Wilder's Mistake (Kingdom Come MC #6)

1. Lucy

LUCY

By ten thirty, Nora is married, Caleb has survived the speeches, and the only thing left on my list is getting them into the honeymoon car with both passports.

I stand near the edge of the ballroom with one heel slipped out of my silver pump, watching my best friend dance beneath the crystal lights.

She looks happy in the loose, unguarded way I wanted for her all day.

Caleb looks as though he still cannot believe she chose him.

The flowers arrived. The photographer took every family combination without losing patience. Nobody mentioned the groom’s parents’ divorce during dinner. By my project-manager standards, the wedding is a triumph.

Then Wilder crosses the floor and ruins my concentration.

Nora’s older brother wears a black suit with his white shirt open at the throat.

His short dark hair is neater than usual, though nothing about him looks polished.

Tattoos rise above his collar and disappear beneath his cuffs.

He moves through a formal ballroom with the same quiet certainty he carries everywhere else, as though chandeliers and armed clubhouses are merely different rooms he knows how to control.

The men I usually date are clean-cut, careful and easy to explain. Wilder has never been easy to explain, and he catches me looking. His gaze drops to my bare heel before traveling slowly up the blue dress Nora chose for me.

“Done?” he asks when he reaches me.

“Nearly.”

“You look done.”

“My feet are trying to resign.”

“Take the shoes off.”

“And walk barefoot through a hotel ballroom?”

His eyes hold mine. “I wasn’t thinking about the ballroom.”

Heat reaches my face before I can stop it, and Wilder moves on with no change in expression, leaving me to wonder whether I supplied the filthy meaning myself.

He’s been doing that for six years. A low comment at one of Nora’s birthday dinners.

A look held half a second too long. Something that could pass as innocent if I challenged him, followed by his calm departure before I found the nerve.

He’s never touched me, but somehow that has not made him harmless.

Nora appears beside me and takes the champagne from my hand.

“That was mine.”

“I know, but I need it.” She smiles and drinks anyway. “You can stop working now.”

“When you are in the car with your passport.”

I look at my best friend. A few strands of dark hair have escaped the pins at her temple, and happiness has softened everything the makeup artist tried to perfect.

Her mouth curves as she glances across the room, where Wilder is speaking to Caleb near the bar.

“He behaved, at least,” she says with a nod in his direction.

“The night’s young,” I reply.

“People decide what he is before he opens his mouth. That’s the problem with my brother.”

“He rarely bothers correcting them, though.”

“He does, but only when it matters.”

The words are quiet, not a warning or an invitation. Nora knows her brother better than anyone. She also knows me well enough to recognize every subject I avoid too carefully.

We met at a construction conference six years ago and became friends over bad coffee and a speaker who used the phrase synergistic pathways without irony.

Since then, she has become the person who knows where I keep my spare key, which work calls I pretend don’t upset me, and the date each year when grief for my mother catches me off guard.

She is family because we chose each other and that is one reason I’ve never acted on what happens to me around Wilder.

A careless affair could sour birthdays, holidays and every ordinary day Nora expects both of us to be in her life.

Wilder might be able to walk away cleanly.

I couldn’t bear to make her stand between us afterward.

Caleb approaches and rests a hand at Nora’s waist. “The car’s downstairs.” She gives me back the empty glass and somehow I ache for what they have right now.

“Our room key?” I ask.

“In my bag,” she replies.

“Your passport?”

“Also in my bag.”

“Your husband?”

Caleb raises one hand. “Present.”

“Then my work here is done.” I kiss her cheek. “Go enjoy being married.”

Her smile softens. “I love you.”

“Love you too.” She hugs me for one extra second, then leaves with Caleb through a tunnel of drunken applause.

I watch until the ballroom doors close behind them and the day is over. For the first time since six this morning, nobody needs anything from me. The DJ announces a final dance. Wilder stops in front of me and offers his hand.

“Dance with me.”

“You ask beautifully, but…” I hesitate and remember exactly why this is a bad idea.

“You saying no?”

I put my fingers in his. “Apparently not.”

His palm settles at my waist as we move onto the thinning dance floor. My other hand rests on his shoulder. He is warm beneath the suit, solid enough that one careful breath brings the front of my dress against his shirt. He dances well. That surprises me more than it should.

“Did Nora teach you to dance?” I ask.

“Before her senior prom, she made me her practice partner.”

I smile at the image of Nora ordering a younger Wilder through the same turn he guides me into now.

“She told me you rode your bike to the venue behind her limo.”

“Didn’t trust the driver.”

His thumb moves once against my side. “You back at work Monday?”

“Wednesday. I booked two days after the wedding.”

“Two days to recover?”

“That’s the plan.”

His gaze drops to my mouth. “Might not be enough.” My next step catches against his shoe. Wilder steadies me, his hand firm at my waist.

“You somehow managed to make everything sound filthy.”

His eyes return to mine. “Only when I’m talking to you.”

The song ends. His hand leaves my waist slowly, and the absence feels more intimate than the dance. The ballroom empties in stages. I confirm with the hotel that everything has been organized as planned for Nora and Caleb’s luggage. After that, I have nothing left to fix.

Wilder stands at the bar with Caleb’s uncle, listening more than he speaks.

His suit jacket is folded over one forearm.

He looks up as though he felt my attention and holds my gaze until the space between us becomes its own conversation.

The men I date would cross the room and ask whether I wanted another drink.

Wilder waits to see what I will do. A man from Caleb’s side of the wedding catches me near the bar.

His bow tie hangs loose around his neck, and I can’t remember his name.

