Page 44 of The Bad Wedding Date

“About anything good?”

“About you and that fucking dress.”

She smiled brightly. “I was right: you are the only wolf I need to watch out for tonight.”

God, I wished that was true.

The party around us grew wilder, and right on cue, a server came around with a tray of drinks. Charlotte took two whiskies on the rocks and settled them between us.

I shouldn’t have taken the drink, but the moment I saw Dean over Charlotte’s shoulder, and he gave me a subtle nod that no one else would notice, I allowed myself to relax. I always felt better when my men were around, so I took a sip of the whiskey, grateful to be intoxicated by something other than the woman opposite me.

Joey wasn’t far behind Dean. The two of them looked like they’d been a part of the wedding all day long, with their finely pressed suit trousers, their shirts undone at the collar, and their sleeves rolled up to the elbow as they sauntered around the room. There were so many people there, we could have invited the whole damn circus inside, animals included, and none of the dozy beefcakes on the outer edges would have batted an eyelid. They were here for their fat paycheques and nothing more.

“Now, that’s the Charlotte I’ve been waiting over twenty years to see!” cried a woman who had to be in her mid-fifties. Her arms were held out wide, and she looked like her plastic surgery had been done under a toaster. “Stand for me. Let me see you.”

Charlotte flashed me a grimace before she rose to her feet and turned to give the woman her full attention, leaving me to stare at the bare skin of her back and her toned muscles. Charlotte reached out to hug the woman, who was apparently her Aunt Fern. That dress looked like it had been made to sweep off Charlotte’s every curve, and all I could envision was pulling at the bow behind her neck and watching as the material trickled away to reveal her breasts, and…

“I must say, your unexpected costume change is a beautiful sight,” Fern said, snapping me out of my daydream.

“Thank you. A friend gave it to me.”

Friend. Ugh.

Fern’s eyes drifted my way, and her raised brow suggested I should stand, so I did, holding my hand out for her to shake.

She shook it weakly. “My, my. The date, I assume? Charming to meet you.”

“Likewise,” I lied.

Fern bored Charlotte with more idle gossip before she turned to us both and said, “Wemustsee you both dancing together. You know how much I love to see us dance as a family. It takes me back to my days in The West End, up on that stage. Dance can make a funeral seem like a party. Come on, come on.”

“Oh, no.” I held up my hands. “I don’t dance.”

“Fraser doesn’t dance,” Charlotte said at the same time.

Aunt Fern grunted and ignored our protests, and before we knew what was happening, she’d wedged her way in between our bodies and was pushing us onto the edge of the dance floor, just as Earth, Wind, and Fire’sSeptemberfaded out, and the song switched to Gladys Knight & The Pips,Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me—an old favourite of my mum’s.

I wasn’t sure I could do this.

For the first time all day and night, I looked at Charlotte for help.

If it hadn’t gone against every moral code I had within me, I’d have pushed back against Aunt Fern and told her to go fuck herself, but there I was, trying to blend in as Charlotte’s real date, and she happened to be looking up at me with nothing but laughter in her eyes. Eyes that drew me in, wrapped an anchor around my ankle, and then threw me out to sea.

“It won’t kill us.” Charlotte shrugged. “Right?”

I glanced over her head to see Dean and Joey on the outskirts of the dance floor, talking to the group of bridesmaids who had now cornered them, each of their smirks aimed my way in a fashion that would have normally sent my fist hurtling into their faces.

After closing my eyes, I growled to myself before I took Charlotte in my arms. She fell into them immediately, like she belonged there, and I spun us around, my back to the guys. Charlotte’s arm curled around my waist, so small yet comforting, and all I could see was doe-eyes staring up at mine…

And that fucking dress.

The lyrics to the song flowed around us, and for one moment, I imagined the two of us dancing like this away from these people. Away from the crowds. Closer to a bed where I could let her fall back into my arms and lay on top of her—

Shit!

I was losing sight of why I was here, and if I didn’t get out of this embrace soon, nothing about our time together would be fake.

“One dance,” I mouthed at her.

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