Always a Bridesmaid

by Lizzie Shane

  “Don’t even think that. The tabloids would love it and suddenly they’d be dragging out all their photos and comparing every tiny detail—and we’d lose the decoy guard job because she wouldn’t be able to use her decoy anymore.”

  “It’s just weird.” Cross shrugged. “I didn’t realize how much of this job was acting.”

  “You should talk to Candy. She does all the hiding-in-plain-sight jobs we get since the rest of you are so busy. And recognizable.” All of the other guards were minor celebrities in their own right. It was part of the cachet of being guarded by Elite Protection. Clients always knew their protection was going to be gorgeous and moderately famous.

  “I actually wanted to talk to you about that.” The subtle tinge of discomfort in the words alerted Max that this was Cross’s real reason for seeking him out.

  “Cover work?”

  “No, the fact that we’re busy. I know you want to start offering celebrity self-defense classes and we’re getting so many clients we’ve had to start turning some down, and I thought you might want to hire some more people—”

  “And you have someone in mind. Who is it?” He was always interested in referrals from his people—no one knew what the job required better than they did. Cross himself had been recommended by Tank. But Cross seemed uncomfortable, and it was setting off subtle warning bells.

  “Elia Aiavao.”

  Max frowned. “Why is that name familiar?”

  “MMA.”

  His head rocked back on a nod. “Wasn’t he in a coma?”

  “He’s healthy now.”

  But Max heard what Cross wasn’t saying. His career as a fighter was over.

  “He doesn’t have protection experience, but he could do the same training program you sent me to,” Cross went on. “He’s a smart guy. We played ball together in college and he was the guy who could always read the offense. It’s part of what made him a great fighter.”

  Until a motorcycle accident had put an end to his career. “Give him my number and we’ll set up an interview.”

  “Thank you.”

  His relief made Max uneasy. “No promises.”

  “I don’t need any.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Girls’ Night felt different.

  Maybe it was the fact that Lorelei had retreated to her upstairs lair and wouldn’t be joining them, or the fact that Nick and Tori were laughing in the kitchen when Parv came in, making her feel like she was interrupting their domestic ritual where she never had before.

  Then Sidney and Josh arrived—Sidney for Girls’ Night and Josh to pick up Nick since they were meeting some of his guy friends for a movie—and it only got worse. Parv hovered in the background, clutching the glass of wine Nick had poured for her, and watched the two couples go through their farewell dance.

  None of them were making a show of it, but that almost made it worse somehow. The fact that they were all so comfortable with each other that the leave-taking was nothing special.

  Parv had never felt like such an outsider with her friends before—and she wished she could crush the little spike of envy watching them inspired.

  As soon as the door closed behind Josh and Nick, Sidney spun toward Parv, beaming. “We need champagne. We’re celebrating.”

  And then she flashed her left hand, showing off the giant rock on her third finger.

  The whooshing feeling was back, like the floor had just dropped out from under her again. Even knowing it had been likely to happen eventually, the reality hit Parv hard—equal parts happiness for her friend and a disoriented feeling like nothing in her life was steady anymore and she needed to hold onto the nearest fixed object to keep from being flung off the merry-go-round.

  “You’re getting married!” she gasped, hoping she sounded more excited than breathless from the dizzy spinning feeling—and the two-ton weight suddenly pressing on her chest.

  Sidney came to give her a closer look at the ring—all twenty-seven zillion karats of it. “It was this weekend—that little getaway to the B&B. He had it all planned—but it wasn’t a cheesy Marrying Mister Perfect scene. It was so us. And I cried. I never thought I was a crier, but as soon as he pulled out that ring I started blubbering so hard he could barely understand my answer.”

  Parv felt tears pricking in her own eyes, but she noticed that Tori wasn’t squealing and gushing over the ring. “You’d already heard?”

  “I saw the ring this morning,” Tori admitted. “And I actually have some news too—though no champagne for mine.”

  Sidney froze, then spun toward Tori with wide eyes. “No.”

  “No?” Parv looked between the two of them trying to figure out what she’d missed. “Are you engaged too?”

  “Well, yes,” Tori said, as if it was nothing, “but Nick and I have been moving in that direction ever since we got back together. That isn’t my news.” She rested her hand over her abdomen—and the floor fell away beneath Parv’s feet again even before she confirmed it with the words. “I’m pregnant.”

  “Oh, Tori.” And then Parv was tearing up—and trying to convince herself that they were all happy tears. Everything seemed to be happening at light speed and she was still stuck in neutral, watching it all whiz by.

  “Nick and I have decided to do a quick little wedding in a couple weeks,” Tori went on. “Get it over with. Just a few people, but obviously we want you to be there.”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it,” Parv promised.

  “I’d wondered why you were suddenly in such a hurry!” Sidney exclaimed—and Parv realized they’d already started on the wedding plans. “When are you due?”

  “May thirtieth. We only tested positive on Saturday. We aren’t telling anyone yet—still first trimester—but I wanted you guys to know.”

  “That’s incredible,” Parv murmured.

