by Addison Fox
Walker took the bottle midpace across the hotel room they were using as a groom’s suite. “Did everything get here?”
“I left all of it in Anchorage.” Mick took a long drag off his new bottle as Walker’s mouth fell. “Oh for God’s sake, I put everything in the damn plane myself this morning. And I was out of here at six a.m. The least you could do is believe me when I tell you I have everything. Again.”
Walker scrubbed a hand over his freshly shaven face. “Damn it. I’m sorry. It’s like I can’t keep anything in my head.”
“Name the Bill of Rights,” Roman suggested. The finger gesture he got in return pretty much told him what Walker thought of that idea, but it did give him an opportunity to poke his friend a bit more. “You were able to name them, along with all the other amendments in the sixth grade. If you’ve forgotten that, Sloan McKinley has really gotten you good.”
“Legs like that’ll do it every time,” Mick added as he raised his beer.
“Yeah, but the brains, the smile and the open welcome for everyone she meets were the clincher.” A funny, lopsided grin spread across Walker’s face. “And she wants to marry me.”
“There’s no accounting for taste,” Roman offered as he took a seat, careful to select just the right one.
“Isn’t that the truth.” Mick nodded.
Walker glanced up at that, the dreamy haze evaporating from his gaze. “You’ve got room to talk. Grier let you put a ring on her finger.”
“And I count myself the luckiest of men,” Mick intoned, his voice solemn. “I count myself even luckier that she wants a wedding that’s small and intimate, with a minimum of fuss.”
“Which is an improvement over her wanting you to drag her to Vegas,” Roman couldn’t resist adding. “I still don’t understand why you turned her down.”
“I’m a romantic fellow, and Elvis officiating just didn’t fit the bill for what I have in mind.”
Roman shook his head, a subtle sense of bemusement humming in his veins. He was happy for his friends’ leap into the married phases of their lives, but couldn’t quite understand when things had gone so sideways.
They were the eternal bachelors.
And now he was the only one left.
“What time is it?” Walker’s voice pulled him from the maudlin thoughts that had dogged him with uncomfortable regularity these last six months.
Roman stuck out his arm in an exaggerated gesture and dragged up his tuxedo sleeve to look at his wrist. “He’s improved, Mick. It’s been six minutes since the last time he asked.”
A good-natured round of “You’re an asshole” later—a standard response the trio had practiced since middle school—ended with the three of them sitting in quiet solidarity.
Walker broke the silence first. “You and Avery were awfully distant last night.”
Roman chose his words with care, but couldn’t stop the slight edge of resentment that coated them. “I barely saw her. She was so busy flitting around the room talking about Ireland.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got sour grapes about the Irish, Boy-o.” Mick affected the lilting notes of his heritage in his tone. “Our fine lass was simply regaling our townsfolk with tales of the Emerald Isle.”
“It’s more the Irish asshole who can’t seem to leave her alone.”
The words were out before he could stop them, and as Roman took a reflective drag on his beer, he had to admit he didn’t want to.
“So that’s what has you so torqued up.” Walker took the seat next to Roman, who stood to pace. It was bad enough he’d already let the cat out of the bag about Avery; he’d be damned if he’d share every fucking thing going on in his life right now.
“He lives in Ireland. What the hell is he getting her hopes up for?”
Mick’s words stopped him midpace. “So that’s why you’re pissed? You’re afraid she’ll get hurt?”
“Damn straight. The man lives like a billion miles away. What is he expecting, calling her every damn day flirting with her?”
Mick shook his head. “That’s how it works, man. I realize you’ve been living in the rarefied air of a celebrity athlete, where women throw themselves at you with wild abandon, but the rest of us have to work at it.”
“Some call it a courtship ritual,” Walker added. “Maybe you’ve heard of it.”
“What the hell is he courting her for?”
Shitty peripheral vision or not, Roman didn’t miss the glances and raised eyebrows Walker and Mick exchanged across the room. It was Mick who spoke first. “He likes her, Roman. Is that so hard to believe?”
“No. Of course not. She’s spectacular.”
But it was Walker who put the proverbial nail in the coffin. “I hope you’d at least agree she deserves it.”
• • •
Avery watched Sloan walk down the aisle of the small, A-frame nondenominational church that dominated the end of Main Street and thought she’d never seen a more radiant bride. But it was Walker’s incandescent smile as their gazes met that would put any woman into sighs of ecstasy.
Grier reached over and squeezed her hand, a bright smile shining through her tears. Avery squeezed back, the sappy feelings that had swamped her earlier winging back through her chest in a heady rush.
So why the hell—in the middle of a moment of sweet, glorious perfection—did she clamp eyes on her ex-boyfriend across the aisle?
Roman stared back at her, that green gaze as compelling as it was when she was sixteen. Add in the fact that all six-foot-four feet of him was decked out in a tuxedo that had to be custom-made and her traitorous body gave a leap of appreciation that wasn’t quite appropriate for church.
One dark eyebrow lifted in silent challenge and Avery fought the urge to stick out her tongue.
Damn the man. He’d make a stripper blush with those bedroom eyes and thick, luscious hair that begged to be mussed.
