Break On Through (31 page)

“Over a hat?”

He knew it was more than a hat. “Did I tell you the color of my bridesmaid dress is citrine?” It was more than the color, too.

“Don’t know citrine.”

She opened her eyes. “A greeny-yellow,” she said, gazing out at the side yard in search of an example. “I’ll look like an under-ripe lemon.” Her voice lowered. “To go with my sour mood.”

“Lex…” There might have been an undertone of sympathy in his voice.

“Don’t pity me,” she warned. “I won’t be crying at the altar. I’ll be steaming mad.”

“Should someone talk to—”

“No one can talk to
anybody
about this. I don’t want a single person besides you and me to know I’m upset in the slightest.” Wouldn’t that be humiliating?

“Whatever you say.”

All along, her plan had been to attend the event unescorted. That way, she could escape from the reception ASAP. But now she was having second thoughts. She still didn’t want a
date
date, but a buddy, a pal, a confidant who could be relied upon to yank her back from the brink of disaster…or from doing damage to the woman wearing a white fascinator…

“You’ve got to go with me,” she said in a rush. “To all the stupid pre-events and on the big day itself. Just to make sure I don’t do harm to myself or…or others.”

“Maybe Nico needs a solid punch in the face,” her best friend muttered.

Alexa’s stomach pitched.
Nico
. “It’s not about him.” That she’d gone away one weekend, engaged to the Italian Stallion that was the man of her family’s dreams only to come home to find her fiancé had hooked up with her cousin and that they were already talking of marriage…

It wasn’t about losing him at all, at least not anymore. It was about losing face.

She swung around, even more certain what she needed. “You have to come with me,” she declared. “Promise you will, Bro—” The rest of her best friend’s name stuck in her throat. She stared at the man in the kitchen with her, at his tall frame, his bare chest, his familiar features.

He was turned toward her now, with his nearly-black hair tumbling messily over his forehead. His brows were straight slashes framing his vivid blue eyes and their spiky, thick lashes. His nose was straight, his jaw square, and the tiny hint of a dimple in his chin didn’t provide even a dash of boyishness to his astounding good looks. He was all hard-edged, darkly intense male.

Her gaze dropped to the carved-out curves and ridges that were his pecs and abdominals. A fist-sized sun was tattooed on the skin over his ribcage. The orb of it was yellow, with red flames snaking and swirling from its perimeter, reminding her of Medusa’s hair.

Just like described in the legend, staring at that tattoo turned Alexa into stone, even as a new burn crawled over her flesh.

Because this wasn’t Brody she’d been talking to. She was face-to-face with his twin brother, Bing.

Who wasn’t her friend. He was something else altogether, so much something else that she tried to avoid him when she could and always avoided looking directly at him.

She swallowed and attempted to control the thundering of her heart. “Forget I said that. Forget I said anything.” Bing Maddox would be no kind of sedative for her volatile mood. He could never be the one to prevent her from doing something humiliating; indeed he might very well be the source of further embarrassment.

Time to go.

Whirling toward the back door, her hip bumped the table. The decorative bowl on top of it—the one she’d bought for Brody herself in thanks for him fixing a broken lamp—rocked, then danced off the edge to hit the hardwood floor where it exploded into a zillion shards of amber glass.

She gasped, bending to sweep them up. Immediate bites of pain made clear that wasn’t such a great idea. Sucking in another breath, she cradled one bleeding hand with the other.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she said, straightening.

“Jesus, Lex. You’re cut.” He came forward, reaching out as if to touch her.

Alexa jerked back, desperate for that not to happen. “Totally fine,” she said, feeling hot and graceless and like she was talking much too loud.

Yes, definitely time to go.

Something about Bing Maddox always brought out her flustered and foolish side. Worse yet, he always put her in full retreat, taking her from a safe place to somewhere that felt a mere pinkie toe away from disaster.

