Honey had taken her in, introduced her to Brent, and he’d taken one look at Pippa and…that was that. Until it wasn’t.
Honey hugged back. Hard. With ten years’ worth of affection. She felt…thin, Pippa realized. And she was shaking.
Pippa pulled away. Honey looked as beautiful as was to be expected, but she also looked terrified. Her light-brown eyes tortured. Her skin a definite shade of green. Hardly the vision of a blushing bride.
Oh, God. Had she heard the rumors after all? Did she believe them? Or maybe Pippa’s dress was enough to convince her the world was about to end.
But then Honey broke into a big, wide smile as she shook her like crazy. “Pippa Montgomery, you have no idea how glad I am to see you. To see such a beautiful, friendly face.”
Pippa found herself laughing, the relief meant so much. Being with Griff was like dancing across a minefield of loaded emotion, but it was worth it to have stopped the Bellefleur whispers before they made it to her old friend.
Some friend, Pippa thought as she took in the strain around Honey’s eyes that had nothing to do with time passed. She tucked a stray strand of hair back into Honey’s hair spray–stiffened waves. “Don’t you be kidding yourself, Honore Moreau. There’s a whole slew of friendly faces out there waiting to see you looking so mighty beautiful on your wedding day.”
Honey turned to the big gilt mirror in the corner, her hands shaking as she wiped gentle fingers beneath her eyes, smoothing out her already-perfect eyeliner. “They’re here for Beau Vaughn’s famous crab claws and gator tails, and the hopes Lady Calliope’ll get toasted enough to table dance.”
“There’s that. But I’m here because I always knew you’d have the most beautiful wedding this side of the Mason-Dixon line, and there was nothing anybody could have done to keep me from seeing it. Now the fact that you’re marrying Brent…”
Honey turned on a grin, the kind that was like sunshine on a cloudy day. “Loved him since preschool, you know.”
Pippa laughed, then realized she was dead serious. “Good God, Honey, I had no idea! Then how could you…? Why didn’t you…?”
She waved a hand over her face. “It’s fine! I loved you. I loved him. And it all worked out in the end.” Honey grabbed Pippa by both hands. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me, too.”
Yet Honey swung her arms from side to side as she always did when she was nervous. “Have you seen Brent?”
“Briefly,” Pippa said. “He looked…the same. Very handsome.”
“Nervous?”
“Brent? Not sure that’s in his repertoire.”
“Unless he’s hiding it. Putting on a show for the guests. These are the people who’ll support his effort to make the senate after all.”
“Honey, from what I remember, Brent’s not that complicated. He loves you. He wants to marry you. He’ll marry you. That simple.”
“Simple…,” Honey said on a sigh. “Not exactly the byword for this wedding.”
Honey glanced over Pippa’s head, saw the time, and froze. “Please tell me you’ve seen Nina! She’s my maid of honor and according to that clock I was meant to be getting married five minutes ago.”
“I haven’t. Do you want me to find her?” Pippa tried to imagine Honey’s little sister ten years old by deleting the mental pigtails and constant arabesques.
Honey grabbed her by the arm, her eyes now on the verge of wild. “Stay. Please. Until she gets back. I love that girl to bits, but boy does she have a way of flaking out at the most inopportune moments. Besides, Grace’ll find her. My replacement wedding planner. Long story. Total genius.”
“So it’s just Nina standing up with you?”
Honey pulled a face. “And the grim cousins Dixon.”
Peter, Paul, and Mary… “Jenna Mae and Brooke are your bridesmaids? Honestly?”
“It was Daddy’s wish.”
What could Pippa say to that? Judge Moreau had always had a way of making himself a big presence in Honey’s life. In fact, their burgeoning friendship had been set in stone after a conversation about Honey’s father’s efforts to turn her into a top-class brood mare. And now here she was marrying a Thoroughbred. Probably not the moment to bring that up.
And yet as the years contracted, Pippa wished…so many things. Things it was far too late to change. Wasn’t it?
