to disappoint your cousins, but Leah just led a group of them to a bar up the street.”
Nick frowned for the first time in days. “In this weather?”
“It’s stopped snowing and I’m sure the roads are slowly being cleared.” Nibbling her lip Izzie added, “It’s only a couple of blocks away and I paid the limo driver to make sure they got safely back here to their rooms tonight.”
“Look out, Chicago, horny bridesmaids are on the prowl.”
“I don’t imagine too much can happen since Gloria’s with them.” Gloria was happily married to Nick’s oldest brother. The mother of three had seemed relieved when her husband had offered to take their boys home so she could enjoy the night on the town with the rest of the bridesmaids. “She’ll play chaperone.”
“Oh, right. Chaperone to a lawyer, a bookkeeper, a stripper and a Rockette.”
“You got something against strippers and Rockettes?” she asked, cocking a challenging brow.
He had finished working her sleeves open and slid around behind her to start on the long row of tiny buttons up the back of the dress. As he slid each one free, he kissed the tiny bit of skin revealed, sliding his lips over each of her vertebrae with heart-pounding restraint and sensuality.
“Uh-uh, Cookie. Some of my favorite people are strippers and Rockettes.”
She dropped her head forward, sighing as he continued to undress her. Conversation was the last thing she wanted. Thoughts of her bridesmaids began to fade.
But before thrusting the whole subject out of her head altogether, she reassured them both. “They’ll be fine. They’re grown women, they’re not driving, and they’re in a group. What could possibly happen?”
* * * * *
1
THROUGHOUT THE EXCITEMENT of the past week, Bridget Donahue had managed to keep a happy expression on her face. It hadn’t been easy. Because while she was genuinely happy that her cousin Izzie had landed the guy she’d loved for years, Bridget had two big worries on her mind almost constantly.
First, she had to testify in a criminal trial against her former boss in two days. And second, her own experience with love had left her a little sour.
Not love, she reminded herself. She hadn’t been in love with the guy who’d broken her heart. Damn it, she hadn’t. She hadn’t even gone on a real date with him.
But they’d kissed. Oh, that one day last August, they’d kissed wildly, passionately, right in her own office. And his kisses had left her weak in the knees. So, she supposed she had cared about him, maybe even more than she wanted to acknowledge. Dean Willis had snuck into her heart back when she’d thought him a simple used car salesman. That he’d done it intentionally was what made it so hard now.
Done it as part of his job. The bastard.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” asked her cousin Gloria, Izzie’s oldest sister. Though they sat at a table with the other bridesmaids, surrounded by the loud patrons of a trendy Chicago bar, Gloria had obviously noticed Bridget’s pensive mood. “Sweating the trial?”
“A little. I’ve been dreading it. It looks like the defense has run out of motions and I have to testify this week.”
The petite brunette, a mother of three who managed to pull off sexy and maternal, waved an airy hand. “They’ve got this guy cold. He was slime, laundering drug money through the car lot while pretending to be so nice.” She frowned. “To think I liked his ‘Come down to the most honest guy in town’ commercials.”
“Which just proves you have questionable taste,” said the black-haired woman to Gloria’s right, a slight grin on her lips.
Gloria smirked at her sister, Mia, who was the middle Natale sister. Wagging her left hand in the younger woman’s face, she quipped, “A married woman with bad taste.” Mia’s single status was apparently especially rankling now that both her sisters had tied the knot.
“It’s a good thing you’re doing,” Gloria said to Bridget. “More people need to get involved, step up and do what’s right.”
Mia jumped in. “I wish there were more people like you. Would sure have made my last job easier.” Mia had, until recently, been a prosecutor in Pittsburgh. Now she was back in Chicago, though honestly, Bridget didn’t see her cousin much more than she had before. Mia was a private one.
Bridget didn’t doubt she was doing the right thing in testifying against Marty, her former boss at Honest Marty’s Used Cars. But the trial, which started Monday, could also bring her face-to-face with him. Dean Willis. The FBI agent who’d used Bridget to get the evidence he needed against her boss.
“That doesn’t look like an ‘I’m nervous,’ expression. Looks more like a ‘who was that guy who knocked me on my ass’ one.” This came from Vanessa McKee, a friend of Izzie’s from her days with the Rockettes. The striking woman wagged her eyebrows. “Come on, we’ve been sharing man tales.”
“Not Mia,” said Gloria, her tone saccharine sweet.
Her sister made a rude gesture, which Gloria ignored.
The last of their group, Leah, a sweet-faced young woman who worked with Izzie at a local strip club, tapped her fingers on the table and frowned. She was so cute, trying to look fierce when she resembled, more than anything, a Kewpie doll, with her blond curls, pink cheeks and full lips. “Ignore them. You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to, Bridget.”
The others appeared to follow her lead and fell silent. Good. Bridget truly didn’t want to talk about it. Only Izzie knew the full details—the way Dean Willis had feigned interest in her, then backed off the minute he’d realized she was not involved in her boss’s illegal activities.
He’d made a fool of her. And there was no way Bridget was going to talk about that. Especially not to a bunch of tipsy bridesmaids who’d just come from a gloriously romantic wedding.
Fortunately, the subject quickly changed, everyone distracted from Bridget’s problems by the sight of a tall, rock-solid hottie walking by their table. The distraction was a good time for her to take her leave. “I really am tired. I think I’ll head out now. I’ll send the car right back for the rest of you.”
A chorus of nos followed, but she didn’t relent. She’d had a long few weeks. As Izzie’s maid of honor, she’d been planning showers and bachelorette parties. All while worrying herself to almost physical sickness over the trial.
Besides, she’d never been into the bar scene. She preferred quiet evenings with someone special. Not that there’d been anyone special in a long time. And considering how hard it had been to get over Dean, she didn’t see that changing soon.
To her surprise, Leah rose, as well. “I have to nap off those mai tais in case I decide to go in to work tonight,” she said with a yawn.
After hugs good-night, Bridget led the way to the exit. The place was packed and she and Leah got a lot of looks. It was probably due to their lovely red gowns…though, Leah, at least, was sexy in a girlish way, with a body to die for.
Bridget, on the other hand, was no inspiration for lust. She was a bookkeeper, with boring, straight brown hair and an average figure. Still, the looks she got said the men in this place were too far gone on twenty-dollar martinis to notice.
Once outside, Bridget spied their stretch limousine. Then she saw another one, very similar, parked just beyond it. “Which one is ours?” she mumbled with a frown.
Hoping Gloria would know, she decided to give her cousin a call rather than go back through the club. But when she opened her tiny purse, she realized she couldn’t. “Oh, no. I lost my cell phone.” While in the ladies’ room earlier, she’d dropped her bag, spilling