My stomach sours at the thought, and I push all anxiety it brings with it right out of myhead.
He slides a Shirley Temple my way, and I slide it right back. “Add some vodka thistime.”
He frowns my way, and two tiny dimples insert on either side of his cheeks. Brody’s family and ours have always been close. His sister, Colby, is the wild child of the bunch. She just graduated high school, and rumor has it, she’s at the local community college wreaking havoc on all the poor professors who have to put up with her. His parents are still together, unlike mine. My father is actually deceased, but the way I blamed him for leaving us you would think he left my mother for another woman and not a coffin. I’m still pretty upset with him, and it’s been the better part offorever.
“What’s got your panties in a bunch?” He reluctantly slides the drink back my way, and judging by the sugary legs seeping from the cherry red grenadine, I can tell he’s fulfilled my vodkadreams.
“Funny you should ask.” I knock back half the drink and shudder as the burn runs clear down my esophagus. “Lex Maxfield to be exact. She had some female bonding trap laid out for me, and I fell into it hook, line, andvagina.”
Brody’s eyes widen with horror as I say it, and something about that small action has my stomach squeezing tight. My God, I hate how viscerally I respond to him. That dark scruff on his cheeks forces me to lean over and scratch it as if the liquor had already gone to myhead.
He grunts as he catches my hand and kisses it. And I’m momentarily thrown off my game. Brody and I lob barbs at one another. That’s what we do. We don’t kiss. We don’t.Right?
He growls my way as I take my hand back. “Don’t use the V word in my presence. I’m practically your bigbrother.”
I swallow hard because now that I see how soft his scruff is, I think I found somewhere better to sit than on hisbiceps.
“Yeah, well, it’s true. Lex took me to a sadist who made me strip off my skivvies and spread ’em. She put molten hot wax on my junk, and I screamed for an hourstraight.”
Brody belts out a laugh as if it were the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “Was that you? I thought the fire alarm was goingoff.”
“Very funny,” Igrunt.
The noise around us dies down a moment as the house band starts in on a new song, and I lift a finger because I happen to recognize this Neil Diamond cover, “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon”. My mother worshipped at Neil’s rhinestone feet. She said it was an obsession passed down to her by her own mother, and now here I am swooning over the lethargicrhythm.
“Hear that?” I let the first stanza finish, and Brody bounces with a nod, his dark brows lifting seductively, causing my stomach to bisect withheat.
“I hear.” He toasts me with his beer. “And, believe you me, I’ve said it to my fair share ofgirls.”
“You’re disgusting.” I pluck the cherry out of my drink and chuck it at him. “But tonight, that”—I point to the house band—“is my song. I’m headed to downtown Jepson to that sleazy nightclub they just opened in the basement of the Dungeon.” The Dungeon is a notorious strip club that Low and I may have visited a time or twelve during our stay at Whitney Briggs. Low was my roommate, and we grew closer than sisters during those four frat house riddled years. “And I am going to get toasted and show off my hairless kitten to the first frat boy I see,” I grunt into the words because I hate how much this is a reality forme.
“What?” He tips his head back as if I just had the power to knock him off his feet. “There are so many things wrong with what you just said, I don’t know where to begin.” His features harden, and I can’t help but find it vexingly sexy. “First, no bar. Second, no frat boy. Third, please don’t say hairless kitten to me ever again.” His eyes linger over mine a moment, and sparks jump from him to me. Or at least that’s my story, and I’m sticking toit.
A part of me wants to unleash and tell Brody the real reason I’m so determined to drown my troubles tonight. For starters, I’m no longer employed. The Regency Agency, which I worked my fingers to the bone for, was nothing but a sham. Some good my MBA did me. For the most part, I didn’t do much more than fetch everyone else their lattes. But I push my once upon a cushy job out of my head for a moment. I don’t want to think about the fact I’m no longer employed, earning the big bucks to shuffle hot coffee, the fact I no longer have the ability to house myself in the Jepson penthouse, which I adored even if I had only set foot in it a total of three times. The agency kept me on the run like a fugitive. I even missed last Christmas with the family because I was in India shooting a lookbook for a teen heiress who bought herself a clothing line.Christmas. I missed my brothers, Levi and Chip, even if they were feuding at the time. Chip knocked up Meredith, Levi’s wife—yes, it was ugly. But now Levi is divorced and remarried to my bestie, Low, and nobody wants Meredith. Although baby Maxie is sure pretty cute—and she’s one of the chief reasons I’m back in Hollow Brook—there are other reasons, too, perhaps a little more chief, but I’m slow to admit it. I look over at Brody as he hustles up a few drinks and slides them over to his customers before coming back myway.
