by Ren Benton
To make matters even worse, because she never wore anything that exposed her arms, she didn’t own a strapless bra, and the boutique didn’t sell one, so her breasts would be hanging loose and low for the evening, getting all sweaty underneath. After only a couple of minutes in her portable sauna, she could feel the heat trapped against her body by the mystery textile, steaming her like a head of cauliflower.
On the bright side, because she’d been wearing a skirt, she did have the spandex shorts required to keep her thighs from rubbing each other raw.
A situation was dire when the bright side was a thigh shaper.
“Need help, Duchess?”
Livinia Dangereuse was known in the society pages for being helped out of her clothing by men in public places. She would make headlines for attending this wedding naked to protest the dress code.
Ivy simply wanted company in her misery. “What are you required to wear?” she called through the door.
“Oh, it’s awful.”
Confirmation of a nondiscriminatory policy slightly diminished her feeling of persecution.
“White shirt, white pants.”
He was lucky her glare didn’t burn a hole through the door and vaporize his black heart. “You poor, poor man.”
“I was warned there would be a surprise at the end of the reception. I’m guessing we’ll be forced into either a Karate Kid reenactment or recruiting new members for a cult.”
Many men would look suited for either role, but when she tried to picture Griff in the specified getup, she saw him lounging on a yacht, cool and casual. “Or, to pay for the wedding, they sold you to the hotel to work as cabana boys.”
“That would explain the orientation manual on my pillow.”
The mirror reflected her dopey grin. This man turned going with the flow into a water park and gave her a day pass to play for free.
Jared would have expressed his disapproval of defaming the newlyweds and the hotel by suggesting they had engaged in unethical behavior and discouraged her from opening herself up to lawsuits.
Her lips lost their curve. She couldn’t dredge the sound of his laugh from the depths of memory and wondered if she had ever heard it. How could she spend the rest of her life with someone she couldn’t even share a joke with?
“Let’s see it, Liv.”
She didn’t want to be seen in this condition by anyone, but maybe Griff would take one look at her and change his mind about the necessity of a wedding date.
She emerged from her dressing room at the same time as a neighboring brunette wearing a bikini. The open fishnet shawl slung around Bikini Girl’s hips for decoration concealed nothing — not that the bronzed goddess had anything to be modest about.
Several seconds passed before Griff took notice of the woman he’d brought to the store. He extended one arm, hand flat, palm down. “Go ahead. Get the wrist slapping over with.”
“What for? I looked, too. Granted, probably not for the same reason.”
He returned his fingers to his front pocket. “Catty, Duchess?”
“Little bit.” Otherwise, she wouldn’t have counted the few butt dimples visible through the net. They obviously didn’t trouble their owner. “Mostly, I’d like to know where she got the guts to walk around practically naked in public.”
He tipped his head toward a display on the wall. “The bikinis are right over there if you want to walk around practically naked.”
She made a sound in the back of her throat. “I lack the nerve, not the four square inches of fabric.”
The dimple tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You impress me as being plenty nervy.”
Just nervy enough to show her arms to strangers she would never see again. She pinched her elbows against her sides for maximum jiggle prevention. “Will this get me in the door?”
Smoky eyes glided from her bare toes to her aggressive hair. “You look good to me. The aura of despair is the perfect accessory for the occasion.” His eyes widened as hers narrowed to slits. “Oh, were you hoping I’d let you off the hook?”
“Of course not. Though I wouldn’t cry all night if you did.” She muttered the last as she fished the price tag out of her clenched armpit to learn how much this monstrosity would set her back.
He reached out and snapped the tag from its plastic stem before she saw the number. “It’s on me.”
“I wish it was, but I don’t think it comes in your size.” She made a grab for the tag.
He held it over his head, where she would never reach it without full arm extension and braless jumping — so that wasn’t happening. “It’s mandatory equipment for the favor I asked of you. It’s only fair that I pay for it.”
Only fair would be the bride getting her head out of her ass and letting guests wear their own damn clothes.
The unseen price would have been calculated with an eye toward gouging tourists. Ivy’s unease about allowing a strange man to buy her overpriced clothing scuffled with her inability to afford to win their second argument about money.
She compromised. “All right, but I’m returning it to you after performing the favor.”
“What am I going to do with it?”
She rasped her nails against the fabric. “Let your mother give it to someone she particularly despises.”
His teeth flashed. “Deal.”
She retreated to the dressing room to escape both the ugly dress and the yearning clawing at the back of her sternum. Why couldn’t she find that kind of rapport with a man in real life?
She wanted to blame the failure on the shortage of Griffin Dunleavys at home, but it probably had more to do with the shortage of Livinias. Even Mr. Friend-to-Everyone would have a hard time relating to someone uptight enough to be renowned for her inoffensiveness. Boring Old Ivy would never do any of the outrageous things she’d done today.
Maybe Jared never laughed with her because she wasn’t fun with him.
“Toss the dress over the door, and I’ll check out while you get dressed.”
