Weddings From Hell

by Maggie Shayne

  “Sure thing,” he responded with a lazy wave. She bought in bulk and she always paid on time. Jim would pretty much let her do anything.

  Isa walked toward the back, glad that Chance followed without argument. When they were away from any prying eyes, Isa started right in.

  “Whatever my grandmother hired you for, I’m telling you the job’s off. If she owes you any money for your time, I’ll pay it. Just tell her you didn’t find anything or that everything’s okay. She doesn’t need this kind of stress at her age.”

  Chance regarded her with open curiosity. “You think I’m someone she hired? You mean your grandmother hasn’t told you anything about me?”

  “No,” Isa said, impatient. “But whoever you are, you don’t want to be mixed up in this. Trust me, pal. It goes way over what any pay scale can cover.”

  He continued to stare at her like she was speaking a foreign language. Isa tapped her foot. Maybe Tall, Dark and Dumb had been an accurate way to describe him after all.

  “Has your grandmother ever mentioned the name ‘Bones’ to you before?” Chance asked in a very careful voice.

  “Who?”

  Chance inhaled. From her scent—and the thoroughly blank look on her face—she was telling the truth. She had no idea he was a vampire. Odds were, if her grandmother hadn’t told her about Bones, Isa had no idea that vampires even existed.

  This would make things more complicated.

  “The only name that matters here is Robert Bertini,” Isa went on. “You already seem to know what he’s involved in, so I shouldn’t have to spell out how hazardous it would be to your health if you continue to mess around with him.”

  Chance laughed. “You’d be amazed at all the things my health can handle, darling. Your little Robbery doesn’t scare me, and as I told you last night, I’m here to help you. It’s not a matter of money, so you can keep your bank account as it is. It’s a matter of honor.”

  “Honor?” Isa couldn’t stifle her snort. She had enough to handle without anyone meddling in this. “Right. Do me a favor. Go away before you make things worse.”

  It would be so much easier if she knew what he was, Chance mused. Still, it wasn’t his place to enlighten. Not yet, anyway. Maybe there was a reason for Greta’s secrecy. Perhaps Isabella was one of those humans who couldn’t handle the knowledge. She didn’t strike Chance that way, but then again, this was only his second time talking to her.

  Chance smiled. “Thanks for the wine recommendation,” he said, and walked away.

  Isa watched him go, gripped with the uneasy feeling that she hadn’t seen the last of him.

  At nine o’clock sharp, Isa’s premonition was confirmed when a familiar dark-haired man slid into table twelve at her restaurant. She almost groaned out loud in frustration. Talk about not taking a hint!

  Chance even had the nerve to wink at her as he took his seat. What was it with men lately? Didn’t the phrase “No means no” translate to them anymore?

  She didn’t even wait for the waitress to approach his table before she marched over.

  “Whatever you want, we’re out of it,” Isa announced crisply.

  Chance pushed his menu aside with a lazy grin. “Doesn’t matter. I’m only here for you, darling.”

  Isa clenched her fists. She may not be able to throw Robert out on his ass—yet—but that didn’t mean every male around could ignore her wishes in favor of their own!

  “Get out, and by the way—calling a woman ‘darling’ when you don’t even know her is sexist and demeaning. Got that, sugar lips?”

  She stressed the endearment as a taunt, but it didn’t have that effect. A light appeared in Chance’s eyes. If Isa didn’t know better, she would swear they seemed to be turning green.

  “Sugar lips…mmm. I confess I’d like to find out.”

  The way he was looking at her mouth made Isa want to wipe it, but not in disgust. To see if it had suddenly turned into dessert, since that was the only way she could justify the intensity of Chance’s stare. For someone who said he wasn’t here for food, Chance looked very, very hungry.

  “You have to leave. Now.”

  Isa said it with none of the internal tremble that had taken up inside her. The last thing she needed was another complication in her life, and a stubborn, sexy-as-hell private eye would definitely complicate things.

  Then again, so would Robert’s two goons Ritchie and Paul, and they just swaggered in the door.

