You May Now Kiss the Bridesmaid

By Melinda Curtis

What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas.

He’s there to stop a wedding.

Maxwell Bonander’s sister has been engaged six times in the past five years without any marriages. Tiff has the worst taste in men. So when she announces she’s marrying a man after only knowing him two days, Max knows he’s got to stop the ceremony.

She’s there as a bridesmaid.

Lorelei Spencer thinks Tiff has finally found the right man. When Tiff asks Lorelei to keep Max occupied, she takes her job seriously. Too seriously.

They never expected to wake up married. Can this unlikely couple unravel what happened in Vegas? And when they uncover the truth, will they really want an annulment?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094433271

Melinda Curtis

Melinda grew up on an isolated sheep ranch, where mountain lions had been seen and yet she roamed unaccompanied. Being a rather optimistic, clueless of danger, sort she took to playing "what if" games that led her to become an author.  She spends days trying to figure out new ways to say "He made her heart pound."  That might sound boring, but the challenge keeps her mentally ahead of her 3 kids and college sweetheart husband.

Book preview

Chapter 1

No one was answering the phone in the hotel room next door.

Lying on her stomach, Lorelei Spencer awoke from a deep sleep with a pillow over her head. She stuffed it tighter against her ears, but she could still hear the ringing, over and over, until she yelled, For the love of Mike! Answer the phone!

There was a noise. Movement. And then a man’s rumbling voice. Hello.

Lorelei’s fingers curled into the pillow. That ‘hello’ didn’t sound as if it came from the next room.

I was sleeping. A masculine voice. A deep voice. A voice she recognized.

Lorelei sucked in too much air. Thank heavens she didn’t smell woodsy aftershave or minty gum. All she smelled was bleach and clean linen, which meant it couldn’t be him. She was on a business trip to Las Vegas for a candy convention. He didn’t go to candy conventions.

She must be dreaming. Or maybe the hotel walls were thin. Or there was a connecting door. Or she’d developed superhuman hearing, like a ninja.

Why are you asking me, Tiff? Maxwell Bonander’s steely voice skated down Lorelei’s spine on cold blades.

She sealed the pillow over the back of her head, hoping for ninja invisibility along with superhuman hearing. He couldn’t be on her side of the wall. He just couldn’t. It was just that he sounded so close.

From a distance, Max was hot–dark hair, chiseled cheekbones, tall enough that a woman could wear heels without threatening his masculinity. On paper, Max was even hotter–one of the heirs to the Bon-Bon Chocolate empire, one of New York’s most eligible bachelors, owner of a brownstone near Central Park and a luxury home in the Florida Keys. But up close, Max was cold–a scowling, brooding, high maintenance pain-in-the-butt.

"Tiff…Tiff…Tiff!" Max roared.

The bed shifted.

The bed? Her bed?

Lorelei didn’t dare move, didn’t dare take the pillow off her head, didn’t dare think this was anything but a dream. Maxwell Bonander was not the kind of man she found in her bed in the morning.

Truthfully, she’d never found anyone in her bed in the morning. Nerds tended to have boring social lives.

I haven’t seen Lorelei since Candy-Con. Max’s annoyance hacked his words into hard rough bits. Don’t call back. A cell phone clicked. The bed shifted again.

Her bed.

Lorelei’s veins flushed hot.

And not the powerful, sexy kind of hot. No. This was the mortifying, stupid-stupid-stupid kind of hot.

There was no mistaking it now. Maxwell Bonander was here–in Vegas, in her hotel room, in her bed. There were women in New York who’d love to wake up with a sexy, powerful heir with a lifetime supply of chocolate. Not Lorelei. She was no match for Max in or out of bed; and she was an innovation food scientist who created new chocolate, so she had her own supply of confection. But…

Max was in her bed.

Lorelei drew a deep breath and held it, searching for calm. She needed a hypothesis as to how he’d gotten into her hotel room and why they shared the same sheets. Being a scientist, Lorelei found peace in facts and predictability. But…

Max was in her bed.

Calm went out the window, along with the air in her lungs.

