The Groomsman: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Billionaires of Club Tempest)

by Sloane Hunter

  I’d been right (I usually was). The drink and the fuck untwisted that knot of annoyance and anger in my gut. I was feeling good, my cock in her pussy and her arms wrapped around my broad back as she panted and moaned in my ear.

  I was just, literally just, about to climax when Mariana stiffened. I thought — for the briefest of moments — that she was cumming until she shrieked and somehow managed to do a home run dive off me and into the open bathroom stall.

  Confusion turned to shock when I realized what had happened. The door that I was ninety-nine percent (and dropping) sure that I had locked was fully open and currently occupied by a gorgeous auburn-haired girl wearing a teal bikini and a look of immense shock.

  We stared at each other for a solid beat. Then I gave a weak smile, hoping we’d slipped into an alternate reality running on porn logic and she might want to join in. All hope of that vanished when her face slipped into anger and disgust.

  Mariana cowered in the stall. I felt no sympathy. She’d been acting as my only piece of clothing and she’d abandoned me to stand completely naked and fully erect under the eyes of this stranger.

  Well, stranger to me. Because with a cry of disgust, the girl said the one thing that could make this entire situation worse: my name.

  4

  Alice

  “Mac!”

  The words left my mouth an exclamation, a scold, and a curse. He looked just as surprised as I felt, standing there naked, suddenly alone. But he also didn’t make any move to cover himself. My eyes betrayed me, roaming his body even though every neuron in my brain screamed to look away.

  A year and four months hadn’t changed Mac Walsh in the slightest. If anything, he seemed bigger, free from the burden of clothing. His muscles stretched tight across a chest that was brushed with dark hair and featured a Celtic lion tattoo across his left pec. His arms were thick and veined, his shoulders rounded. His black hair was shorter than the last time I’d seen him, recently cut. And speaking of cut, a chiseled six-pack ended in a prominent V that pointed all the way to his still fully-erect cock.

  I really tried not to stare at it, but it barged its way into my vision with the persistence of an overly eager Walmart greeter. And, let me just say, before I go any further… damn.

  I ripped my eyes away from its bobbing grin and focused on the bottle-green eyes attached to the correct head (though I doubted the one that did all the thinking). His eyes bulged as the echo of my words faded in the bathroom and suddenly we were locked in a staredown. He looked confused, apprehensive, caught off guard by my words in a way that surpassed any physical embarrassment.

  I struggled to understand until the realization hit me: He had no idea who I was.

  As soon as the thought struck, I knew it was true. A hot sense of embarrassment warmed my blood and rushed it to my cheeks. Had I really wasted time thinking, hating, a guy that gave so few shits he couldn’t even remember my face?

  “Do you not know who I am?” I demanded. I realized I had the door wide-open still and even though this bathroom was out of the way, kids were still running around. Seriously, how irresponsible….

  I stepped inside and closed the door. “Well?” I asked when he didn’t answer.

  “You want to give me some privacy, love?” he asked, finally finding his voice. With the words, any trace evidence of surprise or shame left his face and was replaced by a lazy condescension that I immediately wanted to smack off.

  “I think you forwent your right to privacy when you screwed in an unlocked public place,” I spat back. “And don’t you dare call me love.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s in the most basic form of the word. How do you know my name?”

  I put a finger on my chin, tearing my eyes away from his face to look mockingly up at the ceiling as if searching my mind. “Hmmm, let’s see. How do I know you?”

  I snapped my fingers. “Oh, that’s right. You punched out my boyfriend at the Black Shade Saloon last year after hitting on me with one of the most disgusting pick-up lines I’ve ever heard in my life. But yeah, honestly with the way you were stumbling around drunk off your ass, I’m not even surprised that doesn’t ring a bell for you.”

  A look passed across his face, so quickly I wasn’t even sure I noticed it. Something that might have been a memory. But it was gone before I was sure and his face re-hardened into its indifferent mask. He reached down and grabbed his black swimsuit off the floor, pulling it up to cover his length though his erection pushed the fabric out obscenely.

