blinked. He didn’t have an erection, but the urging on by the brainless idiot behind his zipper had suggested it, what with all the brushing and rubbing Allie’s front was doing with his.
“Hard arm and back muscles,” she amended, and her mouth quivered a little as if she might smile.
Both the clarification and the smile helped until he remembered there was a question in there. Were his muscles knotted and tight because of what she’d said about the blood-brother thing?
No. That wasn’t it.
And Ryder hoped like hell that was true.
He didn’t have time to dwell on it, though, or on the groin-tightening dance because the music stopped, and Curt lifted his hand to get everyone’s attention.
“Savannah and I want to thank all of you for coming.” He kissed his bride during the applause and cheers that erupted, a kiss that lasted long enough to keep the applause and cheers going.
“Get a room,” someone called out.
“That’s the plan.” Curt kept his love-filled eyes on his bride. “Savannah and I are saying good-night and heading off on our honeymoon.” More cheers, peppered with some PG-13 suggestions. “Y’all feel free, though, to hang out, dance and have some fun.”
Curt stopped by Bree first to say goodbye and hug her before he made his way to Allie and Ryder. More bear hugs that were so tight that Allie looked as if she might puke when he finally pulled back, and just like that, Curt and Savannah were gone.
Ryder immediately felt the loss again, but he pushed it down fast and plastered on the happiest face he could manage. He was doing good. Until his eyes met Allie’s. She wasn’t crying—Allie wasn’t a crier—but there was a shimmer, and she was blinking hard.
“Shit,” Ryder grumbled, easing her back to him. Not for a body squash or dance this time but for a much-needed hug.
Between friends.
When he pulled back, her eyes were still shimmering, and she was still blinking hard, but she glanced around the room at Bree, who had obviously set her sights on Trace. His twin had found a Band-Aid fix for her blue mood.
Allie squared her shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. “Since tomorrow’s Sunday and none of us will have to work, want to hand Mindy off to Dylan so we can all get drunk?” she asked.
That sounded like a fine idea...until he realized there could be a big-ass pitfall with it.
“Uh, maybe now isn’t a good time,” he threw out there, but at best his tone was that of a suggestion. Still, emotions were running high right now, and Bree wouldn’t be with them.
Allie being Allie knew just what to say to soothe his doubts. “It’ll be our farewell to the Crab Posse.” She hooked her arm through his. “Trust me.” And she said the words she’d said to him a hundred times. “Nothing can go wrong with that.”
CHAPTER TWO
SOMETHING WAS WRONG.
Allie got proof of that the moment she opened her eyes. For one thing, she wasn’t in her own bed. In fact, she wasn’t in a bed at all. She was lying on a blanket...somewhere.
That immediately got her full attention.
She was just a few weeks away from her thirtieth birthday, and not once had she woken up confused about her current location. Allie snapped to a sitting position, instantly regretting the movement because it set off a tornado in her head.
Mercy, where was she?
Despite the spinning and her unfocused eyes—yes, they were bleary—she fired her gaze around the room, only to realize it wasn’t even a room. She was in a barn loft, and there were bits of hay poking her in the butt and back.
That got her attention, too, because she realized the hay on top of the blanket was coming in contact with her bare skin and not merely poking through her clothes. She was naked. Or rather, almost naked. She was wearing only her panties and her right shoe, and there appeared to be a hickey or bruise on her ankle.
God, what had she done?
She glanced around and saw the rest of her clothes strewn across the hay on the right. The green puffy bridesmaid’s dress and her other shoe. No bra, but there was a deck of cards and an empty bottle of whiskey. Those were hardly enough clues to give her the details she wanted so she shifted her attention to her left. And her breath landed somewhere in the vicinity of her recently pedicured toes.
Because she wasn’t alone.
Ryder was next to her. He was sprawled out on his stomach, and there was no almost to his nakedness. He didn’t have on a stitch of clothing, and Allie had zero trouble seeing his bare butt.
Her mouth went dry. Her heart started to thud, and she wasn’t sure it was because she was seeing a lot more of her best friend than she’d ever seen before. It was because of the quality of what she was seeing.
Ryder was hot.
Incredibly hot. A real man. Of course, she hadn’t needed to see him naked to determine that. Allie had always thought he was scalding in the looks department, but she’d never believed she would get visual proof of it. Proof that would have been a lot more fun if there hadn’t been a tornado in her head and hay poking her in places she didn’t want to be poked.
