Three Simple Words (Kingston Ale House)

by A. J. Pine

  “He should be your plus one,” Doug said, and Annie shook her head violently.

  Wes leaned back and crossed his arms.

  “I can attend a wedding without a date,” she protested.

  “You replied with a plus one,” Dan added, and Annie rolled her eyes.

  “Well, tell that to the guy who thought attending a wedding was too serious of a commitment. As if every woman who goes to a wedding wants to marry her date.”

  Dan stage-whispered to Doug, “She always chooses the commitment-phobes. Why do you think that is?”

  “Maybe because she doesn’t really want to commit,” Doug whispered back while Wes watched, amusement on his face.

  “Not until she finds someone who holds a candle to her romance heroes.”

  Wes laughed while Annie scoffed.

  “Standing right here, guys,” she said. “And I still have to buy you two a wedding gift, so you better watch what you say before I go off registry and pick out something myself.”

  Dan gasped while Doug waved her off. “She’s bluffing.”

  “She better be,” Dan said.

  “When’s the wedding?” Wes asked.

  “Saturday,” both men said in unison. “In this darling Central Illinois town called Bliss. Everything—I mean everything there is wedding.”

  Wes shrugged. “I’m free.”

  Again Annie shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m good without a pity date.”

  Doug crossed his arms. “The extra plate is already paid for. You don’t want us having a table with an unused setting, do you?” He batted his dark lashes at her, and Annie groaned.

  “You’re not worried about an unused place setting.”

  Doug gave her a pointed look.

  “Okay, maybe you are. Just a little. But I think you’re more interested in showing off a famous author to your guests.”

  They both nodded.

  “Guilty,” Doug said.

  “Totally guilty,” Dan echoed.

  “I feel like a piece of meat,” Wes said, but he was grinning. “But I don’t know. Annie sounds like she doesn’t want to be seen with a—how did she put it? Famous author.”

  Taking Annie to a wedding? He’d change her opinion of the book—and him—by giving her a night to remember.

  Annie rolled her eyes and let out a breath. “Fine,” she said, then turned to Wes. “You can come.”

  “Best invitation I’ve ever received,” he said, then stood so he could lean over the table to kiss her on the cheek. He whispered in her ear, “I wasn’t lying about that teenage crush.”

  When he pulled away, he could have sworn he saw her shiver.

  “Okay,” he said to Doug and Dan. “Whose book am I signing first?”

  But all he could think about was two nights from now—and spending the evening with the fiery redhead who tried to remain cool as ice in his presence.

  She had already turned and was following Brynn out a side door with her share of the empty boxes.

  “Looking forward to our date,” he called after her. “You can tell me about all your favorite romance heroes!”

  She glanced over her shoulder and glowered but said nothing in response.

  “All you have to do is give her a happily ever after,” Dan said.

  At that Wes let out a breath and went to work signing the books.

  He couldn’t give any woman what he didn’t believe in. He’d never seen himself as the hero type anyway, but for one night he could play the part.

  If it meant a night with Annie Denning.

  Chapter Six

  When HEAs Happen in Real Life

  by HappyEverAfter admin | Leave a comment

  So, you know this blog is all about the HEA, so I had to share a very special IRL HEA with you tonight. There’s a tight-knit community of indie shop owners in my corner of the city. Down the street from my bookstore is the best coffee shop around—Hot Latte. The owners, Doug and Dan, have grown to be my friends, and tonight they are getting married in what I hear is this crazy-cute wedding town in Central Illinois called Bliss. I may not have an HEA of my own just yet, but these two guys are proof it’s not just a thing of stories. True love is real, and I’m so happy they’ve found it. Just to give you a little idea of where I’m headed this evening, here are some pictures of Bliss. I swear, someone should write a book about this town.

  COMMENTS:

  asyouwish says: Is this town for real? A wedding cake statue?

  11:11 a.m.

  pepperonmypaprikash says: You are a brave soul if you’re going to a wedding in a town like that as a single woman.