  “Oh, hell, it’s Smelly and Bowling Ball,” Isa muttered.

  Chance began to laugh. “Is that what you call them? How appropriate.”

  She gave him a fraught look. “Are you trying to get killed? Leave! Before they see you!”

  But it was too late. Paul glanced their way…and stopped so abruptly, one of her waiters crashed right into him. Spaghetti alla nona decorated the front of him, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

  “You!” Paul exclaimed in a voice much higher than usual.

  Chance inclined his head. “I see you’re wearing your favorite meal. Now if you can only bash into someone carrying meatballs, your ensemble would be complete.”

  Isa’s eyes closed. Good God, he was a dead man.

  Ritchie, oddly enough, didn’t fly into his usual hair-trigger temper.

  “You can’t be here,” he almost squeaked. “We—”

  “You what?” Chance interrupted. “Shot me? Put me in a trunk, drove me to an old warehouse, wrapped me in plastic, and buried me around the back?” Chance let his words sink in, and then he smiled, perfectly cordial. “How preposterous. If that’s what you did, then I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I?”

  Everyone in the restaurant had stopped eating to watch this exchange. Isa was torn between the ingrained urge to keep her business running smoothly—and the new, unhinged desire she had to bash plates over Paul’s, Ritchie’s, and even Chance’s head.

  Her business sense won. Isa laughed like a joke had been told and then approached Paul and Ritchie with a fake, warm smile.

  “Let’s get you guys to your favorite table. Lauren, bring something to help clean Paul up. And Ritchie, you look like you could use a drink.”

  She politely dragged them across the room under her effusive hostess pretense. Both of them went like they were dazed while still staring at Chance. Isa didn’t know what he’d meant by his bizarre little imagining of what Ritchie had been about to say, but damn it, this was her restaurant! Not some criminal macho showboating ring.

  Paul stiffened. “Uh…we gotta go, Isa,” he said. “Gotta check something out.”

  “You think Kevlar?” Ritchie whispered with a glance in Chance’s direction.

  “Must’ve been,” Paul muttered.

  Isa didn’t care what they were babbling about as long as they didn’t cause any more disruption.

  “Don’t worry about him, he’s on his way out,” she said low.

  Paul looked at Chance and grunted. “Uh huh. We thought that last night, too.”

  What?

  Ritchie grabbed Paul’s arm. “Come on, let’s roll. Boss needs to hear about this.”

  With a last look at Chance—and the mess on his Armani shirt—Paul left with Ritchie in tow. Chance gave them a cheery wave that made Isa want to smack him again. Thankfully, it was obvious Robert’s two thugs had pressing business elsewhere.

  Chance stood, stretched, and brushed his hand across Isa’s cheek.

  “Some things we need to talk about, but not here. I’ll see you later, darling.”

  “No you won’t, nut muffin!” she replied as low and fiercely as she could.

  He laughed at that, giving her a lingering glance.

  “Yes, I will.”

  Chapter 3

  Robert came in right after closing. All the patrons were gone and it was just her, a few servers, and her head chef Frank tidying things up.

  “Isa,” he said, without acknowledging any of her staff. “Brought you your wedding dress.”

  Frank and the ot
hers left the main room, used to Robert’s rudeness by now. Paul obediently approached Isa holding a garment bag. Isa stared at it for a moment before taking it. Even holding the dress in her hands filled her with panic. Frazier better call again soon, she found herself thinking, because I can’t fake this much longer.

  “Um…thanks.” She couldn’t manage to say anything more enthusiastic.

  “It was my mother’s, God rest her soul,” Robert replied, crossing himself. “My sister made an appointment for you to get it fitted. She’ll call you tomorrow with the date and time.”

  No consultation, no consideration for her schedule. Isa hadn’t even participated in the decision of where or when her wedding was going to take place. Robert’s sister had showed up at Isa’s restaurant a week ago and told her what church to be at on what date. It was a good thing Isa had no intention of actually marrying Robert, or she would have been pissed about how someone else was planning her wedding.

