by J. R. Ward
THE WEDDING FROM HELL sparks a fire that Anne Ashburn and Danny Maguire simply can't put out.
Fight the firestorm in October 2018 with a brand new series from the New York Times bestselling author of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series . . . and become CONSUMED.
Consumed
* * *
ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!
chapter
1
Saturday, October 31
T minus 2 hours ’til blastoff
St. Mary’s Cathedral, New Brunswick, Massachusetts
Anne Ashburn had never had veil envy, as they called it. As a young girl, she had never pictured herself walking down an aisle in a white dress, ready to be rescued by a knight-in-shining-armor groom who was going to take charge and take care of her for the rest of her life.
Nope. Anne had wanted to fight fires like her father and then her brother. Even though she no longer respected the former, and had a strained relationship with the latter, she’d wanted to pull on turnouts and strap an air tank to her back and breathe canned air as she ran into open flames dragging hundreds of pounds of charged line with her. She’d wanted to rescue grandmothers, and children, and people who had succumbed to smoke inhalation. She’d been ready to cut open crumpled cars and drag broken bodies out of wreckage at the sides of highways. She’d been determined that the extremes of cold winter nights, hot summer days, physical exhaustion, and mental fatigue would never keep her from doing her job.
So, yup, the old fashioned Mrs. degree had never held any fascination for her. There was no way in hell she was going to be like her mother, living a derivative, nineteen-fifties version of life, nothing but a pretty blow-up doll that was expected to cook, clean, and cut the yapping.
On that note, as she pulled into St. Mary’s parking lot and looked up at the great cathedral’s stained glass windows and lofty spires, she decided it made sense that not only was she not the bride, she wasn’t even a bridesmaid.
Like the rest of the crew down at the 499 firehouse, she was a groomsmen in the impending nuptials of Robert “Moose” Miller and Deandra—what the hell was her last name anyway? Cox. That was it.
Anne was thinking groomsmen was a role she might as well get used to. Not that Duff, Emilio, Deshaun, or any of the other men she worked with were settling down anytime soon.
Especially not Dannyboy Maguire.
Right on cue, a Ford truck entered the parking lot, the late-afternoon sun flashing across its windshield.
As Anne’s heart kicked in her chest, she was tempted to hustle in the side door of the church—but she had never been one to run from a challenge.
Danny was more than just a challenge, though.
And okay, fine. So maybe she had already run out of his way at least once: Last night, at the rehearsal dinner, she’d positively bolted after he’d made that speech of his.
I never believed in love . . . I thought it was just a word, a title folks gave to daydreams and misconceptions about destiny, a lie folks told to themselves to make them feel solid in this imperfect, unreliable, and mean-ass world.
Now I know it can happen between two people. And it doesn’t have to make sense because it’s not about logic. And it doesn’t have to have good timing because forever is like infinity, without beginning or end. And it doesn’t have to be defined because truth is like faith—it just is.
So, let’s toast to love.
He’d looked at her while he’d spoken. He had been talking . . . to her . . . in that slow, deep voice.
Everybody else had toasted Moose and Deandra. But Anne had known it hadn’t been about them. Danny, ever the ladies man, king of the one-night stand, he who shalt never be tied down . . . seemed to be suggesting not just that he’d had a change of heart.
But that he might have given his own to Anne.
Unless she was misreading everything? Then again, they had kissed the night before that. In her living room. While riding an adrenaline high after they’d saved a life in an alleyway.
And lips-to-lips had been better than good, the rare circumstance when reality had improved on a fantasy. After two years of attraction and sizzle and unacknowledged heat, that which had been pushed under the rug was exposed now. And there was no going back.
Especially as she felt the same way.
So hell yeah she had bolted out of that restaurant. The second she had been able to get up from her chair, she had hit the exit and left Danny without a ride home.
He’d called two hours later. He’d been in a bar, probably Timeout where the crew always went, the noise in the background loud and raucous.
She had not answered. He had left a short message, but not called again.
Anne just wasn’t sure what to do. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There were plenty of things she wanted to do to him, with him, on him—all of which were naked and erotic and not necessarily only horizontal.
Refocusing, she watched Danny’s truck pass by. From behind the wheel, he looked over at her.
She waited for him to find a space and get out, and as he walked across to her, she tried—tried—not to go sixteen-year-old girl at the sight of him in a tuxedo.
#epicfail
He was very tall, over six feet five, and he was built hard and muscular, his shoulders so wide, his chest so broad, his waist the point of the inverted triangle of his torso. His jet-black hair was still damp, and what sunlight there was in the mostly cloudy sky flashed blue in its depths. He was freshly shaven—his cologne reaching her nose even before he stopped in front of her—and his eyes were that brilliant blue that had always arrested her.
Irish eyes.
But they were not smiling.
For a man who was rarely serious, he looked positively grim, and she frowned.
“You okay?” Stupid question. “I mean—”
“Yeah, no. I’m fine.”
