Hitched (Licking Thicket - Horn of Glory 2)

But if there was one thing I’d learned since becoming an event planner, it was that nothing ever went entirely smoothly. Emergencies cropped up when you least expected them.

In this case, the emergency looked a lot like Levi Christianson sneaking out of Marissa’s bedroom again in the predawn hours of a Friday morning that just so happened to be the morning before Marissa’s wedding day.

“What the fuck?” I hissed at Levi, closing my own door softly behind me before Champ could wake up.

After trying and dismissing a million different potential ways to get into the vault in the Drakeses’ basement, Champ’s crew had finally decided that the only way to get the Horn was to drill the lock. Since this was going to be noisy and impossible to conceal, his team was going to go in during the wedding itself, while Tommy and his staff were busy enjoying the festivities and Champ and I had wedding-planning alibis.

If Champ woke up to find Levi in the hallway, I wouldn’t put it past him to whisk the man off to an undisclosed location until Marissa was safely married.

Levi’s eyes went from wide and guilty to narrowed in accusation. “Don’t act like you and Champ haven’t been having sex too!”

I gasped and clutched my throat. “You’re having sex?” I cried like someone’s maiden aunt. “Might I remind you that Champ and I are…” The word got stuck in my throat until I forced it out. “Dating? Neither of us is marrying someone else tomorrow,” I whispered furiously.

“I thought you were engaged?” Levi folded his arms over his chest.

“Irrelevant!” I shot back. “We’re talking about you right now and your… Marissa… who is someone else’s fiancée! Is this some kind of wild-oat sowing on her part, or are you two…” I couldn’t even say it. I could only imagine the look on Tommy Drakes’s face when he discovered his precious baby girl had been schtupping the very man who was supposed to have been protecting her.

“I’m in love with her,” he whispered back. He looked as miserable as he sounded when admitting the truth. “We’re in love with each other.”

I threw my hands up. “Then why is she marrying someone else?”

My brain helpfully substituted Levi for the image of the groom at the wedding. I wondered if it was as simple as—

“I’m not good enough for her. Obviously.”

I stared at him. He was good-looking, in a Licking Thicket hoedown kind of way. And I knew from living with him for the past month that he was thoughtful and kind, especially to Marissa. Levi wasn’t a terrible catch. Was he?

“Your dad owns a large security firm,” I began, as if trying to sell him on himself. “You’re decently employed, well respected, competent, good-looking, fit, and surprisingly good at identifying obscure country-music songs on the radio…”

“I didn’t even go to college. Trey… he’s all the shit I’ll never be. Fancy degree. Fancy job in suits. Country club memberships. Hell, the only thing I ever did with a golf club was take out Pixie Denton’s mailbox after she called Marissa a whore at the homecoming dance.”

Dear God. I was living in a teen drama.

“Have you talked to her about it?” I asked, trying not to clench my teeth so hard I’d wind up with a headache before the day even started.

“And ruin her wedding when I have nothing to offer her? I wouldn’t do that.”

I shot a look past him to the bedroom door he’d just come out of dressed in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. “Yeah, fucking her the day before she’s set to marry another guy probs won’t ruin anything. You’re a real prince,” I muttered before walking past him to the stairs. “Tommy and Carlotta arrive today, asshole, but I guess that’s none of my business. Remember to bring Marissa by my office later this morning so we can go over the rehearsal dinner stuff for tonight.”

Until someone canceled this wedding, I had a job to do.

I stormed downstairs, shoved a Pop-Tart into my mouth angrily, and hate-poured coffee into a travel mug before taking out poor Rebecca’s undercarriage on the country road to work.

My fuck-it attitude lasted all of four hours before I caved and called the one person I could ask for advice without causing some kind of Licking Thicket security breach.

“Quinny!” Aunt Cherry exclaimed. “Baby cakes, how are you? I’ve been meaning to call you. I felt so bad about the way we left things after the SnoBall—”

Oh, right. Shoot. “No, that was… that was all on me. I’m sorry, Aunt Cherry. I was in a mood. But things are better now.”

“Better… as in you and the man you’ve been romantically not-romantic with have patched things up? That’s a relief, I have to say, sweetness, since Bernie sent me a picture of you and Champ canoodling at Annie’s the other morning. I’m pretty sure when you’ve been with your one-night stand for forty days and forty nights, you can’t claim it’s any kind of stand anymore.”