Kiss the Bride

by Jody Wallace

  “It’s a good thing I don’t require your approval,” she snapped, and that was the end of it, because Jhi and Lisa traipsed into the room wearing dresses Sally described as cobalt with a hint of azure, so everyone had to discuss the merits of cobalt with a hint of azure versus azure with a dash of turquoise.

  It all looked blue to him. And so did Caroline.

  He had the sneaking suspicion her unhappiness was his fault. He didn’t like that, either.

  Chapter Two

  “Would you relax?” Heck shut the passenger door of his truck behind Caro. Last-minute prep for the wedding had included overseeing the janitorial service that had spruced up the outbuilding on his property and finding a new photographer. Mindy Lou Meyers, Tallwood shutterbug extraordinaire, hadn’t recovered as expected from a certain elective enhancement surgery and would not be able to perform her duties. “Mindy Lou bailing on you isn’t the end of the world. Though if you want to cancel the wedding…”

  He watched Caro’s face to see if she looked like she was considering it.

  “Oh, shut up, Heck.” She crossed her arms and glared. She looked like she was considering something, all right, but it was probably kicking him in the shin.

  They hadn’t talked about the incident in the bridal salon, but he’d been thinking about it. About her. He needed to bring it up and so far hadn’t found a good opening.

  He didn’t have one now, either, but he was running out of time. He’d have to crowbar an opening. Here in a bit.

  Heck placed a hand at the small of Caro’s back to escort her across the hot aggregate driveway to the front door of their destination. “James Jones says this guy’s good. He’s new in town so he’ll probably give us a discount to build up his clientele.”

  “Tallwood networking.” Her shoulder brushed him as they walked. “Can’t beat it.”

  He had found himself wanting to touch Caro more and more after his realization in the salon. While he hadn’t deciphered what it meant, he knew some of it was lust, some of it was not wanting Caro to leave, and some of it was—

  Nope, that was all he’d come up with.

  The man they were here to see, a friend of Sally’s photo-bug brother, responded quickly to Heck’s knock on the white storm door of the cookie-cutter, ranch-style home.

  The skinny black guy’s gaze fell on Caroline first. “Miss Oakenfield? I’m Nathan Grimes. Nice to meet you.”

  Caroline, dressed in her normal uniform of bright T-shirt and jeans, shook his hand. Then Heck did. They followed him into the house, which didn’t have much furniture. A bunch of framed photographs covered the walls.

  Heck didn’t know squat about art, but they looked pretty good to him. Not a fingertip or a blurry face to be seen.

  “This your work?” He didn’t actually give a shit if the guy was talented. The Oakenfield-Pencil Neck wedding wasn’t one he considered a Kodak moment.

  “Most of it.” Grimes indicated some chairs beside a coffee table and took one for himself. “I understand you two are in the market for a wedding photographer and your big day is this Saturday. Congratulations.”

  Heck and Caroline exchanged a glance. As they’d run around like chickens missing their heads these past weeks, tons of folks had mistaken him for the groom. People who didn’t know them. People who’d known them a long time.

  At first it had amused him. Then it had confused him. Right now, it was giving him the oddest sensation, making him feel belligerent and possessive. He slid an arm around Caro’s shoulders. “Thanks. Took me forever to convince her to settle down. She’s a wild one.”

  “Ignore Heck. I’m not marrying him.” Caro didn’t smack his hand like he figured she would. She leaned against him and grinned. “He’s my maid of honor.”

  “That’s cool.” Grimes shuffled some paperwork on the desk. “As it happens, I have Saturday open.”

  He handed Caroline some rate sheets, and they deliberated groups and singles and posed shots and casuals until Heck worried he might fall asleep. The whole time, Caroline let his arm remain around her shoulders.

  His arm, and their closeness, felt wrong and right at the same time. He and Caro weren’t touchy-feely. She wasn’t the kind of person who was always rubbing on people and hugging their necks, and neither was he.

  For example, he’d never seen Dan and Caroline share a kiss. Certainly he’d felt the urge to coldcock the guy, but that was for fun. If he’d seen Dan kiss her, he may have gone through with the punching.