Even with all those things wrong with this situation, it occurred to her that she didn’t want Ryder to see her like this. It was best if she got dressed, regrouped and found a mirror so she could figure out how bad her remaini
ng makeup was. She was guessing it was bad, and while Allie hated to admit she was vain, she didn’t want the image of her like this etched in Ryder’s brain.
Especially since her memory would be of his incredible bare butt.
Despite her good intentions, Allie didn’t manage to push down the groan she made when she tried to get up so she could locate her bra, and the sound must have alerted Ryder because his eyes flew open. Since his face was turned toward her, Allie saw the same confusion race through his baby blues that she’d experienced just moments earlier.
Ryder looked at her. His attention lingered on her panties and then her bare breasts. That caused her nipples to tighten. It also caused his eyes to widen to the size of turkey platters.
Cursing, or rather attempting to curse, he scrambled to his feet. Since this had already taken a weird turn, Allie decided to try to lighten things up a bit. “So, seen any good movies lately?”
He didn’t crack a smile. Blinking and attempting more of that profanity, Ryder kept staring at her until he glanced down at his own exposed parts. Specifically, the male part of him that had garnered her attention. Again, it was impressive.
“Hell, did we...” Ryder garbled out. “No, we didn’t. We couldn’t have. Hell. Did we?”
Thankfully, Allie had been awake a few seconds longer than he had so her head was slightly clearer. “No. We didn’t do that. But we drank way too much, and we ended up here.”
He glanced around, obviously trying to figure out where here was. It was the hayloft of the Granger Ranch, where they both worked. Until the night before, Allie had never been to this part of the barn, but there was enough recognition in Ryder’s eyes now to confirm that he probably had. And that it perhaps involved bringing a lover or two to this place sometime during the time he’d been working for the Grangers, which went as far back as high school.
Ryder cursed again. This time, the words were a lot less garbled, which likely meant this was all coming back to him.
“Damn,” he spat out and, wincing with every move, he located his boxers and dragged them on. “We came up here as the reception was winding down, got drunk and played strip poker.” He stopped, froze as he dragged on his jeans. “I didn’t kiss you or anything, did I?”
He made it sound as if he could have possibly infected her with mad cow disease. Or vice versa.
“No kiss,” she assured him. Since the weird was just getting weirder, Allie grabbed the blanket and used it to cover her breasts. “Well, not on the mouth. Shortly before you passed out, the subject of hickeys came up, and I told you I’d never had one.”
“Hickeys?” That brought on more cursing.
She understood the reason for this profanity, too. Hickeys weren’t an especially good topic for good friends of the opposite sex or for adults. Of course, what had followed hadn’t been a good idea, either.
“You called me a hickey virgin and said you could fix that,” Allie explained. She stuck her foot out to show him the love bite on her ankle.
He didn’t curse this time. Or groan. Maybe Ryder had reached the conclusion that it just wasn’t worth any more reactions like that because everything about this situation warranted profanity and groans.
“What else did we do?” Ryder snapped while he searched for the rest of his clothes.
Her memory was still a little fuzzy around the edges, but she did remember nearly melting when his mouth was on her ankle. No way would she tell him that, though.
“We did some flirting,” she admitted. Of course, the strip poker told her that. It was basically a game of foreplay, but Ryder had crashed before they’d reached the actually playing stage. “That was about it.”
He opened his mouth as if he might ask for details about that flirting, but then he shook his head and started looking around. For the rest of his clothes, she realized, when he picked up his socks.
And her bra.
It was a strapless, barely there strip of white lace that held his attention for a couple of seconds before he must have realized what he was doing, and he tossed it to her. Allie kept the blanket covering her while she put it on, and once it was in place, she got up to gather her clothes and get dressed as Ryder was doing.
“Whose stupid idea was it to play stupid strip poker?” he asked.
With those double stupids in the question, Allie hated to be the bearer of bad news. “Yours. That happened when we found the deck of cards, and you joked that one of the hands had probably played strip poker up here. I said I’d never played...”
She let him fill in the blanks. Ryder had called her a strip-poker virgin and had set out to remedy that. In hindsight, if she’d wanted to have sex with him, she could have lied and told him she was a virgin. But thankfully she’d been too drunk and was too honest to do something like that.
“I’m sorry,” Ryder grumbled. “I can’t believe I did this—with you of all people.”
Until he’d added that last handful of words, Allie had only been caught up in the weirdness and the memory of his protruding male part, not pissed off. But that did it.