  12:15 p.m.

  bookluvr says: I was at the signing the other night and MAYBE overheard something about you taking Wes Hartley to this wedding. Is it TRUE? Are you and he, like, a thing?

  12:30 p.m.

  HappyEverAfter says: Hi bookluvr. Um, yes. You heard right. I am taking Wes Hartley to the wedding. But no, we are so not a thing. The grooms are both big fans, and when they found out Wes and I went to high school together, they called in a favor. Mr. Hartley was gracious enough to comply. But I promise you—it is NOT a date.

  12:33 p.m.

  64 more replies…

  Umm, wow. There were a lot of people who seemed to care about her non-date with Wes Hartley. She hadn’t had time to respond to more than just the one question and hoped the rest of her readers would be satisfied with that.

  Annie stepped away from the mirror. Then she leaned over the sink and nearly face-planted the glass. A step back. A step forward. And she was pretty much doing the cha-cha.

  She spun to face Brynn, who stood against the wall outside the bathroom door, scrolling through pictures on her phone.

  “I might have over tweezed. How bad is it? Be honest.”

  Brynn squinted and pursed her lips. She unclipped Annie’s long, auburn bangs and let them fall over her face—and the eyebrow that was maybe a little thinner and arched a little higher than the other.

  “There,” Brynn said. “Problem solved.”

  Annie huffed out a breath. Then she nodded. “It’s too bad I can’t stand him. I mean, bookseller and writer. It looks good on paper, right? Maybe I should have chased Spencer Matthews across the country. The effort was wasted on you.”

  Brynn rolled her eyes. “Very funny. That trip to L.A. was exactly what Jamie and I needed to realize—well, to realize we never needed to leave Chicago to find happiness. Anyway, Spencer’s dating that CW actress who’s going to star in the movie adaptation of his book.”

  Annie sighed. “And to think you chose Jamie over him.”

  “Hey!” Brynn pushed her good-naturedly on the shoulder.

  Annie laughed. “You know there’s no one better than Jamie. They broke the mold with that one.”

  Brynn sighed wistfully. “I know.”

  Annie sighed louder, more dramatic, and cleared her throat. “Okay, lover. Attention back on me, please. The eyebrow isn’t the worst thing ever?”

  Brynn fussed with Annie’s hair again, then stepped back and crossed her arms.

  “Totally not the worst thing ever,” she said. “And as long as you keep that dramatic part going, you won’t look perpetually inquisitive.”

  Brynn snorted. Annie flipped her off. Then her friend’s eyes grew serious.

  “What?” Annie asked, worried the eyebrow actually was terrible.

  “Sales the other night?” she said. “From Wes’s signing.”

  Annie winced, bracing herself. “You waited until now to tell me? Okay. Fine. Whatever it is, I can take it.”

  Brynn worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “Annie, we sold more Thursday night than the past week combined. And it wasn’t just Wes’s books. Tabitha had to restock the new release section, and the romance shelves were demolished. If you can start doing events like that on the regular, you’ll be offering something the online retailers can’t. Face-to-face time with their favorite writers.”

  Annie’s jaw dropped. “T
hat’s amazing, but—this is the part where I remind you I’m a no-name little store. Why will anyone’s favorite writer come to me?”

  Brynn smiled. “Because you’ve got the endorsement of a New York Times bestseller.”

  Annie gritted her teeth.

  “Okay. Fine. I gotta go, but think about it,” Brynn said. “It’s okay to ask for help, even from someone you claim not to like, and right now I need a ton of help making sure the apartment is ready for guests. Holly and Will arrive from London in an hour, and I want to be home when they get there. They’re only here for two weeks, so I gotta get my little sister fill. Call me in the morning, and don’t forget dinner at Kingston’s next Sunday night, the whole gang!”

  Brynn kissed her on the cheek and bounded toward the door.

  “Bye!” Annie called after her. Have fun with your almost-husband, your sister, and her tall, dark, and British almost-husband. I’ll just be on my pity date with a guy I don’t like. No big deal.