And wasn’t that the problem?
Everything was way too easy for Roman and it always had been.
It had just taken her too long to understand that fact.
Dragging her gaze away, Avery focused on the bride. Grier took Sloan’s flowers as she took her place beside Walker, and Avery did a quick refluffing of the train so it lay evenly on the aisle.
Jobs completed, she and Grier met Mick and Roman where they escorted them the few brief steps to their front pew seats. Roman took her arm, and it took everything inside her to keep her gaze straight and her smile firmly fixed as the entire town of Indigo looked on with interest.
“You look beautiful.”
Avery swallowed hard at the warm breath in her ear, those inconvenient feelings rising once more in a hard clutch of her belly.
“Thank you.”
She took her seat, the words playing over and over in her mind.
So many images stood out in her memories of the two of them, but the one that held the top of the list was the year they began to notice each other as more than friends. Roman had whispered in her ear in the middle of a soccer match on the town square. He’d told her where to line up a shot and she’d nearly melted into a puddle as his words skittered down her spine, light as a feather and as powerful as an avalanche.
The sensation—a mixture of inexperience and the sudden change in a relationship she’d had since grade school—had taken her so off guard that she’d pushed him away with a smart-ass retort. But she’d thought about his words long into the night, wrapped up in her tiny bed in the back room of her mother’s house.
Clearly not much had changed in eighteen years.
“You ready?”
Avery felt Grier’s quick poke to her thigh and realized she’d nearly missed her cue along with most of the ceremony. She and Grier returned to the altar to help Sloan with her dress, then moved to the side as Mick and Roman stepped forward to flank Walker.
Mick produced two shining platinum bands from his vest pocket and laid them on the reverend’s open Bible.
Avery watched with rapt fascination as Walke
r slid the band effortlessly on Sloan’s finger and moments later when her friend returned the gesture. And when the couple kissed for the first time as husband and wife, the entire church let up a cheer.
Walker and Sloan began their walk back down the aisle, and Mick and Grier followed. It was only when Roman took her arm once more to begin their procession through the church that a thin layer of panic seized her.
Broad smiles greeted them as they moved down the aisle, making slow progress as many guests stopped Walker and Sloan with hugs. Hooch MacGilvray even threw her a big wink, which his wife, Chooch, responded to with an oversized elbow to the stomach.
Roman seemed oblivious as they walked, his arm locked steadily with hers. She snuck a glance at his chiseled profile and—miracles of miracles—it looked as if he’d missed Chooch and Hooch’s antics. As if sensing her attention, he turned with a smile.
“I haven’t felt this on display since I did a calendar shoot for charity.”
Avery sucked in an involuntary breath. She’d seen that calendar when someone had brought a copy for Roman’s mother, Susan. She’d even given herself permission to go look at it late one night when she was manning the front desk by herself.
Long ropes of muscles defined his arms from shoulder to wrist, and thick ridges sculpted his abdomen. He’d always been well built, but the man that stared back at her from the photograph, wearing nothing but a strategically placed towel, had taken her breath away.
He was magnificent.
A warrior.
And he had been as foreign to her as if a stranger stared back from the page.
Pulling herself back from the heated memory, Avery just shrugged as those inconvenient flutters once again filled her stomach. “Small towns.”
A slight smile grooved his cheeks as he leaned in once more. “So why don’t we really give them something to talk about?”
Chapter Two
Roman shifted his feet to bring Avery’s face more clearly into view.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her hiss was low enough not to be heard by anyone else, but no one in the remaining pews between them and the door would miss the fury in her eyes.
“If you’re so worried about what everyone thinks, let’s make it worth our while. Have a little fun.”
“I’m not worried about what people think.”
Fresh air greeted them as they finally made their way through the doors of the church and Avery pulled her hand from his arm.
“Could have fooled me.”
Avery flung a hand in the direction of the church, even as she stomped across the small front lawn to give them some privacy. “Did you not miss how we were on display in there? The oversized winks and broad grins, everyone so delighted we were walking down that aisle together?”
Roman couldn’t resist poking at her a bit more. “Cupids in their eyes and all that shit.”
“Exactly!”
“Which was all I was really pointing out.” He kept his tone reasonable, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t hold back a grin.
“You were talking about sex and that’s something else entirely.”
“You’ve got a dirty mind.”
“And you weren’t talking about sex, Mr. Big Shot Hockey Player?”
“While I never turn down sex with a beautiful woman, no, that’s not what I was talking about.” He’d turned down plenty of sex, but Roman decided he didn’t quite need to share that tidbit now. Instead, he moved closer to Avery, intrigued when she held her ground. “I was actually talking about a little slow dancing. A few whispers in dark corners. Maybe even a well-placed kiss or two. You know, all the things people expect from the single members of the wedding party.”
“This dress is not a neon sign for sex, despite what conventional wisdom—and Cosmopolitan magazine—suggests.”
“And there you go, right back into the gutter again.”
As if suddenly realizing how close they stood, she moved back, but he didn’t miss the light flush that suffused her chest and cheeks.
“We’re going to behave like civilized adults. Just because we have a past the entire town knows about doesn’t mean we have a present. We can be nice and cordial to each other.”
