Don't Kiss the Bride: An Age Gap, Marriage of Convenience Romance Read online

  Copyright © 2021 Carian Cole

  Don’t Kiss the Bride

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author, except for inclusion of brief quotations in a review. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. All characters and storylines are the property of the author and your support and respect is appreciated. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover photography: Regina Wamba

  Cover models: Michael Kemp and Cherry Albrecht

  To strangers who inspire stories in others without ever knowing the role they played …

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Connect with Carian Cole

  Books by Carian Cole

  Newsletter

  Chapter 1

  Jude

  The screech of tires and Meatloaf’s Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad blasting from tinny speakers pulls my attention from the blueprints I’m bent over. I frown at the silver ’75 Corvette speeding into the high school parking lot next door.

  It’s one of my favorite songs, but not at seven a.m. on a Monday.

  Until today, construction on this residential, two-story house has been quiet. No traffic buzzing by. No people milling around. Zero distractions. Exactly the way I like it. But that’s all gonna change now that summer break is over and kids are back in school. Rowdy and giggling teenagers have been traipsing past the job site for the last hour.

  “Hot damn,” my foreman Kyle mutters under his breath and lets out a long, low whistle.

  “What?” I follow his gaze to the school parking lot as I roll up the blueprints and snap a rubber band around them.

  A young girl steps out of the ’vette, pushing aviator sunglasses up on top of her mane of wavy, waist-length blonde hair. She nudges the driver’s side door shut with a casual sway of her hip—a move that instantly makes my mouth go dry. The door hinges squeak from decades of rust, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

  I push my hair out of my face, mesmerized by the fringe of the moccasins sashaying around her jean-clad calves. A black tee with a red kiss mark stamped across it peeks out from under a matching suede jacket. She struts away from the car with the attitude of a movie star who just stepped out of a limo and not a rusty old sports car that’s more than twice her age.

  Did she fall into a time portal that sucked her out of the seventies and dropped her straight into today?

  “The things I’d like to do to her…” Kyle says, licking his lips like she’s about to be his last meal.

  My gut burns with a twinge of disgust and guilt as I tear my eyes off the girl. “She’s a teenager, man,” I say, giving his shoulder a hard shove. “Get back to work. I’m not paying you to ogle chicks.”

  Laughing, he hitches up his tool belt and plants a hardhat on top of his head. “Teen my ass, Lucky. Girls sure as hell didn’t look like that when we were in high school.”

  True. If they did, maybe I would have been more interested in sticking around. Instead, I dropped out six months before graduation to take a full-time job.

  I glance at the darkening gray sky. “The clouds are rolling in. Let’s get some shit done before we get rained out. We can’t afford to lose any more time on this job.”

  “You got it, Jude.” He leers at the girl one more time before getting back to work.

  Grabbing my thermos of coffee, I scan my four-man crew and try to gauge our progress. We’re two days behind thanks to the homeowners’ asking for last-minute changes, but I think we can get back on track and move to the next job on schedule. Ending or starting a job late pisses off the customer, and I don’t need any ranting one-star reviews about my company plastered on the internet.

  “Hey, Skylar!” a female voice yells. “The eighties called. They want their clothes and car back!”

  I screw the lid back on my thermos as I’m sucked into the teen drama unfolding a few yards away. Three girls are laughing as they follow Corvette-girl to the rear entrance of the school. She suddenly stops, spinning around to face them in a whirlwind of blonde hair and suede fringe. They step back, bumping into each other.

  “Wow.” She looks the girls up and down before zeroing in on the tallest and prettiest of the group. This one’s gotta be the head mean girl, based on all the movies I’ve seen. “Too bad your daddy couldn’t buy you some brain cells to go with that nose job, Paige. The car’s from the seventies.”

  The girls glare at her, then simultaneously roll their eyes up to their eyebrows. She stays rooted to the sidewalk, forcing them to walk around her. A smirk tips the corner of her mouth.

  As she turns to enter the school, she catches me watching her. Holding my gaze with her bright eyes, she flashes me a teasing smile, blows a pink bubble of gum at me, pops it, then disappears inside.

  I quickly wipe the silly grin off my face with the back of my hand and refocus my attention on my job. Distractions aren’t a luxury I can afford. Especially feisty, cute ones with trouble stamped all over them.

  “You need anything before I head outta here?” Kyle asks, glancing over the blueprints that are spread out on a table in the middle of the framed-in addition. We’ve known each other since high school, and he’s worked for me since I started the company ten years ago. He’s always the last of my crew to leave.