  “All right,” he said. “I vaguely remember something like that. Though from my recollection, that skinny prick you just called a boyfriend had it comin’ to him. I probably did you a favor.”

  A favor? Yeah right. But I wasn’t about to admit to Mac that I’d continued to date Daniel for close to a year after that night; I barely could admit it to myself. “All you did was ruin my Saturday.”

  “You were gonna be disappointed anyway, love.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  A hand darted out of the stall and grabbed the white pants on the floor. We both started. Somehow, I’d completely forgotten that Mariana was still there. She ran out a moment later, not making eye contact with either of us and fleeing to the outside.

  “And now this is going to be really awkward,” I said, gesturing after her. “You know she’s putting the whole damn wedding together, right?”

  He snorted, amused for some reason. “Well, it’s your fault she was left unsatisfied. So I suppose it’s on you if this whole thing goes to shit.”

  My mouth dropped open. How dare he even insinuate… “No, it’ll be on you, asshole! Just wait until Beck hears you—”

  “No. You’re not going to tell her,” he cut me off.

  I couldn’t believe the audacity of this guy. “And exactly why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because if you tell her, then my friends will know too, and I don’t want to have to deal with Sam, not to mention Mason.”

  I crossed my arms. “I don’t see exactly how that’s my problem.”

  He sighed and ground his jaw. The irritation in his green eyes somehow made him even hotter as he glared down at me. Not important right now, Alice!

  “You want this wedding to go well? Making it awkward is just going to screw it up. What if she quits? No wedding planner, terrible wedding. Trust me.”

  “How selfless of you to care.”

  Mac smirked. “I honestly don’t. Like I said, I just don’t want to deal with a lecture.”

  I shook my head in wonder. “You’re unbelievable.”

  “I’m honest.” Then he chuckled, the irritation in his face replaced by a teasing smile. “But I’d also hate to see you throw Mariana under the bus like that. It takes a tough woman to resist my charms.”

  I gave him the blankest look I could muster. “You poor man. How do you get through life with women just constantly throwing themselves at you?” I asked, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s amazing you can walk down Fifth Avenue without causing pile-ups.”

  “Don’t be jealous ‘cause you can’t do any better than a Ivy League Ken doll,” he said. “I hear them make ‘em in a factory out in Connecticut. Is that where you go for the latest model? Or do you pick them off a tree in Murray Hill?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Go fuck yourself, Mac. And kindly stay out of my way this week. I don’t want to go mad with lust and pull a muscle. Now get out of here. I need to pee.”

  He looked down at his erection and then back up at me, a mocking gleam in his eye. “Would you compromise and pull an organ? I can’t walk around like this.”

  “Get out!” I shouted.

  “Fine, fine,” he muttered, grabbing his shirt off the sink and stalking past me. “Remember,” he said, pointing one thick finger in my face, “not a word about Mariana.”

  I scoffed and pushed it away before stomping to the stall and slamming the door shut.

  I peed angrily in an aggressive stream. What was this guy�
�s problem? I listed Mac Walsh’s sins off in my mind. Completely unashamed by his idiotic behavior. Selfish — didn’t care about Mariana only about one of his friends finding out. Crude. Disgusting. Whorish. (Did that word apply to men? Whatever. It stood.) Doubly selfish because he knew, but didn’t seem to care about how all of this would affect the wedding.

  In a small, strange, twisted way, I was glad I’d walked in on them. It completely justified my opinion of Mac Walsh and, doubly, gave me something to focus on. I needed to keep a close eye on Sam’s spastic groomsman lest he do something irreversible. Everything had been going too smoothly up until this point. It was time for a wrench to be thrown in and, as Maid of Honor, I was ready to rise to the challenge.

  As I left the bathroom, I tried really hard to ignore Mac’s final sin — that he hadn’t remembered me at all.

  5

  Mac

  Alice Rhodes.