Pippa opened her mouth to offer her services as backup if Nina had in fact gone AWOL when the door swung open and Honey’s little sister swanned in, looking like the cat who got the cream.
“Pippa!” said Nina.
Pippa stood in time to find herself the center of another Moreau crush. The Moreau girls really did give good hugs.
“Lookin’ good, Pip,” Nina said, eyeing her earrings, her shoes. The dress got her an ear-to-ear grin.
Nina, with her lithe dancer’s build, in her gorgeous champagne number, looked amazing. So grown-up. Pippa was about to tell her so when Honey cut her off.
“What took you so long?” Honey asked Nina.
“I ran into Daddy,” offered Nina, gliding to the mirror to fix her hair, to fix her lipstick. “And then Alex.”
“And?” asked Honey.
“It’s all good.”
“What’s all good?” Pippa asked.
Shaking her head, but somehow looking a little more balanced, a little more confident, a little more herself, Honey said, “My little sister just got engaged. And it only took her a night.”
“Two years and one night,” Nina corrected, quelling Honey with a look.
“Took me nine years. Several adjournments. One near miss—”
“And one proposal,” Nina said. “And here we all are.”
“Surrounded by enough romance that no singleton out there stands a chance,” Pippa added, feeling the years contract further still, as Nina and Honey turned to her with matching smiles.
“You too?” Nina asked, an eyebrow raised, her brown eyes quick.
“Me? Oh, no no no. I’m stuck with Griff because… Well, not with Griff, exactly. No. More like…adjacent to.”
Nina’s eyes widened with each passing word. “You’re here with Griffin Delacroix?”
Honey’s eyes swung to her, wide as can be. “Yes? Yes!”
“No…”
“Bee-Bee always thought he had a thing for you, Pip,” said Nina. “I thought it was because she was always secretly smitten with Brent, but maybe she was onto something.”
“I was,” Honey said with a sad little sigh, as if she wasn’t about to marry the guy.
Pippa would have laughed, but she was still in a fair amount of shock. Griff had a thing for her?
But Pippa didn’t get the chance to find out more as Honey squealed, “The time!” and just like that the crazy eyes were back.
Nina went to her sister and, lifting up onto her toes, placed her hands on either side of Honey’s face. “Brent’s not going anywhere, Bee-Bee. He’s here for you,” Nina said softly. “He’ll wait.”
As Honey breathed, and calmed, and nodded into Nina’s eyes, Pippa quietly backed out of the room and slipped into the hall, her heart aching a little at the knowledge that even while she’d done the absolute right thing in leaving Brent, in leaving Bellefleur, she’d given up so much more than she’d realized.
…
Griff checked his watch. Pippa had been gone too long.
And he didn’t mean the ten years since he’d seen her.
Okay, now that he’d seen her, touched her, had the scent of her hair in his nostrils, he was starting to wonder if he meant that too. Which made things messy.
The last thing he needed was a complication. Anything that would spin his relationship with his family back to the “dark days” after he’d left. And yet that wasn’t enough to keep his backside in his chair.
There were still things to say, and there was no way he was letting Pippa get away so easily this time. Not without a thorough talking-to.
When he’d exhausted the public quarters of
the extensive ground floor of the mansion, he took the stairs to the second floor two at a time, his shoes sliding to a halt on the carpet when he saw Pippa walking down the hall toward him, forehead pinched, hands wringing.
She looked up, saw him coming, frowned some more, and pulled up short. When she looked over her shoulder, as if in search of an emergency exit, he was at her side with vampiric speed. His hands at her waist as he cornered her against the wall and waited until her skittish eyes connected with his. Until the hands she’d pressed against his chest curled against him, soft, warm, pulsing with such energy he had to grit his teeth to remember what he wanted to say. Not only what he wanted to do.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
“I don’t see that there’s anything to talk about.”
“The night you left seems as good a place to start as any.”
