Oughta Be a Movie: a Sugar-&-Spice romantic comedy (3 page)

“And what if I’m serious about slutty wedding sex? How am I supposed to find a hook-up if every guy here thinks you’re my date?”

No way in hell.
“Not a chance.”

“When did you get to be so bossy?”

Oh, baby, definitely not going there.
“I’m telling you no wedding sex on my watch, slutty or otherwise. Unless, of course, you’re planning to have it with me. That can be arranged. As I’ve said, always ready to be of service.” She might have stopped breathing again, but as Tim and Pippa passed alongside them, he pulled her even closer. So close she couldn’t possibly miss exactly
how
ready he was to be of service.

What the hell was happening here? Was that what she thought it was?

Unless Ben had a rolled-up script stuck down the front of his tuxedo pants, it was. And his hand only had to move a few inches lower to lift her up and grind his…against her…her nipples were voting “hell, yeah.” Did he just offer to include sex on their pretend date? And not two minutes ago did he threaten to turn her over his knee? She felt a hot rush from her cheeks to, well…
there
.

And what is that all about?

Speaking of knees, hers were turning to Jell-O. She didn’t have a lot of experience, but this must be how Alice felt when she was tumbling down the rabbit hole.

His hand flexed on her hip, and apparently connected with a spot that had a straight connection to her nips which tightened even more than they already had. If she weren’t smashed against his chest—his hard solid chest—he’d see her headlights on high beam. His hand moved to her hip bone and moved her slightly back. He started to say something, but his eyes went straight to her breasts. When he looked up to her face, he cleared his throat twice before trying to speak.

“So what’s next?”

She stuttered before realizing he was talking about the reception. “Cake.”

He looked around. “I don’t see a cake.”

“Oh, believe me, there’s cake. Just wait.”

As if her words were a signal, the announcer’s voice came over the speakers as the last notes of the song faded away. “Ladies and gentleman, if you’ll open a path to the center of the dance floor.” A spotlight focused on the kitchen service double doors as two servers held them open, and the spotlight followed the pastry chef walking alongside a cart carrying the five-tiered cake that towered a foot taller than its honor guard—a white fondant confection, each layer ringed with calla lilies and baby’s breath.

Ben chuckled and shook his head. “You were right. There
is
cake.”

Josh led Bree to the cake table, cut a slice and fed it to her. She had a crumb on the corner of her mouth which he leaned over and kissed away. As he looked into his bride’s eyes and whispered something that made her blush, the crowd sighed and aw’d, and Ben’s arm slid around Ali’s waist and pulled her against him.

Once Bree fed Josh a bite, the chef’s assistants moved the cart to the edge of the dance floor and began plating cake slices for the waitstaff to deliver to the tables. Another platoon of servers magically appeared at the tables with coffee service. On cue, the orchestra resumed playing. Ben shook his head again. “This is quite a production.”

“Down to the last detail. Exactly the way Bree wanted it.”

“Bridezilla?”

She smiled. “Only once or twice.”

“And what did Josh want?”

“For Bree to be happy.”

“I can see that.”

“Bree wanted the whole wedding pageant thing. Josh would have gone with a down-and-dirty party. So they took the royal wedding approach.”

At his questioning expression, Ali explained. “Formal wedding, then the first party: formal seated dinner, toasts, dances, a major cake. Wine, champagne,
no
beer. No smashing cake in the bride’s face. And absolutely
no
dancing the Macarena. They’ll visit with their parents’ friends then toss the garter and bouquet and leave. An hour later
their
friends will show up at a bar around the corner for the second party—
Josh’s
kind of party.”

“And that’s where—” He stopped.

“What were you going to say?”

“Nothing. I was about to give away a surprise.”

“A surprise? Tell me!”

He tapped the tip of her nose with his knuckle. “Nope. Because it’s a
surprise
. If Josh didn’t tell you, I’m not giving it away.” Her fake pout didn’t change his mind, but he kissed her lightly on the temple. “Not telling. You’ll have to wait and see. Or hear.” He took her hand, leading her back to their seats. As they sat down a server asked if they wanted the lemon amaretto cake or the triple chocolate. At the same time, they both answered “Yes” and laughed.