Standard answer for firefighters when they were in pain. And she wondered if it had to do with that speech of his, and what she could have sworn he had been telling her.
His eyes shifted off to the side and then his mouth got thinner. “And here’s the blushing bride.”
A stretch limo entered the parking area and made a fat turn toward the back door of the cathedral. When it stopped, its driver got out and went to the rear door.
Seven all-in-pink, spray-tanned, body-glittered, and blond-streaked women got out one by one, a clown car of bridesmaids who were such carbon copies of each other, it was like they had been ordered out of a catalogue.
And then the white dress emerged.
Deandra, Moose’s intended, had her blond-streaked hair—natch—piled up on her head in an organized, sculpted waterfall of curls. Her veil was a gossamer fall over her tiny waist and her big skirt, and the shimmer of crystals across the bodice and down the front and sides of the gown made her look like a princess.
Provided you didn’t catch her expression.
She was sour as an old woman with gout and shingles. In spite of the fact that she was supposedly marrying her true love, she looked downright nasty as she snapped at the driver, glared at her maid of honor, and yanked her skirting up to march into the back of the church.
“Wow,” Anne muttered. “That’s a happy bride.”
“Whatever. They’re on their own with this dumbass idea.”
“Did you happen to talk to Moose last night?” she blurted. “As in out of this? Or would that be considered tacky given it was less than twenty-four hours before the priest hit the altar with them.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “He’s bound and determined to ball-and-chain himself. Personally, I’d be running in the opposite direction.”
And then there was silence between them. Tension coiled up quick, and as Anne’s temples started to pound, she decided it was going to be a long night, just not for the reasons she’d assumed at the beginning of the weekend.
* * *
Danny Maguire knew all about making bad choices. In fact, up until recently, his love life—or sex life, as it had been—had revolved around all kinds of stoopid decisions made when he’d been drunk.
Deandra, the frickin’ bride, for example, had been one of his worst and was proving the most enduring. He’d never expected her to have any permanency, and look where they all were, with her marrying his roommate.
Moose, the fallback meant to make Danny jealous, was giving her a new last name.
But even all that paled in comparison to what was really on Danny’s mind. In the middle of the wedding from hell, he had come to a realization that he couldn’t change, was unable to ignore, and felt the need to share.
Somewhere along the line, he had managed to fall in love with Anne Ashburn, and, for reasons he didn’t want to look at too closely, he was determined to give her this newsflash—not that she was giving him much of a chance to, and who could blame her in that. She had bolted out of that rehearsal dinner as if she had a four-alarm to respond to.
And he had ended up with the bride breaking and entering into his apartment and propositioning him for sex.
Not how Danny had intended the night to end.
“You want to go inside?” he asked Anne.
“Not if I have to go hang with those women.”
“You’re in a tux, remember. You’re one of us groomsmen.”
At any other time, he would have thrown a casual arm around her shoulders, but not today. Not after he’d kissed her. Not after that speech he’d made to her, and not to the couple, at the rehearsal dinner.
“Yup,” she said, “I’m just one of the guys.”
Not even close, he thought as they started walking together.
They had been instructed at the rehearsal the night before to enter the cathedral at the side door and head down into the basement, as the women would be gathering and getting their pictures done in the rear. Danny held the way open for Anne, and as she went by him, he looked down at her.
Her tuxedo had been cobbled together at the rental store, the jacket, shirt, and cummerbund a boys’ version of the ones the men were wearing, her slacks a small men’s size to accommodate her long legs.
She looked way better than any of those pink-clad girls with their spray tans and crimped hair.
Man, there was something sexy as hell about a woman in a tuxedo. It made him want to take off all those clothes and find the female underneath.
With his hands. His mouth. Parts of his own body.
Falling in behind her, he tracked the way she moved, her hips a subtle sway, her sun-streaked hair swinging loose, the jacket over her arm.
He wanted her naked. Now.
He wanted in her. Now.
He wanted . . . everything from her.
Now.
But this was not the time or the place, and he was getting worried there would never be either. It was rare to get four days off for R&R, and Danny had a feeling that if he didn’t come out with how he was feeling during this time away from work, they were going to go back to the station on Monday and return to the grind of alarms and rescues and recoveries . . . and this cusp would turn into a closed door. A lost opportunity.
A road never taken.
And he wasn’t sure he could live with that.
The stairwell was right in front of them, and the red-carpeted steps creaked as they descended into the cool, damp lower level. Stone walls and a low ceiling made him think they were in the cellar of a medieval castle, and as they headed for the voices coming out of an open room, they passed by brass plaques donated by families with Irish last names.
He had been down this hall all his life, it seemed. For Sunday school. Catechism class. Before First Communion. Youth group.
His mother’s funeral. His father’s.
His twin, John Thomas’s, who had died on fire service three years before.
Guess that made him an orphan, assuming someone who was almost thirty could be classed as such.
