Molly leaned against the bar,
downing her second Chardonnay in fifteen minutes. If she’d known a single soul
at the wedding besides Daisy, or if she wasn’t attending by herself, it would
have been easier to relax, but as it was, she was barely hanging on.
“Scotch.
Double,” said a low, terse voice from beside her. “Wait. Triple.”
Molly shifted
only slightly to watch him throw back the lowball glass, before wincing in
distaste and sliding it back to the bartender.
“Again. Neat.”
The old
Molly—sweet, gullible, trusting, stupid Molly—from yesterday, might have gently
laid her hand on his arm and asked him if everything was okay. The dumped,
bitter, caustic, on-her-way-to-plastered Molly of today nudged her empty glass
forward beside his.
“Another
Chardonnay, please?”
“That’s three,”
said the bartender, as he filled up Blondie’s lowball glass again.
She hooked her
thumb at Blondie. “And he’s on his fourth, fifth, and sixth, but I didn’t notice
you counting it out for him.”
“It’s early yet.
Maybe pace yourself, honey.”
“If I wanted a
lecture, I would’ve called my dad,” she said, shocked to hear the words she was
thinking somehow fall out of her mouth.
“Whoa, touchy.
Just saying.”
“Well, don’t,”
she said softly. “Don’t say. Just pour.”
As she exchanged
words with the bartender, Blondie had stopped with his drink halfway to his
lips, and was staring at her with his mouth slightly open.
“Hey,” he said,
his eyes flicking to her breasts for just a second. “You look almost as miserable as I feel.”
“Imagine how
delighted I am to hear that,” she answered, putting her back to the bar and
looking past him, as though bored.
If she was
honest, however, she wasn’t bored by him. Maybe, just maybe, for no apparent
reason that she cared to explore, her tummy might have filled with butterflies
when he locked his blue eyes with hers a moment before.
“Wow.” He threw
back half the glass of Scotch, then lowered the tumbler to the bar, shifting
his body to face her. “Not a big fan of weddings, huh?”
“Not today,” she
admitted, grasping the stem of her wineglass after the bartender grudgingly
refilled it. The wine was doing its work, making the sharp ache of Dusty’s
betrayal recede from the front of her mind.
“Amen,” he
agreed.
“Today, weddings
suck.”
“Right there
with you.”
“Love, love,
love…blah, blah, blah. Whatever.”
“Preaching to
the choir.”
“To have and to
hold…what does that even mean?”
He wrinkled his
nose at her. “I think it just means…to have and to hold.”
She smirked. “I
guess they didn’t want to confuse anyone when they came up with that witty
line.”
His lips quirked
up and he brought the glass to his lips again, taking a small sip. “Boy, you’re
something.”
“Am I?” she
asked, still channeling acidic boredom, although part of her hoped he wouldn’t
leave because at least if Blondie was talking to her, she wasn’t completely
alone. Plus, he was easy on the eyes, it was taking effort not to look at him,
and that effort was distracting her from her general misery.
“You’re really
angry.” He leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. “Don’t take this the
wrong way, but I sort of dig that today.”
“What do you dig
on the other 364 days?”
He laughed
softly, shaking his head back and forth. “Why don’t we just worry about today?”
She sighed,
taking another big gulp of wine before glancing at him. She shifted her body
and fluttered a couple of fingers toward the boutonniere on his lapel.
“Wedding party?”
“Weren’t you at
the wedding?”
“Back row
corner,” she said. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
Fueled by many
fermented grapes, she decided to remedy that now. Without even trying to be
subtle, she started at his neck then dropped her eyes, inch by inch, to his
broad chest, to his tapered waist, to his hips—with strong bets on a toned,
chiseled man-V under his sharply creased trousers—to his legs, and back up
again. “Friend or family?”
His eyes burned
after her blunt perusal. “Family. What about you?”
“Maybe I’m
crashing,” she deadpanned.
As
if dumped schoolteacher Molly McKenna would ever do something as wild as crash
a wedding.
He grinned, his
eyes a touch darker now as he threw back the rest of his Scotch without wincing
or gasping. He shoved his glass back toward the bartender, tapping on the rim
to indicate he wanted another.
“Really?”
“Crashing,” she
whispered with a soft laugh of disbelief.
“I’ve never met
a wedding crasher. How did you get in?” he asked, amusement and surprise thick
in his voice.
“What?”
“You crashed,
right? How did you manage to get in?”
“Oh, I didn’t…”
Wouldn’t
that be something? To crash a wedding? To be someone who did something like
that? Someone…wild?
Either the wine
was making her loopy, or the idea of “being wild” for the first time in her
life had taken hold of her like a beagle’s teeth on a bird’s throat. Whatever
the reason, it didn’t much matter. She looked into Blondie’s deep blue eyes,
which were twinkling with amusement, and made a quick decision. Licking her
lips and lowering her voice to a purr as she’d seen in the movies, she beckoned
him closer.
“Want me to tell
you? Or show you?”
Shocked by her
own boldness, Molly didn’t move an inch. She stared at the pulse in his throat,
the way it pounded, pushing at the skin forcefully with every throbbing surge
of blood. By staring at his heartbeat
she could ignore the fierce pounding of her own.
“Are you
serious?”
Her breathing
had suddenly become shallow and quick. Was she? Was she serious? What exactly
was she offering? A kiss? Sex? Christ on a cracker, she’d never had sex with
anyone but Dusty. Dusty. Her nostrils flared with fury. Dusty who’d cheated on
her with Shana. She exhaled raggedly, licking her lips again, emboldened by her
fury.
“Try me,” she
whispered.
Now a hybrid author who publishes both independently and traditionally, Katy claims authorship of the six-book Heart of Montana series, the six-book English Brothers series, and a Kindle Worlds novella entitled “Four Weddings and a Fiasco: The Wedding Date,” in addition to the standalone novels, Playing for Love at Deep Haven and Amazon bestseller, The Vixen and the Vet.
Katy lives in the relative wilds of northern Fairfield County, Connecticut, where her writing room looks out at the woods, and her husband, two young children, and two dogs create just enough cheerful chaos to remind her that the very best love stories begin at home.
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