by Maggie Riley
Then I remembered how good my sister was at multi-tasking.
I narrowed my eyes at Allie. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Reagan had been seated next to me at every wedding-related event. Or that she always needed help transporting or setting things up. I realized at that moment that I had seen more of Reagan since moving to New York than I had of my own sister.
Fuck. I had been set up and I hadn’t even realized it.
I crossed my arms and stared down at my sister. “Nice try,” I told her.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, now staring at her ever-present to-do list.
“I know what you’re doing,” I said.
“Uh, trying to get married?” she glared at me. “Which I can’t do if I don’t have all my bridesmaids.”
“Why do you need me to get her?” I asked, waving my arm towards everyone else. “You have a whole room of people at your beck and call.”
Allie put down her list. Never a good sign.
“You think I haven’t tried that?” she demanded. “She tells them she’s on her way and never makes it. So I need someone who can literally drag her backstage.” Allie waved a hand at the others. “And everyone here is wearing heels.”
“And no one wants to ruin their nails,” said Joanna.
Allie nodded and then did a double take as Joanna crossed the room. Not that I could blame her. I would have done the same if I hadn’t already noticed what Joanna’s dress was doing to her Marilyn Monroe figure. She was wearing the same simple black dress as all the other bridesmaids, but seemed to be spilling out of it.
“Joanna,” Allie started, her eyes dropping to her friend’s chest, eyes wide.
If Joanna was insulted, she didn’t look it, pulling a black shawl from her bag and draping it over her shoulders, immediately hiding her generous cleavage.
“This is why I wear jackets all the time,” she told Allie. “They have a mind of their own.”
I had managed to keep my eyes focused elsewhere. Joanna might be gorgeous, but she was also as warm and fuzzy as an icicle. A man could get his balls frozen off with just one glance. And even if I was willing to take the risk, I hadn’t felt a single spark of attraction.
In fact, that lack of interest was one of the reasons I had decided to move to New York in the first place. When I was still pitching for the Storm Chasers, I never had a problem finding women I was attracted to. Though I never took advantage of the plethora of ball bunnies that seemed to follow the team around, there were still plenty of gorgeous, interested women to hold my attention.
But after I busted my shoulder, after my former best friend/manager nearly screwed me out of my savings, and after wallowing for several months in Nebraska playing video games, I found that I had become a lot more discerning when it came to the women I slept with. Maybe a little too discerning considering it had been a long ass time since I’d engaged in sexual activity that didn’t involve my own hand.
New York was my attempt to change that. Not just jumpstart my libido, but jumpstart my life. If it weren’t for Allie, I probably would have stayed in Nebraska. Would have gotten really, really good at Call of Duty and found a way to keep ignoring how completely miserable I was. But my annoying little sister had seen right through the “I’m fine” bullshit I kept shoveling at everyone else and had forced me to do something about it.
So set up or no, I owed her. Big time. I ran a hand through my hair.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“She said she was getting her purse from the office,” said Allie. “But she went to the theatre to mess with the lights.”
“The lights?” I asked warily.
“Something about changing the gels on a few of them,” said Allie. “She said she had a dream about how to make them look better.”
A dream? Yep, that sounded about right. I could clearly imagine Reagan in her thick-framed glasses eagerly telling Allie all about her new vision for the lighting scheme of the wedding and how it had come to her in her sleep.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go get her.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I owe you.”
“Not a problem,” I already felt like a jerk for not agreeing immediately. Maybe I was wrong about my sister trying to stage manage Reagan into my life and get her good attitude to rub off on me.
But then Allie looked up at me, her eyes all wide and innocent. Too wide and too innocent. She smiled at me and I knew I had been played. I had been played good.
I sighed and she patted my arm.
“You know I’m only doing this for your benefit.” She pushed me towards the door. “And remember. Carry her back if you have to.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Reagan. In fact, I was pretty sure it was a scientific impossibility not to like Reagan Bennett. Because she was nice. Really, really nice. Golden retriever puppy nice. I was used to nice—I was from the Midwest, after all—but, Reagan out-niced everyone I had ever met. She was friendly and upbeat and unfailingly positive. It was deeply unnerving.
Every time I saw her, she always had an enormous smile on her face, her big brown eyes round and excited behind her black-framed glasses. Because that was the other thing about Reagan. She acted like a professional cheerleader, but looked like a cross between Wednesday Addams and Audrey Hepburn. She was tall and lean, wearing her straight dark hair parted down the middle. I had never seen her in anything but black. Black turtleneck, black capris, black t-shirt and her ever present pair of black overalls.
And she talked. Non. Stop. About everything. About nothing. The other night, at the rehearsal dinner, she spent the entire night talking about the symbiotic relationship between cultural change and musical theatre. Passionately. If I had considered my sister a nerd about that stuff, well, Reagan was the nerd of all nerds.
Then again, if I was honest, the reason she probably talked so much was because lately I had found myself without much to say. I was twenty-eight and up until a few months ago, my entire life—my entire identity—revolved around my ability to throw a baseball incredibly fast. Now I couldn’t even do that. It wasn’t hard to feel like I didn’t have much to offer—and not just in terms of conversation.
