Wedding Party Collection: Always The Bachelor. Barbara Hannay

damn, did she look good now—tall and willowy and soft around the edges. The kind of pretty that crept up on a man slowly, then dug its claws in deep and held on.

      Too bad she was a major pain in the behind.

      He turned up the charm on his smile, knowing it would irritate the hell out of her, since that in large part was the motivation for this trip. He intended to make her suffer. “What, no kiss?”

      Sure enough, that telltale little crease formed between her eyebrows. She always had taken life too seriously. He used to admire her confidence, her determination. The woman knew exactly what she wanted, and she hadn’t been afraid to go after it. Too bad she’d never learned how to have fun. He’d tried his best to teach her, to loosen her up, and what had it gotten him?

      A lot of grief.

      It would be that much more satisfying when he finally broke her spirit.

      “You don’t look happy to see me,” he said.

      Her eyes narrowed, like May be she thought that if she concentrated hard enough she could wish him out of existence.

      “Oh, right, you still think I’m a…now, how did you word it in that little book of yours?” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Something to the effect of me being a self-centered, pigheaded horse’s ass?”

      Her chin rose in that familiar, stubborn tilt. “Not once did I use your name in that little book, so you can’t say one way or the other who I was referring to.”

      She might not have used his name, but the implication had been more than clear.

      Clear to him.

      Clear to his family and friends.

      And clear to the millions of women who had flocked to the bookstore to get their hands on the new must-read self-help guide.

      Nearly every negative little story and anecdote she’d included in the text had been plucked right out of their marriage. Talk about social devastation. The class of woman he normally dated wouldn’t give him the time of day, and the women who would, the morbidly curious and monetarily motivated, he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

      “Besides, it was self-absorbed and bull headed,” Ivy added. “And I never used the term horse’s ass. Even though you were one.”

      He flattened a hand across the left side of his chest. “Darlin’, you’re breakin’ my heart.”

      “Look, you can cut the good ole boy crap. I don’t imagine you’re any happier than I am about being stuck together for a whole week.”

      It was just like her to cut through the bull and get right to the point. And as usual, she was wrong. He couldn’t be happier.

      “For Deidre and Blake’s sake, I’m going to try to make the best of it,” she continued in that master-of-the-universe tone. “I expect you to do the same.”

      He just bet she did. Was she under the impression they were going to pick up where they left off? With her issuing orders?

      Had she forgotten that he didn’t take orders from anyone?

      “How do you s’pose we go about doing that?” he asked in the same good ole boy twang, since it clearly annoyed her.

      “I think we should agree to avoid each other whenever humanly possible. I’ll stay out of your way and you stay out of mine. After this week, we never have to see each other again.”

      The never seeing each other again part sounded just fine to him. But that was only a fraction of the good news. He’d been looking for a way to irritate her, to make her as miserable as humanly possible, and she’d just served it up on a silver platter.

      The worst thing he could do to a control freak like Ivy was take away her control.

      A corner of his mouth twitched, but he held the smile inside. He pretended to give her demand some thought, then gave her a solemn nod. “Sounds like a good idea.”

      She narrowed her eyes at him. “So that’s it?”

      “Sure.” It did sound like a good idea. For her. That didn’t mean he had any intention of doing it.

      She had no idea the flack his family had taken after her book was released. Call it childish and immature—hell, he’d been called worse—but the way he saw it, he was long overdue for a little payback. Some good old-fashioned revenge.

      If keeping his distance was what she really wanted, for the next week he would be stuck to that woman like glue.

       Two

      Feeling helpless, hopeless? Stand up and take control! Show that man who’s boss.

      —excerpt from The Modern Woman’s Guide to Divorce (And the Joy of Staying Single)

      Ivy sat outside on the private balcony of her bedroom, at the cute little wrought-iron patio set, reading the novel she’d started on the plane. The sun felt warm on her skin, and a damp, salty ocean breeze flipped the ends of her ponytail.

      What better place to relax? To kick back and put her feet up? Yet she was so tense she’d read the same paragraph half a dozen times and still had no idea what it said.

      She marked her page and set the book down, rubbing at the beginnings of a headache in her temples. This was supposed to be a vacation. It was supposed to be fun.

      She heard her bedroom door open, and her cousin called to her. “Are you in here?”

      Ivy looked at her watch. It had taken Deidre a full hour to work up the courage to face her again.

      “I’m out here,” she said.

      Several seconds passed, then she heard Deidre behind her. “Are you mad at me?”

      Mad?

      Mad didn’t scratch the surface of what she was feeling. She felt hurt and betrayed and humiliated. They were supposed to be best friends. The sister neither had ever had.

      A team.

      How could Deidre pull a stunt like this? How could she lie by omission?

      She turned to her cousin. Deidre stood in the bedroom doorway wringing the color from her hands, looking like the poster girl for guilt and remorse.

      She’d been a nervous wreck for weeks, sure that at any moment Blake would come to his senses and finally accept the truth. Deidre, with a family history of obesity and bad skin, would never be a supermodel. Then he would undoubtedly start listening when his parents and brothers assured him that, for all his money and family connections, he could do much better.

      Deidre also had what looked like a smear of chocolate in the corner of her mouth. Just that morning Ivy had confiscated a six-pack of chocolate bars and a half-empty box of Ding Dongs from Deidre’s bedroom. She didn’t want to venture a guess as to how much weight Deidre had gained back in the last month or so, but a few more pounds and she would look like an overstuffed sausage in her ten-thousand-dollar designer wedding gown. Even worse was the random acne that had begun to spring up on her chin. Which of course only made her more upset, and more likely to stuff her face with junk.

      She’d been a neurotic mess for weeks. Still, that didn’t excuse what she had done.

      Ivy concentrated on keeping her voice calm and rational. “How could you do this to me?”

      “I’m so sorry. But I knew if I told you, you wouldn’t have come. Without you as my maid of honor, it would ruin everything.”

      Deidre was one of those women who had begun planning her wedding the instant she left the womb. She’d accumulated a ceiling-high stockpile of bridal magazines and catalogs by the fifth grade.

      After a few miserably failed false starts, she had finally snagged Mr. Right. Ivy got the feeling Deidre saw this as her last chance