Julie Miller - Do-Or-Die Bridesmaid

“You, too, Conor. I’ve missed you.”

“I appreciate a few minutes of normal amidst all the crazy.” He chucked her lightly beneath the chin and grinned. “I don’t have to pretend to smile with you.”

When he excused himself to leave, she tugged on his tie with one hand and slipped the other around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss. What the heck? Her lips were warm, bowed and moving across his before he could close the startled O of his mouth. When he did press his lips together, they caught the decadent fullness of her lower lip between his. Whoa. Did that qualify as a kiss? Had he just kissed Laura? With a noise that sounded suspiciously like a moan beneath the pulse of the music, she pushed up onto her tiptoes, sealing their mouths together in another kiss that exploded somewhere inside his brain and lit a fuse down to his groin, prompting the instinctive need to snap her to his body and take over the embrace. But before he could even acknowledge the desire zinging through him, she dropped back onto her heels and broke the connection between them.

As he leaned over her like this, with her face tilted to his, the color of her eyes changed like a kaleidoscope, showing him tawny sparkles of glitter amidst the forest, moss and olive in her irises. The woman had beautiful eyes. “You should do that more,” she whispered.

“Kiss?” He’d been too startled to respond the way he’d wanted to, but now he was wondering if he had... He could still feel the pressure of her lips softening against his...

She rubbed her fingertips across his mouth, probably wiping off a stray glob of lipstick. But he felt the tug of that unexpected touch down deep inside him. “Smile. You’ve always been such a good-looking son of a gun when you smile.”

Was she flirting with him? How was he supposed to think brotherly thoughts when every cell of his body was standing at attention, eagerly anticipating the next touch? When every self-respecting male hormone was demanding he take her in his arms and show her that Conor Wildman knew exactly how to respond to a woman’s kiss, and not stand there like a statue.

She smoothed his tie against his chest and stepped back, maybe sensing that he’d change the way that kiss had ended if she didn’t put some space between them. “I’d better go. Try to get a hold of Chloe again.”

Right. Get a grip, Wildman. That was a goodbye kiss. Hadn’t he just been thanking her for keeping everything normal between them? He was the one putting a sensual spin on things.

A nod of agreement was the best he could do right now. “Good luck.”

Conor watched her chat her way through the crowd before she disappeared into the same hallway where Isaac Royal had gone. These few minutes with Laura—their dance, that kiss—had been both the most natural and the most unsettling conversation he’d had all evening.

After enduring a couple of quick dances with Lisa, reassuring her every way he knew how that her marrying Joe hadn’t damaged him beyond repair, he finally made his exit. He’d done his time. He’d saved face, rallied a bit of his pride. But he was more than ready to loosen his tie and unbutton the collar of his shirt as he pushed open the door to a rush of damp February air and strode across the parking lot to his SUV.

Conor inhaled deep breaths of the cold, sobering air into his lungs, replaying this whole evening, replaying the last two years, actually, calculating just how quickly he could wrap up his mother’s business and get on the road to Kansas City before he got any more lost in the twilight zone of his old life.

He was halfway to his SUV and mentally halfway home to KC when Laura came running out of the shadows from between two cars and slammed into him.

“Whoa.” He caught her by the shoulders and steadied her in front of him to keep her from falling. “Where’s the fire?” Her bare arms were already dotted with goose bumps beneath his hands. His tone grew serious. “Where’s your coat?”

She glanced back at the reception hall and muttered a choice word. “I’ll get it later.” A cloud of warm breath obscured her face for a moment before she broke away and hurried down the line of vehicles. “Chloe’s in trouble.”

“Your friend?” Conor fell into step beside her.

“I have to help her. I knew she was in over her head with Vinnie. It was just a stupid, stupid plan.” She stopped beside a compact toaster of a car and sorted through the keys dangling from her fingers. Before she found the remote, she dropped her keys into the snow beneath the car. Laura dropped down in a billow of cotton-candy pink to search for them. Conor knelt to retrieve them for her. Not only had she run outside without a proper winter coat, but the only things she’d brought with her were the keys and the phone she clutched in her left hand. Where was her purse? Her driver’s license?

Conor’s fingers closed around the keys first and he stood. “You seem pretty upset, Squirt—”

“Stop calling me that. I’m a grown woman.” She snatched the keys from his hand and tried to unlock her car. She tapped the remote a half dozen times. “Why isn’t this working? Dad said to get the stupid battery replaced.”

Conor brushed his fingers along her arm, trying to calm her. “Hey, I’m not the enemy here. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Chloe had a fight with her boyfriend.”

“You mean her fight with Isaac?”

“Vincent. The one she dumped Isaac for.” She glanced a quick 360 around the parking lot. “Isaac’s car isn’t here. Maybe she called him, too. Why would she call me if she’d already talked to him? I don’t know... She sounded wrong. She wasn’t making sense. I have to get to her. I have a bad vibe about this.”

“How bad a vibe?”

“Bad. She said she needs my help.” Giving up on the remote, she pulled up a key to unlock the car the old-fashioned way.

Conor curled his hand around hers, stopping her from turning the key. “I don’t know if you’re in the right frame of mind to drive. Have you been drinking?”

“No!”

“Okay, okay. This just isn’t you. At least, the you I remember. You’re wiggin’ out a little bit.” She rolled her eyes up at him. That was a condemning look. Fine. You’re not a little girl anymore. I get that. “You’re that worried about her?”

“Yes. On the phone, when she finally called me back—she was out of breath. Like she’d been running or crying. Or she was hiding. Or hurt? She whispered everything. I kept asking her to repeat things.”

“Why would she be hiding?”

She hugged her arms around her waist, shivering. From nerves? Cold? A combination of both? “I’m not sure. I don’t think she was alone, and she didn’t want whoever was there to overhear. I could hear a man talking, but I couldn’t make out any words. Music was playing. She had it up loud.”

“What exactly did she say?”

“She said she was eloping with Vinnie—that she talked him into proposing to her. They’re driving to the airport. And then there was something about insurance and she’s counting on me to keep it safe and her mom could never find out, and she was hoping she wouldn’t have to use it.”

“Keep what safe?”

“I don’t know. She thanked me and said I was her best friend and that she had to go.”

“Go where?”

Laura turned the key in the lock. “Stop asking me questions like you’re a cop and I’m a suspect.”

“I am a cop.” Her cheeks were pale, her whole body trembling when she glared at him a second time. Conor shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it around her. Whether she was freezing or about to burst into tears didn’t matter. He clasped her shoulders and rubbed his hands up and down her arms, instilling what warmth and support he could through the jacket. “You’re upset. Enough that you’re scaring me a little bit. Talk to me.”