Get Lucky (15 page)

I don’t want that idea to please me as much as it does.

“Only thing is you have to be on the groom’s side. Tyler just came down with a raging case of stomach sickness. Last I heard, he was throwing up everything he ever ate.” Stacy sighs. “I was going to get Uncle Aaron to stand in his place, but he’d insist on keeping his Uzi strapped to his back. I’d prefer someone without ammunition.”

“Tyler’s sick? What happened?” I ask, alarmed.

Stacy laughs, airily waving her hand. “His sugar mamma took him to get oysters. Apparently one of them disagreed with him.”

Julia Stevens and her friends: the source of all my frustration and happiness on this trip.

As the afternoon slides into evening, we get into our positions and walk up the aisle. A singer is crooning at the microphone, there are rose petals scattered at our feet as we walk up to the rabbi, then move to the side.

Soon, we’re standing next to each other, Julia right up beside me. I can smell her perfume, and it’s intoxicating. Everyone settles down and waits. A moment later, Stacy walks up the aisle on her father’s arm, beaming at everyone.

And all I want to do is reach out, just put a hand through the air, and touch Julia. I want to feel the strap of her dress, the smooth skin underneath.

But I can’t. Because this is someone else’s wedding. And I can’t say a fucking thing.

A
couple
of things flit through my mind as I watch Stacy walk down the aisle.

First: I hope Meredith’s okay. Because I warned her not to order seafood in the desert, and she never listens to me.

Second: Stacy is a gorgeous bride, and Mike looks so radiantly in love with her that it even makes me, professional romance writer, a little sick to my stomach. But mostly sick with happiness.

Third: I absolutely cannot look at Nate. Because if I do, with this whole fairytale wedding unfolding before my eyes, I might projectile vomit onto him due to nerves and crippling sadness. And I think Stacy and Mike have put up with enough weirdness from us today.

They’re at the vows now.

“I, Mike, take you, Stacy, to be my partner in all things. I promise constant arguments followed by ecstatic make-ups. I promise to let you sleep in every other day when I make breakfast, but I’m expecting French toast on Tuesday and Thursday.”

Ah, so they wrote out their vows. Stacy laughs at a lot of parts that I don’t even get; couple inside jokes. In some ways, that’s what I miss most with Drew. Being silly with each other, laughing about things that other people didn’t even get.

Maybe that’s when I knew our marriage was over, six months before he walked out. Because the laughter had dried up.

And with Nate next to me, that momentary blip of closeness that I felt with him for the first time in so long, I start to tear up. Not because it was hot—although it was—or because it was swooningly romantic. I felt something I swore I wouldn’t be able to feel again. That closeness, that fun, that intimacy. But it’s over before it started. It’s all fizzled out, and now I’ve got a bunch of memories distorted in an alcoholic haze, and nothing else.

Here’s the nice thing about weddings: nobody wonders or makes an awkward face when you cry. A couple of hot tears slide down my cheeks, and I feel his hand on mine. Nate. I look up at him, daring to hope—

He hands me a tissue. Right. Don’t want to smear the mascara and frighten the children. I dab at my eyes, and Stacy finishes her vow.

There’s a bit where the rabbi finishes up, folds a napkin around a glass, and the happy couple breaks it underfoot. That must be the big moment, because everybody cheers, and Mike and Stacy kiss deeply.

Despite the ecstatic applause, I’d bet any money they don’t hear us right now. They’re probably caught up in the gloriousness of that moment, the one where they think it’s going to go on forever. Nothing can damage them; nothing can get in the way.

And damn, I hope they’re right.

“
E
verybody get outta the way
. I need to nurse my agent’s hangover,” I shout, squeezing in between people on my way to the bar. Someone laughs as I find Meredith, still with an ice pack on her head, sitting with Tyler on the stool beside her.

They each have some fizzing glasses of ginger ale at hand, and look like people Edward Gorey would’ve drawn when he was feeling particularly malicious.
M is for Meredith, barfing her guts out. T is for Tyler, trying to get his nuts out.

Or something. I’m not really a poet.

“Still not feeling it?” I ask them, knocking back some water. Hydration. It’s important in the desert.

“I think I need to go to bed soon,” Tyler says.

“Good. I’ll join you,” Meredith croaks. He actually smiles and tries waggling his eyebrows, but it doesn’t completely work.

Of all Meredith’s strange hook-up stories, this one is pretty near the top of the weirdness list. Well, everyone needs a little fun in their lives.

