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He turned his gaze back on me, the emotion burning in his eyes. “That’s nice of you to say, son.”
“It’s the truth. Be patient, she’ll come around.”
“I’ve never been a patient man…but I suppose I’ll have to learn to be one.”
“You’re getting married tomorrow.” Carter sat across from me at the picnic table on the grass. Mama and Muse were working on the decorations for outside, placing the colorful flowers in the gazebo where we would get married. “We’ve got to hit the town tonight. It’s your last night as a bachelor, so we’ve got to make it count.”
“I haven’t been a bachelor for a long time.”
“You may have been whipped for a long time, but you have been a bachelor.” Carter drank his beer and watched everyone work in the yard. “Come on, we’ll take our fathers and hit a strip club.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You want to take our fathers to a strip club?”
“Why not?” he asked. “It’s a bachelor party.”
“They’re whipped even more than I am. No way they’d set foot in that kind of place.” My father was too rigid for something like that. I’d never even seen him glance at another woman. He seemed to only have eyes for my mother.
“They’re men just like us. I’m sure they’d come.”
“Carter, we aren’t going to a strip club.”
“Why the hell not?” he demanded. “It’s one time, one night. Sapphire doesn’t seem like a woman that would care.”
She wouldn’t care. She knew I worked with models all day, every day. I designed sex clothes for them to wear so men would fantasize about fucking them. It made them buy my lingerie for their women at home. “I don’t care that she doesn’t care. I’m the one who cares.”
He rolled his eyes and took a drink. “When did you get so lame?”
“I’m gonna be a father in a few months, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“So that means you need to be boring?” he demanded. “Pussy shit?”
“You want me to slam your face into the table?” I countered. “I don’t mind going out for a drink or two, but I don’t want to watch women get naked. When you find the right woman, you’ll understand where I’m coming from.”
“I’ve found a lot of right women,” he said. “But I’ll never understand your point of view.”
“Because they aren’t the one.”
Carter dropped the hostility. “So, we’ll head to Florence for a drink?”
“That works for me. While we’re there, I think we should invite Vanessa.”
Carter looked even more skeptical than before. “Your sister? You want to invite your sister to your bachelor party?”
“It’s not a bachelor party. And yes, I think it would be good to get her out of the house.”
“Jesus, that sounds terrible. That means Carmen will have to come.”
“Not a bad idea.”
Carter grimaced, like he’d just taken a bite of spoiled food. “This is how you want to spend your last night as a single man?”
I hadn’t felt single in a long time. “I saw Vanessa last week, and she looked awful. She’s not staying at the house for the wedding because she’s still avoiding Father. She could use the company. I’m not happy about it either…but that’s what families do.”
Carter didn’t argue, understanding my point immediately. Family was important to both of us. It was something we both agreed on without saying a word. He sighed with disappointment but didn’t express his anger with words. “Alright. Let’s do it.”
Carmen and Vanessa sat across from us at the table in the bar. Carmen was dressed up in a blue dress with her hair big and curled. She wore a lot of makeup, and she was attracting attention with every passing second.
Vanessa was of the opposite nature. In jeans and a t-shirt, she was dressed too casually for the bar. The only reason she got inside was because she was still pretty no matter how sad she looked. She didn’t wear makeup, and her hair was pulled back in the same bun she’d worn the other day.
Carter wasn’t happy about the girls tagging along, but he didn’t make a fuss about it. He enjoyed his beer, his eyes scanning the room for a possible woman to take home. Carter went through women with the same efficiency I used to possess. He had good looks, lots of money, and he had the kind of confidence women were innately attracted to. It was surprising that I’d settled down, but the possibility of that happening to Carter was nonexistent.
He would never be a one-woman kind of guy.
Carmen spotted a man across the room, her eyes following him as he carried his beer from the bar to the table where his friends were waiting. “He’s cute.”
Vanessa drank her scotch, her eyes cast downward. “Go talk to him.”
“I pointed him out for you.” Carmen tucked her dark hair behind her ear, her eyelashes luscious and thick. Carmen had the same exotic look that Vanessa had, but she possessed her mother’s features a little more. As a result, she was a very beautiful woman…much to my uncle’s annoyance.
