Bad Idea Read online

  He got to his fat little legs and yipped.

  “Shhh,” I said, looking around frantically, waving my hand.

  He looked at my hand, then started trotting toward me.

  “Hey, is that a dog?” shouted a wait staff member behind me.

  The puppy made a u-turn and bolted, disappearing under the tablecloths, deep into the room set with fifty tables.

  I got to my feet. “Well, it was a dog.”

  “It still is.” He gave me a stern look. “Dogs aren’t allowed in the Hotel de Grace.”

  “The Humane Society was here with fifteen cages of them earlier.”

  “That’s different. They can’t be loose. Hotel rules.”

  “I don’t think he cares about hotel rules.”

  He scowled at me. “You better get him out of here.”

  I scowled back. “Where is he supposed to go? It’s going to storm soon.”

  His reply was unforgiving. “Get him out,” he repeated, and turned to the kitchen.

  I looked under a few tables, but the furball was gone. Then my phone buzzed, rattling from inside the almost-empty box of Pez-ish dispensers.

  I jumped, then reached inside and looked at the number, and smiled.

  Lexie. My best friend. My little troublemaker.

  We’d spent the last five Christmas’s together, me and Lexie. But this year, I was here, and she’d been traveling for the whole month prior, so we agreed to do our gift exchange remotely. I’d set my gift under her tree before I left, and carried hers here.

  “Unboxing time gf,” her message said. “Put me on video.”

  I pulled out a chair and set the phone on the top of someone’s wine glass and put us on video.

  “I can’t open yours now, Lex,” I said as soon as her pixie-like face appeared on the screen, leaning forward on her elbows, smiling and ready for anything.

  Her face fell. She sat up. For a second all I could see was her breasts in a tank top. She shifted the screen. “What?”

  “The wedding’s in about an hour, and I don’t have your gift here. Remember I said we should unwrap tomorrow? On Christmas?”

  “Oh yeah.” She considered me a second, then said suspiciously, “If the wedding’s in an hour, what are you doing there?” Her eyes scanned the wedge of darkened room the screen allowed her to see. “Alone.”

  “Distributing my dispensers to the masses.”

  “I love those things,” she said fondly, then added sternly, “You’re always alone, Cass.”

  “I’m not alone. There are five thousand pounds of garland here and a lot of wait staff.”

  “Why aren’t you with the other girls?” she demanded in a motherly, angry tone.

  I didn’t want to have the ‘unbelonging’ conversation again, so I just waved my hand. “Lex, I don’t know them and they don’t know me and…I just….”

  Her mouth went into a straight line.

  “I’m happier here with the dispensers.”

  She slumped with a theatrical sigh and slid my gift across the table, onto the screen. She leaned in close and gave a mischievous grin, then put her mouth right up against the screen.

  “What is it?” she shouted.

  I laughed and sat back. “Okay, fine, open it. Fast.”

  She ripped at the wrappings, flinging silvery-grey paper into the air, the same paper I’d used on Ben and Amber’s crystal wedding gift, but in this case, the decorous covering was a ruse. Better to hide the decadence within.

  Lexie was my most open-minded and wild child friend, flinging strips of torn paper and ribbons into the air, like an impish Tasmanian devil. I needed more Lexie in my life.

  I was not a troublemaker. I was not a wild child. I was careful and thought a lot about things that probably didn’t need thinking about. Which is why I was so excited about the gift I’d bought her. Broke my own mold, thinking of what Lexie would want: a gorgeous, work of art, glass dildo.

  “Hurry up,” I said, leaning forward.

  “Jeez, I am hurrying. This is like a Russian doll.” She tugged at paper and tissue. “It’s really heavy.”

  I grinned. “I know.”

  She spread the paper open and peered inside, then reached in and drew out…a pair of crystal toasting flutes.

  “Wow,” she said sitting back, clearly stunned. “Seriously, Cass, these look…really expensive. I think you went over our limit.”

