One and Only

Book 1: Bridesmaids Behaving Badly

by Jenny Holiday

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

In this laugh-out-loud romantic comedy, USA Today bestselling author Jenny Holiday proves that when opposites attract, sparks fly.

Miss Responsibility meets Mr. Reckless

With her bridezilla friend on a DIY project rampage, bridesmaid Jane Denning will do anything to escape—even if it means babysitting the groom's troublemaker brother before the wedding. It should be a piece of cake, except the "cake" is a sarcastic former soldier who is 100% wicked hotness and absolutely off-limits.

Cameron MacKinnon is ready to let loose after returning from his deployment. But first he'll have to sweet talk the ultra-responsible Jane into taking a walk on the wild side. Turns out, riling her up is the best time he's had in years. But what happens when the fun and games start to turn into something real?

The Bridesmaids Behaving Badly series:
One and Only
It Takes Two
Three Little Words

Release date: February 27, 2018

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 384

Sample

Chapter One

TUESDAY—ELEVEN DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING

Jane! I thought you were never going to get here!”

“I came as quickly as I could,” Jane said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her tone as she allowed herself to be herded into her friend Elise’s house. She exchanged resigned smiles with her fellow bridesmaids—the ones who had obviously taken Elise’s “Emergency bridesmaids meeting at my house NOW!” text more seriously than Jane had. Gia and Wendy were sprawled on Elise’s couch, braiding some kind of dried grass–type thing. Wendy, Jane’s best friend, blew her a kiss.

Jane tried to perform her traditional catching of Wendy’s kiss—it was their thing, dating back to childhood—but Elise thrust a mug of tea into Jane’s hand before it could close over the imaginary kiss. Earlier that summer, Elise had embraced and then discarded a plan to start her wedding reception with some kind of complicated cocktail involving tea, and as a result, Jane feared she and the girls were doomed to a lifetime of Earl Grey. Their beloved bridezilla had thought nothing of special ordering twenty-seven un-returnable boxes of premium English tea leaves. She also apparently thought nothing of forcing her friends to endure the rejected reception beverage again and again. And again.

“Jane’s here, so now you can tell us about the big emergency,” Gia said. “And whatever it is, I’m sure she’ll figure out a solution.” She smiled at Jane. “You’re so…smart.”

Jane had a feeling that smart wasn’t the word Gia initially meant to use. The girls—well, Gia and Elise, anyway—were always telling Jane to loosen up. But they also relied on her to solve their problems. They liked having it both ways. She was the den mother, but they were forever teasing her about being too rigid. Which was kind of rich, lately, coming from Elise, who had turned into a matrimonial drill sergeant. Jane put up with it because she loved them. Besides, somebody had to be the responsible one.

“Well,” Jane teased, “this had better be a capital-E emergency because I was in the middle of having my costume for Toronto Comicon fitted when you texted.” She opened the calf-length trench coat she’d thrown over her costume at the seamstress’s when Elise’s text arrived. It was the kind of coat women wore when seducing their boyfriends—or so she assumed, not having personally attempted to seduce anyone since Felix. She should probably just get rid of the coat because there were likely no seductions in her future, either.

“Hello!” Gia exclaimed. “What is that?”

“Xena: Warrior Princess,” Wendy answered before Jane could.

“I have no idea what that means, but you look hot,” Gia said.

Jane did a little twirl. The costume was really coming together. The seamstress had done a kick-ass job with the leather dress, armor, and arm bands, and all Jane needed to do was figure out something for Xena’s signature weapon and she’d be set. “It was a cult TV show from the 1990s,” she explained. Gia was a bit younger than the rest of them. But who was Jane kidding? The real reason Gia didn’t know about Xena was that she was a Cool Girl. As a model—an honest-to-goodness, catwalk-strutting, appearing-in-Calvin-Klein-ads model—she was too busy with her fabulous life to have time to watch syndicated late-night TV. “It’s set in a sort of alternative ancient Greece, but it’s leavened with other mythologies…” She trailed off because the explanation sounded lame even to her fantasy-novelist, geek-girl ears.