  I asked and the universe gave. Now I had something to hate even more than watching Sam and Beck sit with their shoulders touching.

  The time by the pool was filled with new faces. Beck’s bridesmaids turned out to be another girl from the city, one farm chick who was going to be spending the entire week throwing up in the bathroom, and Keegan’s girlfriend, who was just hot enough that I’d give him a pass for putting a label on it.

  The girls all seemed nice enough, the city friend familiar in that half-recollected way known mostly by drunks and the brain-damaged. Now that Alice had mentioned it, the specific circumstances of that night were returning, albeit with the clarity of a television with poor reception. Fights and boozy flirtations happened often enough that ordinarily the evening could have joined any number of wild nights with the guys. But usually those altercations belonged to the deep part of the night, when we’d been out for hours, all of us in a similar state.

  That night, there had been a reason I’d gotten so spectacularly trashed while all the others stayed more or less sober. I’d received a bit of news from the old country and had spent most of the afternoon trying to drown my sorrows.

  I’d been drunk for so long, that I’m pretty sure I came out of a black out mid-fight with that punk Alice was dating. I wasn’t even sure why I was angry at him, only that I was. And because I’d been wanting to hit something all evening, when he popped me across the face, I was ready and willing.

  Too bad the fight wasn’t anything to write home about. If I did miss anything about Dublin, it was that the neighborhood boys were a tougher bunch than these white-collar pissants that populated so much of NYC. Over there, if you came to blows, you got a fight. That night in the Black Shade, Dave, or whatever the hell his name was, had been out on the first punch. The second was just a tap to tip him over. Talk about a pussy. If that was the type of guy Alice Rhodes dated, there had to be something wrong with her. It wasn’t like she couldn’t attract a higher caliber.

  Over that afternoon by the pool, I wondered and simultaneously tried not to care too much about finding out. But, like I said, she was a nice distraction from Sam and Beck.

  I watched her through my sunglasses, swimming lazily with some of the girls in a teal blue suit that showed off her tits and the curve of her ass nicely. She was gorgeous — I’d admit it. Big eyes, brown which people never appreciated as an eye color until they see someone who really pulls it off. They were the color of teakwood — tawny, a light mix of brown and orange that matched her auburn hair which was a few shades darker. Long, thick lashes and expressive, though when they were turned toward me, they pulsed with irritation.

  Yes, Alice was attractive, hot even, but after the way she’d come after me in that bathroom, it was obvious my efforts would be better spent tracking down that blonde from the tiki bar.

  And anyway I had no interest in being on any list that included that prick from last year.

  I couldn’t completely ignore Alice though. I’d dodged a bullet with her not immediately ratting me out to Beck, but it was still in the cards. I wouldn’t put it past her to hold it over my head. But I was pretty sure I could call her bluff if it came down to it. I gathered, sitting and listening to the chatter, that Alice was the Maid of Honor, and, apparently, she took her job pretty damn seriously. Another glaring difference between the both of us. She was all in on this wedding and that pretty much made her the enemy.

  The afternoon by the pool passed without much event. Plans were laid for the evening — hit the bars, the nightly party on the beach, find fun and stay out of trouble. I could do all that.

  Except maybe the last part.

  Tuzas Suns was generally a family-friendly resort with a few exceptions. Once the sun went down and the kiddies went to bed, the beach front around The Sunset Lagoon turned into an all-night hotspot for drinks, dancing, and live music. As New Yorkers, we weren’t prepared to start and end the night in the same location, but there were plenty of restaurants and bars scattered around the property to hit up ahead of time.

  After getting a dark tan snoozing by the pool while the others talked and swam, I headed back to the hotel with Sam and Henry to start getting ready for the night.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to walk back as a group?” Sam asked the girls.

  Beck looked hesitant, like she didn’t want Sam to leave her sight for even a moment (which, blech), but the short brunette girl, Kylie, pulled on her arm, physically drawing her eyes away from her beloved.