I meet up with Shanna out on the floor, where she’s dancing with Brenda Summersby. Toni and Daphne, two of the other authors, are chatting with the DJ. One day, Mike and Stacy are going to have to explain to their kids why there were so many romance authors at their wedding. Where there is free cake and dancing, you can expect us to crop up. We’re sort of like lemmings that way, only in wedge sandals.

“Sort of can’t believe you didn’t have the hook-up with Tyler,” I say to Shanna, as we dance a little bit. She twirls me.

“Honestly, hair gel isn’t really my thing. Besides, I, uh, kind of got a text from a certain person.” Her eyes are particularly glowing right now.

I know she’s been out on a few dates with someone from online, someone she was into, but . . . .

“They want to make it official?” I ask, feeling giddy with how giddy Shanna looks. She nods, and I squeeze her. Subtle as a Sphinx, this one. I never get
any
intel on who she’s seeing until it’s a serious thing. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl. Tabby. Enough about me,” she says, pulling me off the floor a minute. She looks at me with what can only be described as loving concern. “Did you talk to him?” She gives me that look, the one that only your closest friends can give when they know exactly how sad you are because they have a damn laser vision.

I shake my head. “There’s really nothing to talk about. He didn’t get in the cab. The metaphorical cab, I mean. Well, the physical one too. So in that sense, it was sort of this metaphysical cab. Get it?” I wish Shanna would lighten up about my shitty philosophy jokes. They’re great for parties, dammit.

“I swear, he’s been throwing looks at you all night,” she says.

I scoff. “No he hasn’t. Has he?” I honestly wouldn’t know. My eyes have a primary directive: look wherever Nate Wexler isn’t.

My heart beats a little faster at the thought . . . .
No. Don’t be an idiot, Julia.

“Go talk to him,” Shanna says, nudging me. She glances across the room, where Nate is doing his best Grumpy Cat impression next to the buffet. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

“Yes, I’ll often wonder whatever became of the surly man of my dreams.” But I squeeze her hand and walk away, over to Nate. He watches me with that glacier-smooth expression.

You could wreck the Titanic on that gaze.

“Hello to you, too,” I mutter, standing beside him.

“Hello,” he says.

Great. We’ve got the firing shots finished. Okay, who talks first? I guess it’s me. Before I can get a word out, though, he says, “Do you want to take a walk?” He looks at me.

Damn, I wish that face weren’t so unreadable. Or so damnably handsome.

I don’t really wish that last part, actually.

“A walk to where? Out into the desert? I think I’ve done enough of that.” But my heart’s pounding, shaking, and kicking up its heels with glee. None of this is medically safe, by the way.

“Want to go to Paris?” he says.

I think he’s being wildly spontaneous, and immediately my imagination explodes with vivid speculation. It’d be just like one of my books, where the hero has a private jet waiting and the heroine follows him to a romantic European destination, and they kiss and make love under the stars by the Seine, and then—oh. Hold on. He means the casino. Right.

“Sure,” I say, going for super casual. “I have nowhere else to be.” Nate doesn’t respond to this. No, that’d be hoping for too much.

“We’d better hurry. They’re about to start lifting them on chairs.”

Actually, Mike and Stacy are firmly ensconced in chairs and being carried around the room by excitable family members by the time we leave. We walk out of the ballroom, heading out of the hotel and walking down the Strip.

“So what are you in the mood for?” I ask. “Pretty sure we can get champagne on the cheap. Though maybe we shouldn’t have more booze.”

“We don’t tend to make the best decisions under the influence, no,” he agrees.

And there you have it. Our whole tryst, if that’s the word, was one big fat
not best decision
.

Honestly, why am I even going with this guy?

“Look, you just want to do this here on the sidewalk? My blister hasn’t completely healed,” I tell him.

Nate turns, looks at me a moment. The fountain comes on beside us, starting its elegant evening show. Nate steps around a group of photo-taking Japanese tourists and comes up to me.

“I just want to show you something. And then you don’t have to worry about me anymore, all right?” he says evenly. I put my hands on my hips.

“I don’t like being dragged around by a sullen dude.”

“Fine.” He puts a smile on his face; it looks like he’s being forced under torture. “Does this look better?”

“Stick with surly. Stay with what you know,” I grumble. Nate sighs and gestures to the lights of Paris ahead of us in the dark. I really would like to go inside, if only to take it all in.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asks.

“What about the no alcohol policy?”

“One doesn’t kill anyone.”

“No, but one more might.” I sigh, shrugging. “Fine. Let’s go to Paris.”