  And perpetually inquisitive.

  Crap.

  Annie slid her arms through the sleeve holes of her dress and stepped into the nude-colored pumps. She reached behind her back to pull up the zipper, but her hand was forced to a stop halfway up her back.

  She let out a loud groan, then grabbed her leather jacket from where it lay on her bed.

  Fine. I’ll just have a friend zip me the rest of the way when I get there.

  That was assuming whoever helped her out could also get the damn thing unstuck. Otherwise, she’d be doing the moto jacket with the dress look, and everyone else could suck it.

  Whoa there, feelings. Let’s settle down. It’s just a dress.

  Not that she was getting angry. The eyebrow and zipper—those were just minor setbacks. She’d know plenty of people at the wedding and have a great time no matter who she was there with.

  She popped back into the bathroom to turn off the light and grab her clutch, checking that her house and car keys were inside. Everything was accounted for. So Annie held her head high and stepped out her apartment door, deciding to meet Wes out front. She ran down the steps to the walk-up’s front door, and then down five more to the sidewalk where her heel caught in a crack and promptly snapped off.

  “Shit!” she yelled, squatting down to pick up the three-inch heel that was now nothing more than a stick in her hand. “Like, throw me a freaking bone here, universe!” she added as she straightened.

  Before she could turn to head back upstairs for a quick shoe change, the unmistakable sound of a motorcycle broke through the quiet of her street, and seconds later, said vehicle stopped in front of her building. Because, of course, this comedy of errors would not be complete without an audience.

  “I guess I’m right on time?” he said after he killed the engine and took off his helmet. Annie’s stomach lurched.

  He wasn’t supposed to look so good. And that voice of his—playful and teasing with a sexy rasp—wasn’t supposed to do things to her insides. But her palms began to sweat, and she felt a bit nauseous.

  “Yeah.” She held up her broken heel. “Just a minor wardrobe malfunction.”

  His smile bloomed fully now. Annie was still trying to reconcile the cartoon drawing, the ridiculous bio, and the most cynical book she’d ever read with the specimen parked in front of her apartment.

  Because he didn’t look like a cartoon or ridiculous, and that grin was anything but cynical. Wes Hartley wasn’t how she pictured the hero of Down This Road. But he’d created the character and had all but admitted the book was autobiographical fiction. Still, there was the hint of something butterfly-like in her belly, and she wanted to tell the little buggers to knock it the hell off.

  A leather jacket, gray pants, boots, and a body atop a Harley hadn’t found their way into her fantasies before today. The heroes she read about were steadfast and reliable. She could tell just by looking at Wes—from knowing he’d fled Chicago the first chance he got—that he was more of a drifter. After all, Jeremy had told her Wes had just shown up out of the blue looking for a place to stay—unsure about when he’d leave again. But maybe tonight she could throw expectation out the window and just enjoy the view. This was not the boy she barely knew in high school. This was—a man.

  A gorgeous man smiling at her.

  She let herself study him more carefully now after spending all of Thursday night trying to avert her eyes. He was definitely taller than he was as a freshman in high school. And she didn’t remember his ass filling out a pair of pants like that a decade ago, not that she’d even noticed said body part back then and not that she was examining it now as he hopped off the bike.

  “Hey, Annie,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  She rummaged through her closet, not sure what she was looking for. Annie wasn’t a three-inch heels kind of girl, but tonight she wanted to be. The shoes were perfect for the dress, not that she was one to brag, but holy smokes her legs in those shoes… Brynn had insisted she try them on, and once she did, Annie was sure she’d never take them off. Seeing as she wasn’t the most graceful in the inaugural donning of the pumps, though, she wiped the impractical thought from her mind.

  “Gotta admit, I’m partial to the boots.”

  She fell from her careful squat to her ass at the door of her closet, an ankle-high black moto boot dangling from her fingertips, the other half of the pair already next to her on the floor.

  His leather jacket hung open to reveal a snug-in-all-the-right-places white oxford, a navy tie hanging over the buttons.

