Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
“ Y ou’re not the best man,” Anna said flatly, trying to keep her cheeks from flaming, her voice from shaking, and her eyes from drifting to anything that would make either task harder.
Harder.
“Well, that all depends,” he said, smiling down at her in a way that made her insides turn molten. “Whose wedding are we talking about here?”
“Th—this wedding,” she stammered, swallowing hard. “The one right now.”
“This is a wedding?” He pulled his gaze from hers and surveyed the scene around them. Anna swallowed hard, trying to imagine how it looked to his eyes.
His eyes.
God, they were the most remarkable shade of blue gray, almost like the ocean on a stormy morning.
And at the moment, they were taking in the sight of four naked bridesmaids playing Frisbee with three equally naked groomsmen. Anna swallowed and tried to pull his attention back to the matter at hand.
“So if you’re not the best man, why do you have your shirt off?”
He looked back at her and gave a halfhearted shrug, while Anna did her very best not to notice the ripple of muscle in his broad shoulders. His left biceps bore a tattoo of some sort of military insignia, and Anna squinted for a better look.
“You told me to take off my shirt,” he pointed out as he reached for his belt buckle. “My pants, too, if I recall. Just following orders.”
His eyes glittered with laughter Anna could tell he was working to contain. She wondered what it would be like to tickle him until he gave up and burst out laughing. Before she knew it, she was imagining her fingers stroking those hard, glorious abs as she twined her nails in that dark chest hair and rubbed her?—
“I see,” Anna said, taking a step back. “That is, I’m seeing a whole lot more of you than I probably should. I’m very sorry for the confusion, Mr.—”
“Patton. Grant Patton. You can call me Grant.”
“Grant Patton?” She blinked. “ The Grant Patton?”
“I’m not sure I require a definite article before my name, but yeah. Do we know each other?”
“You’re the photographer,” she blurted, feeling foolish. “I saw your photos. The engagement photos you took for Mac and Kelli? They were incredible. I’ve been planning weddings for more than ten years, and those were the best images I’ve ever seen. You’re Mac’s brother?”
He nodded and regarded her with renewed curiosity. “And you’re Kelli’s friend the wedding planner? Funny we never crossed paths in Mexico.”
“Right. Well, after Mac and Kelli decided on a simple little family-only ceremony on the beach, and I had to hurry home for another wedding I was organizing and—wait, you’re here in Hawaii for Sheri’s wedding?”
“Yep. She was kind enough to time it with my leave. I’m the best man.” He grimaced, and Anna wondered what that was about.
“Okay, well, I’m really very sorry about all this.”
“I’m not,” he said, holding her gaze. “Not at all.”
Anna swallowed and turned away. As if on cue, a wiry man with gray hair and a long beard came dashing down the beach, throwing clothes off as he ran. “Sorry I’m late, guys! You haven’t started yet?”
“ This is the best man,” the bride said to Anna, grabbing the newcomer by the arm. “Bob, this is Anna Keebler, the wedding planner. This is—I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
“Grant Patton.”
“Well, Grant, you’re welcome to stick around for the ceremony if you like, but you’ll have to be nude,” the bride said. “This is a nude wedding, so only the staff can wear clothing. Well, except me.” She grinned and touched the edge of her veil. “Anna said I could still wear this.”
“It’s a mantilla veil with lace edging,” Anna said, turning to adjust the comb. “My absolute favorite veil I’ve ever seen on a bride. Worth making an exception.”
She saw Grant smiling from the corner of her eye, and she turned to see him watching her instead of the bride’s bare breasts.
A gentleman.
“I appreciate the offer to stick around, but I have to run,” he said. “I’ll be seeing you around though, Anna.”
“Oh?” She swallowed, wondering if he was asking her out.
“The wedding. Sam and Sheri?”
“Sam and Sheri, right, of course. Absolutely. It’s going to be a wonderful ceremony.”
“I’m sure it is.” He held her gaze a few more beats, then nodded. “Nice meeting you.”
He slung his T-shirt around his shoulders and turned away. He began to jog back the direction he’d come, muscles rippling in the sunlight. His calves were strong and lean, and his bare back glistened with sweat, and Anna pictured him in the shower after a long run, water sluicing over his bronze skin, those massive hands rubbing soap over his chest, then lower until his fingers slid around?—
“Who was that ?”
Anna turned to see her sister moving toward her along the beach. She wore a green dress and an expression of utter amazement.
“Grant Patton,” Anna said, savoring the taste of his name on her tongue. “He’s the brother of the bride in the final wedding we’re doing.”
“How do you know him?”
“I don’t. Not at all. But he took the most amazing engagement photos for my friend, Kelli, in Mexico.”
“He’s a photographer?”
“I don’t think that’s his job. I’m pretty sure he’s a military guy of some sort. Marines, maybe.”
“That explains why he’s built like a tank. You should ask him out. You could use a vacation fling.”
“Please,” Anna said, feeling the heat creep into her cheeks. “He’s hardly my type.”
Janelle rolled her eyes. “That’s right, you like narcissistic, tortured artist types who won’t commit.”
“Not true.” Anna bit her lip, knowing it was completely true.
Not that Janelle knew the reason.
“He doesn’t need to be your type for a fling,” Janelle pointed out. “He looks like he’d be great in bed.”
“Janelle!”
“Well he does.”
