by Misty Simon
Not worrying about it, and only concentrating on my own pleasure, I nestled myself into Ben’s strong arms and simply enjoyed. I finally got to at least wave to Bella as she floated by, wearing a stunning midnight blue dress and surrounded by Officer Jared’s arms. Jared, whom she would get to go home with tonight and have wild monkey sex if she wanted. All this, while I had the couch to look forward to—the couch, alone.
Think honeymoon, think honeymoon, I told myself. Not mine, no, no, no. My dad and Martha’s. Not that I was thinking too hard, since I didn’t want disgusting mental images to follow the thought. But soon this would all be behind me and I could get back to my regularly scheduled life.
Laying my head on Ben’s shoulder, I simply enjoyed the down time and the way he whispered into my ear about the people around us. Local gossip was a county-wide pastime here, and Ben was no exception.
“There’s Mr. Hanks. He’s talking about getting hair transplants to lure in the ladies.”
“Speedos not doing it for him anymore?” I got a gentle nibble on my ear for interrupting. “Do it again.”
Ben pulled back and looked at me, really looked at me. “I cannot in good conscience do that action again unless you want me to take you right here on this dance floor.”
Oooohhh, mama! Yes, yes, take me now. Of course, I didn’t really say that. I had shaved my legs and was wearing pretty underwear, but think of the scandal. “On to the next subject.”
“No fun.”
“I’m plenty of fun, and you know it.”
“Boy, do I.”
“All right, mind out of the gutter, at least just to the curb so it won’t be too difficult to get it back there later tonight.”
He laughed, the sound rumbling up through my stomach.
“Next,” I said, a little breathless, I must admit.
“Have you talked to Horace up on the stage?”
“The wedding singer?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh, no, I’ve tried to avoid him and the florist since the rehearsal. Martha has some seriously challenged relatives.”
“Well, from what I heard earlier, he’s been in the sauce and isn’t normally this bad.”
Interesting. “I thought he was pretty bad the other night, too. Was he in the sauce then?”
“I don’t know.” He used his forefinger to move some wispy hair back from my forehead. I worried I was sweating, but then he placed a kiss on my brow and I didn’t really care anymore.
The music abruptly stopped, and Horace shouted, “Hello, wedding guests,” into the microphone like we were all here for a private concert from him, or something equally horrible. I was a little surprised to not have it followed up by more cheesy talk like, “It’s great to be here in Martha’s Point tonight.”
“We’re going to need to take a little break now. Technical difficulties, you understand.” A big cheer went up, and I heard someone whisper to hurry and get out a boom box. But Horace was still talking. “We’ll be back in just a few minutes.”
With that, he and the keyboard player and the drummer stood in a little knot at the back of the raised stage. I hoped they’d confer for some time and have a shorter set to come back to.
“Wow, a break, that sure is nice, isn’t it, Ben?” I said, turning to him, but he wasn’t there. Now where had he gone, and when had he left? You’d think I would have felt his lack of presence, or that he would have at least said goodbye.
But then Bella came clattering up on her impossibly high heels, with Jared in tow. “Whew! I can’t believe what a relief it is to have them taking a break. Kind of sad it’s after their second song. I can’t believe they’re so popular everywhere else.”
Momentarily distracted from visually searching for Ben, I turned toward her. “What do you mean they’re ‘so popular’?” I admit it, I was baffled.
“I overheard one of Martha’s cousins say how in demand these guys are. I guess they play all over the place for weddings. They even have groupies.”
“Groupies?” I was horrified. “Um, that is hard to believe.” I thought I saw Ben and waved, but when the guy turned around it wasn’t Ben. I grabbed my hand down quick and ran it over the hip of my dress.
“No, I heard the same thing,” Jared said, popping into the conversation after nibbling Bella’s fingers. “My uncle goes to as many weddings as he can, if they play. He even crashed one once, just to listen to them.”
I found this completely unbelievable. “Are you two pulling my leg?”