  “Sorry it’s not a proper suit,” he added, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood at the sound of his deep voice. Wes Hartley did not have that voice when he was fourteen. “Didn’t bring much with me from New York.”

  Annie still sat on the floor, eyes volleying from the boot in her outstretched hand to the man in her bedroom doorway whose caramel waves seemed unruffled by the helmet he’d recently worn.

  The man.

  Her little brother’s pre-pubescent best friend wasn’t just a breakout debut author who kept himself well-hidden on social media. He was all grown up with…with this voice, and a motorcycle, and a five o’clock shadow she hoped he’d never shave off.

  She cleared her throat.

  “You were supposed to wait out there,” she said, pointing with her boot. “Not watch me epically fail at finding anything close to the sexy that were those pumps.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “I didn’t mean sexy.”

  He grinned.

  “Okay, I meant sexy,” she added. “But not for you.”

  This time he raised a brow, and Annie groaned.

  “So that maybe sounded worse. I didn’t mean—”

  She somehow stood without exposing her bottom half, despite the short skirt. She stepped into the boot that had been sitting on the floor, then lowered herself to her bed so she could slip on the one that was in her hand.

  Wes held out a hand. Annie took it and stood, reminding herself over and over again that despite the decade that had somehow sprouted up between them, he was still her little brother’s little friend, she hated his book, and he didn’t even own a suit.

  Okay that last one was a stretch, but her current frame of mind needed stretching.

  “Take it from me,” he said. “The boots are infinitely sexier than the heels.”

  Annie narrowed her eyes at him and stood.

  “You have to say that. It’s in the rule book.”

  Wes’s brows furrowed, and she bit down on her lip, hard. If she wasn’t worried about the swelling, she might have drawn blood.

  “The pity date rule book,” she said. “See? This is why I’m going to kill Doug and Dan. You don’t even know the rules.”

  He laughed. The situation should have made her angry, but instead she laughed, too.

  Wes stepped forward. He gripped her by the shoulders, spun her 180 degrees, and zipped her dress so her back was no longer exposed.

  Her breathing grew shallow, and she could
hear Wes’s do the same. His hand rested against her neck, and a current passed through them, from the tips of his fingers to the depths of her toes.

  “It’s not a pity date if I don’t pity you,” he said quietly, his voice rough.

  He let out a breath, and she felt the warmth of it against her skin.

  She spun to face him now, which was definitely a mistake. Because the boy who was now a man was also so close she could smell him, a mixture of outside and the clean crispness that was his cologne.

  Crap. Were his eyes always that blue?

  “You want to go to this wedding with me?”

  He nodded. “Is that so surprising?”

  She pursed her lips. “You are sorta surprising,” she said. “Not exactly what I expected.”

  “You know there’s a saying. Never judge a man by his book.”

  She threw her hand over her mouth. “Jeremy told you?”

  He laughed. “He didn’t tell you that he told me?”

  She shook her head. “I’m going to kill him. God. Just when I think he’s finally a grown-up, he acts like the same little shit he was in high school.” She groaned.

  “It’s okay not to like my book, Annie.”

  But she could hear a challenge in those words.

  “I know.”

  “But I bet I can prove you wrong,” he said. And there it was. The challenge.

  “You won’t.” She held her ground. “So if that’s the only reason you came tonight—to try to change my opinion of your book—you should probably go.”

  He leaned in close, his lips an inch from hers, and her throat bobbed.

  “Do you want me to go, Annie?”

  The logical answer would have been yes. But she shook her head.

  “I don’t want you to go,” she said, and he relaxed into a smile.

  “That’s good. Because I didn’t want you to want me to go.”

  She backhanded him on the shoulder and let out a small laugh.

  “I’m not riding your bike in this dress, though. That part is non-negotiable.”

  He nodded.

  “Does that mean other things are negotiable?”

  Heat spread through her. Were they flirting this quickly? That was flirting, right? Because she was suddenly thinking of what the terms of their negotiation would be, and that only made the heat grow—hotter.