The corridor opened into an area that seemed to take up half the cathedral’s footprint. With more of that blood red carpeting, and a lot of carved oak furniture, and shelves crammed with leather-bound books, the place smelled like beeswax candles, incense, and old stuff.
The other groomsmen were all there, Jack and Mick, the other roommates, and Emilio, Deshaun, and Duff from the 499 stationhouse, talking and laughing.
Moose, the groom, was off to the side, and as Danny entered with Anne, the guy looked up.
For once, he wasn’t jovial. Joking. Jocular.
He was subdued in his tuxedo, a pink rose on his lapel, his beard newly trimmed, his eyes bloodshot and baggy’d.
Danny’s first thought was what had happened the night before in the dark. When the bride had dropped her dress to the floor, and made him an offer that had been very, very easy to decline.
Shit. The cat was out of the bag.
chapter
2
As time passed slowly in the cellar of the cathedral, Danny kept an eye on Moose. The guy continued to stay on the periphery, pacing in circles and keeping his eyes on the floor. And in response to his mood, everyone else went equally quiet, the tension growing.
Taking a seat on a settee that had all kinds of velvet cushions, Danny rubbed his face and felt like he was making a mess out of everything. The wedding. Moose. Anne.
He’d never had many regrets. But this Deandra shit was turning into a problem. They’d had a casual hookup that she’d tried to turn into more six months ago. When it hadn’t gone any further, she’d jumped ship to someone who would fall in line.
See also: Mr. and Mrs. Moose.
Moose had been all too ready to become a shoulder for her to cry on, and things had progressed fast from there to the jewelry counter at Macy’s. And as those two had gotten together, Danny hadn’t given any other thought to Deandra, even as the woman had started coming around the apartment at all hours of the day and night.
He’d been too busy thinking about Anne to take anyone else seriously.
But after last night, he had to wonder what his obligations to Moose were?
At least he hadn’t done anything wrong, Danny reminded himself.
As the settee creaked, he looked over and sat up straight. “Anne.”
She seemed to gather herself before she spoke, crossing those long legs in those tux slacks, undoing the button on the jacket.
“Listen,” she said softly, “I think you need to talk to Moose. Something’s really wrong and if he doesn’t want to do this, he needs to say so and put a stop to things.”
Danny stared into her eyes. And pictured the two of them doing this not as support troops, but the real deal, her all in white, him in this penguin suit.
“Hello?” she demanded. “Did you hear what I said?”
He looked across at Moose. The guy was leaning against the wood paneling and staring down at his shiny black shoes. “Yeah. I did.”
“You’re the only one he listens to.”
Between one blink and the next, Danny went back to being in his bedroom the night before, naked under his sheets, his in-and-out-of-consciousness all about Anne.
When a female shape had come through his door, he’d been confused—and aroused, thinking it was Anne. But then the perfume that was all wrong had made its way across the still air, and he’d realized the hair was too blond.
That dress Deandra had been wearing at the rehearsal dinner had been up-and-over’d quick, hitting the floor with a soft rush.
I want you, Danny, only you.
He’d told her to get the fuck out, but Deandra didn’t listen to anybody when they were talking shit she didn’t want to hear. And then she’d told him all about Moose going to that strip club and cheating
on her.
So of course, why not fuck your fiancé’s roommate in retaliation. Classy.
But I love you, Danny. Only you—
“You’ve got to talk to him,” Anne repeated. “This is wrong.”
I’d rather talk to you, he thought as he got to his feet.
“Okay.”
He didn’t want to get involved, but last night had put him at the front of the line for issues those two needed to work on. Besides, he had some fucked-up idea that if he did the right thing by his roommate, maybe he would deserve Anne a little more.
“I’ll be right back,” he said to her.
As he walked over to Moose, the guy didn’t look up. “Hey, can we talk?” Danny asked.
There was a long pause, and then Moose shook his head from side to side. “Nope. I’m good.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yup.”
“Come on, Moose. This doesn’t feel right to a lot of us.”
“Feels right to me.” The groom shrugged. “She’s what I want.”
Then why did you go to the strip club the night before last? Danny wanted to say. With a wallet full of condoms?
“Maybe just put things off for a little while. Take a break. Shit’s moved really fast.”
Moose stroked his beard. “Yeah, and you know all about that, don’t you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
A couple of the other guys glanced over, and going by the way they changed their stances, they were waiting for a fight to break out. Then again, everyone knew about Danny and the Deandra thing. Except for Anne.
“I just don’t want you to do something you’re going to regret.”
Moose looked over, and the simmering anger in his eyes slowly drained out, revealing an exhaustion you had to feel sorry for. “Why does everybody always love you, Danny? And not me.”
Danny looked away. To Anne.
Not everybody loves me. At least, not the way I want them to.
“Moose, I—”
The guy squared his big shoulders and smiled without any happiness. “It’s gonna be fine. I’m getting the girl of my dreams. What could be better?” He turned to the assembled. “Come on, boys, let’s get hitched!”