She stripped and hurled the dress, hoping it would fly into the slowly churning paddle fan above and be shredded to confetti. It fell short, caught on the top edge of the door, and dropped to the floor on the other side with an audible thud.
There was a moment of silence before Griff asked, “What the hell is it made of?”
“Lead and broken dreams.” She stuck her foot under the door to kick the hateful thing from her sight.
She yanked her foot back when his finger trailed over her arch.
His voice rumbled up from knee level. “What are you wearing right now?”
A few inches of air and a flimsy wicker panel separated her from an irresistible man, and she wore nothing but flesh-toned spandex. The fan spun without cooling her skin. Her nipples tingled and tightened.
She touched the door with the very tips of her fingers. “Mascara.”
He made a throaty sound, and the dress slithered from view. “Reports of your nerve deficiency have been greatly exaggerated.”
She listened to his receding footsteps and exhaled slowly, releasing the erotic charge generated by the friction of fantasy rubbing against reality. That’s all it was — mental masturbation. Her galloping pulse was certainly out of proportion to an innocent touch on her foot.
Once she got her libido under control, it took only a minute to throw on her own clothes and sandals. She hitched the tote over her shoulder and went in search of her partner in pretend.
He hadn’t gone far. Bikini Girl was modeling for him at the counter. She sashayed away at Ivy’s approach. “Was it something I said?”
“She knows she can’t compete with your mascara.” Griff pushed the wad of fabric and the tag across the counter toward the clerk. “Charge it to room 325.”
“Yes, sir.” She took his room key as identification and beamed at him. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to make your stay more enjoyable.”
He accepted the bag that held his purchase and looked up just
in time to intercept Ivy mid eye roll. “What?”
She backed away from the counter. “Someone will be tapping on your door tonight to make your stay more enjoyable.”
“The plaque at the front desk does guarantee the staff is dedicated to providing the ultimate guest experience, at any hour of the day or night.”
The base of her spine softened under his palm as he guided her out of the store — definitely too long since she’d been touched. “So dedicated, an employee from the women’s apparel department will come to your room after her shift ends to see to your needs.”
“You’d think their reviews would be better.”
She bumped him in the side with her elbow. “You’re a bad man.”
“I am.” He grinned down at her, cheerfully unrepentant. “Where to next?”
“I have to spend the next two hours in hair, makeup, and wardrobe.” She relieved him of the boutique bag. “You get to chase bikinis and shop girls until your shift by the pool starts.”
He heaved a sigh. “It’s tough being a man.”
“So I’ve heard.” She patted his chest to console him in his time of hardship — and added a couple of extra pats to console herself. She did have to wear that dress, after all. “Should you happen to come across a horrifying mom gift not in excess of thirty dollars during your adventures, I’ll deduct it from your debt of indescribable magnitude.”
4
“You can’t go on a date with some stranger.”
Closing the bathroom door in Jen’s face would be impolite when it was her curling iron forcing style into the wedding coiffure, so Ivy merely repeated herself. “I’m not leaving the hotel grounds. I promise I won’t be the dumb tourist on the news.”
“I don’t care about that. You can’t cheat on Jared!”
Ivy pulled the iron down, releasing a springy ringlet. “First of all, consider yourself disinvited from my funeral in the event I am murdered.”
“You know what I meant.”
She carefully wound another strand of hair around the hot barrel. “Second of all, even if I had wild monkey sex with this or any other guy, I would not be cheating on Jared because Jared and I broke up three years ago. An out-of-nowhere marriage proposal does not make us a couple.”
“If you have wild monkey sex,” Camille piped up from her repose on the bed, “I want details. Size, shape, orientation, endurance, positions...”
“Will you stop?” Jen snapped over her shoulder. She returned her scowl to her original target. “You can’t just pick up strange men.”
“People do it all the time.” Ivy used her fingers to break the ruby spirals into loose waves. She decided to leave her hair down. In the event she somehow got wet, a wash of red dye could only improve the dress.
Her work done, she unplugged the iron. “In fact, I seem to remember you picking up a stranger in a bar while both of you were drunk.”
“That’s different. I married him.”
Camille hooted. “And she knew at the time that would be the outcome because the spirits told her he was The One.”
With the exception of embarking on a romance with a friend or coworker, relationships began by meeting strangers. Ivy generally relied on introduction by mutual acquaintance because a trusted friend vouching for a stranger increased her confidence that he wasn’t a serial killer and reduced the risk of rejection because he’d been primed to expect a great gal, but because she’d taken a sensible approach to dating in the past, she was excluded from the picking-up-strangers club?
Screw that. The Duchess of Dangereusia crashed any club she wanted to dance in.
She could get through the door tonight. Jen and Camille confirmed the dress was hideous, but she looked okay from the neck up. Her makeup was subtle yet flawless, her hair shiny as a freshly waxed fire truck. Even with lax arms, she had a fair shot at seducing a stranger desperate for an excuse to leave a boring event.
If she wanted to bait Griffin Dunleavy with the promise of escape and be the tunnel he had to squeeze through to attain freedom, she’d damn well do it.
A knock on the door silenced the ongoing bickering between Jen and Camille.