  “The boys tell me that dark-haired mook’s been hangin’ around you again,” Robert went on. “They warned him to stay away last night, but they said he was back again tonight. I don’t like that, Isa. It’s disrespectful to me.”

  She had to tread carefully. Chance might be asking for trouble, but Isa didn’t want to serve him up a big plate of it.

  “He’s just a customer, Robert. I wouldn’t even remember him, except Paul and Ritchie made such a stink when they saw him earlier.”

  Robert gave her a hard stare, but Isa schooled her face to show only innocence. If Catholic nuns couldn’t make her admit to cheating on a test in high school, then Robert had no chance of breaking her with his gaze.

  Finally he shrugged. “Good. Then you won’t mind if the boys keep this troublemaker from bothering you in the future.”

  “If I see him again, I’ll tell him not to come back myself,” Isa said with complete honesty.

  Robert moved closer. It took all of Isa’s willpower not to flinch when he touched her face.

  “Still…maybe you should come home with me. This guy could be a real whack job. I don’t want anything happening to you.”

  Isa hardly knew Chance, but already she surmised that out of the two of them, the true whack job was the man in front of her.

  “That’s okay, Robert. I’ll be fine. If I see him again, I—I’ll call you so you can deal with him.”

  A complete lie. She’d chase Chance away herself, true, but she’d never turn him over to Robert.

  Robert trailed his fingers down her arm. “Maybe that’s not the only reason I want you to stay with me,” he said in a husky voice.

  Oh, shit. Isa steeled herself to stay where she was, instead of running away screaming, “hell no!” like she wanted to.

  “I told you before, Robert—I’m an old-fashioned Catholic girl. That’s one of the things you like about me, remember? Well, in my family, we don’t have sex until our wedding night.”

  Another bunch of bullshit. Isa hadn’t been a virgin since nineteen, and while she hadn’t racked up the notches on her bedpost, she’d had a few lovers in her time. None since she moved back to Philly three years ago, however, which is why Robert didn’t know about them and believed her claims of chastity. And while she couldn’t speak for her grandparents, Isa was pretty sure her parents hadn’t abstained from premarital sex either.

  But just in case Robert needed more convincing than her supposed desire to wait until their wedding night…

  “Besides,” Isa whispered, waving Robert closer. She unzipped her purse and held it open so the contents were visible. “It may not be a good time right now.”

  Robert peered inside at the multiple tubes and then picked one up curiously.

  “Vagisil,” he read the label, his mouth twisting down. “For treatment of acute feminine itching and discharge—argh!”

  He threw the Vagisil across the room as if it had grown into a hairy cockroach. Isa bit her lip to contain her laughter from the horrified look on Robert’s face.

  Ritchie gasped before dropping his gaze below her waist.

  “What kind of nastiness do you have down there?”

  Robert stalked over and punched him straight in the face. “That’s my future wife you’re talkin’ to!” he snapped, though he also gave a look of dread at Isa’s lower half.

  She spun around and zipped her purse back up as if indignant. It helped that none of them could see her expression, because her lips couldn’t stop twitching.

  “It’s not nastiness, it’s a yeast infection,” she informed them in a prim tone. “They’re very common. After another week of treatment, it’ll be gone, or so my doctor tells me. You remember the doctor’s appointment I had last week, right, Robert? Well, this is what it was for. My doctor even put me on antibiotics to help ensure that the bacteria doesn’t spread and turn into a urinary tract infection as well.”

  Lie number three. Isa had gone to the doctor and gotten antibiotics, true, but that was for the sore throat she’d claimed to have. Then she’d bought every kind of over-the-counter yeast infection treatment available and stuffed it all in her purse, just waiting for the moment when Robert might try this.

  “You…” Robert didn’t seem to know what to say. Isa turned back to him, biting the inside of her cheeks hard to keep from grinning. Robert gave one more disgusted glance at Isa’s purse before he continued.

  “Get yourself fixed up, and call me if that mook comes back. I’ll see you, uh, in a couple days.”

  Ritchie and Paul hurried after him. Only when Isa heard Robert’s car pull away with a squeal of tires did she allow herself to break into a smile.

