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Anita kept looking at the bouquet by her plate. She couldn’t stop grinning ear-to-ear. Neither could Russ.
“I’m glad you caught it,” he said.
“Caught it? I fought for it. I had to do a WNBA-worthy jump to snag this bad boy. One is enough, though—when we go to Aunt Angela’s wedding, I’ll let someone else have the good luck.” She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Lu looked gorgeous.”
“She did,” Russ agreed.
Lu had declared that white was boring, so she’d worn a daring crimson gown that—according to Anita, anyway, and Russ was willing to take her word for it—perfectly accentuated the flickers of cat-shifter gold in her eyes. George had been completely prepared to go to his own wedding in a sky blue tux and cummerbund that looked like something from a ‘70s prom. Thankfully, Russ had figured one of his duties as best man was to stop that from happening, so he’d gotten George down the aisle in something closer to Lu’s high standards.
It had been a beautiful wedding—one that had him eagerly anticipating their own, which was just on the horizon. Anita’s car would finally be repaired two days before the ceremony, and Russ had already gotten George to promise to decorate it in best JUST MARRIED style, complete with tin cans that would no longer be enough to pull the bumper off. He couldn’t wait.
“Lu looked great. But,” he said, skimming his hand over the soft, brown curve of Anita’s bare shoulder, “the dress I’m most interested in is yours.”
She laughed the husky, carefree laugh that seemed to make him love her even more every time he heard it. “You’re not interested in the dress. You’re interested in what’s underneath the dress.”
To be fair, the dress was gorgeous. Lu had let the bridesmaids pick their own dresses, and Anita’s had been made by her talented and now curse-free and happily engaged Aunt Angela, who was a genius with a needle.
But Anita was right. He was mostly interested in what was underneath. What he really loved about the rosy pink of her satin bridesmaid dress was the way it reminded him of how her skin flushed when she was turned on.
“I’m more interested in what’s underneath the dress,” he said diplomatically.
“Well, that’s how I like it.” She ate the strawberry out of her champagne glass, smiling as the fizzy sweetness. “The happy couple are off to the Caribbean, so most of the party’s over. Want to go home?”
He took another long, lingering look at her dress. “I do. And I regret promising everyone I’d open the bar up tonight, because I really just want to take you upstairs.”
Her smile turned sparkling. “And I want to take you upstairs, so consider it a date as soon as the doors close behind the last customer.”
“Deal.” They both lived in the converted hayloft apartment above the bar now, so it was gloriously easy to just slip upstairs at the end of a shift and be right at home... and, on plenty of nights, right in bed.
They made their way to the exit, his hand at the small of her back. Even now, he wasn’t tired of watching Anita fearlessly weave her way through crowds, sometimes brushing her hand over a friend’s or even exchanging a cheek-kiss or two. He loved seeing her so free.
As they stepped outside, the breeze stirred her hair. She looked at him and smiled.
At the same time, they both said, “Maybe we could open the bar a little late...”
“Everyone can live with a little bit of a wait,” Russ said.
“Who’s to say how long it takes us to change out of these clothes?” Anita added. “Bridesmaid dresses are tricky.”
He took her hand. “Very tricky,” he agreed. “And I can’t wait until I have to spend even more time trying to get you out of a wedding dress.”
“We might miss the honeymoon because we spend so much time ‘changing clothes.’”
Russ laughed and drew her into a long, lingering kiss. They swayed a little there in the parking lot, just for a moment, dancing to their own song that no one else could hear.