  I stared at the champagne glasses. My heart started a slow, cold slide to my belly. If these were the champagne flutes…that meant I’d given the work of art dildo to…Amber.

  There was a dildo in the gift room.

  “Oh shit,” I whispered.

  “Cass?” Lexie said. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  I shot to my feet. “I gotta go.” I turned and skidded on my heels out of the banquet hall.

  Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.

  This is what happened when you played with sex toys.

  5

  I RACED TO THE GIFT ROOM and ducked inside.

  It was dim. Sounds of voices could be heard making their way down the huge hallway to the tented garden outside for the wedding.

  I slunk in, keeping the lights off, and crept toward the tables against the walls. Boxes and bags and envelopes festooned every one.

  I prowled alongside them, eyeing the packages in the angle of light beaming in from the hallway, looking for one the approximate length of a dildo box. Ninety percent of the gifts were wrapped in the stupid silver-grey paper.

  Shit shit shit.

  I started grabbing envelopes, reading each one, then setting it down and hurrying to the next, looking for my wide, looping handwriting.

  Nothing.

  Oh please God, it had to be here. Had Amber’s mother started collecting them already? She was supposed to get them before the ceremony began, then again after the reception got rolling. I knew Ben and Amber were going to open the gifts in the morning with her, before they jetted off to Bermuda.

  If Amber’s mom flipped open a box and took out a dildo…

  A jolt of fear went through me, like when you look back and see a cop car pull out behind you.

  I sped up my search efforts, scrambling through the gifts now, almost tossing the rejects over my shoulder, when I saw my box, pushed to the back of the farthest table.

  Relief skipped through me as I reached for it like the ship was sinking and that dildo was the last life vest.

  I dragged it off the table, clutched it to my chest, and turned to the door, my mind racing.

  I’d send Ben and Amber a note. Explain the gift got delayed in shipping, and they’d never know how close Amber’s mom came to dragging a glass dildo out of a wedding box.

  I tiptoed to the glowing doorway. A silhouetted figure appeared in its opening.

  “What are you doing?” said a low male voice.

  I almost screamed and clutched the box full of dildo to my chest.

  It was Trey.

  Oh shit.

  He was wearing a suit. A simple one, not all perfected by a tailor who knelt at your feet, but he wore it like a thousand bucks.

  The suit was full-on black, like the pupil inside the dark blue of his eyes, masking yet somehow displaying his broad shoulders and the long line of his powerful legs. He’d showered and shaved until his facial hair was tamed scruff, cut along the edges with sharp, defined lines, leading my gaze helplessly down to the strong column of his throat.

  His throat looked amazing.

  “Trey,” I exhaled.

  “Cassidy,” he said back.

  I took a step away from his startling male beauty. “You scared me half to death.”

  His gaze traveled across my face. “Looks like.”

  “What are you doing here?” I said almost accusingly.

  A small smile touched his mouth and his gaze dropped to the package in my arms. “What you got there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Looks like something.”

  “It
’s nothing,” I assured him.

  “Looks like a present.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Not a present.” Idiot.

  A dark eyebrow curved up. “Wow. That’s a funny looking not-present, all wrapped up with a bow.”

  “It’s not a bow, it’s a seven dollar ribbon, and it’s…mine.”

  “Um-hm.”

  I think I started sweating. “Well,” I said in a chirpy, nothing-to-see-here tone of voice. “I better get going. Wedding’s about to start—”

  “Can you prove that’s yours?”

  I pictured the curving dildo inside and held it tighter. “What are you, the wedding police?” I snapped.

  That only made the smile move to the other side of his mouth, which only made him more handsome.

  “Yep,” he said, a low, lazy drawl.

  I blinked. “What?”

  “I’m the present police. Ben asked me to keep an eye on the gifts.”

  “Why did he do that?” I said a little wildly. “Like someone’s going to steal gifts…”

  We both looked down at the package in my arms.

  “I swear to God, Trey, it’s mine.”

  “Let me see the tag.”

  “You think I’m stealing this?” I shook it. The heavy glass rumbled inside and I stopped.

