The Wedding Date Disaster Read online

  And he did, a quick kiss that left Stephanie hazy-eyed. Will tried to remember a time before his parents died when they’d ever held hands, let alone kissed. He couldn’t. They weren’t physically affectionate people when it came to each other or their kids. No doubt they would have seen the kiss between Hadley’s parents as gauche.

  Cutting a look to the side, he tried to gauge Hadley’s reaction. Like the rest of her family, she was rolling her eyes at the PDA, but the upward curl of her lips gave away her true feelings. The only person who wasn’t watching the interaction between Stephanie and Gabe without an indulgent smile was Adalyn, who’d finished her call and joined them at the table.

  She let out a sigh. “Looks like Derek won’t be able to make it down for a few more days. His boss has him practically chained to the desk,” Adalyn said. “So what did I miss?”

  “The usual old-people PDA with Mom and Dad,” Weston said.

  Knox sat up straighter and leaned forward. “And Will here wants to learn how to be a cowboy.”

  Adalyn looked at him and shook her head. “I’m sure Knox and Weston can help you out there. I’d do it, but the wedding stuff has me out of the saddle until after the honeymoon.”

  “Hadley couldn’t show me the ropes?” It really would be the perfect revenge for pawning him off on her brothers.

  Everyone at the table—including Hadley—laughed at that.

  “Hadley is pretty much a town-only kind of person,” Weston said. “But I’m sure Knox and I could teach you a thing or two. You’re not afraid of a little hard work, are you?”

  The smug, raised-eyebrow, hey-city-slicker look Hadley’s oldest brother gave him telegraphed all too clearly exactly how much work the brothers thought he did. If they only knew. His days may not be as physical as theirs, but he was still up at four, in the office by six, and after that it was in back-to-back meetings until dinner, schmoozing potential investment partners until he got home and fell asleep reading emails in bed at around midnight.

  “Hard work has never scared me,” Will said.

  “Great,” Weston said with a curt nod. “We’ll start in the morning. Be ready by dawn, and we’ll take you out on snipe patrol.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Hadley glaring at her brothers. Of course she didn’t want him to win their sorta bet that her family would fall in love with him. Well, she was going to have to get used to losing on that front, too, because Will always won—no matter what.

  Stephanie cleared her throat, silencing everyone at the table. “Not tomorrow, I’m going to need Hadley and Will to go on down and get PawPaw for the wedding festivities.”

  Was that a dog? A peg-legged possum? He was about to ask a follow-up question when he noticed Hadley’s glare had transformed into a shit-eating grin that would look perfectly in place on a lottery winner’s face.

  “You don’t mind coming with me to get my granddad, right?” she asked. “For some fun family togetherness?”

  The sweetness in her tone should have warned him about the trouble ahead, but the always-needs-to-know-the-answer part of his brain had just taken a hit of that’s-the-answer dopamine. “No problem—anything for you.”

  “So sweet,” Hadley said, resting her head on his shoulder and really playing up the fake-girlfriend role. “It’s only a three-hour drive down there, so we should be fine to leave in the morning and be back home by dinner.”

  Fuck me.

  She got him. Again. There was no way to back out of it now without admitting weakness—a definite not-gonna-happen if there had ever been one. He’d concede this battle to her, but she’d better enjoy this victory while she could, because it was going to be her last one.

  And that determination made it all the way through dinner, toasts to the bride-to-be, and Adalyn’s favorite dessert—s’mores over the firepit. However, as soon as they got back to the cabin and he saw Hadley’s shoulders slump at the sight of the chair she’d napped in, he gave in—for strategic purposes, of course. It was smart to keep your competition off-kilter by throwing some no-strings-attached free will every once in a while.

  “You can have the pull-out.”

  Now, this was where she’d feign protest for politeness’s sake—that fake generosity would be the smart move for someone trying to slyly move in on his brother for all the dollars in his bank account.