  Heck’s brain continued to wander until Caro and Grimes concluded their deal. His opinion wasn’t required. Caroline didn’t ask, and for once, he didn’t give it.

  He was too busy considering other topics—awkward ones. Ones it was time to broach. He needed to be back at the construction site soon, so he decided to sweeten Caro up with some soft-serve at the Dairy Dip first.

  “Did you ever wonder why everyone thinks it’s me and you getting married?” he asked as they waited for their order.

  “No guy besides a wedding planner or a groom would be involved in wedding details. You’re clearly not a wedding planner.” She accepted the cone and bit off the top. A triangle of chocolate coating cracked off and landed on her boob.

  Not this again.

  Heck wrenched his gaze back to the road. “Tag would be involved.”

  “Tag’s different.” She licked the base of the swirl before the ice cream melted down the cone. Cool air chugged sluggishly out of his vents. From unseasonably cold for May, it had morphed to seasonably muggy. Typical Tennessee weather. “Should I have asked him to be my maid of honor?”

  “No.” At first Heck hadn’t wanted to, but now he was determined to be the best maid of honor ever…provided he couldn’t convince her to stop the wedding. “I’m glad you asked me, Caro. Parts of it I enjoyed.”

  “Such as?” They idled at the red light near her house. Just like always, she extended the cone to him for his share. He took a huge glob off the top. “God, you’re such a pig.”

  “I liked the cake tasting,” he told her after he swallowed. In the corner of his eye, he watched her lick around the base of the swirl again, something he’d seen her do countless times. “I liked spending time with you.”

  He liked the way she licked that ice cream cone.

  “Me, too.” She bit into the top of the dip cone. Poked her tongue in the soft serve.

  His dick sprang up as hard and fast as it had in the bridal salon. “Caro, ah. Well, I need to ask you something.”

  “For more ice cream?” She held out the cone. He shook his head, but she waggled it. “You know you want it.”

  “Seriously, I want to talk.”

  As they began the trek down her winding, gravel driveway, she unclipped her seat belt. “Let me guess. You didn’t like the photographer and you know a guy who can do it cheaper.”

  “Grimes was fine.” Now that the moment had arrived, he couldn’t think of a damn thing that expressed his mixed-up feelings. It wasn’t like he could tell her he had a hard-on because he’d imagined that her ice cream was his cock.

  She licked his—no, dammit, she licked her ice cream and stared at him. “Then what is it?”

  “Why aren’t you happier?” He eased his foot off the gas as they approached the last bend in the driveway. The truck coasted to a stop. “When’s the last time you even saw Dan?”

  She shrugged and chomped viciously into the cone. Chocolate splintered, exposing the ice cream underneath.

  He already knew the answer, because he knew her schedule like he knew his own. The last time she’d visited Dan—Pencil Neck didn’t come to Tallwood if he could help it—had been three months ago, for some environmental benefit thing.

  “He proposed on the phone, Caro.”

  Ice cream dribbled, and she wrapped a napkin around the cone. “So?”

  “Doesn’t the fact that he seems okay with spending months apart give you second thoughts?”

  “That’s why he wants to get married,” sh
e said. “We’ll be together.”

  “In Atlanta.”

  “Where his job is. I’m portable and he’s…less portable.” Dan was an accountant, a city boy who wouldn’t know how to hang drywall if the screws torqued themselves.

  “He didn’t appreciate your asking me to be maid of honor, did he?” Dan wasn’t chummy with anyone in Tallwood, but he was particularly stiff with Heck. Fucker. However, the guy couldn’t be too jealous or he’d visit enough to worm his way in between Caro and her male BFF.

  It’s what Heck would have done if Caro were his long-distance girl.

  Hell, it’s kind of what he’d been doing—driving a wedge between Caro and Dan. Or he was trying to. It wasn’t as easy as splitting oak logs. Heck could do that all day and barely be sore in the morning.

  “He didn’t love it,” Caro admitted. “He’s traditional, you know, and a male maid of honor…”

  “Bullshit. He hates me. That’s probably why he got whiny about tying the knot,” Heck declared, not sure if it was true, but it sounded good.

  For a minute, Caro got this stricken expression on her face, as if he’d told her somebody died. Heck’s stomach flopped.

