Chapter Eleven—Nudist Wedding!
“It’s the bridesmaids’ dresses,” Lucy moaned. “They should have arrived days ago for the final fittings, but when I called this morning to check on them, the bridal shop said there had been a mix-up. The Carlisle wedding was called off and all of the orders canceled, but instead of canceling
their
orders, they canceled
ours
. Luckily, we ordered my dress through a different shop, but the bridesmaids! They can’t walk down the aisle naked!”
Brittany caught the bride’s hands to stop them waving around frantically. “Hey, no panicking allowed,” she said with a smile. “We can fix this. No problem.”
Jo hitched herself up to sit on top of Brittany’s desk. “Can I be the one to tell Kim and Bethie they have to go starkers? And would one of you be willing to videotape that moment so I can relive it over and over again?”
“No one’s going to be naked,” Brittany said, giving Lucy’s hands a squeeze. “Dresses are easy. We’ll have them replaced in no time flat.”
“They were perfect,” Lucy whimpered. “We visited every bridal shop in town twice before we found a dress Kim, Bethie, and Jo could all agree on.”
“Which was not my fault,” Jo piped in. “I vote we kick my sisters out of the wedding for being obnoxious. You really only need one person to hold the bouquet and the rings and stuff. And, again, can I be the one to tell them? With videotape?”
Brittany shot Jo a look she hoped said
shut the heck up
, and turned her attention back to Lucy. “You’re the bride and this is an emergency, which means you get to be the dictator. You can force them to wear fuchsia tutus and they can’t naysay you. You’re the boss, remember?”
“I like the fuchsia tutu idea.” Jo grinned evilly. Apparently Brittany’s
shut-the-heck-up
look was not as effective as she might’ve hoped. “I’ll totally wear one if Bethie and Kim have to wear the same thing. That’s much better than a blue satin cocktail dress, in my opinion.”
Lucy ignored Jo, still in high-panic mode. “But how will we get the dresses delivered in time? The bridal shops charge an insane amount for rush jobs.”
“To penalize people who decide to get married impulsively, as is only fitting,” Jo said dryly.
“We won’t go to a bridal shop,” Brittany said. “It’s May. Neiman’s is practically overflowing with formalwear for prom and wedding season. The perfect bridesmaid dresses are just waiting for you there, with half the mark-up. I can feel it.”
The calm words finally penetrated Lucy’s panic. Her mouth rounded in an “O” and she blinked. “We never thought of going to a department store.”
Brittany gave Lucy’s hands another squeeze. “Call your other bridesmaids. We’ll do a girls’ night of shopping until our feet fall off and the universe sends us the perfect dresses.”
Lucy nodded dazedly and pulled out her cell phone, moving to lean against the desk where Jo perched. Brittany turned back to Rodriguez to find him looking at her skeptically.
“I didn’t know the universe provided dresses.”
She grinned. “Have a little faith. And be grateful. You’re off the hook. It’s girls’ night.”
He shook his head. “Somehow I doubt Karma is going to see it that way. This has wedding demon written all over it.”
Brittany blinked. How could she have forgotten about Mikos? She couldn’t manage to say his name out loud, but that was no reason to completely forget he existed. He was stalking her—supposedly, though she hadn’t seen a trace of him since the flower market.
How could she have forgotten the only reason Rodriguez was hanging around? It wasn’t like he would sit there watching her be a secretary just for the fun of it. Though she had been having fun. And it had definitely been fun having him there.
They hadn’t talked much before today, but just his presence was a pleasure. He made her feel deliciously alive. Sometimes she would catch him watching her and sparks would shower through her, setting off a thousand little fires.
Today it had almost seemed like he’d been thinking about her, watching her, wondering about her. Maybe even half as much as she had been daydreaming about him, watching him out of the corner of her eye and wondering what he was thinking about. The idea that he was thinking about
her
was entirely too seductive.
Right before Lucy and Jo had dropped in with the latest wedding catastrophe, she’d felt like she and Rodriguez were tucked up in their own corner of the world. He had seemed to understand her. He hadn’t mocked her enthusiasm. He’d just tried to figure out the why behind it.
