Page 1 of My Best Friend's Mardi Gras Wedding

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There were naked breasts everywhere.Literally.

It was Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

So yeah, lots and lots of naked breasts.And naked other things.

And Josh Landry didn't care.

For possibly the first time in his life.

Okay, that wasn't one hundred percent true.They were naked breasts.But as he handed yet another woman a strand of beads, Josh was already pushing past her.

A nearly identical strand of plastic beads smacked him in the face a moment later.

What the fuck?He looked up at the balcony where a group of drunk frat boys were throwing beads down to the street.Another one went whizzing past his ear.Jesus, they weren’t supposed to wind up to throw the things.And did he look like he had tits?

Josh took a deep breath.He liked Mardi Gras.Mardi Gras was great.Mardi Gras was a hell of a good time.

Until it had made him a huge sap.

And celibate.He couldn't forget that.

He hadn’t been with a woman in ayear.His friends were past concerned.They were convinced he had a brain tumor.

But that was all about to end.He was going to be with a woman tonight.Thewoman.The one he’d met last Mardi Gras.The one who he hadn’t even slept with and yet couldn’t stop thinking about.The one who was supposed to be here tonight at the same spot where they’d met last year.

Well, they were if they were both still interested.And single.

And able to get to the fucking bar.

This was his fourth trip down Bourbon on this particular mission and it would be his last, dammit.He was bartending at Trahan’s until one a.m.and he’d taken a twenty-minute break every two hours to walk this path—okay, scratch and crawl his way along this path—to get to Bourbon O’s to see if she was there.Thank God his bosses were good friends of his and gave him a lot of slack.Leaving a bar,anybar, in New Orleans short staffed on Mardi Gras was a dick move.

He emerged from the crowd on Dumaine onto Bourbon.He knew better than to try to walk up the entire length of the most popular street in the city, but there was a point where he had no choice but to join the insane mass of revelers.

He was sure the crowd wasn’t any bigger this year than any other, but he’d never noticed, really.Because he’d never resented them before.He was a bartender.He loved a party.He joined right into all of this usually.He loved New Orleans and seeing new people come and experience the city.Mardi Gras was his favorite time of the year.Until now.Because all of these drunk-off-their-asses revelers were between him and the woman who had occupied his thoughts for nearly twelve full months.

But of course he was going to keep making this trek all night.Until he found her or the clock struck midnight and officially ended Mardi Gras.Because the fact that he had to fight a Mardi-Gras-in-New-Orleans crowd for eight blocks from Trahan’s Tavern on St.Peter to Bourbon O on Bourbon was like a man being willing to swim the Nile, climb Mount Everest, and cross the Sahara for true love.That was fucking romantic as hell.He was finally living up to the Landry name when it came to matters of the heart.

He laughed and shook his head.It had been bound to happen eventually.You couldn’t live with the Landrys and Morelands for twenty-eight years and not become a starry-eyed imbecile.

He just really wanted this story to have a happy ending.

She had to be there.

Josh growled at a group of fifty-somethings that had just stopped in the middle of the street to pose for a selfie.

“Oh, would you take our photo?”one of the women, wearing aBirthday Girlsash and tiara, asked.It had to be her fiftieth birthday, if not sixtieth.

The fact that she’d braved Mardi Gras to celebrate the milestone actually impressed Josh.Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street in New Orleans was not for the faint of heart.

And regardless of the fact that these people were holding him up on his mission, how could he say no?They were hardly theonlyones in his way.And he was not just a born-and-bred Louisiana boy who believed that Mardi Gras was an experience everyone should have at some point in their lives.He was also a French Quarter bartender and, well, a big believer in having a hell of a good time whenever he could.How could he not encourage these women with their bright-orangeAngie’s Birthday BashT-shirts?They were all clutching Hand Grenades, the powerful drinks served at the Tropical Isle bar, and he could tell these weren’t their firsts.

He gave the birthday party a big, good-ol’-boy grin.“Okay, girls,” he said.“Let’s do this,” even as someone slammed into him from the back.He gritted his teeth.

It was part of his calling in life to make sure people left New Orleans and the great state of Louisiana with huge smiles, fond memories, and commitments to get back as soon as they could.

Just like the woman he’d sent back to Iowa a year ago with a huge smile and a commitment to get her pretty ass back here as soon as possible.

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