  “Am I right?” he asked, startled. “He’s so jealous of me he wants to marry you? What the hell?”

  “Dan’s proposal had nothing to do with you.” Caro’s lips thinned. “You’re not the center of my universe.”

  “If he hadn’t proposed, were you thinking marriage?” Heck considered the progression of Caro and Dan’s relationship and realized one of the reasons it hadn’t maddened him was that it hadn’t been…time-consuming. Aside from the occasional weekend, Caro had remained in Tallwood with Heck and her friends.

  Caroline stared at the melting ice cream and frowned. “Not really.”

  “Why not? For someone who claims she doesn’t like to be celibate, did you enjoy spending months apart from your boyfriend?”

  “A, none of your business. B, it doesn’t matter if I am with him,” Caro muttered. “I’m still celibate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She blushed, her cheeks red as roses. “Nothing.”

  “That’s definitely something. Why aren’t you and Dan doing it?”

  “Because I don’t like phone sex?” she joked.

  Imagining Caro and Dan in bed made him want to hammer nails until his arm went numb. But he’d known Caro all his life. She wasn’t happy. Heck’s newfound lust aside, it was tearing him up that she was stressed and sad and bound to be miserable once she married that asshole.

  Miserable and celibate? Damn, at least Heck was happy and celibate. And since he was her friend, he had to save her. “When you’re together, you said you were still celibate.”

  Caro leaned her head against the seat. “I am in hell. We are not having this conversation.”

  “The sex isn’t any good, is it?” he suggested hopefully. “You don’t bother. Or you just, I don’t know. Do yourself. That count as celibate?”

  If it did, he wasn’t celibate. He jacked off every now and again. Or more.

  “Jesus.” Caro shoved the half-melted cone into his face. “Eat this and cool your jets, pervert.”

  The sweet, soft ice cream didn’t cool anything. He licked where she’d licked. Her tongue would taste like vanilla sugar if he were to kiss her. She stared at the windshield, arms crossed.

  “You can’t deny you’re acting peculiar, Caro. Are you still mad at what I said about the wedding gown?” he asked.

  “I’m not mad—not at you,” she said. “The wedding’s a lot of work.”

  He didn’t believe that was her problem. She thrived on staying busy and liked to keep other people—for example, him—busy, too. Caro had the stubbornness to whittle a square peg into a round hole with just her fingers, and do it so well you’d swear the peg started out circular. For Caro, a last-minute wedding was a piece of cake.

  Was stubbornness part of her problem? While she always figured out how to chew what she’d bitten off, she did take big bites. He wouldn’t want this to be the first time she choked.

  “I just want you to know, it’s okay to change your mind about shit sometimes.” He propped his arm on the back of the seat in case she decided, this one time, to cry on his shoulder and admit she’d made a mistake. “Seriously. If you decide not to go through with it, nobody’ll blame you.”

  “Except Dan,” she grumbled, then seemed to realize what she’d said. She snatched the cone and began finishing it as if it were her last meal.

  “If Dan’s giving you a hard time,” he said, warming to the topic, “I’ll handle him.” He’d love the opportunity to handle that pinhead. “You don’t have to face him, I’ll—”

  “I don’t need you to handle anything except the bachelorette party,” Caroline interrupted crossly. “I explained my reasons for this marriage to you. Companionship, babies, and life’s next chapter. Take me home. I have phone calls to make.”

  Heck hadn’t cracked the walnut that was Caroline Ann Oakenfield today, but there wasn’t a ring on her finger yet. Pretty stupid of Pencil Neck not to put one there, wasn’t it?

  Chapter Three

  “Herman Heckley is the dumbest man alive.” Jhi tossed back a shot of whiskey and blew out a breath. She usually stayed at Caroline’s place when she was in town, and tonight was no exception. It was Friday, the night of bachelorette party, and tomorrow was the wedding.

  The big day. The final event. Caroline was as jittery as a rabbit surrounded by coonhounds.

  “He doesn’t like to be called dumb. And he’s not, anyway.” Caroline held a swirly red dress against herself in the mirror, biting her lip. Was this right for whatever Heck had planned for the bachelorette party?