  Hadley didn’t even hesitate before grabbing ahold of her suitcase and rolling it behind her as she walked down the short hall toward the bathroom. “We’ll take turns. Me tonight, you tomorrow when we get back from driving PawPaw home.”

  With her, it was always what he didn’t expect. Just like how she’d managed to get him to agree to another gut-wrenching drive. “You set me up with that.”

  “I did,” she said, glancing over her shoulder and winking at him.

  Will was in a pair of sleep pants and brushing his teeth over the kitchen sink when Hadley sauntered back into the living room in a silky red tank top and matching shorts trimmed in lace. Most of his blood went south before the realization settled in that she’d packed those pajamas thinking it would be his brother who’d see them.

  A good man would have pulled himself back from the edge and remembered a gold digger played the long con. He recalled that last bit all right, but he was still balancing right there on the edge of lust and loathing without a clue which side to fall on, while he watched her set up the fold-out bed and slip between the sheets already on it and promptly closing her eyes without ever looking his way or uttering a single good night. He would have thought he would have gotten his ability to breathe back again, but no.

  “You gonna turn out the light?” she asked in a bored tone, “or are you just standing there in the kitchen with a mouth full of toothpaste and staring at me while I’m sleeping—because that’s not creepy at all.”

  Face hot at getting caught, he swallowed the toothpaste without thinking. It tasted like mint-flavored poor choices. “I’ll be done in a second.”

  She didn’t answer, just rolled over and tucked the sheet up high under her chin. By the time he kicked his boots under the pull-out mattress so he didn’t trip over them in the middle of the night and sat down in the chair, Hadley’s breathing had already evened out as she slept. Without the usual annoyed expression she wore when she saw him, she looked softer, sweeter, somehow even sexier than usual. Hell, she looked every bit like she was the kindhearted person she presented around Web. But she wasn’t. And Will couldn’t—Web couldn’t—afford to forget that.

  Chapter Eight

  Will’s neck was never going to be the same.

  As he sat up, he rolled his neck and shoulders, working out the aches from sleeping mostly upright in a chair that was about as comfortable as the middle of the back seat of a subcompact car. Sunshine cut through the blinds in the cabin’s big front window, landing in a bright puddle in the middle of the empty pull-out bed. The sheet was still a twisted, rumpled mess, as if she’d slept about as well as he had—but there was no Hadley in sight.

  That probably wasn’t a bad thing, considering he’d seen plenty of her in his dreams—correction, his nightmares last night. And in every single one of them, she’d been wearing those silky little pajamas, and the strap holding her top in place kept slipping off her shoulder. It was just enough to give him a perma-hard-on while he slept, but that was it. Thank God.

  “So are you sure everything is going okay in Harbor City?” Hadley’s mom’s voice filtered in from the porch through the half-opened front door. “I worry about you being out there all alone.”

  “I’m not alone,” Hadley said softly. “I have friends and a job I love doing, if not the people I do it with.”

  “And now you have Will,” Stephanie said.

  Feeling like some kind of cartoon villain, Will tiptoed over to the window, getting almost there before his little toe got snagged on the foot of the pul
l-out bed. He kept moving forward but his toe went backward and the stupid iron bar stayed in place. Pain shot up his leg and he clamped his jaw shut to keep from yelling out, reflexively lifting his leg and spinning around.

  That’s when he saw it. Immediately, he froze with his injured foot in the air and fear clamping down on his balls.

  Snuggled inside the tangled sheets bathed in a pool of sunshine was a fox or a coyote or a baby wolf or an alien animal that only lived on this ranch. Hell, this could be the snipe Knox and Weston had been talking about last night at dinner, even though he knew, like the rest of the world with internet, that they weren’t real. This thing, though, was very real, even if he had no clue what it was. All he knew was it was an animal he’d never seen in any of the Harbor City parks. About the size of a cat, it was gray with orange on its sides. It flicked its bushy tail, the black tip landing right up against its snout. It had one yellow eye cracked open and was staring right at Will. Its lips curled back, revealing pointy little teeth, and let out a low growl.

