Bad Bridesmaid (Billionaire's Club Book 11) by Elise Faber (important books to read txt) 📕

But she wasn’t going there. Couldn’t—

Me thinks you doth protest too much.

Ugh!

Ignoring her mental quarreling, she straightened her shoulders and lifted a brow. “Not sure why that sounds like an order.”

He grinned. “Probably because it is one.”

Glaring, though she couldn’t deny that part of her was amused, she hung her purse on the hook she’d installed by the door for just that purpose, stepped out of her shoes, and tucked them neatly on the rack in the hall. Organization was her life’s blood—well, organization along with Twilight, but she wasn’t about to admit that guilty pleasure to the world.

It was only bearable that Cora, Kate, and Kelsey knew her innermost secret because she knew her friends’ own guilty pleasures, too—unicorns, Hermione Granger, and being freakishly smart, so much so that she collected post-graduate degrees for fun, respectively. Still, organization was a perfectly acceptable guilty pleasure for a woman of her age (even though she was still Team Edward the whole way), and it was easier to focus on hooks and folders and perfectly dusted shelves than on blood-sucking, teenage love, and immortal life.

Though, just thinking about it, and she was jonesing for a reread.

“Want another order?” he asked. “I’m sure I can rustle one up. Don’t walk alone in the dark. Always check the back seat of your car before you get in.”

She’d been so focused on her Twilight and organizational haze that she’d forgotten they were having a conversation, particularly a conversation about orders.

She rolled her eyes. “First, those are all examples of the patriarchal bullshit in our society. Women should be able to walk safely any time of day or night and not have to worry about a man accosting them. Or lying in wait in their car. Along that vein, men should also be taught to respect women and their autonomy, and it’s such horseshit that women are always told to walk in groups and not to leave their drinks unattended and—”

“You’re right,” he said. “It is bullshit.”

Her lips parted on an exhale.

“Of course it’s total bullshit that those are things you have to consider—or are told to consider as a woman.” A beat, his hazel eyes dimming. “But unfortunately, just because we think that things should be different, doesn’t mean they are.”

He had a point there.

She still didn’t have to like it. “Maybe,” she muttered. “But I’m still a grown woman, and there’s not a chance in hell that I’ll obey any orders you give, just because you give them.”

His brows pulled together, those hazel eyes flashing, becoming more brown than green. “You’d risk your life to prove a point?”

“Of course not,” she said. “But I’m an adult who makes her own choices.”

End of story.

He was still, his shoulders stiff, his jaw clenched, but then abruptly that whole demeanor faded, and he relaxed, mouth turned up at the corner. “Are we having our first fight?”

“More like tenth,” she muttered, moving to the fridge. “I suppose you’re staying for dinner.” A beat as she glanced back at him. “As fr—”

“Friends,” he finished for her. Then smiled again. “So long as you’re good to cook for me again.”

She’d already begun pulling out ingredients for a salad. “Is this your strategy when you’re home? Bum food off whatever stranger will take you in?”

“When the stranger is a beautiful woman who’s not actually a stranger, and who just happens to be an excellent cook, great company, and sexy as hell?” He grinned. “Yup.”

“Careful,” she warned.

“I’m not lying.”

“Just spinning bullshit.”

“Not at this moment,” he said. “That may affect my ability to get some of your delicious food.”

“Maybe I’ll use the opportunity to poison you.”

He snorted. “I have no allergies.”

“Allergies aren’t poison.”

“Conveniently, I have spent many years building up my resistance to all types of poison.”

“A la Princess Bride?”

“Exactly.”

She grinned, despite herself. “Well, you have good taste because it’s my second favorite movie.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Only second favorite?”

Heidi giggled.

“At any rate, I’ll take it because you should see this.” It was said with such flourish that she glanced up from where she was chopping veggies to watch him pull out a DVD from the bag he carried. It was a copy of Princess Bride. “We’re soul mates.”

She giggled. “You’re ridiculous.”

“No,” he deadpanned. “I’m Brad Huntington. And you’ve crushed my ego. Prepare to . . .” He screwed up his face. “Dine?”

More giggles bubbled up in her chest. “I stand by my previous statement. Ridiculous.”

“What can I say? I nerd out about Rob Reiner films. Well, him and Billy Crystal.”

“Hmm.”

He crossed over to her, leaned a hip to the counter. “Hmm, what?”

“Hmm as in, okay, maybe we can be friends,” she said.

He tilted his head to the side, studying her. “Because I’m a nerd?”

“Because the only things I respect are nerds. Case in point”—she pointed at her chest—“nerd.”

A shrug. “Well, I’ll take my victory in any avenue possible.”

“Whatever makes you feel better.” She turned back to the fridge and grabbed some chicken, belatedly realizing that a man as big as Brad probably wouldn’t be filled up by a salad. “What else did you bring?”

“Besides the most glorious movie of all time, you mean?” he asked.

“The second most glorious movie,” she countered. “And yes.”

He reached into the bag and pulled out a pint of ice cream. “I heard somewhere once that women like chocolate . . . and ice cream.”

“Except me.” She shook her head. “I can’t stand sweet things.” Never mind that she’d pounded three pieces of the replacement cake at Kate’s wedding the weekend before—both because she had missed the dinner portion of festivities with her cake shenanigans and attempts at saving it, and because . . . she had a sweet tooth.

A major sweet tooth.

His face fell, and immediately she felt guilty that her joke didn’t land.

“I’m kidding,” she quickly said. “Given the chance, I would make love to that ice cream all night long.”

Face clearing, he said, “And here I am, friend-zoned, so I can’t partake in the festivities.” He stashed the ice cream in the freezer. “I’ll just go