  “I’m good.” I wipe my dusty hands on a rag and shove it into the back pocket of my jeans. “See ya tomorrow.”

  “I’ll bring ya a bagel.”

  After he leaves, I do a quick sweep of the job site to make sure nothing’s lying around, then toss my tools in the back of my pickup. The telltale sound of an engine struggling to turn over comes from the school parking lot and I’m not surprised to see the blonde girl banging her fists against the steering wheel of her Corvette.

  Hopping in the front seat, I light up a smoke and throw the truck in reverse. My rearview mirror gives me
a glimpse of the girl prying the hood of her car open.

  Does she even know what she’s looking for?

  She leans into the engine and pokes around for a few seconds, then stands back and crosses her arms.

  “Shit,” I mutter, swinging my truck around. I can’t just leave a teenaged girl in a parking lot with a dead engine. Dark storm clouds are creeping across the sky and a warm breeze is whipping through the trees. It’s gonna pour any minute.

  I pull my truck into the lot and park next to her. “Need some help?” I ask from my open window.

  Her mouth opens and then immediately shuts when she’s interrupted by two high school jocks approaching.

  “Hey, Skylar! If you need a ride, I got one for you right here.” The kid grabs his junk and laughs hysterically.

  “That’s a little small for me, Michael,” she yells back. “I’d rather ride your dad and make you call me Mommy.”

  Ah. She’s a little firecracker, full of spark—which can be good and bad.

  The guys aren’t laughing anymore. “Fuck you, whore.”

  When they see me jump out of my truck, they immediately start walking in the other direction.

  “You shouldn’t provoke those punks,” I say.

  Her eyebrows rise. “Seriously? I can take care of myself, dude.”

  “I can see that, Sparkles. What’s wrong with your car?”

  “Sparkles?” she repeats.

  “Yeah. You gotta lot of spark. Like a firecracker.”

  Her eyes turn a brighter shade of turquoise and the corner of her mouth slowly lifts.

  “My grandfather used to call me smartass, so I guess Sparkles is a step up.”

  I let out a laugh and walk around her to look under the hood of her car. “So, what happened?”

  She shrugs. “I’m not sure. It was fine this morning, now it won’t start.”

  “Get in and try to start it.”

  She does, but the engine still won’t turn over.

  “I think it’s your fuel pump,” I say when she steps back out of the car.

  “Oh.” She chews her lower lip and stares at the engine. “Can that be fixed?”

  “Yeah. You’ll have to get it towed to a mechanic.”

  “Shit.”

  “Might be hard to find parts for this car, though. What year is this? ’75?”

  “Yeah. It was a gift.”

  I gently close the hood and wipe my hands across my jeans. “Nice gift, but it’s probably gonna start costing you money. It’s an old car.”

  She looks up at the darkening sky and lets out a big sigh. “Just great,” she says.

  “Do you or your parents have a local mechanic you use?” I ask.

  Tilting her head to the side, she blinks at me. “No, um… we don’t. My mom doesn’t drive.”

  “I use the guy over on North Main. He’s good and he won’t rip you off. If you want, I’ll call a tow and have them bring it over there for you.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” She looks down at the ground and then slowly back up at me. “Is a tow expensive?”

  The worry in her eyes tugs at my heart. “It’s only about five miles so it’ll be cheap. Maybe twenty bucks.”

  Visible relief washes over her face as I pull out my phone and arrange for a tow truck to come. Holding her purse and her backpack, she stares at her car with a forlorn expression.

  I wonder if she can’t afford to get it fixed. The car’s older than dirt, and her clothes, which come off as hippie chic, may have been bought at Goodwill to save money, not to make a fashion statement.

  I shove my phone into my back pocket. “The tow truck should be here in about fifteen minutes.”

  She nods and smiles. “Thank you for doing that for me.”

  “No problem.”

  Fat raindrops begin to fall, splattering onto the asphalt around us. Her eyes go wide as thunder growls in the distance.

  “Do you need a ride home? I can wait with you until the tow truck comes.” There’s no other high school kids lingering around, and I’m gonna feel bad just leaving her here alone.

  Her gaze roves over the tattoos covering my arms and hands. Takes in my shoulder-length, shaggy hair. Doubt flickers in her eyes.

  Am I a nice guy doing a good deed? Or an ink-covered, longhaired scumbag with a rap sheet a mile long?

