Chapter One
ELLIOT
A billionaire who invented the world’s leading
dating app, but couldn’t find a date to his brother’s wedding…
Weddings really bring out the best in people.
Or, at least, the unexpected…
I’ve known Nancy Tucker since we were both six years old. We met while liberating atomic fireballs from the penny candy section at Kathy’s Kountry Store. Our friendship was solidified when she helped me hide under the stuffed animal display, so Nanny Marie wouldn’t catch me with my cheeks stuffed full of thieved candy I’d been forbidden to consume while spending the holidays in Jingle Bell Junction.
One might think this early entrée into petty theft would mean Nancy is a hellraiser with a wild streak a mile wide.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Nancy is serious to a fault and one of the hardest working people I know. And she actually wasn’t stealing candy that day. She’d been given permission to take five pieces as a reward for helping her grandmother restock the flannel dog toy section.
Nancy’s grandmother is the Kathy of Kathy’s Kountry Store. Her family is royalty in this town and Nancy the heir to the empire. But she’s never used that as an excuse to slack off. Nance is organized, driven, and, as the Kountry Store’s chief financial officer, working behind the scenes to grow the business into a nationally recognized brand.
She’s also currently dancing on the rock wall surrounding the fire pit on my family’s back patio, where—thanks to the yule log my new sister-in-law, Holly Jo, ordered for the wedding—flames leap several feet into the air.
Christmas was several days ago, but that didn’t deter Holly. She insisted on a wedding yule log, holiday decorations for the reception, and some fruitcake on the dessert table.
The fruitcake looks like a lump of ogre dung and will probably survive the apocalypse along with the cockroaches, but I’m a big fan of the yule log.
Or I was…before my best friend had a third glass of champagne and decided to dance with the devil in the pale moon light.
“Are you sure you won’t let me help you down? We could dance by the heat lamp instead?” I keep my tone light and playful, even as I maneuver closer to Nancy, ready to lunge for her in the event of an emergency.
“No, thank you,” she says, continuing to wiggle to the faint strains of Beast of Burden by the Rolling Stones drifting from the ballroom on the second floor. “I told you. I’m dancing with the devil in the pale moon light.”
I fight a smile. “Yeah, so I heard. But so far, I’m only seeing you and Andy.” Holly Jo’s pet chipmunk has also retreated to the patio, where he’s rolling in the snow beside the door, probably in an attempt to remove the tiny tuxedo jacket Holly made him for the ceremony.
I would help the guy out—growing up, I spent enough time wandering the mansion in short pants like an itchy, Victorian ghost child to know how annoying fancy duds can be—but Nancy comes first.
She isn’t just my childhood friend. We worked at the same equestrian camp as teens, went to the same college, and even shared an apartment in New York City our senior year. We know all each other’s secrets, survived the city-wide blackout of our final winter at NYU, and vowed to punch each other in the face if we ever got old and boring enough to listen to smooth jazz.
After a brush with easy listening earlier this year during my maudlin, “why can’t the man who invented a love app find love?” phase, I can’t afford to lose this woman.
Not to mention the fact that a guest getting third degree burns would really put a damper on my brother’s wedding celebration.
“Is the devil going to show soon?” I glance at my watch. “They’re starting the dinner service in fifteen minutes, and I think you could use something in your stomach. Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?”
She spins to face me, making my heart leap into my throat as she stumbles on the stones. She sways back toward the fire, her arms pinwheeling. I’m about to snatch her around the waist and drag her forcibly to the ground when she recovers her balance and points an unsteady finger at my face. “I know I’m drunk, Elliot. Don’t talk to me like I don’t know because I do know. I do, and I’m okay with it. It was a choice. Not an accident.”
I nod seriously. “Good to know.”
“Exactly, and the devil is just a metaphor. Obviously.” She crosses her arms, making her breasts threaten to spill over the top of her low-cut red gown.
I’ve never seen Nancy in red before, I realize. With her nearly white-blond hair and blue eyes, she usually opts for lighter colors or soft browns and grays. She says bright colors wash her out.
But she doesn’t look washed out tonight. She looks vibrant and alive. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes glittering, and her lips painted a deep red that brings to mind 1950s pin-up stars and Old Hollywood.
She’s fucking stunning, a Viking goddess of the first order.
Now, if I can convince her to head inside and put this sudden feisty streak to use seducing Sam, the meat guy at the deli, who she’s had her eye on for years, this night might still have a happy ending.
Happier than falling into a fire pit or getting frostbite anyway.
“And what’s the devil a metaphor for?” I tip my head back, keeping my eyes locked on hers as I shift closer. “Help a computer science nerd out. Are you contemplating a villain era? If so, I’ve heard your mid-30s are a great time to get that out of your system. But maybe we could start by putting fruitcake in the gift bags or piling all the plaid reindeer in Luke and Holly Jo’s wedding bed and then move on to flirting with third burns degree once you have some villain street cred under your belt?”
She nibbles her bottom lip. “Okay, maybe metaphor was the wrong word. I just thought, if I could work up the gumption to dance on a table at a wedding, I could work up the guts to do just about anything.” She sighs. “But then the table felt too embarrassing, and I was worried someone would tell Grandma, and she’d worry about my behavior reflecting badly on the store. So, I did this instead.” She motions toward the fire behind her, swaying in a way that has my heart racing all over again. “And so far, I think it’s working.” She beams, her tipsy smile making her look even more beautiful.
She really is wasting all this sexy out here with me and an irate chipmunk.
Andy’s definitely pissed about the tuxedo coat. He’s now dragging his back along the fire pit stones by my feet, making grumpy chipmunk sounds that remind me of Luke before he met Holly Jo.
“I’m feeling bold,” Nancy continues.
I grin and wheedle, “Does this mean you’re finally going to ask Sam out? I keep telling you, he’s shy, but that doesn’t mean he’s not interested. And think how great it would be to have a meat guy around full time? You’d never have to slice your salami or stuff your own pork loin again.”
“That sounds dirty.”
“Intentionally so.”
“I don’t need a meat guy,” Nancy says, her arms dropping to her sides.
“Everyone needs a meat guy. Think of all the raunchy jokes you could make about his meat and your meat and—”