Page 2 of Stunner (Whiskey Dolls 3)
“Uh—”
“Don’t worry. I’m not planning on stabbing anyone with them.”
I knew that was exactly his concern when he hesitated for another beat before reaching somewhere beneath the bar, producing a gigantic pair of scissors, and passing them over.
“You’re a lifesaver,” I informed him before hopping off the stool, teetering on my heels thanks to the booze. I held my arms out wide to steady myself until the room stopped spinning.
“You good?” Judd asked, looking like he was close to hurtling his much older body over the bar to help me.
“I’m perfect,” I chirped. Then I grabbed a big wad of material and started hacking away at it, mangling a gown I’d spent asmall fortune on. It was a long, arduous process, but by the time I was done, I’d chopped the skirt off around my knees. I felt like I’d lost thirty pounds of fabric and pulled in a full breath as the air conditioning blew across my sweaty legs. For as beautiful as it was, I couldn’t remember a time I’d ever been more uncomfortable.
“Oh my God,” I said on a groan. “That’s so much better, you don’t even know. It was like a Florida swamp under there.”
I climbed back up into my seat, much easier this time, and smacked the bar top. “Another drink. And I’ll take that burger with extra chili and cheese. Oh! And two sides of fries, chili and cheese on those as well.”
“Judd, you start catering to a new crowd without telling us?” a man farther down the bar asked as Judd poured me another shot.
The dude was even harder and more grizzled than my new bartender friend. He looked like he could have been an extra onSons of Anarchyfrom his long, stringy slate-colored hair to the leather vest wrapped around a gut the size of a beer keg, to the faded jeans and scuffed-up boots.
I lifted my newly filled shot glass in the guy’s direction. “Nothing to worry about. Judd here’s just taking pity on me and letting me hide out after my groom pulled a runner before we could get to the vows.”
The guy who looked like he was more hardened criminal than softy gave me a look similar to the one Judd had given as he moved his substantial mass four stools down to take the one beside mine. “Damn, little lady. Sorry to hear that, but I’m guessing a bastard who’d do something like that doesn’t deserve a pretty thing like you. Next round’s on me.”
“Back off, Butch,” Judd said in a voice that made the tiny hairs on my arms stand on end. “She don’t need the likes of you hitting on her, today of all days.”
The guy, Butch, held up his hands in surrender. “You kidding me, Judd? She’s gotta be the same age as my own daughter. Hell, maybe even younger. That’s not what I’m doing.”
Judd’s steely-eyed stare remained on the old biker for a few beats, long enough for me to start to grow anxious. Neither of them were in the prime of their lives, so to speak, but I had a feeling a fight between those two would still be dangerous. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. “All right then, just see that doesn’t change. And keep an eye out to make sure none of these other fuckers pulls anything. I gotta go turn the burners back on and get her grub started.”
“You told me the kitchen was closed,” another much younger biker called out, this one from over near the pool tables.
It was Butch who responded. “You get your ass left at the altar today, boy?”
“Well . . . no.”
“Didn’t think so, ’cause no one alive would marry your ugly ass. So, for you, the kitchen’s still closed.”
The guy looked at me then. “Sorry about your troubles, ma’am.”
“It’s okay. And I’m happy to share some of my fries with you.” He smiled, and the first thought in my mind was that Butch was wrong. This guy wasn’t uglyat all. Too bad I’d sworn off men for the rest of my life, forever and ever, amen, because he might have been the perfect rebound.
2
OWEN
In a town as small as Grapevine, Virginia, it hadn’t taken all that long to track down a wayward bride. People in small towns loved to talk, especially when you asked the right questions, and they were more than happy to talk all about the woman they had seen wandering the streets in a ridiculously puffy wedding dress when I asked. It wasn’t exactly something you saw every day.
That’s why I was standing in front of a rundown roadside bar the likes of which you’d expect to walk in and see Patrick Swayze beating the shit out of someone before pitching the guy’s limp body through a plate glass window. There were so many bikes out front, two rows deep and ran the entire width of the ramshackle building, and so help me God, if Asher Rose had gotten her ass in trouble by coming here, I was going to tan the goddamn thing red. After I got her out of said trouble, of course.
This was all Jackson Newman’s fault, and the next time I saw him, I was going to break that asshole’s nose to match the busted lip and black eye I’d given him earlier.
When he’d come to me last year and asked if I’d be his best man, I wanted to say no. Everything in my body rebelled against carrying that title. The thought of standing up at that altar andwatching Asher walk down the aisle to another man had tied my gut in knots. But I owed Jackson a debt that could never be repaid, so there hadn’t been much choice.
I could still remember the night we’d both met the vivacious, loud, quick-witted brunette with perfect clarity, and without fail, every time I dredged the memory up my mood went down the toilet.
Maybe it was confidence, or more likely vanity, that made Jackson so bold when it came to the opposite sex, but it wasn’t a trait the two of us shared. Having spent most of my most formative years as the gawky nerd who was into comics and video games, my self-confidence hadn’t been honed into a weapon like my friend’s had. Even after coming into my own later in the game—growing into my nose and ears, getting over the hormonal acne, and filling out so my legs and arms weren’t so damn gangly—it was difficult to change my mindset.
I’d been the geek my entire life, so although I’d packed on muscle, in my head, I was still that loser who’d been picked on from kindergarten all the way into the middle of my junior year of high school.