  “We were going to check out the Lagoon, get a good idea of where we’re headed tonight,” she reminded her.

  Beck nodded in agreement and my eyes flicked toward Alice, only briefly. She was whispering something to the other blonde, the country one, and didn’t seem to be paying attention.

  Ever since our rather awkward encounter in the bathroom, she’d mostly ignored me, barely acknowledging me other than the bare minimum of attention to keep the others from suspecting that anything was wrong.

  But even as Alice pretended that everything was fine, the others, it seemed, had a better recollection than me of that night at the Black Shade. I ignored Henry and Keegan’s goading glances between the two of us, trying to get some reaction out of me.

  If only they knew what had just gone down between us in the bathroom… I’d never hear the end of it. Personally, I believed I deserved at least a bit of respect for nailing Mariana, but I knew they’d just focus on the fact that I hadn’t locked the door properly. Keegan and Henry would laugh themselves hoarse over the image of me, naked and erect, under the withering glare of Alice.

  Mason, forever the buzzkill, would ask what would have happened if a stranger had walked in instead of Alice, or, god forbid, a kid.

  It was a fair question even though I still hated Mason’s hypothetical scold. While I disliked the stereotypes, there was something to be said for the luck of the Irish. Mariana and I would have been kicked from the premises.

  Which, whatever. Would save me from having to go to this goddamn wedding. Unfortunately, the entire wedding party might have been booted along with us, and even though it would fall in line with my goal of keeping the wedding from happening, my friendship with the Knights would probably never recover. No, if the wedding was to be called off, it had to have absolutely nothing to do with me.

  Not that that was something I was actively planning on or anything.

  “Ready to get out of here?” I asked impatiently. I’d been waiting with a towel slung over my shoulders for twenty minutes as Sam and Henry talked like we weren’t about to see them again in just a couple hours.

  I was coming to expect this from brand-new, about-to-be-married Sam; it was odd coming from Henry. But, he was reunited with Kylie, who he’d apparently slept with that same night I met Alice.

  I watched them talk. Henry always did this thing when he talked to girls — broad shoulders back, weight on one foot giving him a casual, almost lazy air, head cocked to the side as half-closed eyes maintained firm eye contact so the contrast was apparent when he ‘accidentally’ let them wander. I rolled my
eyes as his face broke into a grin, a smile I never saw when it was just the guys. Knowing Henry, he probably practiced it in the mirror.

  Finally Henry and Sam managed to pull themselves away and headed over to me where I was waiting by the gate. I held it back for them. “Took you long enough,” I said.

  “Not our problem you have the social skills of a skinned cat,” Henry replied.

  It was only five o’clock, and we had about three or four hours before we left as a group to go out. Sam, Henry, and I were done with the pool and wanted to get changed for the evening and hit the casino for a while.

  Sam seemed in good spirits on the walk back to the room and though my heart wasn’t really in it, I tried to mirror them.

  Now that we were alone, with Beck far away and Alice’s stuffy silence no longer a distracting cloud around me, it was easier to get excited about the time we would spend together as a group over the week.

  We ran the usual conversational gauntlets — the current football season, the market values of our apartments, our businesses and where we planned on taking them in the coming year.

  Sam insisted that we had to come check out his new apartment building, the Astor, before it sold, while Henry regaled us with his predictions for the top technologies that would be hitting the market the following year and, his favorite conversation, how far technology would advance in the next decade.

  “I’m telling you,” he said. “They got shit in the works you couldn’t even think up.”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “Someone thought up Star Wars. Is it crazier than spaceships and lightsabers?”

  “Of course! Because this shit is real,” he replied. “But just wait, and enjoy the present because it won’t be the same for long. We’re living in the best time to be alive, my friends.”

  “Well,” I said, stopping Henry. He had that faraway gleam in his eyes. I knew from experience we needed to reel him back unless we wanted a really, really long conversation about giga-watts or probe chips or whatever the hell he actually invested in. “I’m launching a new bottle next year.”