“I agree.”
“You do?”
“Sure.” He shrugged, deliberately casual, even as a flash of something very much like a flaming sword to his guts ripped through him. “You’ve got a new boyfriend you’re all excited about. I’m big enough to wish you well and want what’s best for you.”
Whatever smart-ass remark was about to come out of her mouth—and he knew Avery Marks well enough to know there was going to be one—floated away on a light stammer. “You do?”
“Of course.”
The urge to rip something apart—preferably the Irishman he pictured in his mind—gripped him, but Roman refused to show it. He’d spent far too long in the spotlight, hiding what he really thought about things in favor of doing what was politically expedient. He’d be damned if he didn’t put the skill to good use now.
“Well, good.”
Her wide-eyed stare didn’t waver, and Roman saw the effort she was making to shift gears, but he kept the stupid, fucking, understanding smile pasted on his face.
A loud shout from the direction of the receiving line broke the moment, and Avery turned back toward the church. “I’d better go see if Sloan needs anything.”
“You do that.”
“I’ll see you at the reception.”
“Count on it.”
Roman watched her go, her long, lean frame filling out the dark-red silk dress to perfection.
And only then did he let his smile drop.
• • •
“Are you okay?” Concern lit up Grier’s dark gray eyes as Avery took her place in the receiving line.
“I’m fine,” Avery said through gritted teeth.
“And I’m Mother Teresa.”
“That’s a bit hard, seeing as how you’re not only not dead, but you’re no saint if the rumors about you and Mick out in the airplane hangar last weekend are true.”
Grier’s mouth dropped in a surprised O, but she recovered quickly, her voice prim and proper when she spoke. “We went out to the see the meteor shower.”
Avery hip-bumped her, desperate to keep the conversation off her and Roman. “I’ve also heard he’s got a nice set of etchings out in that hangar as well.”
“Hey, don’t point the finger at me. I’d have been a married woman by now if I could have convinced my fiancé to elope to Vegas.”
“Every man’s fantasy.”
Grier shook her head, her bewilderment evident in the gesture. “He refused to bite.”
“Are you surprised? That man oozes chivalry.”
“It’s one of his best traits.”
“Amen.” Avery smiled, both because she loved Mick O’Shaughnessy with the sort of lifelong affection that made family out of friends and because his sense of honor really was one of his most lovely qualities.
She was halfway through congratulating herself on shifting the subject when Walker’s secretary, Myrtle Driver, and her husband, Mort, hit her stretch of the receiving line.
“Nice ceremony.” Myrtle’s voice was a mixture of gravel and vinegar.
“It was lovely.” Avery nodded.
“They’re stupid in love, but I think they’ve got what it takes to make it. They’re crazy about each other in and out of bed. It’s worked like a dream for me and Mort.”
Avery tried not to choke as she nodded solemnly.
“Saw you eyeing Roman. You two had the whole good thing in and out, too. Shame you were both too young and stupid to understand it.”
Whatever polite manners her mother had managed to scatter into her through the years fled. “He’s the one who left, Myrtle, for a big contract in New York.”
“Well, he’s back now. Pick up where you left off.”
“He’s not back. The season’s done.”
“
So go back with him. You’ve been content to roam the world the last few months. Go have yourself another adventure.”
“It’s hardly that easy.” The crucifix she’d mentioned to Grier earlier flashed through her memory and Avery was suddenly sorry she’d left it in her room.
“Life’s as hard as you make it. Remember that.”
With those ominous words, Myrtle marched off, the silent Mort following in her wake.
“She’s scary,” Grier whispered low enough so the next person in line couldn’t hear.
“Demonic is more like it.”
The receiving line finished up quickly, Indigo’s denizens eager to get to the reception. As soon as everyone was out of earshot, Grier returned to their conversation. “Myrtle did have a good point before.”
Avery whirled on her friend. “Do not tell me you’re in on it, too?”
“In on what?”
“The cupids that have magically started flying around everyone’s head where Roman and I are concerned.”
“I’m not in on anything and I don’t think you should just fall back in his arms like almost fourteen years haven’t passed. I just think she’s got a point, that’s all.”
“It’s been nearly proven on several occasions that Myrtle Driver is the spawn of Satan. Do you really want to side with her?”
“I happen to have it on good authority Satan wouldn’t wear that shade of lipstick.”
Try as she might, Avery had no response.
Grier reached for her hand, the squeeze quick and light. “All I said was she had a point. Do me a favor and think about it.”
Avery was still thinking about it an hour later as she floated around the transformed town hall. If “the grandmothers”—Sophie, Mary and Julia—made the hall a wonderland each and every December for their annual bachelor competition, a wedding had given them an excuse to bring a fairy tale to life.
She’d been here fifteen minutes and still hadn’t seen every inch of the bedecked space. Everywhere she looked was absolutely enchanting, and Avery eagerly took in the acres of roses, tulle, twinkle lights, ice sculptures and even a handcrafted bower that looked like something Martha Stewart might aspire to.
“What do you think, dear?” Julia, Roman’s grandmother and Avery’s own fiercest champion, sidled up to her.