  Her head chef Frank came out of the prep room. From his smile, he’d heard every word.

  “You’re one sadistic chick,” he said admiringly.

  Isa’s grin widened. “Never underestimate the power of a woman.” Then she patted her purse. “Or Vagisil.”

  Isa came out of her bathroom, toweling the wetness from her hair—and froze.

  Chance was in her bedroom, one hand resting on her end table while the other stroked the fabric of the overstuffed chair he was sitting in.

  “You don’t lock your windows,” he said chidingly.

  Unbidden, her gaze went to the window and then back to him. She was on the fifth floor of a brownstone condo, and the fire escape had long been broken. How in the world…?

  “Are you a freaky cat burglar or something? Well, sorry, because everything I’ve got is tied up in the restaurant.”

  He ceased stroking her chair with a half-smile. “I’m something, but it’s not a cat burglar.”

  It occurred to Isa that the proper thing to do was call 911. Or scream for help. Or run into her bathroom and lock the door while doing all of the above. After all, this was a man she’d just met two days ago. He could be a mass murderer for all she knew. Maybe her grandmother had gotten him involved, but that didn’t mean he was safe.

  “So what are you?” she asked instead, tightening her robe around her. Good thing she hadn’t just strolled out naked. That would have made this even more disconcerting than it already was.

  Chance gave her a very serious look. “You’re not ready to know what I am, so don’t ask me that question when you don’t really want a truthful answer to it.”

  Arrogant man. Where was her purse full of testosterone-repellent when she needed it?

  “I could have you arrested for breaking and entering,” she said, dropping the towel from her head.

  Chance shrugged. “Go ahead, but then Robbery will hear I was in your house and he’ll insist you stay with him. I don’t think you want that, do you?”

  Clever jerk. That’s exactly what would happen, and no amount of Vagisil in the world would stop it. No, Isa didn’t want that, and for some strange reason, she didn’t think she was in any danger from Chance, so she wasn’t going to call the police.

  “All right. What do you want bad enough to break into my home for?”

  “A chance to talk to you,” he replied
instantly. “It’s so much nicer when—what did you call them?—Bowling Ball and Smelly aren’t around to interrupt us.”

  A gorgeous, mysterious man broke into her bedroom because he wanted to talk? Isa rolled her eyes. Yep, that sounded like her luck.

  “Well, Chance, it’s two A.M. and I’m tired, so make it quick.”

  He stretched, rippling his muscles from shoulders to knees in one sinuating motion. Isa just stared. Wow. That was something she’d like to see again.

  From the new tug at his mouth, he’d guessed her thoughts. Oh well. Isa was sure she wasn’t the first woman to find that impressive.

  “I’m going to stop this wedding and get your brother back unharmed,” Chance said as mildly as if he were commenting on the weather. “But I’ll need you to keep up your pretense of being Robert’s fiancée in the meantime.”

  Yet another person to tell her that. Isa hadn’t liked hearing it from her brother over two weeks ago, and it didn’t sound any more enticing now.

  “Of course you are. Then you’re going to give me multiple orgasms and pay off my mortgage too. I saw this movie, pal. It was in the fantasy section.”

  The grin he flashed her was decadent. “Do I get to pick the order in which these things will occur? Because I do have a preference, Isabella.”

  There was that hint of green in his eyes again. It made her heart speed up, and when he gave her a slow up-and-down appraisal it made her feel warm all over. Like she was being caressed.

  Chance inhaled with a long, deep breath that somehow seemed as intimate as a kiss. Self-consciously, Isa brushed her hair back from her forehead. Yes, it was definitely getting warmer in here.

  “And just how are you going to get my brother back without getting him—and possibly me—killed in the process?” she asked, to distract herself from counting how long it had been since she’d had sex. Ugh, if she counted good sex, then she’d have to break out more of her old calendars than she cared to count.

  “I’m going to find out where your brother is, and once I get him safely away, then I’m going to convince Robert that it’s in the best interest of his health never to bother you or your family again.”