“I said all I wanted to say about that.”
“Well, now it’s my turn.”
Her nostrils flared, her lips parted, and desire rushed through him with such force, such intensity, it was all he could do to stay in the present. She was quicker off the mark.
“What happened between us that night was wrong, Griff,” she said tilting her chin and squaring her shoulders. “I was confused. Afraid. Angry. I’d just broken up with your bother, for Pete’s sake.”
“Who’s Pete?”
“Who’s… What?”
There, Griff thought, that’s better. Less haughty, more unguarded. Soft, raw, the Pippa he remembered. The one he’d struggled so damn hard to resist.
“You seeing anyone?”
She shook her head, and kept on shaking.
“That’s a no?”
“That’s a we-need-to-get-out-of-here-as-the-bride’s-about-to-burst-from-that-room-any-minute.”
Griff didn’t give a shit if the New Orleans Saints’ first string was about to storm the hall. “So are you seeing anyone or not?”
“Of course not. Or I wouldn’t have needed to grab you, would I?”
That was enough for Griff.
A hand at her waist, another braced against the wall beside her head, he gave in to the urge he’d had since the moment she’d taken his arm on the steps outside.
He kissed her.
He expected resistance; hell, he’d planned for it. But the instant their lips met she sighed against him, her mouth opening, welcoming, drinking him in. She gripped his shirt, yanking him closer. Her hips pressed against his, a foot sliding up the back of his leg until it took every ounce of strength he could spare to keep his own legs locked.
Jesus, she was softer than she looked. Tasted even sweeter than he remembered. Like an orange. Probably the mimosa. Yet he was oddly certain their first kiss had tasted the same.
That was all that was remotely the same. The trembling young girl he’d kissed once before was nothing but a memory. This Pippa was all heat and desire and knowledge. Her skin was like fire, her body a veritable feast of new curves, her mouth a slice of heaven. This Pippa was all woman.
And she made him feel like so much man as he pressed toward her. Showing her exactly what she did to him.
When her hands dug into the back of his hair and she came up for air, he took his chance and traced her perfect jaw with his tongue. Rained kisses down her neck, nipping at her collarbone, running his fingers along the silken edge of her dress to the big bow behind her neck, certain all it would take was a tug and —
The sound of footsteps. And voices.
Not wholly aware how far he’d gone, Griff somehow managed to pull back just enough to make sure they were decent, or as close to.
When Pippa reached out for him, lips shiny, eyes dark as night, cheeks pink, unable to keep still, it was all he could do to say, “We’re not alone.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth a woman in a neat suit talking into a discreet mouthpiece—the wedding planner, Grace something, she’d introduced herself outside mere moments before Pippa had launched herself at him—arrived at the top of the stairs and rounded the corner, followed by the Dixon cousins, a pair of hyenas whose names Griff had never bothered to note, who pulled in fits of giggles at finding Griff and Pippa indisposed.
The laughter brought Honey and Nina from the room to Griff’s right.
“Griff?” Pippa said, her voice rough, her hand at his chest.
Belatedly he noticed the flower girls in their white dresses and big yellow sashes gaping at him. And he realized that considering he still had Pippa backed up against the wall, decent was pushing it.
He pulled back, straightened his tie, nodded at their gathering, and with a smile and a slight bow, said, “Ladies.”
Thank goodness the wedding planner was a total pro, and had probably walked in on far worse. She cocked a smile as she swept past, gathering the wedding party in their long dresses and big hair and herding them back down the hall.
Honey gave him a big kiss on the cheek as she danced past, looking far more together than she had at the rehearsal dinner. He hadn’t said so to Brent, not about to mess with the newfound peace the wedding had encouraged in his little brother, but he’d wondered then if she might show up that day at all.
“Hey, Griff,” Honey’s sister, Nina, drawled as she danced past. “Be good now.”
“Right back at ya.”
