Sassy Ever After: Mate of Honor (Kindle Worlds Novella) (2 page)

“Son of a bitch,
” Bailey swore at the ten extra pounds preventing her from squeezing into her size sixteen jeans. “Honest to God these things fit yesterday.” She gave her best friend and law partner Tory Thames a forlorn look of disgust.

Tory patted down her pulled back, black hair and shook her head. “Maybe the shoemaker’s elves took them in a size during the night.”

“Ha ha.” When Bailey finally managed to button the top button of the jeans, her fingertips red and slightly pained, she fist pumped the air in triumph. “Hah!”

“Congratulations,” Tory said dryly. “Bailey, I think you need a new a wardrobe.”

“My clothes are fine.” She put on a chocolate brown, button-down blouse. It was one of the few colors that really flattered her pale skin and hazel-green eyes.

“It’s ill fitting. The buttons are gaping.”

“You suck.”

Tory walked to Bailey’s bedroom mirror. She was the kind of woman who exuded confidence and grace. Tall, leggy, and with skin the color of dark honey. Regal and beautiful. “Did you ever hear back from that whistleblower? We’re going to have to drop the class action suit if we can’t get some physical proof. The judge is going allow the state’s attorney’s dismissal.”

Bailey shook her head. “He, or hell, for all I know, a she, never called back. Using a voice modulator is some real paranoid crap.”

“It’s not paranoia if the man is really out to get you. I know this wedding stuff is going to keep you busy for the next couple of days, but if you hear from him…”

“I’ll call you immediately. No worries. I know what matters.”

“Good. And so do I.” She pulled a sea foam fitted shirt from Bailey’s closet. It was an extra-extra-large. “This V-neck is flattering.” She held the shirt out at arm’s length in front of Bailey. “And va-va-voom, you are one hot mamma in this outfit.”

“It’s a rehearsal dinner for a wedding, not a blind date.”

“Regardless, Bailey, you are a beautiful woman, so you might as well take full advantage of your assets.”

“You mean my ass.” Bailey smirked.

“If the shoe … or in the case, the Spanx fits, you--”

“Squeeze into them like sausage in a casing.”

Tory rolled her eyes. “You need to embrace those curves, baby doll.” She stood behind her as Bailey looked at herself in the bedroom mirror. “You are sexy as shit,” she said. “Evan Blackthorn is going to be picking his tongue up from the floor when he sees you.”

“So his bride to be can step on it?” Bailey sighed. She didn’t want to be jealous of Lara Hout. They’d been best friends growing up, and she supposed it wasn’t her fault that the guy they both had crushed on chose her. Tonight was the rehearsal dinner with a scenting ceremony to follow.

Bailey didn’t know if she’d be able to stand to watch him sniff all over her, but she’d made a promise that she wouldn’t hide away like some pathetic coward. She repeated the mantra she’d been chanting in her head since Lara asked her to be in the wedding.

I am human rights attorney. I fight against injustice for the little guy. I am bad ass. I don’t need Evan Blackthorn to complete me.
“Besides, I’m not trying to steal the groom,” she said out loud.

“You know, there are other fish in the sea.”

“You mean wolves in the pack.”

“Po-tay-toe, Puh-tah-toe.”

Not really, though, considering Evan and Lara were both wolves.

“I’m a fox shifter, Tory. And worse, I have no family or pack to back me. I never had a shot with Evan Blackthorn. I knew that from the first moment I saw him. His father is the pack alpha. Lara is a wolf, like him. Her father is the pack’s enforcer, and her uncle is the pack’s second. She is basically royalty. They belong together.”

“I still can’t believe you agreed to be her maid of honor.”

Bailey couldn’t believe it either. “In my mind, I’d screamed, nooooooo! But the word
yes
tumbled out of my mouth.” After she’d already said she do anything for the person on the other end of the phone. To add salt to the wound, the stupid Deep Throat character never called back!

“What about his brothers Luke or Dorian? I hear they are single and ready to mingle.”