  Or was it as wrong as the urge she’d had in the bridal salon? The urge to rip off her clothes and ask Heck to please, please put his mouth where his eyes kept straying?

  The only man she needed to fantasize about was Dan. The man who recommended they marry since it was the next logical step in their relationship. The man she’d agreed to marry because she did care for him, and she did want…a new approach to life.

  Of course he was also the man who insisted she break it off with Heck, but she was trying to be understanding about that. Who would want their spouse’s bosom buddy to be an attractive member of the opposite sex?

  The fact that Heck had guessed Dan’s motivation when he seemed blind to everything else was nothing short of amazing. She’d refused to admit to Heck he was right, though. She couldn’t bear to hear him laugh about how preposterous it was for Dan to be jealous since Heck thought of Caro as his sister. Jhi flung her tiny self onto Caro’s bed with a whump. For various reasons, Caroline hadn’t begun the move to Dan’s yet, so everything she owned was here, in the guest cottage behind her parents’ house, which her grandmother would inhabit after the wedding. Under protest, but hey, that was Gran for you.

  “Has Heck really never noticed your boobs before?” Jhi asked. “I thought for a minute in the bridal salon he was going to reach out and honk them.”

  “How should I know?” Caro’s face turned as red as her dress when she remembered the shock on Heck’s face. He’d never acknowledged her femininity—so to speak—before. The fact that he’d done so now, after a fashion, was maddening. She was finally prepared to take a huge step toward a fresh start, and she didn’t need her pipe dream popping up like a jack-in-the-box.

  “You should know because you and Heck are best friends,” Jhi said, her expression suspiciously blank. “Friends tell each other everything.”

  “We don’t share details like that,” Caro explained. The red dress had no straps, but the top didn’t fit as securely as the wedding dress. “I’m like the sister his momma didn’t have.”

  “But he’s not your brother.”

  Caro wished Jhi wouldn’t badger, but then she wouldn’t be Jhi. She hung the dress back in the closet. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m getting married tomorrow. To somebody else.�
�

  “Somebody who couldn’t make it to the rehearsal dinner and vetoed a honeymoon.”

  Nobody in Tallwood liked Dan, which wasn’t fair. Apart from his not-so-irrational jealousy of Heck, he was a stand-up guy. Friendly, cerebral, and as concerned about the environment as she was. Definitely not the type to beat anyone up, know a guy who’d beat anyone up, or refuse to listen when you threatened to have a guy beat him up if he kept doing…whatever he was doing. Her friends hadn’t gotten to know Dan. His schedule rarely allowed him to travel, and Tallwood and Atlanta were six hours apart. Not to mention, he was standoffish with Heck, and Caro had increasingly been subjected to Dan’s insistent request that she not spend so much time with another man.

  “Dan’s using his vacation days to help me move to Atlanta next week.” Caro slipped on a robe. “You know that.”

  “He didn’t participate in any of this. Getting married was his idea, and he hasn’t lifted a finger. It was all me, you, Sally, and Herman. Herman, for God’s sake.”

  Caro opened her mouth to defend her fiancé, but Jhi shushed her. “I’m sorry. Let’s not argue. Tell me something fun about Dan. Is he doing the bachelor party thing in Atlanta tonight?”

  “His friends are taking him to a basketball game.” Dan might have a slightly pinched face—Heck called it a bitchface—but he was a decent man. She liked Dan, as well as cared for him. There came a time in every woman’s life when she had to give up her fantasies, forcibly if necessary, and find her place in the real world.

  That time for Caroline was tomorrow. Three p.m. sharp at the First Methodist Church of Rattlesnake Holler.

  Jhi sat up. “A ball game and then a strip club?”

  “I doubt it.” She couldn’t imagine Dan and his intellectual friends tucking bills into a dancer’s G-string. “Before you get your hopes up, I doubt Heck is taking us to a strip club, either.”

  “That I do believe.” Jhi sorted through the jewelry box on the bed, holding different earrings next to her ears. “He wouldn’t be able to handle the nudity. The way his eyes bugged out at your cleavage? He practically started moaning, ‘Boooobs, boooobs!’ like a horny zombie. And here I thought he was gay.”