It was a nightmare. Only this time, Delaney was definitely awake. The evening had started out wonderful enough. The wedding ceremony had gone smoothly. Lisa looked beautiful, and the pictures afterward hadn’t lasted too long. She’d left Henry’s Cadillac at the church and ridden to the Lake Shore with Lisa’s cousin Ali, who owned a salon in Boise. For the first time in a long while, Delaney had been able to chat hair trends with another professional, but most important, she’d been able to avoid Nick.
Until now. She’d known about the wedding dinner of course, but she hadn’t known the tables would be organized in a large open rectangle with all the guests seated on the outside so everyone could see everyone else. And she hadn’t known about the arranged seating or she would have switched her engraved placecard to avoid the nightmare she was living.
Beneath the table, something brushed the side of Delaney’s foot, and she would bet it wasn’t an amorous mouse. She pulled both feet beneath her chair and stared down at the remains of her filet mignon, wild rice, and asparagus spears. Somehow, she’d been seated on the groom’s side, sandwiched between Narcisa Hormaechea, who clearly didn’t care for her, and the man who refused to cooperate and let her ignore him any longer. The harder she tried to pretend Nick didn’t exist, the more pleasure he took in provoking her. Like accidentally bumping her arm and making her rice shoot off her fork.
“Did you bring your handcuffs?” he asked next to her left ear as he reached across her for a bottle of Basque Red. His tuxedo lapel brushed her bare arm.
Like an erotic movie wrapped for continuous play, visions of his hot mouth on her naked breast played in her head. She couldn’t even look at him without blushing like an embarrassed virgin, but she didn’t need to actually see him to know when he raised his wine to his lips, or when his thumb stroked the clear stem, or when he shoved his black bow tie into a pocket and removed the black stud at his throat. She didn’t have to look at him to know he wore his pleated cotton shirt and tuxedo jacket with the same casual ease he wore flannel and denim.
“Excuse me.” Narcisa touched Delaney’s shoulder, and she turned her attention to the older woman, who had two white streaks on the sides in her perfect dome of black hair. Her brows were lowered and her brown eyes were magnified behind a pair of thick octagon-shaped glasses, making her appear a little like a myopic Bride of Frankenstein. “Could you pass the butter, please?” she asked and pointed to a small bowl sitting by Nick’s knife.
Delaney reached for the butter, careful to keep any part of her from touching Nick. She held her breath, waiting for him to say something rude, crude, or socially unacceptable. He didn’t utter a word, and she immediately grew suspicious, wondering what he planned next.
“It was a beautiful wedding, don’t you think?” Narcisa asked someone further down the table. She took the bowl from Delaney, then ignored her completely.
Delaney didn’t really expect warm fuzzies from Benita’s sister and turned her gaze to the bride and groom, who were surrounded by parents and grandparents on both sides. Earlier, she’d braided Lisa’s brown hair in an inside-out coronet. She’d stuck in a few sprigs of baby’s breath, and wove in a piece of tulle. Lisa looked great in a white off-the-shoulder gown, and Louie was quite dapper in his black tails. Everyone seated near the bride and groom appeared happy, and even Benita Allegrezza smiled. Delaney didn’t think she’d ever seen the woman smile, and she was surprised at how much younger Benita looked when she wasn’t glaring. Sophie sat next to her father with her hair pulled up in a simple ponytail. Delaney would have loved to have gotten her hands and scissors on all that thick dark hair, but Sophie had insisted her grandmother fix it for her.
“When is it your turn to get married, Nick?” The booming question came from down the table.
Nick’s quiet laughter mixed with the other noise in the room. “I’m too young, Josu.”
“Too wild, you mean.”
Delaney glanced a few feet down the table. She hadn’t seen Nick’s uncle in a long time. Josu was stocky like a bull and had florid cheeks, due in part to the amount of vino he’d poured back.
“You just haven’t found the right woman, but I’m sure you’ll find a nice Basque girl,” Narcisa predicted.
“No Basque girls, Tia. You’re all too stubborn.”
“You need someone stubborn. You’re too handsome for you own good, and you need a girl who will tell you no. Someone who won’t say yes to you all the time about everything. You need a good girl.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Delaney watched Nick’s long blunt fingers brush the linen tablecloth. When he responded, his voice was smooth and sensual, “Even good girls say yes eventually.”
“You’re bad, Nick Allegrezza. My sister was too easy on you, and you’ve grown into a libertine. Your cousin Skip is always chasing skirts, too, so maybe it’s genetic.” She paused and let out a long-suffering sigh. “Well, how about you?”
It was probably to much to hope that Narcisa was talking to someone else. Delaney lifted her gaze to Nick’s aunt and stared into her magnified eyes. “Me?”
“Are you married?”
Delaney shook her head.
“Why not?” she asked, then looked Delaney over as if the answer was written somewhere. “You’re attractive enough.”
Not only was Delaney sick of that particular question, she was getting really tired of being treated as if there had to be something wrong with her because she was single. She leaned toward Narcisa and said just above a whisper, “One man could never satisfy me. I need lots.”
“You’re kidding?”
Delaney choked back her laughter. “Don’t tell anyone because I do have my standards.”
Narcisa blinked twice. “What?”
She put her mouth even closer to Narcisa’s ear. “Well, he has to have teeth, for one.”
The older woman leaned back to get a good look at Delaney, and her mouth fell open. “My lord.”
Delaney smiled and raised her glass to her lips. She hoped she’d scared Narcisa off the subject of marriage for a while.
Nick nudged her arm with his elbow and her wine sloshed. “Have you found any more notes since Halloween?”
She lowered her glass and wiped a bead of wine from the corner of her mouth. She shook her head, doing her best to ignore him as much as possible.
“Did you part your hair with a lightening bolt?” Nick asked loud enough for those around them to hear.
Before the wedding, she’d done a zig-zag part, pulled the flat bangs behind her ears, and teased the crown into a nice little bouffant. With her hair back to blonde, she thought she looked like a 60’s go-go dancer. Delaney lifted her gaze up the pleats of his cotton shirt, to the exposed hollow of his tan throat. No way was she going to get sucked in by his eyes. “I like it.”
“You dyed it again.”
“I dyed it back.” Unable to resist, she raised her gaze past his chin to his lips. “I’m a natural blond.”
The corners of his sensuous mouth curved upward. “I remember that about you, wild thing,” he said, then picked up his spoon and tapped it on the edge of his glass. When the room fell silent, he rose to his feet, looking like a model out of one of those bride magazines. “As my brother’s best man, it is my duty and honor to toast him and his new bride,” he began. “When my big brother sees something he wants, he always goes after it with unyielding determination. The first time he met Lisa Collins, he knew he wanted her in his life. She didn’t know it then, but she didn’t stand a chance against his tenacity. I watched him proceed with an absolute certainty that left me bewildered and, I admit, envious.
“As always, I am in awe of my brother. He has found real joy with a wonderful woman, and I am happy for him.” He reached for his glass. “To Louie and Lisa Allegrezza. Ongi-etorri, Lisa. Welcome.”