“Xena basically goes around kicking ass, and then she and her sidekick get it on with some lesbian action,” Wendy said, summing things up in her characteristically concise way.

“Really?” Gia narrowed her eyes at Jane. “Is there something you’re trying to tell us?”

“No!” Jane protested.

“Because you haven’t had a boyfriend since Felix,” Gia went on. “And you guys broke up, what? Four years ago?”

“Five,” Wendy said.

It was true. But what her friends refused to accept was that she was single by choice. She had made a sincere effort, with Felix, whom she’d met halfway through university and stayed with until she was twenty-six, to enter the world of love and relationships that everyone was always insisting was so important. Felix had taught her many things, foremost among them that she was better off alone.

“You know we’ll love you no matter what,” Gia said. “Who you sleep with doesn’t make a whit of difference.”

“I’m not gay, Gia! I just admire Xena. She didn’t need men to get shit done. We could all—”

A very loud episode of throat clearing from Elise interrupted Jane’s speech on the merits of independence, whether you were a pseudo-Greek warrior princess or a modern girl trying to get along in the world.

“Sorry.” Jane sometimes forgot that most people did not share her views of love and relationships.

“I’m sure this is all super interesting, you guys?” Elise said. “But we have a serious problem on our hands?” She was talking fast and ending declarative statements with question marks—sure signs she was stressed. Elise always sounded like an auctioneer on uppers when she was upset. “I need to grab my phone because I’m expecting the cake people to call? So sit down and brace yourselves and I’ll be right back?”

Jane sank into a chair and warily eyed a basket of spools of those brown string-like ribbon things—the kind that were always showing up tied around Mason jars of layered salads on Pinterest. She wasn’t really sure how or why Elise had decided not to outsource this stuff like normal people did when they got married. The whole wedding had become a DIY-fest. “What are we doing with this stuff?” she asked the others.

“No idea,” said Wendy, performing a little eye roll. “I’m just doing what I’m told.”

Jane grinned. Although she, Wendy, Gia, and Elise were a tightly knit foursome, they also sorted into pairs of best friends: Jane and Wendy had grown up together and had met Elise during freshman orientation at university. They’d picked up Gia when they were seniors and Gia was a freshman—Elise had been her resident assistant—RA—and the pair had become fast friends despite the age difference.

“We are weaving table runners out of raffia ribbon,” Gia said. She dropped her strands and reached for her purse. “Slide that tea over here—quick, before she gets back.”

“God bless you,” Jane said when Gia pulled a flask of whiskey out of her purse and tipped some into Jane’s mug. If the “emergency” that had pulled Jane away from her cosplay fitting—not to mention a planned evening of writing—was going to involve table runners, she was going to need something to dull the edges a bit.

Elise reappeared. Jane practiced her nonchalant face as she sipped her “tea” and tried not to cough. She wasn’t normally much of a drinker, but desperate times and all that.

“I didn’t want to repeat myself, so I’ve been holding out on Gia and Wendy?” Elise said. “But there’s been a…disruption to the wedding plans?”

I love you, but God help me, those are declarative sentences. Sometimes Jane had trouble turning off her inner editor. Job hazard.

“Oh my God, are you leaving Jay?” Wendy asked.

“Why would you say that?” Elise turned to Wendy in bewilderment.

Now, that was a legitimate question, the inner editor said—at least in the sense that it was meant to end with a question mark. The actual content of Wendy’s question was kind of insensitive. But Wendy had trouble with change, and Elise pairing off and doing the whole till-death-do-us-part thing? That was some major change for their little friend group. Jane might have had trouble with it, too, except it was plainly obvious to anyone with eyeballs that Elise was head-over-heels, one hundred percent gaga for her fiancé.

“I’m kidding!” Wendy said, a little too vehemently. Elise looked like she might have to call for smelling salts.