Ben’s arm moved to the back of her chair as he spoke to the server. “How about one of each. We’ll share.”

Ali’s heart clutched. This felt so much like a real date. A romantic date. A Valentine’s date. Time to remind herself that he wrote pretend romance for a living. But she postponed the reminder when he cut a bite of the lemon cake and held it up to her lips, his hazel eyes darkened when she opened her mouth and took the confection on her tongue. Their eyes never leaving each other as his thumb brushed a crumb off of her bottom lip and seconds spun out.

“Good cake.” Jeff, the distant cousin and groomsman, broke the moment. Ali shook off the spell Ben was casting and divided the two pieces of cake, putting a half slice of each on the plates. She managed three bites before the reminder she should have listened to earlier sunk in. It’s just pretend.

“I think I’m going to say hello to my aunt and uncle and…” She pushed back her chair as she waved toward the wall of French doors on the opposite side of the room. “I’ll catch you later.”

“Ali.”

She ignored him and didn’t stop until she was across the room and out on the terrace. The terrace lit by twinkling white lights. More damn romance. Houston in February could be either freezing of tropical, and tonight was a warm night, but she shivered, felt a chill. She asked herself again, what was happening? She knew the answer. This is what she’d wanted for as long as she could remember. For just one second when his thumb brushed across her lip, he’d looked at her the way Josh looked at Bree. An expression that practically shouted, “Mine.” She didn’t want pretend romance; she wanted the real thing.

Timothy had never looked at her that way, and she’d never cared. Neither of them had been in love. She’d been okay with the package she thought he offered—the wedding, the house, the kids. And if she could never have the man she wanted, she’d thought she could settle for good enough. If Tim had proposed, would she have gone through with it? Probably not because…she admitted the truth to herself. She’d never loved anyone the way she loved Ben.

Her eyes were stinging and her breath shaky as she walked to the end of the terrace and sat on the stone wall, looking out at the grounds dimly visible in the moonlight.

“I thought you might need this.”

Not hearing him walk up, she jumped at the sound of his voice, saw her shawl in his hand.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He wrapped the silk around her shoulders and sat down beside her. “Are you okay? What’s got you so deep in thought?”

“I’m fine.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
She shivered again as the silly words had her imagining his big, warm hand on her panties. “Just needed a little fresh air.” And then she started babbling nervously to fill in the quiet, covering her lie, distracting herself from her fantasies.

“It’s humid tonight. There’s a cold front northwest of here. It should get here before ten. Unless it stalls again. That will push out the Gulf air. But for now, humid. And my hair is going to frizz. Humidity makes hair frizz because the chemical structure of hair makes it susceptible to extra hydrogen in the air—you know, like H2O? And the extra hydrogen atoms bond with the keratin proteins and with enough of these bonds—they’re really weak—but with enough of them the hair starts to fold back on itself—” Ben was chewing on the inside of his cheek. “No, really.”

“I don’t doubt that every word you just said is true.” A small smile was sneaking out, but he was going to hurt himself if he chewed any harder.

“Some hygrometers—that’s an instrument for measuring moisture in the air—use human hair. The more moisture, the shorter the hair, and…” He’d given up on biting it back and a grin lit his face. “What?”

“You.” He tugged at a curl on her temple that had escaped her up-do. “Aw, Ali-Cat.” He shook his head slightly as his hand slid around to the nape of her neck giving her a gentle squeeze. “I
have
missed you.” He chuckled. “And your science tidbits. I always learn something when you’re nervous.”

“Oh.” So much for distracting herself.

They were both quiet until Ben asked, “What would any of us have said fifteen years ago if someone told us that Josh and Bree would end up together?”