We walk silently the rest of the way. I have to admire the casino as we walk inside. They’ve painted the walls to resemble a blue sky over a lovely Parisian neighborhood. Inside the hotel, Nate leads the way to the Eiffel Tower. The bottom of it has been sculpted into the casino, and an elevator waits to take you up to the top, high above us in the Vegas sky.

“Where are we going?” I ask as we get inside the elevator.

“You’ll see,” he answers. I look at him, my eyebrows lifting. If he didn’t have a heart attack level of seriousness on his face, I’d think that there was something wacky going on here.

The doors open, and we exit into the Eiffel Tower restaurant. The soft mood lighting and the tinkling piano music lend the diners a kind of romantic air. The windows look out onto the sparkling Las Vegas surroundings.

Nate speaks with the hostess, making sure to turn his back so that I can’t hear. The lady nods and beckons me. “We have your table, sir.”

Table?

I follow Nate to a small, private corner of the restaurant. It’s a booth tucked into a little alcove, our own exclusive view out our own exclusive window. On the table, there’s an incredible looking chocolate soufflé, strawberries and cream, and a chilled bottle of champagne waiting. Two glasses sparkle in the light. I gape, not making the world’s most articulate noises.

Nate turns to me, and I watch the walls come down. His eyes are alive, questioning, claiming mine. I realize, with kind of a shock, that the poker face lawyer façade isn’t just there when Nate is kicking ass. It might also be there when he’s nervous. When something’s important.

“Julia. I brought you here to ask you a very quick question.” Nate takes my hands into his own. Then, slowly, he gets on one knee.

“Oh my God,” I mutter, because this is way too much like the ending out of one of my books. After a misunderstanding and break up, the hero realizes he can’t live without the heroine, and—

“Will you not marry me right now?”

System malfunction. Loss of data. Cannot speak. All your base are belong to us. What the what?

“You . . . want to . . . ” I can’t quite form the words.

Nate grins; a full, honest smile. “Please don’t marry me right now. And if you choose to not marry me this moment, I can promise you an exciting future filled with very exciting headaches. Like travel. I know we live in different places, but they’re not impossibly distant.”

“You’re in Chicago, I’m in Milwaukee. It’s doable,” I say.

Heh. Doable. Christ, pay attention right now.

“Besides the romantic possibilities of multiple Amtrak rides, I can offer you orgasms before breakfast, arguments over where to go to dinner, and a whole host of potentially erotic problems before lunch.”

I like a man who plans around the day’s meals. But I do have to be a little serious right now. Because when he presses his lips to my hand, gently, romantically, I nearly collapse in what I hope would be an attractive swoon. Every molecule in my body lights up.

“We barely know each other,” I say, though I’m hoping that he’ll say something about—

“I know, and it’s crazy. It absolutely is.” He looks into my eyes, a bemused smile playing on his lips. “If I were hearing about this from a friend, I’d be telling him to go to a shrink. But it didn’t happen to my friend. It happened to me.”

“What did?” I ask. I can barely breathe as he gets up, still holding my hands.

“I could be falling in love with you,” he says, his lips mere inches from mine.

I close the last bit of distance, and I’m wrapped in his arms. The kiss sends the hot wash of feeling over me, the kind that makes me want to start ripping his clothes off. As per usual. But it’s tempered with something else. Gentleness.

We pull apart, and he leans his forehead against mine. “It was something Mike said to me this afternoon. When you know you’ve found something that’s right. This could be right. And I don’t want to make what could be the mistake of my life because I was too goddamn scared.” He touches my cheek. “What do you think?”

He could be falling in love. I close my eyes. “As crazy as it sounds, I could be feeling the exact same things,” I say, kissing him again. We linger there a moment, and I almost hate when we break apart. “Any guy who orders chocolate soufflé gets in my
might love
book.”

He wraps his arms tight around me and lifts me off the ground, just a little bit. I laugh, not minding when my feet leave the earth. I look up at him, bathed in the soft glow of the Las Vegas lights.

“So. Should we go back to the party?” he asks, beaming. The corners of his mouth lift, his eyes soften. I think he was as nervous and hopeful as I was.

I like that.

“In a couple of minutes. There’s champagne, after all. I’d hate for all of it to go to waste,” I say. Giggling, I slide into the booth, and he does the same.

W
e walk back
down the Strip, my arm through Nate’s. I’m leaning against him, and he kisses the top of my head.

How can you want to kill someone and then never want them to ever leave you again, all within forty-eight hours? The emotional whiplash is killer. But I like it.

If I were writing this in a book, I would’ve had the happy ending nailed down tight on the final page, it’s true. There would’ve been a definite proposal, a serious assurance to the reader that this is forever. No one likes open-ended stories.