The Wedding Audition

by Catherine Mann

  Slow. Deliberate. With purpose.

  “I am having an affair, tonight,” she told the black and white kitten she found curled on a crisply made bed.

  The kitten sat up at this news, folding her tail neatly around her feet as she seemed to listen.

  “I know,” Annamae replied like they were old friends. “Phone the press, right? But could you use a throwaway phone so they don’t show up and climb those apple trees with a telephoto lens?” She ran a hand over the gray quilt folded at the end of the California king-sized mattress propped on a simple platform. The only other furniture in the room was a nightstand, bare of anything save a lamp and a book about grafting heirloom fruit trees.

  “Mew?” The kitten’s conversational skills were better than most of her stepsisters’ who’d never been terribly concerned with Annamae’s life.

  In their defense, she’d never told them she was about to have a torrid affair, so maybe that was an unfair comparison.

  “How many cats does the man have?” she wondered, peering under the bed to see if there were any more felines hidden away.

  Maybe the kitten was incensed, because she jumped down from the bed and skittered out the door in a hurry, her paws slipping a little on the hardwood floor as she left.

  She settled in to read about tree grafting, a topic sure to settle her nerves, if not put her to sleep. But it was actually more interesting than she’d imagined. Wynn had flagged pages about disease-resistant varieties, in keeping with his organic approach to farming. Maybe he could use some pecan mulch…

  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the stairs creaked in the hallway.

  “Wynn?” She bolted upright.

  The creaking on the stairs stopped.

  Panic gripped her.

  “What if it wasn’t?” a familiar voice asked, as the creaking continued. He stood in the threshold of the bedroom then, studying her as he leaned a shoulder into the doorjamb. “What if I was a hired gun sent to take out anyone in the house?”

  “Then I’d be very disappointed in my watch dog who never barked when the door opened downstairs.” She set aside the book. “Welcome home, by the way.”

  His eyes flared with heat. “It is a hell of a welcome, I have to say. When I didn’t see you downstairs I thought…”

  Her pulse fluttered with nerves. Or maybe it was just anticipation.

  “You thought I’d chickened out.” She felt brave that she hadn’t. She also liked that she’d surprised him. In a good way.

  “Before I left, you asked me what we were doing,” he reminded her. “You looked a little spooked.”

  She wondered why he still stood in the doorway. Why he hadn’t come closer. Touched her.

  By now, she was really, really ready for him to touch her.

  “I’m not now.” She remembered that he’d wanted her to think this through. To be sure. “And you’re right… I’m not nearly as beige as I thought.”

  One second he stood in the doorway. The next he loomed over her, inches from the bed. He tipped her chin up to see her eyes, studying her.

  “You’re sure about this happening between us. Now. Tonight.” It wasn’t a question. That crooked grin of his tipped his lips in a half-smile.

  “Didn’t I say as much?” Her heart pounded harder at his touch. His nearness. She tipped her cheek so that he touched more of her.

  Then, wanting even more, she rose up on her knees so she was almost eye-to-eye with him where he stood beside the bed. The warmth of his hard body beckoned.

  “I think country living is turning you sassy, Ms. Jessup.” He stroked a finger down the length of her neck, pausing in the hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse did a crazy dance.

  “It’s not easy holding my own with a surly landlord looking for any excuse to toss me out on my ear.” She had to steady herself with a palm against his chest.

  She was gratified to feel that his heart slugged a fast pace too.

  “Yet you have the power to put an end to all the surliness.” He leaned closer, the heat and earthy smell of him reaching out to her.

  Her breasts grazed his chest with delectable friction.

  “Do tell,” she urged, her voice whispered now that their lips were mere inches apart.

  “It’ll be better if I show you.” His hand slid around the back of her neck, pulling her to him.

  She had a brief impression of his hungry eyes and then his mouth claimed hers.

  And Annamae spontaneously combusted. In a good way.

  Heat radiated through her, burning her inside and out. Wynn held her where he wanted her, guiding her where he wanted her and she loved it. Loved how her body answered his like they’d been communicating this way for years instead of moments. No awkwardness. No worry if she was doing something right. This kiss didn’t ask questions. It answered them.

  Her arms wound around his neck, drawing him down to her. On to the bed. On top of her. The hard, heavy weight of his body sinking into the cradle of hers felt like a homecoming. Like he belonged exactly there. A long sigh hissed between her teeth, the pleasure so sharp and sudden she didn’t know what to do with it all.

  Then his hands were in her hair, sifting, sinking. Annamae closed her eyes to shut out some of the sensations overwhelming her, needing to anchor herself in the moment before she floated right away on a wave of pleasure. She’d pick through what it all meant later. Right now it was just her lips on his. Her breasts flattened against his chest. The hard length of him pressing against the fly of his jeans to tease her thighs.

  His arms banded around her and she felt like a part of him already, and they hadn’t even taken their clothes off. As if she could lose herself in this. Him. It was scary and incredible at the same time.

  “Clothes off,” she murmured against his mouth. Needing to take this feeling to its explosive conclusion.

