He cleared his throat hastily and took another drink. “If you want to keep working this morning, you won’t call me that again.”
She smirked and half turned so he could see her better, camera still safely raised in front of her face. “Don’t like it?”
“That wasn’t what I meant. At all.”
She should know better than to play with the fire that was Hunter. “Good-friggin-night,” she muttered, fiddling with her camera strap.
He hummed a quiet laugh of pride. “How many Mississippis?”
“I will be counting Mississippis all day, you jerk,” she scolded, tossing her hair and taking secret pleasure in the way it bounced. “Stop distracting me and go be part of the wedding party. You have to be in some of these.”
“So do you.”
She gave a small shake of her head. “Later, when the rest of the family not in the party come in. Go.”
“You’re cranky in the mornings,” he muttered.
She shrugged one shoulder, focusing back on the table in front of her. “Only when I can’t sleep. That’s on you.”
He said something softly under his breath and cleared his throat. “If I live through this day…”
“We’ll both be grateful,” she finished firmly. “Go away.”
He turned and discreetly stroked her waist as he set down his glass and moved past her to another table, effectively cutting off her train of thought and having quite the emphatic last word. She moved to the other side of the room as quickly as she could without making a scene, but it was no use. His eyes followed her and eventually, she migrated back in that direction.
Once they were all officially welcomed by Jenna and Tom, with a sweet toast from Tom’s father, the food was brought out and set up buffet style. Mal was officially supposed to be done with her photographer duties, so she handed her camera off to Dan and took her place at the table she’d been assigned, with some distant cousins she only had faint recollections of, but they seemed fairly normal.
When it was her table’s turn, she went up to the buffet table again, helping herself to the food as if it were perfectly normal for her to be in a designer dress with rich people, eating fancy breakfast food at a wedding at which she was both working and attending.
She was at the fruit salad bowl, scooping some onto her plate, when she felt someone move behind her, and she shifted closer to the table to get out of their way, only for them to follow. A hand rested on her hip briefly.
“Eat up,” Hunter murmured as he slowly passed, his voice close to her ear. “You’ll need it.”
She had no idea how he made generic, honest advice about breakfast sound like an invitation to bed, but she smiled and tried not to make a scene.
“Thanks,” she murmured back as he moved on, for all the world looking as though he really did need another napkin from the end of the table and nothing else.
She shook her head, still smiling.
As he’d said, if they lived through this day…
The rest of the day was a mad, frantic mess of things, but Hunter couldn’t mind that—not when his best friend was happy and getting married, and not when the woman he loved was everywhere he was today.
Someone, probably Caroline, had forced Mal to change into a different dress for the wedding, and he liked it just as much as the dress she wore at breakfast. He didn’t know how she was working in it, with the sensual wrapping and ruching and folds of the champagne bodice that disappeared into a fitted black skirt, let alone the heels that made her legs seem endless. But working she was, and incredibly well.
He had to flick a couple of the guys on the ears as they gawked and made comments about her, but he couldn’t say he blamed them. Despite looking like the high-class wedding guest she was, she ordered them around with the authority and efficiency of a drill sergeant, somehow looking calm and collected and just as fresh as if she’d only just arrived. She was flawless, his Mal, and he couldn’t mind that others took notice of that, not that she heard any of it. She was in her element and, as such, was completely absorbed by it.
She had taken pictures of the wedding party separately, so as not to throw the world on its ear by having the bride and groom see each other before the wedding. It was an odd arrangement, but seeing as how the wedding was in the afternoon and there wasn’t time for all of the pictures between wedding and reception, it would have to do. Guys had gone first, considering the girls would take more time getting ready.
Hunter tried to steal a moment with her, but all he managed was to brush by her again, and for her to say something about how the cream suit looked on him. The specifics were lost on him at the moment, as she was looking at him, but whatever she’d said had made him count Mississippis, and she’d chuckled at that.
He had been unsure initially about the cream suits, considering Tom would be in a gray tux, but now that he saw them all together, with Tom’s cream vest and the matching berry-colored ties and boutonnieres, he could safely say that it worked. More than that, it was the least ridiculous monkey suit he’d ever had to wear, and that was a relief.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, really, considering it was Tom. He had always been a class act, as evidenced by his Stag Night the night before, which was probably one of the most relaxed events Hunter had ever attended—and certainly the first one where he’d been in bed before three in the morning.
His fully functioning brain today was grateful.
Mal quirked a brow at him from where she sat, officially among the wedding attendees now, with Taryn and Dan floating around as discreetly as possible. He mentally shook himself and returned his attention back to the ceremony currently taking place in front of him. Or, more specifically, in the gazebo to his right.