Page 2 of Love JD

“Fine with me.”

When we pulled up to the venue near Park City, a horde of reporters swarmed us, their cameras clicking, their phones snapping candid shots, and their eyes feverish with greed. I frowned. “Uh, what the hell? Are these yours?”

“No,” Azura replied, her full bottom lip jutting out. “I shook mine, and I made sure they didn’t know anything about the wedding.”

“Well, they’re not mine,” I pointed out. I won plenty of high-profile, corporate law cases for our firm, but Azura had won hers in the spotlight and gone viral several times. Mostly because the public liked seeing an attractive woman in a suit hand grown men’s asses to them in a courtroom. But then she’d started to date the Tristan Valehart, and any hope she might have had about fading into the background was shot. The paparazzi loved the Valeharts.

“True,” she agreed, her voice distracted as she peeked through the windshield at the mob. “Maybe they followed Tristan.”

I doubted that. Tristan was a pro at sneaking around. See aforementioned title: Criminal. “Not likely.”

“Well, they’re here to stalk someone,” she mused.

“Whoever the reporters are here for, let’s go around the back,” I suggested.

“Fine, but hurry. If they get wind that Tristan is here, then I’ll have to stay sober so I don’t do something stupid on camera.”

I gave her a withering glare. “That’s the reason you have to stay sober?”

She shrugged innocently. “I’ll eat my stilettos if you hadn’t planned on beating me to that.” I didn’t bother correcting her. She was wrong, but I wasn’t in a hurry to shed my heartless party boy persona just yet.

I drove around the property as the Teton mountains loomed over us, their snow-capped ridges glittering blue and purple in the early spring sunlight. I managed to find a side entrance with a loading bay that went into the gaudy stone venue, and I let Azura out first, ducking my head around to keep an eye out for the vultures.

I hated hanging around her anymore. Parties? Great. I loved them. Famous friends? Super fun, and they usually had good pills. But Azura’s adoring mob of fans and reporters? Absolutely not. It was a hard pass for me. Although, truth be told, even the clubs and famous friends had lost their appeal for me a while ago. Azura assumed that I still went out every night and lounged around on penthouse terraces and flew to a different city every weekend. But the truth was, I hadn’t done that for several months.

Apparently, approaching thirty was my limit for the Kardashian-approved lifestyle. Lately, I’d been going back to my house—the weirdly cozy cottage thing I’d bought on a whim—and I’d been researching chickens and ducks and shit. And if I wasn’t doing that, I usually just read books.

Manly books. Definitely not tragic romance novels and cheesy Westerns.

I parked the car down the road, and after locking it, I slipped the key fob into my black suit pocket and made my way up to the venue. It was a nice spot up in the mountains with tall pine trees stuffing the area with green and the cool, crisp mountain air filling my lungs. I scratched my neck as I made my way around the back of the venue, dreading the wedding as a whole and wishing I’d taken a swig of Benadryl or something.

As I crossed the back parking lot, the forest to my left had several hiking trails carved into it, and I heard a moan drift through the sparse tree line. I stopped, cocking my head. Was someone seriously already getting laid before the wedding had even started? At least wait until the fucking cocktail hour. Then again, maybe they were onto something. I’d much rather be hot and heavy with an hourglass shape under my hands than walking into a venue for a wedding between the two most lovesick losers I’d ever seen.

I wandered down the hiking trail, my sneakers cracking dried pine needles and displacing loose gravel as I went. I kept one hand in the pocket of my dress pants, ducking my head and looking around for the source of the sound. If I didn’t get to have fun, then no one did. I was a petty bastard like that. Another moan ghosted through the thickening forest, but that time it sounded distinctly distressed. Worry pinched at the edges of my curiosity, so I picked up my pace, pulling my hand from my pocket and pushing to a light jog.

“Ughnngh,” came a voice to my left. Above me.

I swiveled and peered up through the tree branches. Clinging to the trunk of an old spruce tree was a woman, her legs dangling precariously off a thin limb and her face plastered against the trunk as she hugged it tightly. Even more bizarre than finding a young woman hanging from a tree was the fact that she’d taken her arms out of her long-sleeved black dress and had tied the sleeves around the tree trunk. If I had to guess, and I had an inkling I shouldn’t have stuck around to do that much, I’d have said that she had tried to make a harness out of her dress. The skirt had ridden way up her thighs, and her butt inched down the branch. She screeched, her teeth mashed together and her eyes closed tightly.

This had “disaster you don’t need in your life” written all over it. “Do you need help?” I asked reluctantly. Abort mission, a warning voice chimed in my head. This chick is crazy. She’s a literal tree-hugger.

“Uhm,” she moaned, her eyes still shut and not even bothering to look at me. “I—I’m…”

I waited, like she was going to reveal that she was going for a world record in half-naked tree-hugging or something. But no such information was forthcoming, and instead, she went completely limp. The dress strained. Her head lolled forward, listing off to one side, and her feet dangled. The hem of her dress snapped up her ass and caught under her arms, and then gravity dragged her down like a sausage slowly releasing from its casing.

“My fucking hell,” I managed to grunt out before the dress gave way with a loud rip. She fell through the branches with a heavy crash, and I reached for her, knowing full well it was going to hurt like a son of a bitch. When her body collided with mine, I managed to wrap my arms around her limp torso, tilting back so the momentum sent me sprawling on my ass. The impact knocked the wind from my lungs, and I wheezed out a pained breath.

The girl remained completely limp, and as I rolled us to our sides, I had to wonder if something had gone horribly wrong with FernGully here, or if she really was just batshit crazy. Coughing and struggling to get my breath back after being assaulted by one hundred-something pounds of dead weight, I rolled the girl onto her back and checked her pulse under her jaw. It beat away steadily, and her chest rose and fell in a normal rhythm.

I tapped her cheeks. “Hey, tree-hugger.”

She groaned, and then her eyes fluttered open. Clear as a bell and like she’d simply closed her eyes for fifteen seconds, her honey-hazel eyes found mine. “What? How did I—ah!” She shot into a sitting position, and her hands hovered over her ankle. They shook as she stared at the already swelling joint. “What—who are—did I fall?”

“Sleeping in trees isn’t generally recommended. Falling is a known side effect.” I sat with her, rubbing my ribs.

“Oh shit,” she breathed. Her hands moved up her body, patting over her stomach and breasts like she was assessing for damage. Then her gaze flew to mine again. “Did you catch me?”

“I gave it an effort,” I admitted derisively.

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