  That was the problem with scary, incredible things. As much as she wanted to savor it, the suspense about how it would all turned out was killing her.

  “I knew you were going to be a wild woman in bed.” He shifted his kiss from her lips to her neck and then lower, his hands skimming her t-shirt up and off so there was nothing between his lips and her breasts but a kind of exotic Italian lace bra from her mother’s European negligee shopping jaunt last season.

  Wynn made it clear he was only interested in what lay beneath it, however, his fingers working the clasp as if her barely B-cups were something to write home about. Expensive lace cast aside, he drew the tip of one breast in his mouth, making her toes curl and pleasure coil between her legs.

  Some of that scary feeling slipped away as she realized Wynn knew exactly how to take them where she wanted to go. This night wasn’t going to end in quiet contentment. It would end in fireworks.

  With restless hands, she scraped at his tee, tugging and shoving cotton aside until he leaned up to pull it off for her. By the light of the moon streaming bright through the windows, she got an eyeful of naked broad shoulders and flat pectoral muscles. Abs that made her breath catch.

  “Pants too,” she blurted, enjoying the show. “I mean, as long as you’re at it.”

  “You make a sexy voyeur.” He worked the buttons on his jeans and shucked them faster than she’d ever have managed. His boxers disappeared too. “But if you keep looking at me like that, Annamae, I’m not going to last long.” He reached for her. “Did I mention I’ve been in hiding for the past year?”

  “You mean no women?” Her eyes seemed stuck to him, refusing to obey when she was ready to stop ogling.

  He was just so… So.

  Everything about him was delicious.

  “No women.” He pulled her up to stand beside him and her eyes still wouldn’t behave. He tugged off her jeans and tossed them onto the hardwood floor.

  “So all these greedy looks haven’t been about me. You’re just starved for sex?” she teased.

  “First of all, I’m not alone in the greedy looks department.” He nipped her ea
r and slid a hand around her waist, palming the small of her back. “Second, this is all about you. Only you.”

  He pressed his hips to hers and she was already seeing stars.

  She held tight to his shoulders, losing herself in another mind-drugging kiss. He whispered things in her ear. Naughty, hot things that should have made her blush but only made her whimper with need for more.

  By the time he slid a finger inside her, she was so revved up she came instantly. Instantly. It was the most insane thing ever. Until he took her in his mouth and made her fly apart all over again. She would have used the last of her strength to straddle him and take what she wanted most, but he must have read her mind because he rolled her on top of him and handed her a condom.

  Mindless with want, she simply followed the silent command and took him inside her.

  She could have moved against him like a mad woman, but when she saw the sweat bead along his forehead, she knew he hadn’t been kidding about not having been with anyone for a while. She let him control the pace, humbled to be the one he chose after all that time.

  Just when she thought the night didn’t have the power to surprise her anymore, she was most struck by that tender sentiment—that this was more than just a fling because he’d chosen her. The notion got under her skin and into her head until she wanted to hold him all night long and kiss every square inch of him.

  He took his time, holding back, finding ways to drive the pleasure higher for her even though he teetered too close to the edge. In the end, she pushed him over, nipping his ear and whispering a precise description of what she planned to do to him the next time she got him naked.

  She couldn’t savor the victory too long though. The feel of him throbbing deep inside her nudged her into a third orgasm she never would have dreamed possible in one night.

  Fireworks, for sure.

  She smiled as the aftershocks pulsed along her skin for long minutes afterward. She couldn’t speak. Could barely move. Instead, she just curled up against him and absorbed the warm feel of his chest beneath her cheek.

  “Definitely unexpected.” His words made her smile right before she might have drifted off.

  “You can’t have any morning-after regrets yet,” she informed him, only half joking. “I’m still in the afterglow stage.”

  “I’m a guy. We never regret sex.” His hand curled around her shoulder, brushing lightly.

  She laughed. “Right. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

  Although she did, of course. She was worried he’d regret being with her. He’d be leaving Beulah soon for his trial. And she’d be…

  She wasn’t even sure.

  “I can hear you thinking.” He kissed the top of her head, a gentle press of his lips in her hair.

  “Is that a crack on me for being an actress? Nothing but air between my ears?”

  “Hell no.” He shifted her so they lay side by side on the pillow, facing each other. “That’s the psych major talking. You went all silent after you said you didn’t know what you were thinking—.”

  “So you assumed I was suddenly thinking deep thoughts.” Who knew she was so predictable? Her grandmother had been right. She really wasn’t a very good actress.

  “Bingo.” He lifted a strand of her hair where it lay between them. Stroked it between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s only normal, you know. You went from thinking I was some random good old boy farmer to finding out I’m law enforcement, to finding out I’m wildly attracted to you all in one day. Any woman would be overwhelmed.”

  She knew he was making a joke, but she really did feel kind of undone by the last few days.

  “I think I’m just punch drunk from all those orgasms.” She deflected the more serious part of the conversation, truly savoring the afterglow. She could live off those endorphins for months.

  “Good to know. I hear there’s an unlimited supply when you sleep in this bed.” Carefully, he smoothed the strands of her hair back into place. “Red, I want you to know I’m going to keep you safe.”