My sister had given Reagan an impossible task—bring back the guy I had been when I had my dream job and my dream life. But that job and that life was gone. And so was that guy.
I wasn’t such an ungrateful dick that I couldn’t recognize that I still had it pretty good. I had a family that loved me, a solid savings account and by all accounts, I still looked good in those white pants—but my drive was gone. The ambition that had propelled me forward had vanished and I was floundering. And while moving to New York had been a good decision, it didn’t change the fact that I still had no idea what I was going to do with my life.
And no eccentric black-clad theatre director—no matter how perky and positive she was—was going to change that.
Chapter 3
JOSH
I found Reagan in the theatre standing at the top of an extremely rickety ladder, messing with a pile of colored cellophane sheets—or something that looked like them. I held back a sigh. At least she had taken off her heels before climbing the ladder, but she was still balanced precariously without anyone holding the bottom for balance.
She didn’t even seem to notice as I walked over, her attention focused on the cellophane in her hands, squinting up at them through her glasses. She was wearing the same dress as Joanna, but while both women were tall, that’s where their similarities ended. If Joanna was Marilyn Monroe, Reagan was the human version of Bambi, complete with big, round eyes and overlong legs.
It wasn’t until I was a few feet away that I realized Reagan had hiked up her knee-length bridesmaid dress way up, giving me an unexpected eyeful of those before mentioned legs. But any and all previous comparisons I’d made to Bambi or puppies immediately flew out the window. After weeks of seeing her completely covered up, I was suddenly confronted with miles and miles of pale, smooth skin.<
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It was as if a shockwave had gone through my body. I had always considered myself a breast man, but holy shit, I had never seen legs like this before. They seemed to go on forever. Her ankles were slim, her calves curved and smooth, and the insides of her knees looked extremely bitable. Immediately I imagined hooking them over my shoulder as I kissed and nipped my way up the soft skin of her inner thighs.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
The fuck? I’ve been surrounded by the gorgeous women of Manhattan for months and nothing. But a glimpse at Reagan Bennett’s legs and now my dick is standing at attention? Ok, they were spectacular legs, and they appeared to be attached to an equally spectacular ass, but still. This was the last person in this world I should be getting a hard-on for.
Because this was a friend of my sister’s. And I had a rule. Never, ever mess around with your sisters’ friends. And given that I had a lot of sisters, and they had a lot of friends, you’d think that it would eliminate a good portion of the population—especially in Nebraska—but it had never been a problem.
Yet here I was. Standing in the middle of the theatre where my sister would be getting married in an hour, entertaining the first good sexual fantasy I’d had in a long, long while. A fantasy that involved shoving that dress up around her waist and sitting her on the ladder at the perfect height for me to just lean in and put my mouth on her—
“Josh, hi!”
REAGAN
I hadn’t even heard Josh come into the theatre. Wow. If I had thought of him as hot in every day jeans and a shirt, he looked amazing in a suit. It fit him perfectly, emphasizing his broad shoulders and athletic physique. Even the giant pink paper flower pinned to his lapel couldn’t detract from how completely and utterly male he was. Like, there would be a picture of him in the dictionary under the definition of masculine. His tie was just slightly askew, and I imagined fixing it and then running my hands down the hard planes of his chest and stomach. Pushing my glasses back on my nose, I quickly swept away that little fantasy before I could start wondering if his hands were good at handling things besides a baseball. But down on the ground, he blinked, as if I had surprised him.
I gave him a sheepish smile. “They sent the big guns to fetch me, huh?” I put down the gels. “Guess I should let the lights be.”
“They look good to me,” said Josh, but he wasn’t even looking at the lights.
Was he staring at my legs? A little thrill went through me, one I quickly dismissed. I probably just had a weird bruise on my leg or maybe even missed a spot shaving. Both very likely possibilities given my tendency to not look where I was going and get so caught up thinking about work in the shower that I only shaved one leg. But a glance down revealed no bruise or wayward hair in sight.
Instead, I saw exactly how high I had pulled up my dress in order to climb the ladder. Very high. Indecently high. There was a pretty good chance that what Josh was staring at was my red polka dot panties. Dammit. Why didn’t I wear sexy lingerie? Not that I should want him to be looking at my lingerie—sexy or not. Quickly, I shoved the black fabric down.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten that I was pretty high up on an unsecured ladder. I probably should have waited until I got to the ground before making any sudden movement like the one I had just made. My heart leapt into my throat as the ladder shifted beneath me, one side of it coming off the ground. I scrambled downward, bracing for a fall, when suddenly everything was secure again. All of the ladder’s legs were firmly on the floor, and I felt completely steady.
That’s when I realized Josh was standing behind me, one hand holding the ladder, the other one holding my butt. I had been right—his hands were pretty good for more than just pitching. His palm cupped me firmly, his long fingers curling around me, just about to reach the crease between my thigh and hip. If I twisted in his arms, his hand would be in a very different, very intimate place. A place that hadn’t been touched in an extremely long time.
