CHAPTER 1
Cheyenne
This is it.Tonight’s the night.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My waist-length blonde hair fell in waves over my shoulders. My blue eyes popped from the black liquid liner on my top lid and my thick lashes which I’d just applied another coat of jet-black mascara to. I popped my lips which were a daring shade of red that I’d never worn before. I rarely ever wore makeup but had decided to go for an Old Hollywood vibe and I hoped that I was pulling it off.
There was just one more detail that needed to be tweaked. I leaned forward before adjusting the neckline of my red strapless satin bridesmaid’s dress by tugging it up to afford me maximum cleavage. I wasn’t working with a lot, but what I did have was going to be on full display.
I just wished we could get this show on the road.
My brother’s wedding was scheduled to start nearly four hours ago but kept getting postponed because of a family emergency. On the way to the nuptials, my oldest brother Hank’s girlfriend Skylar’s five-year-old daughter, Luna, fell and broke her arm. The three of them were still at the emergency room. She was okay, thank God, but since he was the best man, the decision was made to push back the ceremony until she was released.
The four-hour delay hadn’t seemed to bother the bride-to-be, Reagan, in the slightest. She didn’t appear to be at all fazed by it. Whatever the opposite was of a bridezilla, that’s what Reagan was. She was cool, calm, and collected.
She hadn’t even had to touch up her makeup or hair. I, on the other hand, was not handling the delay as well. I was currently in the bathroom retouching my makeup for the fifth time.
I was a hot mess. But my reasons had nothing to do with the ceremony postponement. No, my anxiety was due to an anticipated personal milestone I’d decided I would be experiencing if all went to plan, which was why the lag of start time was affecting me so greatly.
After twenty-five years on this earth, I would be handing in my V-card. Tonight. And the man who I planned on giving that card to just so happened to be my brother Billy’s best friend, and was a groomsman, but I’d yet to see him today.
The bridesmaids and bride had been holed up in the master suite of my brother and soon-to-be SIL’s newly renovated farmhouse for the past few hours while the attendees were treated to a pre-wedding cocktail hour, or make that hours, in the backyard where the nuptials were set to take place. From what I’d heard the attendees were more than content as long as the free booze was flowing.
I had to admit I was going a little stir crazy, but thankfully, we did have alcohol. I downed the final drops of my mimosa from my champagne flute. My third mimosa of the day. Which for some people might be nothing, but for me could end in a black out. I was a lightweight.
That’s it. I’m cutting myself off.
I set the glass down on the counter and it made a much louder clink than I was expecting. A drip fell from the left side of my lips and I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Thankfully my lipstick was actually a stain, so it didn’t smudge or come off.
I had to admit, I looked good. Probably the best I’d ever looked.
“I’m going to tell him,” I declared boldly. “Tonight.”
Isabella—my childhood friend and fellow bridesmaid who also happened to be engaged to my younger brother Jimmy—froze mid lipstick application as her eyes shot to mine in the reflection of the mirror. “Tonight?”
“It’s perfect because everyone knows that it’s a rule that bridesmaids and groomsmen hookup,” I explained. “I’m going to get him on a technicality.”
The logic sounded airtight to my admittedly tipsy brain.
Isabella set the tube of berry gloss down on the marble countertop and turned to me. Speaking in a quiet voice, I assumed so that the rest of the wedding party who were hanging out in the bedroom couldn’t hear, she whispered, “I don’t think that losing your virginity to a person should happen on a technicality.”
I saw her point, but the truth was, I’d given myself a deadline, and that deadline was nearly up. I needed to take the bull by the horns, or I guess in this case by the penis.
I’d promised myself, years ago, that I would not be a virgin when I turned twenty-six and my birthday was coming up. So, after my second mimosa, genius had struck. It was an unspoken rule that one of the bridesmaids hooked up with the best man and I’d called dibs, not that I’d had a ton of competition considering the only single bridesmaid was not interested because she’d already “been there and done that”.
Nadia, another bridesmaid, and Cash had hooked up in high school, which wasn’t all that shocking. This was a small town and if the stories I’d heard were true, she was one of many flings he’d had. Cash “Casanova” Malone was known for being quite the ladies’ man. But people can change.
Case in point. Today my brother Billy was getting married. His nickname had been “Panty Dropper”. But his leopard spots changed the moment he laid eyes on Reagan, my soon-to-be sister-in-law. He was a one-woman man now. I don’t even think other women existed in his world. All Billy saw was Reagan.
Although the trajectory of Cash and mine’s relationship hadn’t been as straight a line, I was hoping that the end result would be the same for us. That he would finally look at me as more than just his best friend’s little sister and realize that we were perfect for each other.
There was a knock at the bedroom door and I figured I might as well make myself useful. Plus, it was an excuse to get away from Isabella and her annoying voice of reason. Who needed that? Not this girl.
“I’ll get it!” I called out, perhaps a tinge too loudly.
As I walked to the door a burp bubbled up in my throat. It was just about to escape when I opened the door and swallowed it back down after seeing who was standing on the other side of it.
Cash Malone. The man to whom I would be making an indecent proposal, minus the million dollars, that is.