“Take a breath,” Gia said to Elise, “and tell us what’s wrong.”

Elise did as instructed, then flopped into a chair. “Jay’s brother is coming to the wedding.”

“Jay has a brother?” Jane asked. Though she was guilty of maybe not paying one hundred percent attention to every single wedding-related detail—for example, she’d recused herself from the debate over the merits of sage green versus grass green for the ribbons that would adorn the welcome bags left in the guests’ hotel rooms—she was pretty sure she had a handle on all the major players.

“His name is Cameron MacKinnon.”

That didn’t clear things up. “Jay Smith has a brother named Cameron MacKinnon?” she asked. Was that even possible?

“Half brother,” Elise said. “You know how Jay’s mom is single?” It was true. There had been no “father of the groom” in Elise’s carefully drafted program. “Well, she split from Jay’s dad when Jay was nine. Then a couple years later, she had a brief relationship with another man. Cameron is the product of that—that’s why his last name is MacKinnon and Jay’s is Smith.”

“But he wasn’t always going to come to the wedding?” Gia asked. “Were they estranged?”

“They’re not particularly close. There are eleven years between them—Cameron was in first grade when Jay left for school—but they’re not estranged,” Elise said. “He wasn’t going to be able to make it to the wedding because he was supposed to be in Iraq. He was in the army. But now he’s…not.”

“That sounds ominous,” Wendy said.

“Look, here’s the thing,” Elise said, sitting up straight, her voice suddenly and uncharacteristically commanding. “Cameron is a problem. He’s wild. He drives too fast, drinks too much, sleeps around. You name it—if it’s sketchy, he’s into it.”

“And this is Jay’s brother,” Jane said. Because no offense, she liked Jay fine, but Jay was…a tad underwhelming. He was an accountant. No matter what they were doing—football game, barbecue, hiking—he dressed in dark jeans and a polo shirt, like it was casual Friday at the office. To be honest, Jane had never really been sure what Elise saw in him. The girls were always telling her to loosen up, but compared to Jay, she was the life of the party.

“Yes,” Elise said. “Cameron is Jay’s brother, and he must be stopped.”

“Dun, dun, dun!” Wendy mock-sang.

“Hey, I can totally switch gears and weave this thing into a noose,” Gia said, holding up a lopsided raffia braid.

“I’m not kidding.”

Elise’s tone made everyone stop laughing and look up. The upspeak was gone, and the bride had become a warrior, eyes narrowed, lips pursed. “He’s a high school dropout. He burned down a barn outside Thunder Bay when he was seventeen. He was charged with arson, the whole deal. Jay says his mother still hasn’t lived it down. And there’s talk he got a girl pregnant in high school.”

“What happened?” asked a rapt Gia.

Elise shrugged. “Her family moved out of town, so no one really knows.”

“Wow,” Wendy said, echoing Jane’s thoughts. Jane had initially assumed Elise was being melodramatic about this black-sheep brother—as she was about nearly everything wedding related—but this guy did sound like bad news.

“Anyway.” Elise brandished an iPad in front of her like it was a weapon. “Cameron MacKinnon is not ruining my wedding. And if he’s left to his own devices, he will. From what Jay says, he won’t be able to help it.” She poked at the iPad. “This changes everything. We need to redo the schedule—and the job list.”

The words job list practically gave Jane hives. Elise had turned into a total bridezilla, but by unspoken agreement, the bridesmaids had been going along with whatever she wanted. It was the path of least resistance. But also, they truly wanted Elise to have the wedding of her dreams. Even if it was painful for everyone else.

But, oh, the job list. The job list was like the Hydra, a serpentine monster you could never get on top of. You crossed off a job, and two more sprouted to take its place. Jane had already hand-stenciled three hundred invitations, planned and executed two showers, joined Pinterest as instructed for the express purpose of searching out “homemade bunting,” tried on no fewer than twenty-three dresses—all purple—and this Cameron thing aside, it looked like today was going to be spent weaving table runners. And they still had the bachelorette party and the rehearsal dinner to get through, never mind the main event.