He gives me the creeps with his overconfidence.

“Come have a drink?” he says.

“I’m heading upstairs.”

“Come on, just one drink?”

“No, thanks.”

I step around him and his hand closes around my elbow.

“She said no.” Wilder’s voice comes from behind me.

The man releases me and turns. Wilder doesn’t raise his voice or move closer. The man looks at Wilder’s face and makes the sensible decision.

“We were just talking.”

“Not anymore.” The man mutters something and walks away.

I rub the place his fingers touched. “I had it handled.”

“I know you did.”

“Then why step in?”

“I didn’t like him touching you.” The direct answer steals the one I had ready. We leave the ballroom and cross the lobby together.

“What now?” he asks.

“Well, I was thinking that I’d take off these shoes and sleep for nine hours.”

“Is that what you really want?”

I look through the glass doors at the Strip, all neon, heat and people behaving as if tomorrow belongs to somebody else.

I have spent four days in Las Vegas doing exactly what I promised.

I booked Monday and Tuesday away from work, arranged coverage for the hospital project and planned the trip down to the last transfer.

Nora is married. The schedule worked, and I should feel satisfied.

Instead, I feel as though I came all this way without letting the city touch me or properly enjoying myself.

“No,” I admit. Wilder stops beside me.

“Then don’t go upstairs.”

The invitation is quiet. He doesn’t smile or make the decision for me. Instead, we turn toward the casino.

“Okay, just one drink,” I say.

His hand settles at the small of my back. “Sure.”

The first drink happens at the hotel bar. The second comes in a narrow place off the Strip where the bartender pours tequila with no concern for our flight home. By the third, my shoes are hanging from Wilder’s fingers and the knot between my shoulders has finally loosened.

We find a table near an open wall where hot night air pushes through the music. Wilder sits with one forearm resting across the back of my chair, close enough that his knuckles graze my shoulder whenever somebody squeezes past.

“Why do you keep bringing those men to Nora’s dinners?” he asks.

I know exactly which men he means. “Because she invites me and I occasionally date.”

“They all look the same.”

“They do not,” I protest, while quietly admitting to myself that he has a point.

“Clean shoes. Soft hands. Talk too much about work.”

“You have met three people in six years.”

“Enough for a pattern.”

I take another drink. “They fit my life.”

His gaze moves over my face. “And I don’t.” The bluntness catches beneath my ribs.

“That’s convenient,” I say. “You never asked.”

His expression stills. Wilder has seen every blush and every quick turn away. He knows I wanted him to ask. What neither of us says is why I never made it easy. He touches the inside of my wrist, one slow pass of his thumb over my pulse.

“Tonight,” he says, “you look different.”

“That’s because I am barefoot in a bar.” I laugh.

“That’s not what I meant.” The night breaks into bright pieces. His hand on my hip while we cross beneath white pedestrian lights. My laugh coming too easily, the city sliding past in mirrored windows and Wilder drinking from my glass after I tell him his drink tastes terrible.

“It’s the same tequila,” he says.

“Mine has lime though.”

I press the wedge to his mouth. He catches my wrist, bites into the fruit and drags his tongue across the salt on my thumb. The look he gives me is sober enough to be deliberate even when neither of us is remotely sober.

“You do that on purpose,” I say.

“Do what?”

“Make me think filthy things and act as if I invented them.”

His eyes stay on mine. “That wasn’t even close to my version of filthy.” I take a drink because my mouth has suddenly gone very dry.

We order the next round together. I am drunk enough for the lights to blur at the edges, not drunk enough to mistake the man beside me or the heat that has lived between us for years. I keep finding reasons to touch him. His wrist. His shoulder. The rough line of stubble along his jaw. He lets me.

Outside, Vegas presses warm against my bare shoulders. Wilder puts his suit jacket around me and carries my shoes. We leave the Strip for a quieter passage between casinos and Wilder backs me against the wall beneath a bright neon wedding chapel sign.

His hand closes around my jaw, not forcing, just holding me still beneath his gaze.

“Tell me to stop.”

I grip his open collar and pull him down.

His mouth hits mine hard. The first kiss tears through six years of restraint.

I taste tequila and lime. His body presses me into painted concrete, every inch of him controlled until I slide my hands into his hair and drag him closer.

The sound he makes against my mouth goes straight through me.

His hand moves down my spine and over my ass.

My dress climbs against his thigh. I feel how hard he is and stop caring that anybody could turn the corner.

He breaks the kiss, breathing hard. “Hotel.”

The wedding chapel sign blinks over his shoulder.

I look at it, then back at him.

“Not yet.” I laugh, catch his hand and pull him toward the chapel.

It sits between a souvenir shop and a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, with gold stars on the black ceiling and plastic roses around a narrow arch. A tired woman behind the desk asks for our identification, then asks whether we understand that the ceremony will be legal.

I hear myself say yes and Wilder says it too.

We fill in the paperwork shoulder to shoulder. Cheap rings wait in a velvet tray. Mine has a rhinestone large enough to light the way home. Wilder chooses a plain silver-colored band that looks wrong and strangely right against his tattooed hand.

He is laughing when I slide it onto his finger.

I remember that clearly, and I remember his hand closing around mine. I remember the officiant dressed in a white rhinestone-encrusted jumpsuit asking whether we are ready. Wilder looks at me. Alcohol darkens his eyes, but there is nothing vague in his answer.

I know who he is and somehow I know this could change everything waiting for us in Missouri.

I say “I do” anyway. We are both too many drinks in to realize just how dumb this is.