“That feels like a no. So, you mean…” Everly’s brows lifted before she flitted her gaze down toward Levi’s lap.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Beck snapped.
Levi held up his hands. “I didn’t say a damn thing. Blame your twin for bringing it up in the first place.”
“Well, I don’t wanna hear anything more about it. I don’t care what the hell you do to your junk as long as it doesn’t keep you from finding a wife,” Addison said. “If we want to capitalize on this avenue and have weddings become the next major draw of the resort, I’m gonna need to use all of you as guinea pigs. Which means, whichever one of you”—she pointed a finger, bouncing it between Brady and Beck—“gets married first, it has to be at the resort. Swear it, or I’ll kill you.”
Brady blew out a long sigh. “You can’t threaten an officer of the law, Addison.”
She scoffed. “Oh please. You’re not Sheriff McKenzie right now. You’re just my stupid older brother. And when you get married, you’re going to do so at the resort. Luna’s okay with it. Aren’t you, Luna?”
Thank fuck the attention was off me because I wasn’t sure I could keep a straight face with this line of conversation. If only Addison knew she was pointing at the wrong brother… But it would at least allow me some leeway to save my ass from her wrath when she inevitably found out I was actually the first to get hitched.
Not wanting to tempt fate, I pushed back my chair and stood with my bottle of beer. “I’m gonna grab another.”
It didn’t matter what I said, because Brady and Addison were now in a full-blown argument over where his and Luna’s nonexistent wedding would be taking place and didn’t pay any attention as I slipped away.
I hadn’t even gotten three steps before the door to One Night Stan’s swung open and in walked none other than my future bride. This was nowhere near her normal routine, so she had probably heard about Beck and Everly’s celebration tonight and had decided to swing by. People had been stopping by to congratulate them all night, so Quinn wouldn’t be the first. But for some reason, I hadn’t expected to see her here.
Or, rather, I’d hoped she wouldn’t be here.
The last thing I needed was for my family to realize prematurely what was going on between us, because someone would inevitably try to talk me out of this. I might regret that at some point, but I’d never let that stop me before. Not when I took off to Iceland on a whim or went skydiving in Pensacola or headed to Idaho for the weekend to BASE jump off the Perrine Bridge. Had any of my siblings known about those beforehand, they all would’ve tried to talk me out of them. But I didn’t want to be reminded of the reasons this was a bad idea. I never did.
Quinn wore one of those flirty fucking sundresses that she practically lived in and that I foamed at the mouth for. I swore she wore them for the sole purpose of driving me out of my goddamn mind, all thanks to the way the hem brushed her soft thighs, teasing at everything she was hiding beneath.
I whipped my gaze back to where my family was still bickering, confirming they hadn’t yet seen her. Barely allowing her inside the space, I marched up to her, wrapped an arm around her waist, and tugged her toward a shadowy alcove in the back where we could stay out of sight.
“What the hell, Ford? Do youmind?”
With another quick glance back at my family, I turned my attention to her. “What are you doing here?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, what are you doing here?”
“And I said, what the hell?”
“You can’t be here.”
“I assure you, I can.” She moved to step around me, but I blocked her path.
“No, you can’t.” I ran a frustrated hand through my hair, shooting another look over my shoulder to make sure my family was still occupied. “I don’t want my family to know about what we’re doing.”
She blew out a disbelieving laugh, her eyes flitting between mine. “What do you mean, you don’t want your family to know about this? It wasyouridea in the first place.”
“Uh…no, it wasn’t. It wasyouridea. You’re the one who said we both needed a spouse.”
“Andyou’rethe one who said we should get married. Clearly, we’re both idiots, because this is never going to be believable if all anyone ever sees us do is fight.”
“I can promise you, kitten, I’m not going to have any problem making it believable.”
She scoffed. “Somehow I doubt that. Of the two of us, it’s you I’m worried about. I’m quite a divergence from the women you usually go for.”
“How would you know what kind of women I usually go for? You haven’t been here for over a decade.”
In a dry tone, she said, “I took a wild guess that the women don’t usually look like me.”
With the way she’d said it, somehow I didn’t think she was suggesting that no other woman besides her had been able to get my dick to so much as twitch since she’d waltzed her sweet ass back into Starlight Cove and made me crave every lush inch of her. She’d said it like it was a foregone conclusion that I wouldn’t be attracted to her or her insane body that’d been starring in my fantasies for weeks—years.