But before I could really savor that fantasy, Josh swore and jerked back as if my ass had bitten him. Not the reaction a girl wanted to get when a guy was groping her—accidentally or not. Trying not to be disappointed, I came down the rest of the way, hopping off the last step.
“Thanks for that,” I told him. “You literally saved my ass.” The gels had fallen onto the floor and I bent to pick them up.
“You shouldn’t climb ladders without someone spotting you,” he said gruffly, clearly not finding my joke funny at all.
I glanced back, about to explain that I was usually very careful, but his eyes were focused on something else. On the butt he had just saved. Shit. Was my dress tucked into my underwear? That would make this truly perfect. Not even sexy lingerie could save something as embarrassing as that. I quickly straightened and he looked away, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Can I trust you to actually go to the bridal suite?” he asked, his eyes now focused at the ceiling. “Or will you just sneak back when I leave?”
“Hard to say,” I tried to subtly swipe a hand over my butt, making sure my dress was covering everything that needed to be covered. Thankfully everything seemed to be in place. I let out an internal sigh of relief. “What happens if I try to come back?”
“I’m under strict order not to let that happen,” he said. “I’m supposed to carry you if necessary.”
“Really?” I got a little thrill at the thought of Josh throwing me over his shoulder. A totally inappropriate thrill.
“Really.”
Was it my imagination or was there a flicker of something other than annoyance in his eyes? No, that would be ridiculous. After all, he was still frowning at me in his usual grumpy man way.
I looked up at the lights, squinting. They actually looked pretty close to how they had appeared in my dream. And I knew that Joanna had been right—that nothing would ever be able to live up to my fantasy of it.
“Ok,” I said. “I admit defeat.”
I went over to the ladder, but the minute I put my hand on it, Josh’s fingers covered mine.
“I thought you just admitted defeat.” His voice was low.
Even though only his hand was touching me, I could still feel the heat of his entire body behind me. I wanted to lean back against him again, feel his hot, hard muscles pressing against me. But I didn’t.
“Just putting the ladder away.” I turned my head and flashed him a smile.
It wasn’t returned. “I’ll do it,” he said. “Just get backstage before my sister kills one of us. Probably me.”
I nodded, and slipped out from under his arm. Grabbing my heels off the ground, I hurried out of the room before Josh could see how flushed I was.
Chapter 4
JOSH
In addition to amazing legs, Reagan had an incredible ass. An ass I now had first hand knowledge of. Literally.
How I managed to put away a six foot ladder with a hard-on, I wasn’t sure, but struggling to shove it into the mess that was the theatre’s supply closet definitely helped get rid of it. As was the reminder that lusting over Reagan was an immensely stupid thing to do.
Clearly I had gone without sex for so long that I was slowly losing my common sense. I never, ever went after my sisters’ friends. Especially the ones my meddling younger sister threw at me in an attempt to get me back in the saddle. Because I was pretty sure that Allie was not intending for Reagan to be the saddle.
And Jesus, what kind of guy got all handsy with someone who was just trying to be a good friend? No doubt, Reagan wasn’t thrilled with having to babysit me and all my emotional baggage but she was too obviously nice to say no to Allie. She was a grown woman with a life and a job to worry about. And I’d heard enough about the theatre from my sister to know that Reagan bore the brunt of most of the creative vision of The Hole in the Wall theatre. Considering I had only been creative with my curveball, I could only imagine how stressful it would be to be responsible for thinking up shows for the theatre. I’m sure it was a real pain to fit me into
all that as well. So it was real nice of me to repay the favor by trying to cop a feel.
So what if she had great legs? So what if she had a great ass? She was Allie’s friend and had been given the unpleasant task of having to spend time with the world’s grumpiest twenty-eight-year-old. The least I could do was keep my dick under control.
And ok, yeah. I could probably afford to be a little nicer.
I kept this in mind throughout the wedding. And it was a nice wedding, as far as I could tell. No one objected to the union, no one forgot the rings, no one tripped walking down the aisle. Everyone who should have cried, cried—Allie, my mom, my sisters and, of course, Reagan. I knew this because for whatever reason, my eyes kept wandering over to her throughout the ceremony. It didn’t make sense, especially since she wasn’t in my direct line of vision.
Shane didn’t have any brothers and both of his parents had passed, so when he asked me to be the best man, I hadn’t hesitated. So I was across from Megan—Shane’s sister and the maid of honor—and by all accounts should have been looking at her if I wasn’t looking at the bride and groom. Or even at Emily, the world’s most adorable flower girl and the person who I had escorted down the aisle amidst a chorus of sighs and whispered comments about how adorable it was. Let’s face it, there were plenty of other people I should have been looking at.
But my gaze kept sliding over to Reagan. Watching her was almost more intense than watching the ceremony itself. Because she felt it. Everything that everyone was experiencing—or should have been experiencing if they weren’t the emotional version of the desert—was reflected on her face.