Fifteen years ago. Josh and Ben were still in high school; she and Bree in junior high. If anyone had been taking bets then on possible happy ever afters, smart money would have been on Ali and Ben. She blinked away the tears that threatened and faked a laugh. “None of us would have believed it. Wouldn’t even have believed it
two
years ago. Things change.”

“Yeah. A lot of things don’t turn out the way we expect.”

“That sounds personal.”

“Personal. Universal. I never expected to be the go-to guy for romantic comedies. Guess I thought I’d be writing scripts that ‘change the world.’” He made air quotes. “Or at least move the conversation.”

“You coulda been a contend-uh?”

He smiled at her bad impersonation and misquote. “
On the Waterfront
. Marlon Brando as Terry.” He was looking over her shoulder into the darkness. “Maybe.”

She looked him over and raised an eyebrow. “Well, you’re great at what you do, and you make a lot of people happy. And you’re not exactly in your dotage. I’d say you have plenty of time. What’s stopping you? What happened to that story you started three years ago?”

“You remember that?” His voice gave away his surprise and something else.

“Uh huh. An older guy goes looking for the son he and his girlfriend gave up for adoption forty years ago. Right? And you wouldn’t tell me how it ends.”

That something else was still there in his eyes. “Probably because I didn’t know. I finished it last summer.”

She heard what he’d left unsaid. “But you haven’t shopped it around. Why?”

His only answer was a one-shoulder shrug. “And what about you?”

She shook her head. “Things not turning out the way I expect? Have you forgotten that I’m the girl who got dumped on New Year’s Eve when she thought she was getting an engagement ring? Totally not what I expected.”

“You didn’t see it coming?”

Another shake of her head, “No. Things had been different that last month. I thought it was cute that he was apparently nervous about proposing. Turns out he was just at T-minus-2 and holding for lift off. I think he waited until the last minute to tell me because our circles of friends had about a seventy-five percent intersection. He didn’t want the drama to be strung out.”

“But you said you were over him right away.”

“I was. It didn’t take long to figure out I’d been with him for the wrong reasons.” She looked out to the dark lawn. “It was harder to get over the embarrassment. As I said, my friends were his friends. And it only got worse when five months later he was engaged to Pippa.”

“Is that when you started trash talking yourself?”

“I don’t—” His raised eyebrows stopped her. “Okay, I guess I do, but I didn’t even realize it until you pointed it out. I should stop.”

“You should.” He held up two fingers.

The reminder of his threat sent another jolt zinging its way through favorite parts of her neural network.

“With all that history, why did Josh invite Timothy to the wedding?”

“He asked me what I wanted him to do. Timothy would have been the only one of their law school crowd not invited. When word got around, I would have looked…” She shrugged. Not going to say pathetic. “Would have looked like I wasn’t over him. So I said he should invite him. To be honest, I didn’t think he’d come. I should have known.”

Ben studied her for a second then changed the subject. “What happened to your plans for grad school? Research? Teaching college?”

She answered with a shrug of her own and avoided his eyes. “It’s hard to explain. I love teaching high school, but it was only going to be for a year or two. Now it’s been four years, and…” When she didn’t finish the sentence, he just waited, not letting her off the hook. “I’m practically thirty, and it’s time to stop waiting.”

“You just turned twenty-eight last month.”

“Yeah, but I’m closer to thirty than I am to twenty-five.” Now was the time to tell him she was resigning her teaching position next month.

She’d applied to three grad schools—three of the top ten biochem programs in the country. She’d figured in what was a completely atypical and unscientific way for her that if she got into any of them it was a sign. She’d already been accepted by two, and she was going to grad school in the fall. She should tell him, but...

He laughed at her closer-to-thirty comeback, but he was studying her again, and she thought he was going to ask what she’d been waiting for, why she’d been waiting. She was relieved when instead he asked, “So what’s next on this pageant schedule?”

Ali lifted his arm to glance at his watch. “Crap. I need to grab Bree’s make-up bag from my room and take it to their suite before they do their big grand finale.”

Standing, he pulled her to her feet; a second later his hand landed a firm swat on her rear end. “Then we’d better get moving.”