Page 40 of The Gingerbread Bakery
‘I don't see why that’s relevant.’ Annie refused to engage in this line of questioning or to think about Mac charging across the parking lot to get to her. Or how it would feel to see him in the sexy suit she was sure he’d be wearing.
Jeanie gave a little shrug like she wasn't going to push the matter, but then she went ahead and pushed it. ‘I'm just saying it’s rare that you're both unattached at these things. Seems like it might be a good opportunity…’
‘A good opportunity for what, Jean Marie?’
Jeanie wrinkled her nose at the use of her full name. ‘I don't know. A good opportunity to bury the hatchet.’
‘Thereisno hatchet. We don't need to bury anything, and we certainly don’t need to be near each other any more than is strictly necessary. Like I promised you, I've been on my best behavior, but that’sallI can promise.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Jeanie put up her hands with her newly painted nails in surrender. ‘I appreciate it.’
Jeanie let it drop, and the girls turned their attention back to more pressing matters, like was it really bad luck to see the bride before the wedding because Jeanie had no intention of sleeping away from her groom tonight.
‘I don’t think it matters,’ Iris weighed in, and Kira agreed.
‘As long as he doesn’t see you in your dress,’ Hazel added.
‘Says the woman who shopped for her dress with her groom,’ Jeanie said with a laugh.
Hazel shrugged. ‘He helped pick it out, but he didn’t see me in it until we were on the beach together. It’s nice to have it be a surprise, don’t you think?’
‘I do think that’s romantic. To have his first look of you in the dress as you walk down the aisle,’ Kira said, blowing on her fingernails.
‘Logan is going to cry so much,’ Annie said.
Iris looked at her in surprise. ‘You think so?’
‘That guy is all gooey inside. He’s for sure going to cry.’
‘Did Noah cry?’ Iris turned back to Hazel.
‘There were tears,’ she confirmed, and everyone sighed again. What was it about making grown men cry that was so damn satisfying?
‘Okay, so we’re all agreed. I can sleep with Logan tonight, but he can’t see me in the dress.’
‘That’s right,’ Kira said. ‘That feels like a good compromise.’
‘We clearly don’t believe in following tradition anyway,’ Iris said, gesturing to her belly and smiling at Hazel and Kira.
Hazel laughed, raising her glass of champagne in cheers, but Annie knocked on the wood table beside her. She didn’t need anyone jinxing the wedding or anything else for that matter, babies and relationships included. She still hadn’t found Estelle or finished the secret wedding dessert. She didn’t have time for any more bad luck. As soon as her nails were dry, she was going back out there, this time by herself. She didn't need a certain someone distracting her from more important things, like her friends’ happiness.
* * *
‘Aren’t you not supposed to see the bride the night before the wedding?’ Bennett asked, stepping up to take his turn at the dart board. They were at the pub doing what the groom had requested for his last night of bachelorhood: eating burgers, drinking beer and playing darts.
Logan scoffed. ‘I’ll be damned if I’m not going to sleep with my fiancée tonight.’
Noah patted him on the back. ‘That's right. Who needs those old traditions, anyway? You two have been shacking up together for a year so that ship has basically sailed.’
‘Says the man who barely left his hotel room long enough to get married before hauling Hazel back to it.’
‘Hey, there was no hauling. She came willingly,’ he said with a smirk.
Mac laughed, taking another pull from his beer. He was glad he’d come out. He needed a distraction. Annie’s words had been tormenting him all day.I faked a lot of things.And then she’d gone off to get her nails done, like it was nothing.
Not to mention he’d failed to find Estelle and he didn’t really know what they were going to do about it. A little detail he had no intention of telling the groom.
Despite all that, he was happy to be out with the boys. He’d lost touch with most of his friends from high school and, much to his surprise, it had been Logan who reached out first when he’d moved back. It was nice to have solid friends again now that he was settled in one place, even though he knew it pissed Annie off having to see him all the time. Or maybeespeciallybecause it pissed Annie off. For a while, he'd deluded himself into thinking that simply being around her would be enough to soften her feelings toward him, get her to see that he was different than the boy who had left her, but Annie was stubborn as hell.