It boggled the mind. Elise was an interior designer, so of course she cared how things looked, but even so, Jane was continuously surprised at how much the wedding was preoccupying her friend. She could only hope they would get their funny, creative, sweet friend back after it was all over.

“Cameron is coming to town tomorrow,” Elise said. “I don’t know why he couldn’t just arrive a day ahead of the wedding like the rest of the out-of-town guests, but it is what it is.” She let the iPad clatter onto the coffee table. “I don’t even know how to add this to the job list, but somehow, we have to babysit Cameron for the next week and a half.”

“We?” Wendy echoed.

“Yes. He needs to be supervised at all times until the wedding—until after the post-wedding breakfast, actually. Then he can wreak whatever havoc he wants.”

“Hang on,” Jane said. “I agree that he sounds like bad news. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, he did something horrible and got arrested tomorrow. I don’t really see how that would have an impact on your wedding at all, because—”

Elise looked up, either ignoring or legitimately not hearing Jane. “You can’t do it, Gia. You’re my maid of honor, and I need you at my side at all times.”

“Sure thing,” Gia said.

Easy for her to say. Gia had purposely not taken any modeling jobs the two weeks before the wedding. She had plenty of time to lounge around braiding dried foliage and looking effortlessly beautiful in sweatpants. Also, there was the part where she was a millionaire.

Elise started scrolling through some kind of calendar app on her iPad. “Now, tomorrow we’re supposed to be spray-painting the tea sets gold.”

Jane looked around. Spray-painting the tea sets gold? Why was no one else confused by that sentence?

“But we’ll have to do that in the afternoon,” Elise went on, “because—”

“I have to work tomorrow,” Wendy said. And when Elise looked up blankly, she added, “Tomorrow is Wednesday.”

Jane was about to protest that she had to work tomorrow, too. Book seven of the Clouded Cave series wasn’t going to write itself. Just because she didn’t have to be in court like Wendy didn’t mean her job wasn’t important. She had an inbox full of fan mail from readers clamoring for the next book, not to mention a contractual deadline that got closer every day.

Elise continued, seemingly oblivious to her friends’ weekday employment obligations. “Tomorrow we also need to do a practice run of boutonniere, corsage, and bouquet making. I finagled a vendor pass to the commercial fruit and flower market, but we need to get there early. So we should do the flowers in the morning and paint the tea sets in the afternoon. We’ll meet in Mississauga at five thirty, but someone needs to pick up Cameron and make sure he behaves all day.”

“I’ll do it,” said Jane, mentally calculating that to be at the suburban flower market by five thirty, she’d have to get up at four a.m. Also, there was the part about spending the afternoon spray-painting tea sets. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which was the lesser of the two proverbial evils. She could babysit this Cameron dude. She’d treat him like a character in one of her books—figure him out, then make him do her bidding. “Give me the wild man’s flight info, and I’ll pick him up.”

“I thought it would be best if you did it,” Elise said, still scrolling and tapping like a maniac. “I mean, your job is so—”

Wait for it.

“Flexible.”

But at least she hadn’t said anything about—

“And you’re so responsible. I feel like this is your kind of task.”

Jane stifled a sigh. Everyone always called her responsible, but they made it sound so…boring. She preferred to think of herself as conscientious.

“I really, really appreciate this, Jane,” Elise said, finally looking up from her iPad and gracing Jane with a smile so wide and sincere that it almost made her breath catch.

Yes. Right. That was why she was voluntarily submitting to this bridesmaid torture-gig. Her friend Elise was still somewhere inside the bridezilla that was currently manning the controls, and she was so, so happy to be marrying the love of her life. That was the important thing. It made even Jane’s heart, which was usually immune to these kinds of sentiments, twist a little. A wedding wasn’t in her future, and she was fine with that, but all of this planning made her think of her parents’ wedding pictures, the pair of them all decked out in their shaggy 1970s glory. Had they been in love like Elise and Jay, before the accident? Maybe at the start, but probably not for long, given her father’s addiction. He was never violent, but he wasn’t very…lovable.