“Nope.” Bella crossed a finger over her heart. “They are really rolling in it, from what I understand. The trumpet player is awesome, I heard tell, and he’s also their accountant slash stockbroker. He made some very wise decisions in the market and was able to almost triple their money. Plus, they have a gig almost every weekend.”
Huh. The stockbroker comment brought to mind the last murder I’d helped solve, but I pushed it away just as quickly. I would not think about the fact that we’d been without a dead body for weeks now. I did, however, really like the fact that no mad hatter murderer was running around town at this time. Then the first part of Bella’s comment sank in. “Trumpet player? I haven’t seen a trumpet player.”
“He’s supposed to be killer.” Bella pressed a hand (not her own, hee-hee) to her chest, and Jared smiled. “I just love trumpet players. Ben...” But she trailed off and stood staring, transfixed, at the stage. I tried to turn toward the stage, but Bella grabbed my upper arms in a surprisingly firm grip and blinked, looking at me. “How do you feel about musicians?”
“I guess I like them fine.” I shrugged. I’d never been a huge music groupie. As a teenager I was more apt to have movie stars up on my wall than singers.
Bella’s fingers dug into my arms. “I have to be honest with you before you turn around. I have to tell you that I never lusted after Ben in any way, shape, or form. But when he picked up an instrument in fifth grade, I drooled a little.”
I looked over at Jared to see how he was taking this admission. He looked gently amused and not jealous at all. Maybe I should take my cue from him. Bella was being a whole hell of a lot more blunt than some of the girls over the last few days. But when I glanced over her shoulder, I literally saw forty women from age ten to eighty with their mouths hanging open and small strings of drool on their chins.
“Let me go.” I wrenched myself from Bella’s grip and turned, not sure what I would see. Had this scene all of a sudden morphed into an all-male revue while my back was turned?
Then I got a good look at the stage, where Ben stood front and center, his lips poised behind an impossibly shiny trumpet. His hands were crooked over the buttons at the top, and he winked at me. Or at least I think he winked at me, since there was a collective gasp behind me and a distinct thump that could have been a woman falling over onto the hard floor. I didn’t take my eyes off Ben to investigate the noise; I was too mesmerized.
And then he started to play. Was there nothing this man didn’t do with absolute perfection? I couldn’t have told you what the song was, but I didn’t look away from him for an instant while his lips blew into the mouthpiece and his deft fingers played those buttons—pressing, releasing, caressing them like a lover. God help me, I was about to melt into a puddle. There was a distinct possibility that I might join the other woman on the floor. Yowza!
But before I could flutter my eyes, the song was done. Way too soon, to my mind and about forty other minds, judging from the collective sigh behind me. Ben put the trumpet down on the stand, bell to the floor. I tracked his every movement and only breathed again when he vaulted off the stage and came straight at me. He didn’t even look left or right as the ladies tried to touch him. He came directly to me, and I met him halfway, nearly swallowing him whole when he laid his lips on mine.
Chapter Nine
Wrapped in Ben’s arms—after we finally came up for air to many sneers from the girls and much clapping from the men and Bella—I prayed the next song would be another s
low one so I could keep my hands on Ben. I desperately needed to keep my hands on Ben. I wanted to be played like that trumpet.
Instead, Horace switched into a high-stepping version of the Cindy Lauper song about girls and the fun they want to have. My gaze found Martha in the crowd, and I thought she was going to blow a gasket. But my dad took her hand, kissed it, and calmed her right down. Neat trick. I might have to try it out on Ben next time he got out of line.
Speaking of Ben, he pulled me out onto the floor and started boogieing away. Okay, now, Ben is very talented at so many things—he slow dances like we’re making love, he gardens, he plays my big-word game. And he has such an incredible walk, I fully expected him to be well versed in fast dancing.
Unfortunately I was wrong. I was very, very, very wrong. So wrong it was almost horrifying. Can we say seizure? Oh, guffaw. But I didn’t laugh because that would have been rude, and Ben had always been good at making me feel good even if I was making the biggest ass of myself.