  Tori looked pointedly at Sidney. “Are you and Josh going to get started right away? We could be pregnant together.”

  “Oh no,” Sidney insisted. “We’re in no hurry. We can’t even agree on a wedding date. I think kids are way off.”

  Tori waved them over to the island, pouring Sidney a glass of wine and getting water for herself as they gathered around. “Which dates were you considering?”

  “Josh was thinking February—but anything even remotely Valentine’s is way too cliché and that doesn’t give us any time to plan, and you know people will be watching to see what we do with our wedding because of the show—though we’ve agreed we aren’t going to feature our own wedding. It would be too weird. Though it would probably be great for ratings.”

  “You could get hitched on April Fool’s,” Parv suggested. “Like that actress who announced her wedding on Twitter and everyone was debating for months whether it was real or a hoax. That’d be great for ratings.”

  “My wedding isn’t a publicity stunt.” Sidney shot her a look—apparently forgetting she’d brought ratings into the conversation in the first place. “Besides, we always tell our brides you can’t plan a showstopper wedding in less than six months so I was thinking maybe early June—but with you due at the end of May, Tori, that would probably be cutting it close.”

  “If I get a vote, I’d rather be pregnant than sleep deprived with a newborn for your wedding. With Lorelei I had a weird surge of energy in my last trimester but I remember almost nothing of her first six months beyond how tired I was all the time.”

  “This time will be different. This time you’ll have Nick to help,” Sidney reminded her. “But maybe we can do early May. I’ll need to look at the filming schedule for Once Upon a Bride—especially if we get picked up for a second season. I talked to Caitlyn yesterday morning and that should be long enough after her baby is born that she’s comfortable traveling with him—”

  Caitlyn. Sidney’s best friend from Marrying Mister Perfect.

  Parvati barely heard her as she went on.

  She knew Sidney had her show friends now, the other girls from her season of MMP. They�
�d been in the reality TV trenches together. They understood Sidney’s life in ways that Parv didn’t. But that didn’t help the little ache in her chest that Sidney had already told Caitlyn, had called her the morning after the proposal, while telling Parv seemed like almost an afterthought. She’d been replaced.

  But she refused to let her insecurity wreck this moment for Sidney. Parv took a long swallow of her wine, forced a smile, and lifted her glass. “I guess May it is. Here’s to May. And to the luckiest guy I know and your future together.”

  Sidney beamed. “Thank you.” She lifted her glass, taking a sip before her gaze flicked back to Parvati. “Speaking of the future—I was thinking about your problem, with Common Grounds. Why don’t you go on one of those Bake-Off shows? You’d have a great chance and even if you didn’t win it would be great exposure.”

  “Sadly not everything can be solved by a reality television show. It’d be too little too late.” Besides, she’d already auditioned and been turned down by half a dozen different baking shows.

  “I’d feature you on Once Upon a Bride, but you don’t do wedding cakes. Though I bet if you did they’d be amazing. You could probably give Lacey’s Cakes a run for her money if you decided to open a bakery—”

  Parv listened to her friends trying to help by listing all the ways she would be successful, if only she’d done everything differently, and took another healthy swallow of wine. It was going to be a long Girls’ Night.

  * * * * *

  Max had only been home fifteen minutes before his doorbell rang. He smiled to himself when he pulled open the door to find Parvati on his doorstep again. But this time there were no cake pops. Just an irritable scowl.

  “Did you hear?” she demanded.

  He arched a brow. “Was there something I was supposed to hear?”

  “Sidney? Ring a bell?”

  “The wedding thing?”

  Parv groaned, visibly deflating. “I can’t believe she told you before me.”

  “I am her brother.”

  “And I’ve been her best friend since we were six years old!” She glowered up at him. “When did she tell you?”

  “Yesterday? She called while I was at work.”

  “I’m officially a pariah.” She slumped against his doorjamb.

  “Come here.” He grabbed her wrist, tugging her across the threshold. He pulled her into the living room and shoved her toward the sofa as he went to mix drinks. “You aren’t a pariah.”

  “No. I’m just broke and alone while everyone around me is coupling off and skyrocketing to success.”

  He paused with the scotch bottle poised over the glass. “If you’re going to whine all night, I’m going to send you home.”

  “I’m allowed to whine. I just spent all night listening to my two best friends go on and on about weddings and pregnancies and double dates with their fiancés, while my life has become more pathetic every day. I’m the girl who invested all her energy in her career and failed. And I don’t even have a good excuse! Tori’s a single mom and she was able to make a success of herself. Other people have had to claw their way up from the bottom and they make it. I was just stupid. I just failed.”

  “So try again.” He crossed the floor to her and pressed the glass into her hand.

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “And you make it sound harder than it has to be.” He sank down onto the sofa beside her.

  “Says the man to whom everything has always come easily. You don’t even have to work for women to fall into your arms. You just dimple at them and it’s Game Over, but I can’t even make it to date three.”

  “I’m still willing to do background checks on anyone you want. Just saying.” He took a sip, savoring the flavor, and propped his glass on his stomach.

  “Don’t you think that takes a little of the romance out of it?”

