Strip Search (Tap That)

“None of your damn business.” He wasn’t the guy who told the juicy details about a woman he was dating. And if Leighton was anything, it was juicy.

“So, no chance you’re going to fall for this girl?” Jesse asked.

Axl scoffed. “No.”

He didn’t think so. Not much.

And if he did, because okay, he was, he’d be fine. He wasn’t the guy to fall head over ass.

It hadn’t happened yet and he didn’t see why it would.

That was the whole damn point.

He was emotionally shallow, to quote his last girlfriend.

There was no way he was going to end up wanting the marriage to be real.

And if he did, for whatever crazy reason, he wouldn’t do that to Leighton.

He just wanted to enjoy today and worry about after the wedding after the damn wedding.

He put his hand down on the table. “Full house, assholes. I’m lucky this week.”

And it had everything to do with meeting Leighton.

* * *

“Open your mouth nice and wide,” Axl urged her. “I have more for you.”

Leighton shook her head at him, amused, and slightly embarrassed. He was holding a bite of cake on his fork in front of her lips. He knew precisely how his words sounded.

They were at Cakes by Autumn, sampling flavors for their wedding cake.

Autumn clearly got the innuendo as well. She was in her late twenties and she shot Axl a dirty look. “Stop embarrassing your fiancée,” she told him. “You’re the worst.” She looked over at Leighton. “We went to school together. Axl and his friends were notorious for getting in trouble.”

“That is not true,” he said. “That was more Sullivan and Brandon. I kept my nose clean.”

“I’m not sure I believe you,” Leighton said, giving him a wry look. “What flavor is this before you shove it in my mouth?”

Her choice of words made Axl laugh and lift his eyebrows up and down. “It’s true. I am, for the most part, a rule follower. And I have no idea what flavor this is.”

She thought back to him actually following through and giving her a speeding ticket. Maybe she could believe he wasn’t a troublemaker. She opened her mouth and Axl eased the fork between her lips gently.

“That’s vanilla almond,” Autumn said. “With a champagne buttercream frosting.”

Flavor exploded in her mouth. Briefly, she closed her eyes before chewing and swallowing, savoring the sugary delight. “Mmm. That’s really good, Autumn.” She meant it and that was a substantial compliment coming from her. She had probably tasted two hundred cake flavors in her tenure as creative director.

Since the details of each couples’ wedding were supposed to be a secret, part of their whirlwind wedding makeover, that included the cake. Which meant Leighton had to choose them for the majority of the episodes they filmed. Everyone on staff seemed to think that since she was already “overweight” she had nothing to lose by taking on the calories, so it fell on her to taste them. The size zero girls ran away from the cake like it was the physical manifestation of Satan.

Vanilla almond was a standard wedding flavor but Autumn’s frosting was a cut above a lot of the samples Leighton had experienced. “What do you think?” she asked Axl.

“I want red velvet.”

“You’re getting the red velvet in your groom’s cake. We need something else for the display cake.”

“And what is the groom’s cake going to be?” Autumn asked. She looked slightly panicked, probably because of the timeframe. “Am I doing that too?”

“Axl wants a fish. With red velvet,” she told Autumn. “Can you do that?”