come on!” Delilah’s speech picked up speed and volume as she gained enthusiasm. “Go for it! Have a fling! You’ll never turn thirty again. Besides, you’re a bridesmaid. It’s what bridesmaids do. Look around you—everyone is pairing up.”
Through the mist of a few too many alcoholic beverages, Lucie surveyed the rapidly thinning crowd in the ballroom. “Oh, my god. You’re right. There are trysts forming before my very eyes!”
In fact, directly in her line of vision, she saw Ian, the handsome best man, sitting very close to Steffi’s maid of honor, the one with the silicone-inflated cleavage and legs up to her chin. From here, it looked as if the two of them were getting cozy. Very cozy. Yuck.
And if she looked the other way, her gaze hit snippy little Steffi, out on the dance floor in her white lace wedding dress, clinging to her handsome groom like there was no tomorrow.
Steffi, twenty-one and married to a drop-dead gorgeous guy in his thirties. Her hideous maid of honor, also twenty-something, also attached to a gorgeous guy in his thirties.
And here sat Lucie, thirty and alone. “Well,” she said with spirit, “isn’t that a kick in the pants?”
AS IAN TRIED to decide where he was going with this, Feather made her move. Bending in close enough to give him a full view of her dangerously round breasts, she slid a hand onto his knee, teasing the edge of his kilt. She whispered, “Are you feeling what I’m feeling?”
“What are you feeling?”
“Hot. Hot, hot, hot.”
He smiled. Okay, so he was human, and when a woman put her hand under his kilt, he had the obvious reaction. “Maybe.”
“I know you’re as turned on as I am,” she mouthed. “Tell you what—just give me your key, and we’ll take this upstairs.” As he made no move, she pouted and tried, “Come on, Ian. Everybody knows the best man and the maid of honor are supposed to make it on the wedding night. It’s kind of a…” She winked at him. “A tradition.”
He told himself not to be an idiot. She might not be the swiftest boat in the fleet, but Feather was a beautiful, willing, sexy woman. Was he really going to turn her down?
Not on your life. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the key. The number 2-0-3 caught the light of a nearby candle as he slipped it across the table.
Feather offered a triumphant smile, nabbing the key and sticking it quickly into the small plaid handbag looped around her wrist. “You go ahead,” she said in a breathy voice. “I’ll just freshen up and then I’ll be right with you.”
As she toddled off in the direction of the ladies’ room, Ian pondered the odds of her actually making it up the stairs to his room. Fifty-fifty, he decided. But hey, that was like letting fate decide whether a horizontal tango with Feather was meant to be.
He grabbed the bottle of Scotch on the table, stopped by the front desk for another key to his room, and strolled up to the second floor, still in a very dark and cynical frame of mind.
If Feather made the climb or if she didn’t, it was no big deal to him.
“IT’S WHAT HAPPENS at weddings, Luce. It’s like they pump something into the air. All the sexual tension, the weepy till-death-do-us-part stuff, everyone thinking about honeymoons and garters and sloppy kisses and white lace and roses and…Well, the open bar doesn’t hurt, either.”
“Okay, so everyone else is doing it. That doesn’t mean I have to,” Lucie protested. “I’m just not that kind of person.” She hiccuped delicately. “Besides, my father would have a fit.”
“What’s he got to do with it?” Delilah argued. “And why would he even have to know?”
“He wouldn’t, I suppose. It’s just…he’s very hung up on toeing the line, not making waves, not doing anything that would embarrass him.”
“Let me get this straight. This is the same man whose daughter just foisted this Scottish monstrosity of a wedding on about four hundred people?” Delilah shook her head so hard she looked dizzy. “Lucie, you are thirty years old. What your father does or doesn’t like is hardly important at this point—especially when the old jerk let Steffi have her wedding on your birthday.”
“Oh, I’m sure none of them remembered. It’s not like it was intentional,” Lucie assured her new friend.
“That’s even worse.”
“Not really—”
“I’m telling you, Luce,” Delilah interrupted. “Tonight, for a few hours, you deserve to think about you, to celebrate the big 3-0, to be as wild and wicked as you’ve always wanted to be.”
Still, Lucie hesitated.
The other bridesmaid demanded, “Come on, Lucie, what are you afraid of?”
What was she afraid of?
“Don’t be shy—don’t even think about it,” Delilah counseled. “After all, it’s no biggie.” There was a spark of mischief in her smile. “Just a harmless little fling.”
2
JUST A LITTLE FLING.
It might not sound scary to Delilah, but it was like jumping off a cliff to Lucie.
“I don’t know if I can,” she hedged. But a tiny, reckless voice inside her whispered, You know you want to. “I—I don’t know.”
“Which is exactly why you’re sitting here by yourself on your birthday, with nobody warm and friendly to curl up to.” Delilah pushed herself to her feet. “Harsh words, my dear, but true. Don’t look now, but my best shot at my own fling is heading for the bar, and I think I can intercept him. Paolo has my name written all over him.”
With a determined glint in her eye, Delilah stalked off in search of big game.
“Paolo?” Lucie muttered, squinting after Delilah. “Who is Paolo? Oh, good heavens. It’s the cranky busboy.”
Dejected, Lucie watched the candle flame sputter into a wisp of smoke in front of her. The bride and groom had left. Ian and his bimbo had left. Delilah was hot on the trail of a busboy. And Lucie was alone at her table.
Alone on her thirtieth birthday. This was just wrong.
“I’m going to do it,” she said suddenly. Fortifying herself by chugging the last of her margarita, Lucie stood up and unsteadily surveyed the ballroom. “Who’s it going to be?”
She frowned, weighing the prospects. It couldn’t be just anyone. Her head might be buzzing with champagne and tequila, but she still wasn’t stupid enough to put the moves on just anybody. Nobody with a wedding ring. Nobody who looked too old or too young or too…scary.
But then who? Shaking her head from side to side, Lucie tried to clear her mind enough to make a rational decision. Not that there was anything rational about any of this.
It’s my birthday, the brash, foolhardy