  “Internet dating is romantic?”

  ”I’m trying to let it be. Lots of people meet that way these days. It’s the new normal.” She drained half her scotch in an impressive gulp. “Though I’m beginning to think that after a certain age all men fall into two categories: giant man-children who never grew up and never want to, and bitter divorcees with so much baggage they secretly hate all women. Luckily those ones are easy to spot. They’re the ones who ask you weirdly specific questions about your shopping habits and how you feel about Honda Civics when they meet you, as if they’re interviewing you to see if you’re their ex in disguise.”

  “And which am I?” He rose to bring the bottle back to the couch, topping up her glass before he sat back down.

  “Are you kidding?” Parv snorted. “Man-child all the way.”

  “Hey. Don’t insult the purveyor of scotch.”

  “Is it an insult if it’s true?”

  Max frowned. “I’m not sure I like how you see me.”

  “Ha. Join the club.” Another impressive gulp. “My sisters all think I’m still six years old. Irresponsible Parvati. Impulsive Parvati. Selfish Parvati. As if I am forever locked into the person I was when I was a child. Everyone is a brat at six.” She eyed the cubes in her glass, swirling the liquor. “Though sometimes I do feel like I’m not really an adult. I’m the fun aunt. I never became the wife. I never became the mom. Life is different without kids. I get that. I never had to spend every hour of every day thinking about how my actions would affect someone else. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t.”

  “Of course you could.”

  She didn’t seem to hear him—Parvati had impressive powers of selective deafness. “Maybe my sister is right. Maybe I never did grow up. Maybe I am still waiting for the fairy tale. But is that so wrong?”

  She was obviously waiting for an answer so he took a guess. “No?”

  “No!” she agreed vehemently. “I’m not too picky just because I don’t want to keep dating the Google Stalker or the patronizing asshole who tried to mansplain politics to me because I clearly must not understand the issues if I disagree with him or the one who insisted on paying for my latte only to have his credit card declined and wheedle me into paying for his.”

  Max frowned. “Where are you meeting these guys?”

  “Online. That’s where everyone is these days. Like the guy who tells me on our first date that he’s going to be ‘greedy with my time’—when he doesn’t know me at all. Obviously, I’m awesome, but he doesn’t know that yet so why does he want to get so insta-possessive? You can’t trust that. And then there are the ones who seem promising, but abruptly stop talking to you after you’ve had sex—”

  “Whoa. Hold on. You’re having sex with them?” A fist wrapped around his stomach, squeezing hard. “I thought you just had your first date tonight.”

  She separated one finger from the glass to point at him. “This was my first date this go around, but this isn’t my first rodeo. No sir. And I’m not admitting to you how many times I’ve tried this before because then you’ll know exactly how much of a dating failure I am.”

  “You aren’t a failure.”

  “No. Apparently I’m just so bad at sex that men have to run in the opposite direction without even a goodbye text.”

  “Men are assholes.” And he wanted to break the kneecaps of anyone who treated her like that. “What are their names?”

  “Yes, they are assholes and no, you can’t kill them. Though I personally think if you’ve put your boy parts inside her girl parts then she at least merits a break-up text. That’s just courtesy.” She took a long swallow of scotch. “There’s no courtesy left in the world.”

  He eyed her empty glass, measuring it against her apparent inebriation. “How much did you have to drink before you came over here?”

  “A couple.” Her head fell back against the couch. “Then there are the ones that I like a lot at first, the ones who seem so promising, but then they freak out at the waiter for no freaking reason and you realize you could deal with it, you could handle it but should you have to? Shouldn’t it be magical? At least at
first? At least for a little while?”

  He eyed the way she’d started to list sideways. “I’ve never thought relationships were particularly magical.”

  She glared at him. “You’re like my sisters. They say it’s just a choice you make and then you stick with it and make the best of it. That there’s no such thing as a perfect fit. That you use your head and not your heart, but I’m a romantic, thank you very much.”

  “I know,” he murmured. “That’s why I worry about you. Romantics have their hearts wide open and open hearts are open targets.”

  “So I’m supposed to close my heart?” She glowered at him. “That sounds like a great plan. I’ll add that to my list of advice. So much freaking advice. Put yourself out there, Parv—but it will happen when you stop looking. So what am I supposed to do? Put myself out there, but not look?”

  “I’m not the expert.” What he was was completely out of his depth in this conversation. How had they gotten here?

  “What am I asking you for anyway?” she grumbled. “You think I’m repressed.”

  He did a double take. “I what?”

  Her full lips pursed in a pout. “You said I was repressed.”

  “No, I didn’t.” He would have remembered something like that. Parvati was the least repressed person he knew.

  “That night when you drove me home. After my parents’ party.”

  “I didn’t say that, Parv,” he insisted.

  “Yes, you did. You said I was repressed.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” She was fire and freedom and uninhibited pleasure in the little things in life. Just the way she nibbled on a cake pop was enough to make his entire body tense. That was not repressed.

  “I’m not, you know,” she insisted, tossing back the last of her scotch. “I can be impulsive. I can be wild. I have a tattoo.”