With a wink and a swish of her skirt, Nina disappeared around the corner, and once again they were alone. Only now Pippa had a hand flung over her eyes. And the twisted strap of her silken black dress was an inch out of place. Enough that Griff knew if he didn’t fix the thing, he’d do the opposite.
The thought of having her breast in his mouth, his hands on all that soft warm skin, took him from half-hard to all the way. It was only his promise to help Pippa in her efforts not to become the talk of the wedding that made him do the noble thing.
“Don’t reckon you have to worry yourself about saboteur rumors anymore. The Dixons will have news of this all over the wedding before we even hit the bottom of the stairs.”
Pippa’s laughter was ragged. “There is that.”
He pried her arm from her eyes, needing to see them. Needing for her to see him.
But she ducked under his arm and headed down the hall, fixing herself as she went. “Come on Delacroix, you can’t miss your brother’s wedding now. Your parents might have forgiven you for giving up the family business, but they’d never forgive you for that.”
Unfortunately she was closer to right than she knew.
Nearly ten years since he’d given up the family company to strike out on his own, and it had taken this long for the shell shock to wear off.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit pants and followed. Knowing he and Pippa weren’t finished yet. Not by a long shot.
Chapter Five
Griff had kissed her. Again.
Only this time it wasn’t some overwrought, late-night, heat-of-the-moment, pity kiss. Griffin Delacroix had on purpose tracked Pippa down, and kissed her until her knees had turned to water and her brain to mush.
In an effort to help her stop the rumors that she might yet try to break up the wedding? No, Pippa thought. He’d devoured her, like a man who’d not had a full meal in a really long time.
Back in their chairs on the lawn, Pippa risked a quick glance Griff’s way, to find him looking straight ahead. Her gaze grazed his deep-set eyes, so blue they made her chest hurt, down his straight nose, the dip above his top lip, the flat planes of his mouth. That mouth could do things to her every other man she’d ever known wouldn’t have come close to doing with their whole bodies and an instruction manual.
This man had always had a thing for her? The woman behind the ever-optimistic P.S. blogs puffed out her chest. Yeah, baby! The big fat fraud thought it utterly impossible.
Beside her Griff laughed, and Pippa came to and remembered that Honey and Brent were getting married. Right then and there. Up beneath the arbor, with hundreds of their nearest and dearest—and those they hadn’t seen in a
decade—looking on.
This was why she’d come back. And she was missing it all.
Because all she could think about was Griff. And the kiss. Kisses, plural. What they both meant. How they made her feel. How compared with every other romantic experience of her short life, they were like fireworks against a clear sky.
“Does anyone know why this man and this woman should not be joined together in holy matrimony?”
The question sneaked through Pippa’s subconscious as loudly as if someone had held a foghorn to her ear and shouted. She glanced around to find near a hundred pairs of eyes turn her way. It seemed the Moreau cousins had been too busy actually doing their job as Honey’s bridesmaids to do their job spreading the news about the kiss. Or maybe her beautiful black dress was so offensive it didn’t make a lick of difference after all.
She swept her eyes to the pastor, only to find he’d homed in on her too. Enough that she actually shook her head.
“Pippa?” Griff’s deep voice rumbled beside her. Not him too!
“Good Lord! I’m not here to break up the wedding!” she said loud enough that she drew laughter. Then more quietly added, “Would I have kissed you like that if I was?”
“I was going to say you’re cutting off the blood supply in my thigh.”
She looked down and realized she was in fact gripping his thigh with fingers that resembled talons. Her hand sprang open. But he grabbed it and put it back. His big, warm hand trapping hers.
“Gently,” he said, his voice sliding down her arm and into her fingers, which were now lying flat against the soft, expensive fabric of his suit pants. His warmth bled through the fabric, and she swore she felt a pulse beating in the general area.
His other hand settled around her shoulder, tracing little circles down her upper arm, sending ribbons of pleasure all through her that ended up pooling in the one low spot.
“Griff?” she said, her voice a little weak.
When Honey Got Married Page 19