Lorelei needed to stop being a scientist and focus on being a woman. She needed to ninja her way outta here before Max realized whatever had happened, had happened.

Good heavens. Forget that she’d had a crush on Max since she had skinned knees and pigtails. She hoped nothing had happened, because for the past decade Max barely seemed to like her.

Lorelei lifted the pillow and opened her eyes.

Jet black hair with a corporate cut. Broad back. Tan shoulders. A whiff of woodsy cologne.

Her hot flush turned into a blood-pounding, over-heated, immobilizing overload. Lorelei moved her feet toward the edge of the bed–quietly, stealthily, ninja-style.

I don’t know who you are, Max said without moving. But you have five minutes to get out of here.

Lorelei fell off the bed so fast she landed on the floor with a tailbone stinging, "Ooomph."

There was no plush padding beneath the carpet. No fully-stocked mini bar or hi-def flat screen TV. She wasn’t at her convention center hotel. Light filtered through faded curtains. She was in a cheap, roadside inn and–she looked down–she was in her underwear! Her plain, shouldn’t-be-in-bed-with-a-man, practical white bra and panties.

With a squeak of horror, Lorelei scrambled to her feet, frantically looking for her clothes.

Max released a long-suffering sigh.

She stilled, like a mouse caught in the kitchen by a midnight snacker, hoping not to be seen.

Growing up downstairs from Max in uptown New York, she’d been the recipient of his sigh too many times, the most painful of which had been at her debutante ball. Bolstered by liquid courage, she’d dive bombed his lips and then ran for the exit.

She needed to run now, but–

Drat. Her clothes were nowhere to be seen.

And yet, she wasn’t without options. There was something white and fluffy in a heap on the floor, probably the bedspread. She snatched it up, hoping her clothes and purse were in the bathroom.

Four minutes, Max said in the same detached tone he used in the boardroom when she presented her annual budget plan and he made cuts. If Max had his way, the only thing she’d experiment with was a combo platter in the company cafeteria. Four minutes. And then I’m calling security.

Lorelei shook out the bedspread and tried to wrap it around her. Only it wouldn’t hang straight, because–

Her overheated body chilled. This wasn’t going to work.

It wasn’t a bedspread.

It was a wedding dress.

***

Maxwell Bonander didn’t do one-nighters.

Which was why waking up in Vegas with a woman in his hotel room–in his bed–when he couldn’t remember the particulars, was not only a personal low, but a disgrace to the Bonander name. He hoped she’d leave without him seeing her face.

But the woman was gasping and rustling clothing louder than a dumpster-diver in a Fifth Avenue alley. The hope that she’d leave anonymously faded.

Max sat up, immediately blinded by a room-spinning head rush.

Don’t look! she shrieked, clutching a puff of white in front of her.

Was that…a wedding dress?

I hijacked a bride?

Max blinked and squinted, trying to see clearer. He wasn’t the home-wrecking type.

Oh, no. Those two high-pitched notes indicated she had a slim hold on her composure. Oh, no-no-no. She held up her left hand.

Max’s vision would’ve cleared if not for the nearly blinding size of the rock on her finger.

I hijacked a married woman?

He rubbed a hand over his face, wiping away the last of his vertigo and preparing to go into damage control mode.

There’s a ring on my finger. She edged sideways toward the bathroom, trying to hide behind a spiral of white that bounced and creaked as if it had metal springs. This is not happening.

Her voice. It tugged at his memory. Along with all that lab coat white skin.

He peered at the jumble of warm blond hair with dark roots around her head. Lorelei?

She groaned. Let’s pretend you didn’t recognize me. Let’s pretend we didn’t get married. Let’s pretend there’s a rational explanation for this, because you don’t even like me. She wrestled the hoop skirt into the bathroom, slammed the door, and locked it. Where are my clothes? My purse? My sanity?

Calm down. There’s a perfectly logical explanation for this. Lorelei was like a sister to him–the slightly distracted, lost in thought sister who needed a keeper. He’d protested hiring her for those same reasons. A woman who regularly forgot where she left her keys had no right handling a multi-million dollar departmental budget.

"And