One Wild Wedding Night_ All the Way - Leslie Kelly [1]
“Look out, Chicago , horny bridesmaids are on the prowl.”
“I don’t imagine too much can happen since Gloria’s with them.” Gloria was happily married to Nick’s oldest brother. The mother of three had seemed relieved when her husband had offered to take their boys home so she could enjoy the night on the town with the rest of the bridesmaids. “She’ll play chaperone.”
“Oh, right. Chaperone to a lawyer, a bookkeeper, a stripper and a Rockette.”
“You got something against strippers and Rockettes?” she asked, cocking a challenging brow.
He had finished working her sleeves open and slid around behind her to start on the long row of tiny buttons up the back of the dress. As he slid each one free, he kissed the tiny bit of skin revealed, sliding his lips over each of her verte-brae with heart-pounding restraint and sensuality.
“Uh-uh, Cookie. Some of my favorite people are strippers and Rockettes.”
She dropped her head forward, sighing as he continued to undress her. Conversation was the last thing she wanted. Thoughts of her bridesmaids began to fade.
But before thrusting the whole subject out of her head altogether, she reassured them both. “They’ll be fine. They’re grown women, they’re not driving, and they’re in a group. What could possibly happen?”
Chapter 1
Being married had its advantages.
Gloria Santori could list a dozen of them right off the top of her head. The list included such things as never having to worry about changing the oil in her car, not sweating what she was going to do every Saturday night, not having a freaking heart attack because she’d gained ten pounds over the last few years. It also meant never competing with other women over men.
Getting laid every so often wasn’t bad, either.
Though, since she’d given birth to James, her third son, last spring, getting laid wasn’t exactly the way to describe it. More like getting rubbed against between bouts of fatigue and breast-feeding. And kind of enjoying it, even while wondering if the twenty minutes would have been better spent paying the bills or washing the kitchen floor.
Frankly, with the baby, the two older boys and Tony working his ass off at his family pizzeria, Gloria was just as likely to have a sexual experience from eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s as she was from getting naked with her hubby.
That, she supposed, was one of the disadvantages of being a nice, thirtysomething Italian housewife.
As was this. “You sure you can’t come hang out a little while longer?” said Vanessa, one of the other bridesmaids. The striking woman was only in town for one more night and obviously wanted company.
“I can’t. Tony and the brats are waiting.”
Brats being meant in only the most affectionate sense, of course. Though, if little Anthony got into her lipstick and drew one more battle map for his dragon warriors on the wall of his room, she was, at least mentally, going to call him worse than that. Like demon child sent to torment her.
“Yeah, she has to make sure the big lug didn’t stop to pick up milk and forget one of them in the store,” Mia said with a deep chuckle.
Gloria responded in her typical fashion. She gave her sister the finger. Oh, not the middle one, the ring one. On her left hand.
“Yeah, yeah, bite me,” Mia mumbled.
“So sad, you need your sister to bite you. If only you had a man.”
“Bite me twice.”
Her caustic younger sister smiled as she said it. A little. So did Gloria. The exchange was a typical one between them. Outsiders might think they didn’t even like one another, but that wasn’t true at all. They loved each other…they just had nothing in common.
While there were moments when Gloria wondered what it would have been like to go to college and be out in the workplace, she wouldn’t trade her life for Mia’s. Especially knowing tonight her sister would, once again, sleep alone. Mia hadn’t dated since she’d returned to Chicago and she would wake up tomorrow morning having spent yet another night all by herself.
Gloria, on the other hand,