Kevin nodded, though he didn’t fidget because their mother was giving them the I’m watching you look. “Joe, I swear, if they don’t hurry up, your wedding photos are going to look more like a Chippendale’s photo shoot.”
“If I’d known you two were going to whine like a couple of girls, I would have had you be bridesmaids instead of my best men. You’d look good in a dress.”
Kevin snorted. “Don’t make me kick your ass on your wedding day.”
“Terry sure looks good in her dress,” Evan said. “Kinda makes you want to—”
“No,” Terry’s three brothers said in unison.
Their brother-in-law scowled. “I hate that. I never get to share the good stuff.”
Mike laughed. “Joey and Danny are old enough to watch the younger two in a room of their own. I’ll be doing the good stuff to Lisa later.”
Must be nice. After the wedding, they’d all be heading upstairs to their rooms to do the good stuff. Joe and his gorgeous new bride, Keri. Mike and Lisa. Evan and Terry.
He, on the other hand, was stag at his own brother’s wedding so the only good stuff he had to look forward to was losing the cummerbund and penguin shoes.
It had been a couple of years since Kevin’s marriage had exploded in a cloud of toxic flames, torching his career along with the relationship, and since then his libido had survived on a steady diet of bar bunnies. Less satisfying, but also a lot less risk, like eating a microwave meal instead of preparing a five-course meal. A lot less painful to throw away if it sucked.
He’d gone through his share of willing companions after the divorce, when he bought the bar, but lately he’d been making the trip upstairs to his apartment alone more often than not. The kind of women willing to spend one night with a guy they didn’t know just because he filled out his shirts well, or so he was told, and owned the bar weren’t the kind of women he wanted to have breakfast with the next morning.
And definitely not the kind of women you brought to your brother’s wedding.
Unfortunately, thoughts of his type of woman led to thoughts of Beth, the pretty brunette who’d passed judgment on his type and been totally wrong. It had been two days since he busted her boss’s nose and it irked him he kept thinking about her. It also irked him she’d left with the impression he was some kind of player.
If she wasn’t so prickly—and if he knew her last name or where she lived—he’d probably like an opportunity to show her she was wrong about his type. He wasn’t sure why he cared, but it bugged him she’d left with such a bad opinion of him. He wasn’t used to that.
“Almost our turn,” Joe said, jerking him out of his thoughts. “And then we should be able to go inside. And do more…girly wedding stuff. Whatever. Keri’s so happy she’s gonna bust, so it’s worth it.”
“So are you,” Mike pointed out. “I still don’t know how you pulled this all off.”
Joe snorted. “It’s called a blank check, my friend. Keri wanted fall foliage and I wasn’t waiting a year for her to be my wife, so I said the magic words—money’s no object.”
His brother didn’t usually make a big deal about the money the sick horror novels he wrote earned, but a blank check from him was a pretty big blank check.
The drill sergeant bellowed for them. “Okay, I want groomsmen lined up behind the groom, four inches between you and slightly angled away from the camera. You, the tall one—you’re in the back.”
Screw that. Kevin threw his arm around Joe’s shoulders and pulled him into a headlock. Joe jerked to the right, trying to escape, but he moved right into Mike’s waiting noogie. Evan laughed and added rabbit ears to the back of Joe’s head.
The photographer almost dropped her big, fancy camera, but the mothers of the bride and groom were hitting the shutter button as fast as their compact digital numbers would fire.
“Kowalski Wedding Photo of Doom,” the bride shouted and Mike’s four boys and Terry’s almost-teenage daughter joined the pig pile.
They were all still laughing, a little breathless and more than a little sweaty when the wedding planner finally pulled them apart and ushered them inside. Thankfully the black tuxedos hid the grass stains, but Stephanie’s dress was missing some lace around the hem.
They were supposed to go to the head table, but there were still toasts and formal dances and more freaking pictures to survive before the party could begin and he wasn’t getting through all that with nothing but a sissy glass of champagne. With beer on his mind and a possible redheaded dance partner in his peripheral vision, he made a quick detour to the open bar.
And came face to face with Beth.
Chapter Two