CHAPTER 2
Cash
Music, dancing, and laughter filled the reception tent as I stood in the corner next to the bar nursing a beer. I’d never imagined that my best friend would get married, with the nickname Panty Dropper I doubted many people had seen this coming. But if I had, I would have imagined I’d be having the time of my life celebrating his day instead of keeping to myself and counting the minutes until it was over.
It was an amazing party and I wasn’t being anti-social and sulking to be a dick. I was keeping my distance and actively working not to stare in the direction of the forbidden fruit aka Cheyenne Comfort. That was easier said than done.
She drew my attention like a magnet and I felt powerless against it. When I’d gone up to the room to let Reagan know that Hank was on the way and Cheyenne opened the door looking like a Hollywood starlet from the fifties, she not only took my breath away, she rendered me temporarily mute.
Her red dress clung to her slender curves like a second skin. Her long, silky hair framed her round face. Her red lips called to me like a siren in the sea.
It wasn’t just her flawless beauty that drew me like a moth to a flame. It was the little things that made her uniquely her that I couldn’t resist.
It was the way her lips would pull up in a tiny grin before they’d flatten again and then spread in a wide smile, which I’d coined her smile tick. Like she wanted to hide the fact that she was going to smile. It was so damn adorable.
It was the way that she listened, really listened, to each and every person she spoke to making them feel like the most important person in the world.
It was the way she wore her heart on her sleeve exposing her raw vulnerability.
It was the effortless grace that she exuded that set her apart from every other woman I’d ever met.
There’d always been something special about Cheyenne Comfort. She’d always possessed an unquantifiable magic about her.
My mom and Cheyenne’s mom had been best friends before Mrs. Comfort died in a car accident. I remember that my mom used to say, “Sabrina Comfort is sprinkled with fairy dust that makes people fall in love with her.” If that was the case, then Cheyenne had inherited her mom’s magic. It made perfect sense because I’d been in love with her for as long as I could remember.
Cheyenne wasn’t like any other girl I knew. Even though she was two years younger than me and three years younger than her brother Billy, she used to tag along with us everywhere we went. Her mama even nicknamed her Shadow because everywhere Billy was, she was right behind him. And since I was always with Billy, it meant that she was always with me.
She rode dirt bikes, played in our fort, went fishing and could skip a rock better than Billy and me. She even played Pokémon with us, no girl was ever interested in Pokémon.
It wasn’t just her tomboy ways that I had been captivated by even as a kid. It was her kind and loving nature. She used to save bees when they fell in the pond—even though she was terrified of them—by cupping her hand and tossing them onto dry ground. She would move snails off the sidewalk, so people didn’t step on them. She would set food and water out for stray cats every day.
All of that, and she was funny. She could do impressions of cartoon characters like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. One time she had me laughing so hard, the Hawaiian Punch I was drinking came out of my nose.
She was a unicorn. A beautiful, smart, funny girl. Our third Musketeer always by our side. Then one day she was gone. Her mom died and overnight everything changed. She went to live with her grandparents and I didn’t see her for twenty years.
Billy never talked about her after she left. I wanted to ask so many times if he’d heard from her, but I didn’t want to cause him pain in case he hadn’t. I may not have talked about her, but I thought about her all the time.
Then, almost a year ago, she moved back to Firefly. When I saw her again it was like no time had passed at all, at least where my heart was concerned. It still belonged to her.
“Hey man, can you hold down the fort?” Billy stepped up beside me and his hand slapped on my shoulder. “Hank called a family meeting.”
Comfort family meetings were something that I’d been on the outside looking in at since I was a kid. I knew the rules, though. There were two of them. One: if a family meeting was called, it was mandatory attendance. Two: whoever called the meeting was responsible to bring the food.
“A meeting now?” I would have thought that wedding days were exempt but apparently not. “Aren’t you about to leave to go to the airport?”
He and Reagan were flying to the Bahamas for their honeymoon.
Billy nodded. “Yep. I guess it couldn’t wait till we got back. Hank called it. We’re gonna head up to the house. Make sure that everyone behaves themselves.”
“Done.” I nodded.
“Thanks, man.” His fingers tightened in a squeeze before he walked away.
Billy’s ask might seem easy, but it was actually a big one.
Our strategy to keep the guests happy before we made it to the I dos was to serve drinks while we waited on Hank to arrive. It had worked like a charm, but now that it was evening and the booze had been flowing all day, there were definitely some people that had reached their limits.
Luckily, I had plenty of experience dealing with drunks and cutting people off since I managed Southern Comfort, the bar that Billy and his siblings owned.