  Maybe I’m both.

  “Um—”

  “You saw me earlier working on that house.” I nod over to the new construction. “And this is my business name on the truck. I’m not gonna do anything shady. Just tryin’ to be nice.”

  Her chin juts out. “You think rapists and kidnappers walk around with signs on them? They have jobs. Sometimes wives and kids. They look more normal than you do.”

  “You’ve got a point.” I shake my head and laugh. “Okay then, I’m going to head home before we get soaked. The tow truck will be here any minute—I’m sure he’ll give you a lift home. Or you could call an Uber.”

  “Wait,” she says as I grab my door handle. “I’m kinda low on cash this week.” She takes a hesitant breath. Still unsure if she can trust me. “If you don’t mind giving me a ride…”

  Between an Uber driver, the tow guy, and a random stranger, she’s decided I’m the lesser of the evils.

  Hey, I’ll consider it a compliment.

  “Hop in, then.” A raindrop the size of a quarter splashes onto my face. “We can wait in my truck ’til the tow guy gets here.”

  Once in my front seat, she puts her backpack between us on the seat, like she’s creating a barrier for safety.

  “I have a knife,” she says matter-of-factly. “If you try anything, I’ll stab you in the dick.”

  Laughing, I light up a smoke. “Easy, Sparkles. Not everyone’s out to get you. I’m staying over here on my side.” I take a drag off my cigarette, wondering if this kid is just paranoid or if she has some sort of baggage that’s making her suspicious. “And you shouldn’t tell people you have a weapon. If I was a bad guy, now I’m anticipating you fighting back with a knife, and my first move is going to be to get it away from you. You want to surprise me with it, not fuckin’ announce it.”

  She sighs and stares out the window. “Thanks for the tip.”

  If I were with my sister, I’d say that’s what she said and we’d laugh like idiots. I’d also tell her she shouldn’t be bringing a weapon to school. But my little sister is gone, no longer here to laugh at my jokes or take my advice.

  I clear my throat. “My name’s Jude, by the way. My friends call me Lucky.”

  “Are you?” She turns to face me. “Lucky?”

  The tone of her voice and the way she’s pinning me with her eyes unnerves me a bit. I shake my head and exhale smoke out the window. “Not really. My last name is Lucketti. That’s where it came from.”

  “I’m Skylar.”

  “Nice to meet you.” I drop my cigarette into an almost-empty water bottle in my console. “You got a thing for the seventies? The ’vette, Meatloaf, the fringe suede jacket and moccasins. It’s all cool, I’m just curious.”

  “I don’t know,” she says softly, spinning a silver ring around her thumb. “I guess I’ve just always been drawn to older things. They have character and give me a sort of comfort. They’ve been forgotten and tossed aside.” She takes a wistful breath. “I guess I want to love them. Remind them they still matter. Does that make sense? Or does it sound stupid?”

  Her eyes stay on mine, waiting, hoping I don’t laugh at her. She wants me to understand. And I do. Her words have just snuck into my soul.

  “It’s not stupid at all,” I say as the tow truck pulls up next to us. “And it makes a ton of sense. More than you know.”

  Way more than she knows.

  I am one of those forgotten, tossed-aside things.

  Chapter 2

  Skylar

  Jude doesn’t talk much after I give him directions to my house. He’s obviously not one of those people who has to fill the silence with random, dumb conversatio
n like what’s your favorite class? or we really needed this rain.

  Instead, he says, “You like Pink Floyd, Sparkles?” with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

  “Hell, yeah. Who doesn’t?”

  Grinning, he flicks a tattooed finger over a button on the steering wheel and the familiar, haunting sound of Dark Side of the Moon surrounds us with its unique lull. I don’t know how many hours I’ve laid in bed with incense cones lit on my nightstand, staring up at the ceiling listening to this album when I felt overwhelmed with life. It always calms and grounds me.

  “Nothing better than musical therapy, huh?” Jude says, as if he’s reading my mind.

  I nod. “So true.”

  We sing the lyrics together, which should be awkward, but isn’t.

  “You can just drop me off here and I’ll walk the rest of the way,” I offer when we near the bent address sign at the top of my street.

  Ignoring me, he makes a left onto the bumpy road.

  “Don’t be silly. I told you I’d drive you home, not dump you off on a corner in the rain.” He shakes his head and glances at me. “Which house is it?”

  I point to the right and gather up my backpack and purse. “Two houses down. The one with the camper.”