  Had she thought she’d deflected the more serious part of this conversation?

  “I’m not worried. I feel safer here than just walking around Atlanta on any given day.”

  “I mean from the Dimitris. From the trial hanging over my head. If it comes down to it, and I think it’s not safe for you here, I’ll make sure you get protection somewhere else.”

  “I don’t want to be anywhere else.” Could he do that? Send her away if he was worried about her? As a law enforcement officer, maybe he could.

  “All the stories that ran in the paper… they made me sound like I screwed up that op.”

  She pressed a palm to his chest over his heartbeat. “No they didn’t.”

  “Yeah, they did. They talked about the teen – Antony – who got caught in the crossfire of police ready to make a bust, but it was a cop from some other unit who jumped the gun. We’d been paired up for weeks, both working the same undercover operation—neither of us wanting to compromise our cases. It’s not like on TV where you can just pull rank and get rid of a guy when you feel like he’s not quite up to snuff. There’s so much time invested, lives at stake if covers get blown. You’re living in this elaborate web of lies. It’s… complicated.”

  She heard something different in his voice. Something personal. He’d spent a lot of time thinking about this—she didn’t need a psych degree to know it.

  “I thought the news coverage made it sound like that teen was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just bad timing. He went to try and talk his friend out of leaving a gang—”

  His face was strained, taking on five years’ worth of lines in an instant. “He was a great kid. Antony. He’d been a runner in another crew when he was younger, had a long rap sheet he did earn, but he got out. Really worked his ass off to stay out of that bad element. He didn’t recognize me when I was working undercover, but I knew him from when I’d worked in Ft. Lauderdale. I helped him clean up when he hung out at a rec center where I volunteered.”

  “So you saved him from street violence once, only to see him die the way so many gang members do.” She couldn’t imagine how hard his job must be. How painful it must be to watch a life end that way, especially a young person full of such promise. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Right before he died, though, he recognized me.” The rawness in his voice made her throat close up.

  “Did he say anything?”

  He shook his head. “No. There was just that—light of recognition. And… I don’t know. I swear there was a peace in his eyes. I’ve thought about that moment so many times, knowing that I might have read into it what I wanted to see.”

  He shrugged. Like he had more to say but changed his mind.

  She held his hand. Kissed his cheek. “You know what you saw. Some people are born knowing exactly who they are. Maybe that boy felt a peace because he died doing something he believed in.”

  Annamae didn’t know if it was the right thing to say. If it gave him any comfort. But he lifted their twined hands and kissed the back of hers. “Thank you.”

  “I hope your testimony puts away the person who killed Antony.” She understood a little better why he’d given a year of his life to staying in hiding while the government built their case. It was about more than drugs or a job. It was about justice for a young man taken too soon.

  “It will, Red. I know it.”

  They lay together in silence for a long time, and she felt his breathing go even. Her mind was unsettled though, her afterglow chased off by criminals gunning for Wynn. What a dark world she’d stumbled into. She must have looked like something out of a cartoon with her red convertible and her dog and bleached blonde hair when she’d barreled up to his gate. No wonder he hadn’t wanted any part of her on his property.

  She would never forgive herself if she’d endangered him. Or the case that meant so much to him. Which was why she needed to play by his rules, be discreet. And leave when he told her to.

&n
bsp; She just hoped she wouldn’t leave too big of a piece of her heart behind when that day came.

  When Wynn’s cell phone buzzed on the nightstand by her ear, she realized she must have fallen asleep too. Disoriented, she blinked in the darkness, but Wynn was alert instantly, his face illuminated by the phone.

  “Hello?” His eyes went to her even as he fielded the call.

  She liked that. Liked the connection. Wynn must have seen who it was on caller ID because he switched the call to speaker phone so she could hear.

  “Mr. Lambert, it’s Gus Fields from the service station near the Sleep Tight Motor Lodge. I had a customer out here earlier tonight asking about that starlet. Ms. Jessup? She was real persistent-like.”

  Annamae sat up, dragging the sheet with her. Who was asking about her? A reporter?

  “What did you say?” Wynn slid out of the blankets, putting his feet on the floor.

  Confused, Annamae wondered what time it was. Where was he going?

  “I didn’t tell her anything, like we agreed. But Roofus Haverty has a mouth on him like an old woman.”

  Annamae frowned, not appreciating that comparison.

  “What did Roofus say?”

  “He went and told the lady how Ms. Jessup went to your place one time. And this woman—kinda uppity like—she lit out of here a little while ago. Just now, Roofus told me she was asking for directions to your place. I woulda called sooner but I got busy—.”

  “It’s okay, Gus. I appreciate the—”

  The security alarm blared.

  Chapter Seven

  ‡

  Wynn tossed Annamae her phone. Her real phone this time. Not a throwaway.

  “Take this, get dressed and get into the room I showed you. It’s safe in there. You can watch what happens on the screens.”

  Her movements were shaky, but she was already in her t-shirt.

  “Do you know how to get in there? Will I be able to get back out?”