She’d invited him into her bubble of happiness and he’d come, letting himself be wrapped up in her joy, which had swelled to a hundred times its normal size with him inside it.
But now he was back outside, self-contained and held firmly apart from her.
And none too happy to be coming shopping with them, apparently.
She couldn’t really blame him. She’d yet to meet a man who thrilled at the idea of chasing a bunch of women around a formalwear department. Though, really, what was so horrible about it? Where else were they going to see women with all their good bits falling out of dresses two sizes too small? Wearing see-through fabric that looked so perfect on the hanger or a dress cut so loose in the front you could see straight down to her navel? Really, the fashion rejects that never made it past the fitting-room test were probably the best for ogling. Rodriguez should be thrilled. Didn’t men like ogling? Wasn’t that their thing?
“Brittany?”
She fished herself out of her thoughts about ideal ogling conditions as Lucy bounded over, her previous panic apparently swallowed up in excitement over the prospect of shopping. Jo looked significantly less enthused, but willing to be tortured.
“Beth and Kim are in for tonight,” Lucy exclaimed. “It’s so fun to be able to play the bride card whenever I want to get my way.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Jo advised. “You can be Bridezilla for two and a half more weeks, but then you’re just another old married chick.”
“I know,” Lucy squealed. “I can’t wait.”
Jo rolled her eyes. “There’s love and then there’s this nausea-inducing perfect happiness you and Jake have. You realize you’re the most disgustingly perfect couple, don’t you?”
“I could say the same thing about you and Wyatt,” Lucy protested, clearly unoffended by the nauseating state of her bliss.
Jo snorted. “Wyatt and I couldn’t be less perfect. We fight constantly. The idiot man keeps waking me up in the morning to try to make me come swim laps with him.”
Lucy’s eyes went dewy. “That’s sweet. He wants to be with you.”
“It’s cruel and unusual. He knows I hate mornings. And exercise. And the combination of mornings and exercise. But he keeps waking me up. Why? To mess with me. Just to piss me off.”
Jo sounded irritated, but there was a certain undertone in her voice when she talked about her Wyatt. Brittany could see she wasn’t fooling anyone. Both she and Lucy were head over heels.
A fierce pang of envy hit Brittany. She’d never had that.
She’d never been giddy or mock-annoyed over some guy. She’d never even entertained the idea of marriage. With every day at Karmic Consultants, Brittany was realizing more and more how small her life had been before she came here. How narrowly she had drawn the lines of what she could and couldn’t have. Now that she was coloring outside the lines, the colors were brighter and the boundaries wider than she’d ever imagined.
Rodriguez put his hand on the small of her back and set off another rainbow explosion of sparks inside her.
“Shall we get this over with?” he asked.
Brittany smiled and nodded, but couldn’t help thinking that she wanted these next two and a half weeks to last as long as possible, with Lucy and Rodriguez—and even Jo. Her world was getting bigger every day and she wasn’t ready for it to shrink back down to its original size.
“This is cruel and unusual. You realize that, don’t you?”
Brittany would have readily agreed if it had been Rodriguez saying those words after three consecutive hours sitting with her outside the dressing rooms at Neiman’s, watching the parade of blondes trying on every dress in the store. But since the complainer was Jo and she was whining about a lovely pink floor-length gown, Brittany was less inclined to humor her.
“You look lovely. Does Lucy like it?”
Jo pulled a face. “Lucy is only making me try it on to torment me.”
Brittany pursed her lips, trying to hold back a smile she didn’t think Jo would appreciate. “It suits your complexion, you know. Pink really is your color.”
Jo’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You’re evil, you know that? And pink is no one’s color. Pepto-Bismol has conditioned people to want to vomit when they see this shade.”
Brittany laughed. She nodded toward the dressing rooms where Jo’s sisters could be heard arguing. “Are we any closer to a decision back there?”
Jo rolled her eyes. “Lucy likes blue and Kim is onboard for that, but we haven’t found a blue one that looks halfway decent on any of us and Beth is still pulling for that damned lilacy-grayish one with the goddamn ruffles. Five more minutes. Then I’ll coldcock Bethie and we can make a run for the cashier to buy the ugly blue dresses while Kim revives her.”
Jo disappeared back into the dressing rooms and Brittany turned to Rodriguez. “I no longer regret not having sisters.”