“I’m here in a professional capacity organizing a wedding for his sister. A fling would not be a smart move.”
Janelle shrugged. “Fine.” She fell quiet a moment, and Anna let her gaze wander down the beach to where the bride and groom were taking turns swatting each other with palm fronds while the photographer clicked away with his camera. She’d had to pay Byron extra to agree to work a nude wedding, something he felt compromised his artistic integrity.
“I talked to Jacques,” Janelle blurted.
Anna gritted her teeth and turned back to her sister. “Why are you calling your ex-husband?”
“I didn’t say I called him .”
“You didn’t have to. I know you. You’re here in Hawaii, feeling nostalgic about your wedding, wondering how he’s doing, so you pick up the phone?—”
“She’s pregnant,” Janelle said. “His girlfriend’s pregnant.”
Anna winced and squeezed her sister’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
Janelle sighed and shook her head. “It is what it is.”
“Which is a giant clusterfuck of a marriage that ended when your ex turned into a psycho control freak who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.” Anna meant to keep the venom out of her voice, but it didn’t quite work out. Truth be told, she was probably angrier at herself than she was at Jacques, but her sister didn’t need to know that.
“Anyway,” Janelle said. “He claims it doesn’t mean anything. That he still wants me back.”
“I hope you told him to go fuck himself.”
“With a flaming potato.”
“Good girl.” Anna sighed. “I’m so sorry, hon.”
“Quit saying that,” Janelle said. “I don’t want us to be sorry. I want us to be wild and carefree and happy and maybe a little bit drunk for the next few days. I want us to have crazy flings with inappropriate men and go home with sand wedged in uncomfortable body crevices.”
“Thank you for that mental picture,” Anna said. “You do remember we’re here to work, right?”
“Of course.” Janelle looked back at the bride and groom. “Speaking of which, I should probably go spray the wedding party with more sunscreen.”
“Watch out for the groomsman with the goatee. He’s very handsy.”
“I noticed.”
“The bride and groom look happy though.”
Anna watched the groom trying to juggle a trio of coconuts and tried not to notice which parts of him looked happiest. The bride stood nearby, watching her husband-to-be with a disturbing mix of admiration and lust.
“So you’re really never going to do it?”
Anna snapped her attention off the groom’s anatomy and looked at her sister. “Do it?”
“Get married. I can’t believe you plan weddings for a living and you never want to get married.”
Anna shrugged. “I love weddings, but marriage isn’t really my thing.”
“I know, you’ve been saying that for years, but I figured you’d change your mind.”
“About getting married?” Anna shook her head, fighting to keep her voice bright and even. “Definitely not. Marriage holds zero appeal for me. Besides, I’m much too busy.”
Janelle folded her arms over her chest and frowned. “Too busy to be married? You’re aware this isn’t 1946, right? Women don’t get married and stay home milking cows and doing laundry by hand in a washtub.”
“Cows and laundry have nothing to do with why I don’t want to get married.”
“So what is it then?”
Anna shook her head and turned away. She’d never shared the secret with her sister, and she wasn’t about to do it now. She rummaged in the woven tote she’d parked next to a piece of driftwood and came up with a can of spray sunscreen.
“Here,” she said, thrusting it into Janelle’s hands. “Go make sure the groom doesn’t sunburn anything he’s going to need for the honeymoon. I’ll go do the rest of the wedding party.”
“Fine. But don’t think I didn’t notice you’re avoiding the question.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, and went off to spray SPF on strangers’ bare butts.
The next morning, Grant was dozing under a tree beside the Wailua River. Though he held a fishing pole in one hand, it was unlikely he’d catch any fish. There was no hook on the end of his line.
He yawned and tipped his hat over his face, shading himself from the early morning sun. The earthy scent of river water hung in the air as water lapped at the red-dirt shore and a family of chickens clucked cheerfully in a nearby shrub.
Grant stretched his legs out in front of his sand chair. They were still a little stiff from yesterday’s unexpected jog on the beach, which served him right. Running off like some kind of lunatic to avoid awkward family conversations was probably not the best way to deal with things.
Still, the beautiful woman on the beach had been a nice surprise. Anna . He combed his memory for any details he could recall about her. Mac’s wife, Kelli, had roomed with her in college for a while. He knew she lived in Portland and owned a wedding-planning business, and he knew his sister had hired her on Kelli’s recommendation. Those facts he’d filed in the back of his brain the same way he’d catalogued a grocery list or the names of the players on the Seattle Mariners baseball team.
But now that he’d met her in real life, something felt different. Every detail about her seemed like a valuable gem, worth turning over in his palm and studying in a different light. He was intrigued by the bright flashes of color in her hair—the natural hue of carrot cake mixed with the subtle blue just behind her ear. He remembered the feather tattoo on the inside of her right ankle and wondered what the significance was. Did she have a boyfriend? Husband? He hadn’t seen a wedding ring, but maybe she didn’t wear one. She certainly seemed a little unconventional.
Grant wasn’t sure when he nodded off or how long he’d been out. All he knew was that a woman’s scream jarred him awake with his heart thudding in his ears. He jumped to his feet and surveyed his surroundings, years of military training commanding him to identify the threat.
The woman screamed again, and Grant whirled around.
There was Anna, standing in the water with blood pouring down her chest.
On the shore, a man leveled a gun at her and fired.