*

Bing Maddox was a numbers guy. In the construction business he ran with his brother, it was he who always reminded his twin to measure twice, cut once. And even then, he measured a third and fourth time before letting Brody apply single saw tooth to wood. Bing also calculated the odds of certain events occurring. It was a holdover from early childhood, when he’d ponder things like whether their dad would remember they needed dinner before bed—that prospect was usually deemed fifty-fifty. In early adolescence, he’d wonder if he’d catch a glimpse of Beautiful Starlet’s naked breasts at the next Velvet Lemons pool party—and as their father was one-third of the premier rock band in the world, this was easy to assign at one-hundred to one.

Musicians Mad Dog Maddox, String Bean Colson, and Hop Hopkins had raised their collective nine children—mothers absent for a variety of reasons—at a compound in LA’s Laurel Canyon, that hotbed of eucalyptus trees, artistic creativity, and sexual promiscuity that was just off the infamous Boulevards: Hollywood and Sunset.
Rolling Stone
magazine had once dubbed the nine “Rock Royalty,” though their childhoods had been filled with anything but crowns and tiaras.

So while in some ways he’d grown up privileged, his expectations had always been grounded by real world experience. And real world experience had him calculating the chances of Alexa Alessio turning tail and running from him in the next five seconds at ninety-eight to two.

Bing sighed. He’d never expected to encounter her while rummaging through his brother’s fridge, but he couldn’t let her scurry off when she was wide-eyed, flush-cheeked, and heaving in air. Not to mention dripping blood all over the hardwood floor.

Though dirt stained his soul, he’d never managed to entirely ditch his conscience.

“Sit,” he ordered, pointing to the chair at the table. “Stay.”

Her knees folded and when her ass hit the seat, he tossed her a paper towel then took off in the direction of the first aid supplies.

This shouldn’t take long.

The truth was, he didn’t like to be around her any more than she seemed to like being around him. Not that she wasn’t pretty. She was beautiful, her Italian heritage showing up in her golden-toned skin and her long dark hair. Her mouth, with its deeply bowed upper lip, was appealingly lush.

He’d thought her hot from the moment he’d caught sight of her, not long after he and his twin had moved into houses that straddled her small bungalow.

But she had those Bambi-big, dark-lashed eyes and Bing never did brown-eyed girls.

And she’d always made it quite clear she wasn’t the least bit receptive to being “done” by him anyway.

With his hands full of supplies, he strode back to the kitchen. His feet paused on the threshold.
Jesus
. There she was.

He allowed himself a moment to really take her in, the total package. She wore a sleeveless summer dress with a full skirt that brushed the tops of her knees. Yellow. The shade of sunshine.

His gaze jumped to the gentle waves of her brunette hair, the smooth slope of her shoulders, the pair of nude, high-heeled sandals strapped around her dainty feet. He usually only had the chance to appreciate the backside of her—as she ran in the opposite direction.

Her head came up as he took a step into the room. “I need to go,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the back door.

Of course she did. Because she’d cast him in the role of ogre for some goddamn reason. She could spill her secrets and share her smiles with his brother from morning to midnight, but she’d cross the street before giving Bing the time of day.

Which was fine with him, he told himself. She was so not his type, from those brown eyes to the ladylike way she sat, her knees and ankles pressed primly together.

The modest manner only served to set fire to his lust, however. He wondered what she’d do if she knew how bad that pose made him want to flip up her skirt, rip off her panties, then shove her thighs apart to taste her honeyed heat. The tip of his tongue would slide between her soft folds, teasing out the button of her clit. Next would be the smooth slide along hot flesh until he could plunge inside her tight, slick channel.

At the thought of eating her out, his mouth watered and a shudder ran down his spine. Locking his jaw, he took another step forward and sent a stern command to his eager cock.
Down, boy.
He was tired of being forced to resort to cold showers and the fevered grip of his own fist
whenever this unrequited desire she engendered overtook him.

Which it did, with annoying regularity.

She didn’t want him that way.

He didn’t want to have anything to do with a hearts-and-family woman like her. Thanks to the excesses he’d been offered and then indulged in during adolescence, he figured he lacked the emotional equipment required to handle such a one.

Dumping the alcohol wipes, disinfectant ointment, and bandages onto the table, he prepared to do the doctoring by yanking on the end of the towel she had pressed to her injured hand.

She drew her elbow closer to her body. “I can do it myself,” she said.