  “Not really,” he said

  I sagged a little and gave him a smile. “Good. Because I’m not.”

  He pushed off the doorjamb and stepped inside the room.

  Now he was closer. A closer Trey was not a better Trey. He was a more potent Trey. A hotter Trey, backlit by the lights in the hallway outside.

  “I’m just dropping mine off.” He lifted the duffle bag he still held in his hand and drew out a gift not wrapped in the prescribed silvery-grey paper—it was brown paper, with fluttery ribbons of all colors.

  “Amber’s not going to be happy to see that,” I informed him darkly.

  “Yes she is.” So cocky.

  So hot.

  “Trust me,” I told him. “All that brown will not make her happy.”

  “It hides the riches within.” Amusement deepened his voice as he came the final step, standing so close his hard body was barely an inch away, and I became certain he was going to…do something.

  To me.

  Heat unfurled in trembly ribbons down the length of my body, sort of like the curling ribbons atop his gift, which were shuddering slightly as he reached around me and set the package on the table.

  Oh, right. He was setting it on the table. Idiot. Of course. He wasn’t going to do something.

  Relief washed through me in cold little rivers. Yep, that was relief. Boy was I relieved Trey Dante wasn’t going to do something.

  To me.

  “He did ask me to keep an eye on the room, though.” Trey’s dark blue gaze swept the dim room. “Guess Ben’s so important now he needs someone to watch over the gifts.”

  I rolled my eyes and in the dimness, saw him smile. “In his defense, I will say there are thousands of dollars of stuff in here.”

  He eyed the package clutched in my arms like a football. “Ma’am, is that your gift?”

  I blushed. His eyebrows rose a little. “It was an accident,” I blurted.

  “You didn’t mean to give them a present?”

  “Not this one.”

  “Well now,” he said in that slow drawl, sending heat curling down the rest of my body, especially my pussy, which was not where you wanted to be feeling heat with Trey Dante. Not if you wanted to leave with your heart intact. He’d ruined girls with a look. “That sounds exciting.”

  Trey saying ‘exciting’ was even worse.

  “If you saw what was in here, you would not call it exciting,” I told him grimly.

  He leaned a shoulder against the wall, which looked like a relaxed stance, but he was a pretty big guy, and he was definitely blocking my path to the doorway, which didn’t seem like a positive development.

  A smile touched his mouth. “I was totally joking, Cass, but now I have to know what’s in there.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Oh, it’s something.”

  “Nothing!” I said, too loudly. His eyebrows went up a little more, then his gaze skipped across my face.

  “Hm. You’re flushed.”

  “No I’m not. That’s a blush.”

  “Interesting. Why are you blushing?” Seriously, like I said, trouble. With eyes that could make your knees melt or drill in like a power tool, leaving you breathless for a totally different reason. He had multi-talented eyes. “You look pretty flustered there, Cass.”

  “No, really…” I started to push past him, then stopped. He hadn’t made a move, but I felt like he touched me as my body passed by his, and I simply…stopped moving. Stayed near. “It’s nothing. I wrapped the wrong present, and…”

  “And?”

  “And Amber would have a heart attack on the spot if I gave her this.” I held the box up.

  “Uh oh. Sounds dangerous.” His dark eyes fell to it. “Is it a gun?”

  “God no.”

  “A subscription to Penthouse?”

  I laughed.

  “A dildo?”

  The laugh froze, then burst from my lungs in an outraged gasp. “No!” I said in a loud voice, holding it tighter. “That’s r-ridiculous. I mean, who would…” I was having a hard time forming the words. “Who would give a dildo as a wedding present?”

  A smile crooked up a corner of his mouth. “I think you did.”

  “What are you, some kind of detective?” I snapped.

  “Yep.”

  My body got way too hot, messing up my thought processes. I dropped my head and stared at the floor and said miserably, “A two hundred dollar one.”

  He laughed again, softer this time. “Let me see.”

  I dragged my gaze up. “You want to see my dildo?” I almost choked. “I mean the dildo.”