But now was not the time for a pity party, so she smiled back at Elise. “No problem.”

“You need to meet his plane, take him to Jay’s, and make sure he doesn’t do anything crazy. Jay will be home as soon as he can after work, and then you can leave for the evening and we’ll figure out the rest of the schedule from there.”

“Got it.”

Elise reached out and squeezed her hand. “Seriously. Making sure Cameron doesn’t ruin my wedding is the best present you could give me.”

She waved away Elise’s thanks. This was going to be a piece of cake. Or at least better than tea set spray-painting duty. After all, how bad could this Cameron MacKinnon guy be?

Chapter Two

WEDNESDAY—TEN DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING

How bad could this wedding be?

Cam kept asking himself that question as the plane taxied endlessly to its gate and he stretched—as much as he could in the tiny seat—to shake off the sleep that had overtaken him.

The flight from Thunder Bay had been short, but he’d conked right out and fallen immediately into dreams of the Middle East. Snippets of dreams, really, everything from both tours all jumbled up: sand and heat and boredom and fear. His instrument panel. Haseeb’s face when he’d realized they weren’t going to be able to diffuse the bomb. Becky’s cries for help.

The trial.

Objectively speaking, Jay’s wedding was not going to be as bad as Iraq. Cam knew that. And, he consoled himself, he was in Toronto.

A city. Civilization. Steaks. Ice cream. Hell, fresh vegetables. He smiled to himself as he hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder and shuffled down the aisle.

A drink. Maybe even a joint. He perked up as he ambled down the Jetway. Despite his reputation, he wasn’t really into drugs, but after the last couple years, maybe he could get into the concept of temporary oblivion.

Television. Trashy American television. Or boring Canadian television, even. Television in English, was the point. Falling asleep with the TV on, warm under a pile of his mom’s quilts.

Winter, he thought, as he followed the signs toward baggage claim. Not for five or six months yet, but even just knowing it would come was a relief. And before then, the leaves of fall. Cool nights.

Warm beds.

Women.

It wasn’t a bad list. And ticking off the items on it was going to help get him out of the damned country music song he was currently living in. Kicked out of the Canadian Forces and dumped by the girlfriend he’d stupidly remained faithful to for two deployments—the first in Afghanistan and the one he was just coming off of, in Iraq. He was even homeless on account of the fact that the plan had been for him to move in with Christie when he got back to Thunder Bay. All he needed was to get a dog so it could die and make his wretchedness complete.

So much for turning over a new leaf. He’d been trying to remake his life, but apparently a person couldn’t escape his destiny.

But whatever. He’d spent his whole childhood wanting to get out of Thunder Bay, so why the hell would he want to move back to that remote shithole of a town now that he had no reason to be at the reserve unit? Christie had done him a favor, actually.

He was totally free.

He closed his eyes and let his mind return to his list as he approached the still-empty baggage carousel. His dream girl…she’d be what? Blond? Yeah. Sleek blond hair. What else? Petite. Hell, if he was going to imagine his ideal hookup, he might as well embrace his inner caveman. He would run his hands all over her—they’d practically span her waist. He started a little as the baggage carousel leaped to life but then closed his eyes again. One more second living in his fantasy: blond hair, blue eyes, a pixie of a girl. Someone with a big, wide smile who would be happy to see him. Exactly…

“Cameron MacKinnon?”

…the opposite of the chubby, mousy woman standing before him.

“Yeah?” Did he know this woman from somewhere? Another Thunder Bay escapee maybe? With her jeans, unadorned white T-shirt, and mud-colored hair scraped back into a ponytail, she sort of had that small-town, unadventurous look he recognized from home. He wouldn’t go so far as to call her a hick—her skinny jeans were flattering and looked expensive, but she didn’t seem like the big-city type.