“Yuck. They are the biggest players. Besides, I’m not sure I want any man who has slept his way through the alphabet of female pack members.”

“Experience is nothing to take lightly.” Tory wiggled her brows and shook her hips.

“Not happening.”

“What about his cousin Brad? He’s cute and single. And I hear he’s going to be one of the groomsmen. It could make for a really fun scenting ceremony, at least from what you’ve told me.”

Bailey gave her a pithy glare. “I’m not his type.”

“Who wouldn’t love a voluptuous vixen?” she asked.

Bailey rolled her eyes at the vixen comment. As a fox shifter, she’d gotten vixen comments her whole life. “I have a vagina. He likes dick.”

Tory’s mouth rounded in a small o. “I had no idea.”

Bailey let her off the hook. “He just came out last year.”

“Well, I’m sure there will be some hunka-hunka you can sink your teeth into at the party.”

Bailey pulled her shoulders back. “I will not be participating in the scenting ceremony.”

Tory gave her a disappointed frown. “Why not? You never know. You might enjoy yourself, or even better, you might really find yourself a mate.”

“I would not enjoy myself. I don’t relish the idea of prancing around in fox form to be ignored by all the wolves. I mean, seriously, I got enough of that when I was growing up.”

Bailey’s mother, Lana, had emigrated from Russia when she was five-years-old with the help of the Blackthorns. They owned one of the largest sporting good chains in the Midwest, and they used their long reach to help shifters and other paranormals who were desperate or in dire straits. Her mother had been both. Mr. Blackthorn, Evan’s dad, and his wife, Lila, had taken an interest in Lana. She worked as domestic help for them in the big house, and in return, they paid her a fair wage and let Bailey and her live in the carriage house on the estate.

Which meant Bailey grew up with the Blackthorn Pack, but she was certainly not one of them. Not by a long shot.

It didn’t help that her mother had been crazy. She believed she’d been touched by fortune with a gift for divination in the right circumstances. She used to ask Bailey if she ever saw anything before it happened. And when Bailey would tell her “no,” her mother would say, “Maybe it is good,
malen'kiy kotenok moya
.” Which meant “my little kitten” in Russian. “The gift only comes after great pain.” Bailey, who struggled to remember her mother’s face at times, never forgot her thick Russian accent. “I hope you are never touched by it.”

Her mother’s nutty fortune telling shtick made fitting into the pack even harder.

Lara Hout, Evan’s impending bride, was one of the only females in the pack to make Bailey feel like she sometimes belonged. She and Evan were Bailey’s confidants, her partners in crime, and she and Lara had both developed some serious feelings for the youngest Blackthorn child during their formidable years. When Mach Larson, a friend of Evan’s, had called Bailey a “fat bitch” during their eighth-grade year, Evan had jumped in like a knight in shining armor to her damsel in distress. How could she not love him?

Because he loved Lara. That’s how. She had to get over this fantasy that she’d carried around with her for too many years.

“I hear Forrest Blackthorn is putting in an appearance.”

“Great. That’s all I need.”

The oldest Blackthorn son used to look at Bailey like she was a bug that needed squashing. The first time she’d been introduced to him, she’d been eight-years-old. She and her mother had been at the Blackthorn estate for three years. Forrest walked in while Bailey sat in the library chair studying math while her mother cleaned. She’d never forget the suspicion in his dark blue eyes when he asked her who she was and why she sat in his father’s chair. Bailey couldn’t get out of the room fast enough to suit either her or him. He’d been twenty-two at the time, just out of his first four years of college.

This had been a rare Forrest sighting, and over the next several years, his visits were just as infrequent. She only knew this because her mother wouldn’t let her come up to the Blackthorn Mansion aka “the big house” whenever the prodigal son arrived for home visits. It hadn’t bothered Bailey one iota. The man had a stick in his butt, and she’d often wished she could pull it out and make him play fetch with it.