  He was grinning now. “Yeah. Let me see The Dildo.”

  “Well, it’s all wrapped up and all…”

  “Hm, delaying tactics. Not an accomplished liar, are you?”

  “I am an excellent liar,” I lied. “And I’m not lying. It is wrapped up.”

  He grinned. “You’re not giving it to them, so what’s it matter?”

  I scowled. “Maybe I’m giving it to someone else.”

  Our eyes met. “Let me see it, Cass.”

  Oh boy, now the heat was everywhere. Hot, shivery cords of it. I felt confused and overcome. My head wasn’t working right.

  Watching me, Trey reached out and hooked a thick finger into the taped end and gave a little tug.

  He may as well have unhooked my bra strap. My head tipped back and a tiny but uncontrollable gasp came from somewhere inside me. Also, my nipples got hard.

  I was pretty sure he knew it, too. Knew what he was doing to my breath and my nipples. He never looked away from me as he gave another hard tug.

  My body jerked.

  Well this couldn’t keep up.

  In a bit of a fury, I ripped the paper off and flung it aside, tore out a box which was not taped up anymore because I’d sort of looked at it—you have to at least look at a two hundred dollar dildo, don’t you?— then I clutched it in my hand and raised it like a Stanley Cup trophy.

  “See?”

  It gleamed, a heavy, glass-slippery, pale sea blue dildo, curving proudly in the air, a smaller sea blue appendage curving up the back like a little tail. For your ass, I presumed, having never used one, but anatomically, that’s where I figured it would go.

  He stared at it, and oh boy did his smile get big.

  I was panting. Why was I panting?

  “Let me see that thing,” he said, pushing off the wall.

  I backed up a step. “No. It’s not for viewing purposes.”

  He laughed again and reached for it.

  I was helpless to stop him. For a second, his fingers skimmed the edge of mine and I released it abruptly.

  He loo
ked it over in silence, his hard, calloused hand gripping the curving glass, tanned against the sea blue.

  Well darn, that looked good.

  I shook myself.

  His gaze slid to mine. “You were giving this to Amber?”

  “No! Like I said, it was an accident. I meant it for—” I shut my mouth. I didn’t want to out Lexie, after all. Not that she would care.

  “For who?”

  “Me,” I squeaked.

  He came a step closer. “You wrapped it up for yourself?”

  “I like presents.” I felt him coming nearer like sunshine, hot and liable to burn. “I meant to give them toasting flutes.”

  He laughed again, a low rumble, and took the final step to arrive in front of my body.

  “So, Cass, you got this for yourself?”

  I decided a worldly approach was in order. “My bedroom practices are not open for discussion. But for your information, many smart people use them.”

  “What’s smart about a dildo?”

  I sniffed. “A woman doesn’t need a man when she has one of these.”

  His gaze slid off the device under discussion and met mine. “Girl, if you think that, you’ve gone too long.”

  I gasped. “I haven’t gone long. I’ve gone…seconds.”

  “Seconds?”

  “Yes. I had an orgasm just before coming here,” I announced.

  Oh, that smile, the lazy-lidded, slow smile. Inside my body, ribbons of heat were unfurling from I don’t know where, places that hadn’t been tapped in a long, long time. Muscles were tightening, readying. All because of a smile.

  And a sea blue dildo.

  “Did you have your orgasm with this?” He held it up like exhibit A.

  “Of course not,” I said sharply. “That one is a gift. And it’s a very nice gift. Two hundred dollars worth of nice.”

  “Thought you said it was for you.”

  I scowled.

  “Two hundred? What the fuck?” he murmured, hefting it in his hand. In the backlight, it seemed to glow, a throbbing, rigid glass penis with appendage. “Do you think it’s worth two hundred bucks?”

  I turned and eyed it with him. We were like two doctors, staring at an x-ray.

  “You don’t know what that thing can do,” I said wistfully. I didn’t either, but I was seriously considering getting myself one, now that I saw it in its full glory. With Trey’s hand wrapped around it.