  Cold panic slid down Will’s spine. “It’s okay, boy,” he said, holding up his hands while still balanced on one foot. “I’m allowed to be here.”

  The low growl turned into a medium one.

  “Hadley,” he hollered, not sure if this was a pet or a rabid animal ready to rip his face off. “I think I might have found the snipe your brothers were going hunting to find.”

  The front door opened and Hadley walked in. She was still in her pajamas, her long brown hair pulled into a high ponytail that bounced as she moved. She took one look at him frozen in place with his hands out, his right foot off the ground, and what he was pretty damn sure was a very manly look of pure fucking what-the-hell on his face before breaking out into giggles.

  “That’s not a snipe,” she said, her arms wrapped around her belly. “It’s Lightning.”

  “What is a lightning?”

  “He’s a greedy old swift fox who would steal the hard-boiled egg off your breakfast dish and poop on whatever he claims is his, but he wouldn’t bite you,” she said, coming closer and scratching the fox behind the ears. “Gabe found him as a tod years ago after he’d been injured protecting his sister, who’d gotten cornered by a coyote. She made it. Lightning lost a leg, but thanks to Gabe’s quick thinking, he survived. He’s been coming and going of his own free will since then.”

  Right on cue, the fox got up on his three legs, pulled off a perfect downward dog, and then leaped off the bed before trotting past Stephanie and out of the now fully opened front door.

  “He’s not aggressive,” Hadley said. “He’s just a geriatric three-legged friendly thief who always finds a way to sneak in, and he’s gone now, so you can go ahead and put your foot down.”

  Will lowered his foot, trying to ignore the way Hadley was grinning at him and the you-poor-thing expression on her mom’s face.

  “Morning, Stephanie,” he said, feeling like twelve kinds of ridiculous.

  If Web were here, Will never would have heard the end of it. He’d be getting fox gifts for the rest of his life.

  “Morning,” Stephanie said. “I was just telling Hadley that breakfast will be ready at the main house in about half an hour so you two can have some before getting on the road.”

  Oh yes. The three-hour drive. Just when he’d thought the low point of his day was going to be thinking a possibly rabid three-legged fox was going to eat him. It was past time he got out of here so everyone could more easily pretend this morning had never happened.

  “I’m going to go ahead and shower now,” he said, grabbing his grooming kit and heading down the hallway, ignoring Hadley’s satisfied little smirk.

  A few minutes later, under the steaming-hot water coming out of the showerhead, Will was not still ignoring the triumphant look on her face. Fuck. He wished he was. Instead, he couldn’t get the sight of her hard nipples pressing against her tank top when she’d walked in from the porch out of his head. There was no way he could spend three hours in the car with her wondering what sound she’d make if he rolled them between his fingers as she lay naked beneath him.

  Get it together, Holt.

  Right then, though, under the merciless spray, with both hands pressed firmly against the tile wall in an effort not to give in to the lust riding him hard, he didn’t give a shit. He wanted her. He wanted to see her go soft and wanting, he wanted to feel her squeeze him tight as she came, he wanted… Christ, he just fucking wanted.

  Telling himself—just like he had the other times he’d come thinking about Hadley—that it would just be this once, he curled his soapy hand around his hard cock, stroking up and down slowly, as if that were going to offer any relief at all. What he needed was a tight grip—her grip—around him, teasing him, drawing the pleasure out, knocking him nearly to his knees with want.

  This wasn’t right. He couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to.

  So with a long exhale, he closed his eyes and pictured her mouth swollen from kisses like it had been that night in the coat closet. His balls tightened and lifted as he sped up his strokes and imagined it was Hadley jerking him off while she told him how wet she was in a low, throaty whisper. Fist flying up and down his length as images of her flew through his mind, he edged closer and closer to coming. Her head tossed back as she laughed. The sway of her hips as she strutted across the room. The absolute joy in her eyes when she got the best of him yet again. He bit down, grinding his molars together, to keep the involuntary moans from escaping as the pressure built.