There had been one solace with Forrest’s visits: Evan liked him about as much as Bailey did, so he would hang out with her at the guest house when his brother came to stay.

She’d loved those days. They had been few and fleeting.

The last time she’d glimpsed Forrest Blackthorn had been right after her high school graduation. Mrs. Blackthorn included her in the party for Evan and Lara who had been dating for a year already. Bailey had felt completely out of place. There wasn’t a single person at the party for her except her mother. It drove home the fact that she was alone.

She remembered Forrest so clearly that day as she spied on him from the ballroom window. He’d been standing outside on the back lawn, his arms crossed, and his expression grim. Much the same as the day he’d walked in on her in the library. Everyone at the graduation, young and old, was having fun. Excerpt for Forrest. And Bailey, of course. For a second, she saw a man who was as out of place in this crowd as she was and she stopped hating him. Until he turned around stared at her like she had four head and three legs.

Bailey had scurried away from the window like a whipped pup.

Bailey left for college when she turned eighteen, and before her first semester had ended, her mother had been killed in a car wreck. She’d remembered her mother’s paranoid words, “They are afraid of my truth,
malen'kiy kotenok moya
. They cannot let me live.” But the wreck had been an accident. A driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and drifted into her lane. The head-on collision had killed Lana instantly. The driver went into a coma that lasted months before he died as well. Mom’s funeral had been the last time she’d returned to the estate. Shifters live hundreds of years, so having her mom snatched from her at such a young age made going back to the Blackthorn land painful.

So why had Bailey said yes to Lara?

She threw the shirt Tory handed her on the bed and flopped down beside it. She cast a forearm over her face. “I can’t do it. I just can’t.”

“You already said you would. You are the freaking maid of honor, Bailey. Quitting two nights before the wedding is not an option.”

“I hate you.”

“Because I’m right.”

“Yes, because you’re right.”

“I wish I was coming with you.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re human.” Tory had been at the same high school as Bailey, so she had grown up aware of shifters and other creatures that go bump in the night, but they hadn’t become friends until college. Even so, she’d become as close a sister. “If you actually knew what a scenting ceremony entailed, you and your human sensibilities would go running for the hills.”

“I would not.”

She looked up at Tory, the bravest person she knew, human or otherwise. Maybe she wouldn’t run. Maybe someone like her would be a perfect mate for a strong wolf. After all, Evan did have two other unmated brothers, not counting Forrest. Bailey grimaced. She wouldn’t wish the unpleasant wolf on her worst enemy. “Well…I can ask Lara if I can bring a friend.”

“Are you bullshitting me? Because if you aren’t, my answer is not only yes, but fuck yes.”

“I’ll call her. I’m sure she won’t mind.” And Tory would make a great buffer against the other bitchmaids, err…bridesmaids. Those ladies had snubbed the crap out of Bailey at the wedding shower.

Tory jumped and squealed with excitement. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“You are a bad ass lawyer, Tory. Bad ass lawyers don’t jump and squeal like thirteen-year-olds.”

She stuck her tongue out at me.

Bailey laughed. “They don’t do that either.”

“Shut up,” she said. “I’m going home.”

“But why,” Bailey whined. “I need your help.”

“And I need to pick out an outfit for the party.”

“Fine. Go. Leave me on my own. To weep. To wither.” Emotionally, of course, not physically, because Bailey planned to eat a piece of gooey cake she’d gotten at the bakery on the way home as soon as Tory left. “To die…”

“Drama queen.”

“I really am.” Bailey smiled. “Seriously. Go. Just meet me back here by seven o’clock tonight. The dinner is at eight, and it’s a forty-five-minute drive to the big house.”

“You make it sound like jail.”

“Little bit.” Bailey held up her hand and put an inch between her thumb and forefinger. She sat up on the edge of the bed.

Tory leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You will survive this, Bailey.”

She might survive a night of watching Evan and Lara groping each other, but she wasn’t sure her heart would. “Promises. Promises.”

****