Just another reminder of her dislike of him. It made him feel like the effing Hunchback of effing Notre Dame, and it only irritated him more. It was she, damn it, who was ringing a bell—the one at the top of his personal lust-o-meter.

He made quick work of sweeping up and throwing away the broken glass, then dropped into the chair opposite hers. As he watched her gingerly unwrap the bloody paper covering her wounds, without a word he peeled the foil from one of the antiseptic wipes.

“Bing…?” Wetting her bottom lip, Alexa kept her gaze down, her eyes focused on her task.

He grunted in response, hiding his wince as she revealed three oozing cuts, two on her fingers and one on her palm.

“You’ve got to promise you’ll forget my little rant of a few minutes ago,” she said.

Goose bumps shot up her arm as she dabbed the alcohol-drenched tissue on the wounds. Though it had to hurt, she soldiered on.

“Bing?”

“Not sure forgetting is an option, Lex,” he said, beginning to remove the paper wrappings from the bandages. Before, he’d been under the impression she was handling the end of her engagement fairly well. God knew Nico couldn’t be much of a prize to lose if he was the kind of man who would cheat on her with her cousin. But now it was clear she’d been covering up her trampled pride and tattered heart and it kindled a burn in Bing’s gut. “Once you’ve dressed those cuts, we’ll see if we can get Brody on the phone.”

“Where is he?”

Bing made a non-committal noise. “Doesn’t matter. Soon you can discuss the situation with him.”

His brother would be happy to be her wedding escort and anything else she needed of him. While Bing hadn’t done a woman a favor in the twelve years since he’d turned eighteen, Brody addressed his guilt by finding females who needed their tires changed and their Christmas lights strung. The white knight-next-door was a role tailor-made for him.

Except when he took off like he had today, going somewhere he wouldn’t say where he did things he wouldn’t share for anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. But Alexa didn’t know about those occasional benders. The good twin didn’t even tell the bad twin any details. Bing could only guess at what his brother got up to when the darkness took hold of him by the blood-shot eyes and the nail-scratched back he bore upon his return.

She was shaking her head now. “No way. I was having a moment, okay? I’m over it.”

He pushed the elastic bandages across the table. “My brother will do it, you know.” If Brody was back in time from his latest binge, that is. “It’s a good idea to have somebody at your back during the wedding shit.”

“It’s a terrible idea.”

His brows rose.

Her eyes directly met his, maybe for the first time ever. “Everybody knows about Brody and me. It would be like bringing my gay friend as an escort.”

Bing’s lips twitched. “Pretty sure nobody thinks my twin is gay.”

“You know what I mean,” she said, winding a bandage around one slender finger. “Everyone in my family knows we’re just buddies. It’d be humiliating. Like that time I took my brother to the prom.”

He blinked. “You took your brother to the prom?”

“Of course not,” she said quickly.

Too quickly. She was the world’s lousiest liar.

“Wow.” Bing propped one ankle on his knee. “I know Italian families can be protective, but you couldn’t take a guy to the big dance? Didn’t you go to St. Amelia of the Angels or something like that? Surely the nuns were adequate chaperones.”

Alexa went mum and took her own sweet time covering the next cut.

Bing rapped his knuckles on the tabletop to get her attention. “So you’re pulling my leg?”

“No.” She shot him a quick glance. Two bright spots of hot pink flagged her cheekbones. “Me and Frankie Fudge. We brought our brothers.”

“Frankie Fudge?”

“Francesca Fuggiano.” A defiant light entered her eyes as her small chin lifted. “The two fat girls in the senior class asked the only boys who couldn’t say no.”

“Oh.” What the hell else was he supposed to say to that? Weight wasn’t an issue he wanted to touch with any woman, no matter how gorgeous she was. “Well, if not Brody, find someone else to take with you.”

“Like who?”

Bing set both feet on the floor and leaned forward. “I—”

“Surely not you.” Alarm edged her voice.

No, not him. It hadn’t crossed his mind, yet she didn’t need to look so fucking appalled by the idea. He was the bad twin, that was given, but he’d never been bad to
her
.

Hell, she’d never let him get that close.

“What has Brody told you about me?” he suddenly demanded.