So I stayed out of arm-flailing range and hoped a slow song would be next. In the event of all else failing, I would start looking for someone to talk to and have to leave for urgent conversation. Although I have to say it was refreshing to find out Ben was not the master of everything. We all have flaws; it was nice to see he had one, too, besides his occasional bouts of overblown ego.
He was completely doing the whole “white man’s overbite” thing from When Harry Met Sally. It was getting harder and harder not to laugh my butt off. Okay, I needed to get us away from the dance floor if I wanted to continue having a relationship with this very adorable and very sexy man.
I made a step to leave and tripped over someone else’s pointy-toed shoe, cracking the expensive, torturous three-inch-high heels I’d been forced to wear. Looking up, I caught my balance and saw a woman with her eyes totally glued to the rear end of my boyfriend. I could see the determination in her stance and the way she was almost devouring him with her eyes.
Back off, bitch.
She put a hand on Ben’s shoulder and came this close to losing it. But then Ben turned around, saw me braced inches from the floor, looking up, and reached out a hand to help me stand. She, whoever the hell she was, took his hand instead and practically dragged him farther onto the floor. He must have been shocked—he better have been shocked—because he followed along behind her without too much protest.
He and I were going to have some words over this as soon as I got my three-inch heel unstuck from the edge of the dance floor. Just because I didn’t want to dance with him it didn’t mean anyone else could. And yes, I knew that sounded contrary, but I was feeling contrary right then, so sue me.
“Ivy.” Bella was there, bless her soul, and helping me without a single question about what had happened. “What the hell is Ben doing with Mary Sue?”
Well, she had one question, but it wasn’t about me. And then it hit me. Mary Sue? Mary Sue? Oh he was so dead. Mary Sue had come up in conversation with Bella months ago, when I’d first come to town. She was a hopeful Mrs. Fallon from Ben’s early twenties, and I was not a happy camper.
****
“I’d like you all to get ready for a little something I like to call the Funky Chicken!” Horace yelled into the microphone twenty minutes later. I’d managed to snag Ben off the dance floor and out of the clutches of the two-name ho, only to lose him five minutes later to Martha.
But Martha was a newly married woman and I could trust her, I hoped. Apparently she didn’t have any problem with Ben’s muscle spasms, because they laughed and danced their way across the floor until I couldn’t see them. I had a brief moment of feeling like a total dance snob. If everyone else saw his dancing as fine, then who was I to complain?
Of course Bella eventually set me straight on the dancing thing. She told me Ben had been a complete laughingstock during every party since a dance in sixth grade where someone actually called the school nurse in case he needed medication. Since that point, I was told, he didn’t really care because he was having fun.
All right, I could go with the flow here. And if we ever did get married, which would be nice in about four or five years, we just wouldn’t have any fast dances at the reception.
And we certainly wouldn’t have this idiot, Horace, who was currently standing up on the stage bellowing his own version of the Chicken Dance. Apparently he’d worked hard to put words to a song I had never heard sung. I thought it was only a series of nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh. This guy went all out and was saying something about Marty being the apple of his eye, nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh, Marty sure can catch a guy, blah blah blah. Truthfully it was too painful to repeat even in my own head.
He train-wrecked his way through the beginning of the next song. At an interlude, he paused onstage and grabbed a glass of water—to wet his whistle, I guess. But when he turned back around he was yanking on his shimmering aquamarine tie and clawing at his throat. His eyes started bulging out of his head, and all I could think as I tried to shuffle my way to the front—since there was absolutely no running in these shoes—was that I so did not want another dead body in my town, much less another one at the Barn.
“He’s choking!” a woman screamed near the front while I wobbled toward Horace on my shaky, jacked-up heels. Several people had already made it to the stage and were trying to get him to stop clawing at his throat.
Tell me something we don’t know, I wanted to yell. My heel chose that moment to break right off, and I fell into a solid wall of chest. The male kind, thankfully.
Looking up, my gaze was caught by a pretty impressive pair of chocolate brown eyes—mmmm, chocolate. Long lashes blinked at me before a slow smile curved over a set of fantastic lips. Yowza.