He gave a snort of laughter. “They aren’t that bad. Once you get used to ’em.”
“You have sisters?” Brittany began idly flipping through the dresses on the clearance rack next to the dressing room. Rodriguez sat with his legs stretched out in front of him on one of the waiting area chairs designated for masculine purgatory in the afterlife.
“Two,” he said. “My older sister, Adela, is the bossy one. And the baby, Marisol, whose car you ran into the other day, is the other bossy one.”
“Marisol and Adela,” she tried to roll the names the way he had, but they didn’t sound nearly as exotic when she said them. “Those are beautiful names. Sorry about the car.”
He shrugged, his dark eyes studying her. “So no sisters. What about a dozen big, strapping brothers to beat up boys who look at you funny?”
Brittany smiled. “Nope. Just me. I used to wish and wish for siblings. I thought my parents would worry less about me if I wasn’t the only child.”
Now why had she said that? Brittany was always careful not to mention things that made people uncomfortable. She didn’t talk about her childhood. Words like
congenital heart disease
weren’t part of her vocabulary. She shook her head to dismiss the lapse and focused on the clearance rack, the clicking of the hangers as she shoved them aside.
“Overprotective, eh? My parents were like that with Adela, but by the time they survived me and got to Marisol, they were a lot more laidback. Mari gets away with everything.”
Brittany’s chest tightened, her heart thumping heavily. She could hear the affection in his voice. He’d had a normal childhood. Somehow, hearing that exacerbated the edge of guilt she’d carried around with her since she was little. It was her fault her parents didn’t have any more children, because they were afraid to have another with her health problems.
She’d wanted siblings so her parents wouldn’t worry so much about losing her. So they wouldn’t be so lonely if she didn’t survive one of the surgeries or if her heart just gave out one day. Now, with her new heart, everything was different and it didn’t feel quite so important, but back then, the idea of a little brother or sister had meant the whole world.
She cleared her throat, which suddenly felt tight. She needed to get the conversation back on less personal footing. She needed to talk about something safe. “So, do either of them exorcise demons?”
He laughed. “It isn’t a family business. Being an exorcist is less of a natural ability and more about focus and training, though certain people do have a definite affinity for manipulating demonic energy.”
Brittany paused at what was quite possibly the ugliest dress she’d ever seen. Now
that
was demonic. Who actually looked good in a fabric the color of baby poop? “So, what made you decide to become an exorcist? It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing most kids dream about on career day.”
“I didn’t actually plan on being an exorcist,” he admitted. “I was going to be a priest.”
Brittany’s hands froze on a hanger. She couldn’t keep an expression of outright shock from painting her face. This gorgeous, unbelievably sensual man was going to be a priest? A
celibate
priest?
He snorted at the expression on her face. “Yeah, it didn’t really work out. I was twenty-one when I left the seminary. I’d already learned to identify demonic energy, so I decided to become an exorcist. All of the adventure, none of the celibacy.”
“So the, uh, the Church trained you?” Brittany asked, sliding the hangers aggressively and still blushing over the thought of Rodriguez as chaste and without sin.
He shrugged. “They get called on to do a lot of exorcisms. Most exorcists are either priests or have religious backgrounds, though demons aren’t really the same thing as devils and the demonic plane certainly isn’t hell.”
“I don’t think I understand. What’s the difference?”
“The devil, to Catholics,” he pressed a hand to his chest and gave a wry smile, “is all about the temptation to sin. Demons couldn’t care less about tempting you. They are more like people than angels or devils. Some are good, some are bad, most are somewhere in between, and all of them are subject to manipulation, more than a force of manipulation themselves.”
“There are good demons?” Brittany asked incredulously, remembering Mikos and his shark-teeth. He had certainly seemed evil.
“There are,” Rodriguez affirmed. “Though, admittedly, they are pretty rare. There are four basic types of demons—benevolent, ambivalent, mischievous, and malicious.”
“And the one I saw?”
“Most likely mischievous. Not to scare you, but if you’d run into a malice demon, he probably wouldn’t have let you get away.”
Brittany swallowed. “Okay. Malice demon, bad. Got it. I’ll avoid them.”