“With me of all people?” Allie challenged.
Because they’d known each other for so long, he picked up on the ire right away, and tried to dismiss it with a wave of his hand. “We’re friends.”
Now he looked at her, and it wasn’t an especially good time for it since she was struggling to pull the vomit-green dress over her head. He sighed, went to her and helped, pulling and squeezing like putting sausage in a casing. Once the dress was in place and Allie was cinched in, their gazes met and held.
He opened his mouth but then closed it as if he’d changed his mind about what to say. “I don’t want to screw up our friendship.”
Allie wanted to assure him that it wouldn’t, but she’d never out-and-out lied to him before, and she was worried this might indeed be a whopper. They couldn’t have a do-over on this, and she seriously doubted she’d ever look at her ankle again without seeing, and feeling, his mouth on it. She’d never considered that to be a hot spot before, but Ryder had made it one now.
Along with making some memories that he clearly wished they hadn’t made.
But now that they had been made, maybe it was time for her to clear the air, even if this was a particular clearing he wasn’t going to like to hear.
“Your friendship means a lot to me, too,” she said. Paused. Swallowed hard and put on her mental big-girl panties so she could tell him what she’d been wanting him to hear for years. “There’s a reason, though, that I never wanted you to be my blood brother. It’s because...well, I’m attracted to you.”
Allie steeled herself for him to laugh. Or curse again. Or maybe just leave now that he was dressed. And he might have indeed done one or more of those things if his phone hadn’t rung. Ryder didn’t especially seem relieved about the interruption, but the ringtone let them know it was Bree.
That realization sent Allie and him following the sound to locate his cell phone under some hay. They found it at the same time, their hands closing around it, which meant they touched, and Allie got another jolt of heat. Not quite as scorching as the love bite, but with her now-clear head, it was almost as potent.
“Whew, you’re okay,” Bree greeted the moment Ryder hit the answer button. He put the call on speaker, probably so she wouldn’t need to stand so close to him to hear.
Allie moved away from him, but their eyes stayed connected. She wished she could crawl inside him and figure out what he was thinking. Or better yet, she wished he’d just kiss her, but she figured they were going to need more of that air-clearing before that even had a possibility of happening. But even if it didn’t happen today, Allie wasn’t going to take back what she’d just said.
“What about Allie? Is she okay, too?” Bree asked.
Ryder shook his head as if to clear it. “Uh, why wouldn’t she be?”
H
is twin made an “isn’t it obvious” sound. “Well, when I left the reception with Trace, you two were doing some sloppy dance moves and talking about getting drunk. Nothing could go wrong with that, I thought to myself.” There was more than a smidge of sarcasm in the comment. “With the sour mood we were all in because of Curt leaving, I just didn’t want you two doing anything stupid.”
Allie had very recent memories of what Bree would consider stupid. Heck, she still had bits of hay sticking to various parts of her body, including a couple that were in her bra.
“Something stupid?” Ryder growled. “Like what?”
Bree laughed. “If I have to spell it out for you, then I’m guessing nothing happened. It’s just with emotions running high, I didn’t want you to cross any lines with Allie. I know you sometimes forget, but she’s a woman, Ryder.”
“Trust me, I haven’t forgotten,” he said under his breath.
“Well, neither has she. Allie’s always had a crush on you,” Bree added.
Thankfully, Allie managed to contain her gasp, but her eyes narrowed. Bree was spilling a pinky-swear promise that Allie and she had made when they were teenagers. Eighteen or so years ago. And apparently it had still been a secret to Ryder until this exact second.
“Crush aside,” Bree went on, “Allie and you have your heads on straight. I know neither of you would risk ruining things. We’re the Rab Posse now. Or maybe Bra. Or Arb,” she suggested. “Bra,” Bree concluded. “Yeah, the Bra Posse works because Allie and I both wear bras, and you get your hands into a lot of them.”
Bree laughed as if it were both a fine joke and an equally fine idea. It wasn’t. But Allie figured it’d stick as hard and as fast as Crab had.
“Here’s to the Bra Posse,” Bree continued. “And to all the years we’ll keep the posse just the way it is now. Gotta go. I need to call Allie and make sure she got home okay.”
Bree added a cheery goodbye and ended the call, and several moments later Allie’s phone rang. Judging from the sound, it was somewhere near the scattered deck of cards. She didn’t go scrambling for it; neither did Ryder. That was because they still had that eye lock on each other.
Lone Star Blues Page 27