Ben chose that moment to come up behind me, bumping my arm and pulling me toward him at the same time. “I’ve got you, hon,” he said, sounding eerily like Bella.
“Um, thanks.” I said it as a blanket statement. Thanks to the hunky guy for breaking my fall with his rock-hard chest, thanks to Ben for finally breaking away from the bimbette who had dragged him away. Speaking of which...
I jerked my arm away from Ben and continued my dignified way to Horace to see what I could do to help. It wasn’t as if I had a medical degree or anything, but my niece had once shoved a cotton ball up her nose that I had to get out. Not quite the same thing, but I’m sure you understand.
I took the stairs up to the stage, not wanting to try to vault up onto the platform. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t vault if I wanted to. But the thought did distract me from the thing with Ben, and I could concentrate when I got to Horace. By now, someone had called the police and Horace’s shirt was loosened around his throat. He was breathing, even if it was shallow and wheezy. Thank God, no dead body this time. At least, not yet.
The wail of an approaching ambulance cut through the cavernous barn, accented by the harsh intake of air from the floor and the poor man who had lost his toupee along with his breath. He appeared to be trying to say something. I held my breath—not to be rude, but he had some serious halitosis going on, even if he was hurt—and bent forward to try to make out what he was saying. His mouth kept gaping open and a slight noise peeped out of him, but I couldn’t make out the word.
I bent over him, fully aware I needed to keep a hand on the front of my dress since I didn’t want to inadvertently give the whole place a show. Plus, I could feel someone looking at me, and I wasn’t sure right at that moment if I wanted the eyes to be green or melting chocolate.
Confusion hit me low in the gut and made me want to puke. I held back, barely. Horace may have halitosis, but I didn’t want to make it worse by adding my own bad taste. Yuck.
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and tried again to hear what Horace was saying. I had to get a little closer, so I held my breath and leaned with my ear almost on top of his mouth. Air whispered across my ear along with one word: poison.
Happy New Year to me.
****
Outside, the frigid te
mperature cut through the silky fabric of my dress. I had forgotten my jacket in all the excitement of Horace being checked over and taken off in the ambulance.
A warm jacket settled over my freezing shoulders. I was almost afraid to turn around to see who it was, but then the whispering started in my ear, and I knew. My heart picked up speed and my legs turned to warm goo. All good signs, as far as I was concerned. The melty feeling I had experienced when I fell into the other guy’s chest had been unsettling, to say the least. Maybe it had all been a momentary departure from sanity. Or an overabundance of adrenaline. Yeah, I liked the last one.
“You shouldn’t be out here without a jacket, Ivy.” He left his hands on my shoulders, rhythmically squeezing. It felt so good. But my irritation with him and the whole dancing with She Who Will Not Be Named rose right along with the temperature of my frozen fingers.
I started to shrug him off, but he held on tight. “I heard you’re mad at me for dancing with Mary Sue.”
Nothing like not pulling any punches. And was he trying to make it sound like I was being some naggy, overbearing girlfriend? Well, I could show him mature. “Yeah, what were you doing with that octopus?” Not so good.
He laughed, a seemingly startled sound. I shouldn’t be able to shock him at this point. He knew me well enough to know it was possible I’d never be able to pull off non-catty about his previous life. Give me a break here, seriously. I had only had a single one-night stand, years ago, and that had turned out terribly. According to most of the town, including some of the local public restrooms, Ben had been with quite a few of the ladies in the area who were under thirty.
Some days, I didn’t know what he was doing with me anyway, even if he did say...
“I love you, sweetheart, and no matter who you see me with, it doesn’t mean that’s changed. Mary Sue was actually telling me about her new boyfriend. They’re moving to Alaska so he can fish for a living.”
Anger bubble officially shot down by the missile of logic. Damn. But what about the girl he’d smiled at during dinner, the one who dumped iced tea on my head but gave Ben the towel? I tried to mentally kick her ass to the curb and enjoy the way Ben’s arms wrapped around my shoulders and the way I fit so nicely below his chin, even if I was actually wider than him. You can’t have everything.