  She was dangerous.

  She was the enemy.

  She was his brother’s friend, in it only for the potential payoff.

  Still, Will wanted her. It was a need he couldn’t seem to shake. And in that half of a breath between his body locking in anticipation of the inevitable and his orgasm hitting, he was in the coat closet with her again. Only this time when she looked up at him, instead of saying his brother’s name, she said “Will.” Then everything went dark as white-hot pleasure shot through him.

  Breathing hard, Will opened his eyes and redirected the shower spray to the wall. There wouldn’t be any evidence left for Hadley to find, but that didn’t change the fact that he knew what he’d done—and that he was pretty damn sure he’d do it again.

  He had to get this woman out of his life—out of Web’s life—for both of their good.

  Rushing through the rest of his shower, he went through all of Hadley’s suspicious behavior that had added up to reveal her true motives. The way she’d insinuated herself into Web’s orbit so suddenly, there was no way it had been an accident. How she politely objected to Web picking up her tabs around town but then always gave in.

  The fact that she avoided sharing any information about her family or where she’d come from with anyone but Web—okay, at least not with Will. Her unsubtle hints about how nice it would be to live “the good life” of someone who didn’t have to worry about cash flow.

  Then there were all her ideas about the Holt Foundation and how its charitable efforts could be improved. She’d obviously done her homework on his brother, investigating until she found out what made him tick and how much he really, honestly cared about helping people with the foundation. Really, she was following the same path Mia had with him, right down to acting like she gave a shit about his work. There must be a gold-digger playbook somewhere that outlined it all.

  By the time he’d wrapped the towel around his waist and had finished mentally cursing himself for forgetting to bring fresh clothes into the bathroom with him, he was back to his regular self, no longer obsessed with how much he wanted Hadley. Determination renewed, he opened the door and strode out, nearly running down the woman haunting him.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, jumping back. “I didn’t mean…”

  Her words died off as her gaze traveled over him, not missing a single inch of bare skin. Lust, tangible as the to
wel he was holding in place with one hand, rolled off her in waves, tempting him beyond measure. The way she bit down on her bottom lip as her brown eyes darkened didn’t do a damn thing to help him maintain his equilibrium around her. He glanced down, clocking her towel and change of clothes. No doubt she’d been about to knock to see if the shower was free yet.

  She’d be naked under the water soon. Hands soapy. Body wet. Alone only for a few minutes. Would she take advantage of the privacy, too?

  “Bathroom’s all yours,” he said, his voice sounding rougher than he meant it to as he stepped out of the still-steamy room so she could walk in.

  She paused just inside the bathroom, her hand on the door. “I put your suitcase in the bedroom so you can get dressed without having to worry about someone walking in.”

  He nodded, not sure he could do more than that at the moment. “Thanks.”

  One long, lingering look later, she closed the door, leaving him alone in the hallway, already halfway to forgetting why he was here.

  Fuck. He was in so much trouble.

  …

  The drive had seemed like a better idea last night. Now all Hadley could picture as they sped down the stick-straight highway was the water droplets clinging to the dusting of hair on Will’s obnoxiously well-muscled pecs. If it had been anyone else, she wouldn’t have had a moment’s hesitation. Her panties would have been floor-bound.

  But, of course, it had to be Will.

  And, of course, the towel he’d had wrapped around his hips had been deliciously small.

  So that meant, of course, she’d just spent her entire shower weighing the benefit of masturbating and releasing all that totally inappropriate tension versus the just-her-luck likelihood that she’d slip at exactly the wrong moment and would be found—by Will—knocked out cold on the shower floor with her fingers on her clit.

  In her moment of shower indecision this morning, she’d opted for imagined dignity over orgasmic relief. Regrets? Oh yeah, she had lots. All of which added up to her being overwhelmingly horny and stuck in a car for three hours with the man she totally hated all while she couldn’t help thinking about all the ways she’d climb him like a tree if given the chance.