“You look exactly like I imagined,” she said, regarding him with her hands on her hips and smiling with satisfaction, almost as if she had manifested him with her mind.

“And you look nothing like I imagined,” he answered.

The smug smile disappeared, and she narrowed her eyes. They were the color of mossy mud. To match the mud hair, he supposed, though really her hair was the color of rusty mud. He laughed, both at her confusion and at himself. He’d gone and conjured a woman, all right, but apparently the universe had decided to give him the opposite version of what he’d ordered.

“I’m Elise’s friend,” she said. “She sent me to pick you up. My name is Jane.”

“Elise?”

“Jay’s fiancée?” said the woman he now knew was called Jane. Plain Jane. Muddy Jane.

“Right.” He spied his duffel sliding down the chute and jogged over to retrieve it. “So, Jane,” he said as she caught up to him, “I hope my brother’s marrying up.”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said, her nose wrinkling. She had a cute nose. Especially when she scrunched it up like that. It went a little way toward counteracting all that mud.

“It was a joke, Jane.” She still didn’t look amused. Didn’t even crack a smile. Well. His tiny blond dream girl would have laughed. “Let’s just say that although Jay presents pretty well these days, he and I both come from what you might call white-trash origins. So I’m pretty sure he can’t help but be marrying up.”

One—only one—eyebrow slowly lifted. “Are you ready?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’ve got a car rented.” He looked around for signs for the rental companies. “So you didn’t actually need to pick me up, Jane.” He switched to looking her up and down. The skinny jeans showcased the way her waist nipped way in and then gave way to rounded hips. Pixies aside, there was something to be said for a curvier figure. The proverbial hourglass.

“Jay lives downtown. You don’t need a car.”

“And yet I’ve rented one.”

“He lives right off the subway,” she went on, apparently bent on ignoring him. “It will be impossible to park near his building.”

“Look, Jane. I’ve been driving around the desert in a G Wagon for the past five months. Cruising along a paved road behind the wheel of a good old North American hot rod? I’ve been dreaming of that.” He raised his eyebrows. “Among other things.” A pixie, primarily. The kind of woman who would appreciate the kind of car he was imagining.

She sighed like a weary kindergarten teacher, and annoyance flared in his chest. He hadn’t asked her to come here, boss him around, and then act all put upon when he was exercising the goddamned freedom he’d been overseas defending.

But he wasn’t a bully—he might be a lot of things, but a bully wasn’t one of them—so he bit his tongue and turned, setting off for the car rental counters.

He could feel her following. And when they reached the edge of the carpeted area outside baggage claim, he could hear the clicking of her shoes on the polished concrete floor. He sped up. So did the clicks. Click-click-click, like a ticking timer signaling an imminent bomb blast.

He knew what was happening. Jane wasn’t here as some kind of innocuous welcome wagon. Jay had sent her because he didn’t trust Cam not to fuck up in some way. He expected Cam to embarrass him. And, really, wasn’t that fair? From Jay’s perspective at least? Jay had no idea that Cam had been three years into Operation: Become an Honorable Person when it had all come crumbling down around him. He was back to being the unreliable loser of a younger brother, but as far as Jay knew, that was what he had always been. At least he didn’t have to look into his brother’s disappointed eyes after this latest disgrace. If people’s expectations of you were already in the gutter, it was hard to disappoint them.

He could probably manage it with Elise, though. Cam hadn’t been joking about marrying up. Cam paid attention to his brother’s letters—lived for them in fact, though he’d never admit it. So he knew Jay’s fiancée was an interior designer. Elise and Muddy Jane were probably peas in a pod: uptight, refined, humorless.

Click-click-click-click-click.

He stopped suddenly, and she crashed into him. Her breasts hit his back, and they were soft and yielding as they met his torso. It was only an instant, but it was enough to remind him—to remind his dick—how much he had missed breasts.

A pixie would not have breasts like that.

He could feel her correct by stepping bac. . .