Ivy eased past the obstruction standing in the doorway. “Excuse me. I have a stranger to molest.”
When she opened the door of the room, a striped paper bag suspended at eye level greeted her. “Your horrifying maternal gift, your grace.”
She took the bag from Griff’s fingers and looked inside. “Does this mushroom have a face?”
“With quite a smug expression.” He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb. In all white, he did indeed look in need of a yacht. “Can’t be related to his stature, so it must have something to do with the size of the moss-covered boulders he’s sitting on, which appear to be plagued by crabs.”
A delighted laugh spilled from her lips. “You chose the root over this? Sucker.”
“I’m not falling for the ‘duck season, wabbit season’ maneuver.”
“Neither am I, Bugs. This bad boy is mine now.” At her exposure of his transparent attempt to double wabbit her, he cursed under his breath, which summoned her dopey grin back for an encore. “Give me a second to grab my purse.”
While she exchanged the gift bag for the wristlet she kept inside the tote she kept inside the Bag of Infinite Holding, he propped the door open with his foot and wiggled his fingers at the pair of heads peeping at him around the wall dividing the bathroom from the beds. “Hello, ladies.”
Camille hummed deep in her throat. “Forget details. I want video.”
Ivy ignored her and nudged his foot away from the door. “Goodbye, ladies.”
“Have her home by dawn, young man!” Camille called as the door closed.
Griff’s gaze slanted from the closed portal to Ivy. “Video of what?”
“Nothing. You know how the paparazzi hound royalty.” She unzipped the pocket of her clutch and held up the thirty dollars she owed him for the gift.
“If I suggested paying for the little guy fell under the heading of my indescribably enormous debt, would you insist I take him back at the end of the night?”
“Yes.” The crab-infested mush-peen did not fall under the heading of mandatory equipment to perform his favor, and he had only agreed to find it for her, so it wasn’t fair that he should pay for it.
“That’s what I thought.” He took the money and tucked it in his pocket. “Would you want to know if I went over the thirty-dollar budget?”
“Absolutely not.” She’d given him a budget for a reason — exceeding it was his problem. “Are you always this irresponsible with money?”
“Of course not.” He linked their fingers as they walked toward the elevator. “My fiscal irresponsibility takes many forms. For example, room service brought me cold eggs this morning, and rather than waste time sending the whole plate back to the kitchen, I set a stack of money on fire and reheated them myself.”
This time, her shortness of breath, lightheadedness, and weak extremities weren’t symptoms of sexual deprivation. She did not joke about money. Ever. She didn’t have the bank balance to afford that kind of luxury. “We have to break up.”
“Aw, baby, no.” He raised the back of her hand to lips that promised to make staying worth her while. “I can change.”
Electricity zinged up her arm and into her breasts so intensely, she was surprised the front of her dress didn’t light up like headlights beaming through ugly curtains.
In the name of self-preservation, she extracted her hand from his grasp to push the elevator call button. “I’ll go through with the wedding because I’m not a welcher, but what you overspent is on you.”
“I’d have it all on me if you’d let me, Duchess.”
He stepped into the elevator behind her, and she had a sudden wild thought that it was as wide as a queen-size mattress. He would take up the same amount of space in bed, more than his share with his broad shoulders and long arms and loose-limbed sprawl, so she’d have no choice but to fi
t herself into his angles and cling to claim any space for herself.
One of those arms stretched past her to push the button for the lobby. “You’re going to earn every bit of it, and then some.”
“Have I mentioned we’re breaking up?”
“That’s the best-case scenario,” the man seated beside her whispered. “At the risk of giving you ideas, I’ll be lucky if you don’t murder me before the night is over.”
“You’ll be lucky if I do. At least you’d get to leave.”
She’d get to leave, too. In handcuffs, but still.
He noticed her sidelong contemplation of his vulnerabilities and covered the program in her lap with his hand. “Maybe you shouldn’t read any more.”
She flicked his knuckles until he shot her a wounded look and took his hand into protective custody. “I’m reading. It’s not like there’s anything else to do.”
The bride was nearly an hour late for the appointed time, providing ample opportunity to peruse the six-page program printed on bright white, heavy-gauge card stock, which boasted all the ways in which the wedding was green.
“What are these things?” Griff shook the paper cone each guest had been presented with upon arrival. A dry rattle came from within.
“If you had read your program,” she said in her best teacher’s pet tone, “you would know it’s biodegradable confetti embedded with wildflower seeds to throw in the happy couple’s faces because rice kills birds.”
“Do you suppose the wildflowers are indigenous to the island?”
“Like I suppose seventy-six people flying to this shindig was beneficial to the environment.”
“The wedding planner’s slogan must be Show the power of your love by destroying an ecosystem.”
And her business plan was Sell every dope every ritual. The ceremony alone was going to have the running time of a movie featuring Hobbits — if the bride ever showed up. “What were the invitations like?”
“Everything but an endangered owl in a box, flown across the country express and driven to my house on a gas-guzzling truck,” he confirmed her suspicions, “but I was encouraged to RSVP by email.”