Brody closes his eyes an inordinate amount of time. “Please tell me you’rekidding.”
“I’m not kidding. Low is out of town. Lex is a demon. And I don’t have anyone to hang out with.” I force myself to knock back the rest of my drink and growl as the sting does its best to eat me alive. “As soon as my ride gets here, I’m headed to Jepson.” I pull out my phone, and Brody swats it down with histowel.
“Put that thing away. I happen to have the rest of the night off, and I’m headed to Jepsonmyself.”
A devious smile creeps up my cheek. “Liar.”
His brows twitch twice, and my hairless kitten twitches right along withthem.
“You know mebest.”
Brody Wolf smellslike fresh-cut evergreen branches, mulled spices, testosterone and sex. All of my favorite scents rolled together—sans the sex part. I may have come close to showing off my kitten in the past, but the truth is, it’s a place where no man has dared to venture—yet. That’s what tonight was supposed to be about, cutting loose, popping cherries (not of the maraschino variety), and hopefully finding myself in an expensive hotel where I can spend the night on a feather bed and wake up to a five-star breakfast. Sure, the price tag for such luxury was hefty, considering I was willing to put up body parts on the chopping block, but hey, a girl has to do what she has to do to get a decent short stack. Kidding. Sortof.
Brody growls and grumbles all the way to Jepson while I blast the most annoying, sappy love songs I can find, roll down his windows, and scream into the virginal icy night. Fall is in full swing, and everywhere you look the world is dotted with pumpkins, with autumn leaves in a rainbow of citrus colors. It’s my favorite season, and now that Low is hitched to my brother, now that Lex set off a nuke over my pink parts, I’ll have to spend it all alone. I glance to Brody as the song warbles to an uncomfortable climax. It feels right listening to sappy love songs with Brody. As much as I do it to annoy him, it always feelsright.
I switch the radio off just as we pull in front of the Dungeon and Brody starts to scour for a parking spot. “How does it feel to have both of your business partners falling on the sword oflove?”
He grimaces as he backs his truck into an impossibly tight space. “That damn sword,” he grunts as he glides easily into position and kills the engine. “They can have it.” His eyes meet with mine as the street lamp above casts a heavenly glow over his features. Brody Wolf was kissed by the creator himself before he was sent to earth as God’s gift to women. For as long as I’ve known him, Brody has had at least three girls he was juggling at the same time. And much to my disappointment, I was never one of them. His eyes narrow in on mine. “No falling on the sword for me.” The moment grows serious as his gaze lingers over mine. “When I fall, it’s going to be on a bed of roses with a girl so beautiful we’ll redefine all of the negative connotations regarding falling in love— like that sword thing.” He shakes his head, dismayed, and my insides twist tight as he takes on a demonically sexy appeal. “Love shouldn’t have to hurt, Raven. Remember that.” He gives my hair a quick tug before getting out of the truck, but I’m slow to follow him. I’m still locked in the visual of falling onto a bed of roses with Brody—my long dark hair coiled around him like a leash. Now that’s one bed I wouldn’t let him outof.
I jump out, and we stare at this Vegas-like strip with its flashing lights, neon bulbs, throngs of drunk coeds screaming as they traffic along the busy sidewalks, and we both gasp as we spot the white chapel at the end of the street with its own blinking lights and neon sign that boasts of quickie weddings with a flashing image of the King of Rock himself gyrating above it like aghost.
“Only an idiot would do that.” I’m quick to lay it out there in the event Brody ever gets waylaid by one of his buxom buddies and finds himself standing at the altar staring atElvis.
