“Ashley! What are you doing?”
The blonde made a startled squeak and dropped the food syringe she was holding.
“I—I’m filling the éclairs with cream.”
“No,” Josie Lynn said slowly, “you are filling the éclairs with a crawfish and crab cheese sauce.”
She snatched up a pastry bag filled with vanilla bean and Grand Marnier crème and shoved it toward Ashley. “This is the right filling.”
Ashley gave her a pained look, but Josie Lynn barely acknowledged it, instantly counting the number of desserts ruined beyond repair.
Only a dozen. Thank God.
“I’m so sorry, Josie.”
“No worries,” Josie Lynn said, realizing that response was becoming the mantra of the night. “Just do the rest with this filling.” She pushed the metal bowl filled with more crème toward her employee. “Please.”
“Of course,” Ashley said. “I’m so—”
Josie Lynn raised a hand to stop her apology. “No worries, just finish the rest and I’ll finish the minicrepes.”
Which are filled with the crawfish-and-crab cheese sauce, she finished silently. And sarcastically.
“You can pull this off,” she said quietly to herself, determined to make this her new mantra of the night. “You can pull this off.”
Chapter Three
THE WEDDING CRASHERS
JOHNNY looked at the crappy punch on the table and said to Wyatt, “Seriously? This is a dry wedding? Who the hell has a dry wedding in New Orleans?”
“A dominatrix, apparently.” Wyatt glanced around the courtyard before lifting up his pants leg. He had a flask strapped to his calf. “But I was prepared.”
“You should have told me.”
“You should have read your invitation. It said it right on there they weren’t serving booze.”
“I barely glanced at it.” Johnny wasn’t fond of paperwork. Or details. He wondered where Lizette was off cursing him at the moment. So he had beaten her to the apartment that morning. His apartment. Which contained his stuff, he might add. And so he had broken off the locks her goofy henchman had installed and liberated his drum kit. They were his drums and he had gotten them off of Keith Moon back in the sixties. They were sentimental, not to mention the most expensive thing he owned by far, including his car, and he was not about to let Dieter take a crap on them or whatever he was planning to do in there. In his apartment. Where he paid the rent. And did he mention it was his apartment? He was not going to feel guilty that he might just be making life slightly more difficult for her. She was the one making his life difficult.
Especially when she did things like walk over grates and have her skirt blow up where he could see her slim, milky legs.
“So Stella told me about the VA being up your ass,” Wyatt said, retrieving his flask.
“Yeah. I ditched out on a meeting with her tonight. I figured if she’s going to be taking her sweet time clearing this misunderstanding up, I can take my sweet time giving her answers.” Johnny wasn’t sure why he was having such a strong reaction to Lizette, but he suspected it had to do with the challenge she presented: so buttoned up, yet so feminine. That might explain the weird reason that he had dreamed about her all day while he had slept, and why he’d woken up with a giant erection and the vision of Lizette wearing librarian glasses while riding him like a mechanical bull dancing in front of his eyes.
It had made him edgy, and now he had every reason to believe this wedding reception was going to suck. At least the exchanging of the vows had been short and to the point, though he could have done without seeing Saxon crawl down the makeshift aisle.
“That may be slightly counterproductive, but I can understand your frustration.” Wyatt unscrewed his flask and eyeballed the punch. “Do you think whiskey would taste good in that shit?”
Johnny eyed it. “Is that sherbet floating in there? That stuff is gross. It’s like swallowing a lump of phlegm.”
“Saxon loves the stuff.”
“Saxon is a moron.” Johnny normally loved that quality about him. It made life with him around highly entertaining. But at the moment, he would have preferred an open bar with top-shelf liquor. Or even cheap liquor. “Can I just have a sip of that straight? Please? I’ll give you five bucks.”
“You don’t have five bucks. The VA froze your assets, remember?”
Like he could forget. “Thanks for reminding me.”
But Wyatt took pity on him and handed him the flask. He took a nip off it, glancing around the reception. It was an odd assortment of vampires and mortals, the bride a vision in white leather, her crop whizzing through the air at random intervals and smacking the wall, causing Saxon to giggle. Saxon himself looked like a middle-school girl at her first dance, wearing skinny jeans, Converse, and a tuxedo T-shirt, his long blond hair crimped.
He looked happy.
Zelda looked happy.
Cort and Katie looked happy.
Wyatt and Stella were happy.
Johnny was happy they were all so goddamn happy.
Yet he couldn’t help but feel less than happy for himself.
He was, for lack of a better word, lonely. Which wasn’t an emotion he ever really felt. He was a social guy, and he surrounded himself with people. Friends, women, his sister. He was the guy who sat in the bar talking to the bartender, bouncers, and shot girls for hours, long after his shift playing drums for the night was over. So it was very unusual for him to feel like this. Maybe it was just all this coupling up and settling down that was going on around him. At least he still had Drake as his token single friend. They would have to start hanging out more while everyone else was at home getting laid.
Huh. That was not the least bit reassuring of a thought. Sex with a hot woman or trolling around with Drake. He would have run for the street and married the first woman in sight if those were really the only options, but unfortunately, marriage was a long time, and Johnny had generally found himself allergic to commitment. Which didn’t really make sense, because it wasn’t like he craved change. He hadn’t moved in five years, had lived in New Orleans for thirty, still enjoyed his sister’s company, and wore a pair of jeans he liked until they disintegrated. Even all his one-night stands over the years had turned into friends-with-benefits relationships. He’d never once had a true, never-see-her-again hookup.
So why had he always been so reluctant to commit? He had no idea. He had faked his own death to avoid a more serious turn in his relationship with Bambi. He’d never even lived with a girlfriend. The very idea seemed really . . . intimate.