Accidental Bride(5)

“Don’t you start that too. To hear my sisters talk, you’d think I was some sort of noble martyr withering away from her self-sacrifice.”

Peter chuckled. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

She gave him a poke in the side, since it sounded like there might have been some irony in his words.

He had a way of talking that always hinted at something else, a deeper intent underlying his words. It was like he invariably meant more than the obvious. She liked that about him, but it sometimes made her nervous, since he was often very difficult to read.

Kelly liked to understand people, and she didn’t always understand Peter.

“Do I get to help you pick out a new dress?” Peter asked, stepping forward as the check-in line moved.

“Sure, if you want to. I could go with Heidi, though. She should be here in another hour or so.” Heidi was flying in from California, where she’d been visiting her family, so her plane was arriving later. Kelly hoped she wouldn’t have to go shopping with Heidi. She liked her friend, as much as she liked Veronica, the bride-to-be, but Heidi had a taste for in-your-face-sexy clothes that would never work for Kelly.

“I’ll go with you. I don’t have anything else to do. Owen got here earlier, but he’s probably already holed up, playing video games.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

Kelly would rather hang out with Peter than almost anyone else in the world, but she suddenly felt a sliver of self-consciousness at the idea of his tagging along while she tried to pick out something sexy to wear.

Peter didn’t think of her as sexy. She’d never thought of herself as sexy herself. She wasn’t sure how, between the two of them, they’d be able to find her something appropriate to wear.

***

As Peter had predicted, Owen was already deep into a shoot-em-up video game when Peter made it up to the room they were sharing. Owen was an okay guy, but Peter had little patience with the kind of person who spent every spare minute of his life playing games.

Peter was twenty-four, so he was a little bit older than most of the others he hung out with, all of whom were still in college. When Peter had been eighteen, instead of going to college, he’d taken off to hitchhike his way through Europe, and then he’d kept traveling through Asia and Australia—mostly because he hadn’t wanted to go home.

His family was old money, and they had most of the bad habits that came with it. He’d felt smothered by the pressure and all the expectations, and so he’d finally just walked away.

When he’d come back, he’d been determined to earn his own living, so he was working full-time so he could pay for college, which was why he still hadn’t graduated. He wasn’t remotely tempted to go back and live off his family’s money, but sometimes he felt like a babysitter, surrounded by people younger than him, with a lot fewer life experiences.

Except for Kelly, of course. Everything was different with Kelly.

Owen glanced away from his game long enough to point toward the bed he’d claimed as his. Then Peter put his bag down and sat on the other bed.

He hated Vegas. It just wasn’t his idea of a good time. If Kelly hadn’t decided to come, Peter would have found some excuse not to go too. He’d much rather be biking or hiking or traveling somewhere with a history and culture that gave it real depth—or even sitting at home watching TV.

But he was here now, and he knew Kelly was excited about the trip. She’d never really gotten the chance to go anywhere. Sometimes, he wanted to shake her grandmother for never giving her a chance to have any fun.

He was thinking about Kelly and how she might look in a new dress tonight when his phone rang.

He almost didn’t pick it up when he saw it was his mother, but then guilt caught up to him, so he answered the call after all, moving into the bathroom so he could have some privacy, although Owen seemed completely unaware of his presence.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Peter, where are you? Are you out of town?”

“Why do you ask that?” She always seemed to know what he was doing. Occasionally, he suspected that she had spies on him.

“Jess said you weren’t at work.”

Jess was his younger sister, who came to see him sometimes at the hotel where he worked.

“Yeah, I’m out of town. A friend is getting married in Vegas this weekend, so we came out too.”

“Vegas? Well, don’t do anything dangerous there.” His mother was old-school southern, with the heavy accent and notions of propriety that came with it. “Did your young lady come with you?”

“She’s my friend, not my young lady. But, yes, she’s here too.”

“I don’t know why you never take her by to meet us.”