HAPPY PANTS CAFE (THE HAPPY PANTS SERIES) (2 page)

Young lady? Young lady?
“No, I haven’t. I don’t even like champagne because it gives me a headache, but that’s beside the point. That bride,” Harper pointed at Christina, “is shitfaced. You can’t record what she’s saying!”

Christina looked at him. “Ya know,” she slurred, “I think she’s right. I am kinda shitfaced.”

The man, with his full, sensual lips, sultry hazel eyes and too-delicious thick lashes, looked like he might just strangle Harper. “Who
are
you?”

“None of your business, you sleazy, unshaven vulture.” Harper turned toward Christina. “Why don’t we find you some water?”

“Nooo…Water is for days,” the bride wobbled a bit, “when I’m trying to be sober. Wait—who are you?”

“Um-um, I’m Jessa’s sister.”

The bride swayed a bit and narrowed her eyes at Harper as if trying to see clearly.

“Jessa. Your
prenup attorney?” Harper added.

Christina pointed her finger in Harper’s face. “Oh, yeah…you’re her little sister, the reporter—wait—
heeey…”

Ken spun Harper around, seething. “You—you—” His fierce gaze gripped her like a vice made from raw, sexual attraction. Visions of libidinous acts thrashed inside her head, causing her pulse to spike and her face to feel like it was roasting in the warm sun. Only, that sun brought the promise of endless orgasms instead of
a sunburn. And, for a few brief seconds, she felt lost in the masculine paradise of those eyes and savored the illusion of him being as lost as she was.

Ken shook his head as if trying to regain his focus. “You’re a reporter,” he said accusatorily.

She nodded dumbly.

“Oh, I get it,” he said, “
it’s okay for you to try to get a quote, but not me?”

Harper felt her face turn I’m-so-busted red. “Well, yeah…but I was…”

Ken stepped in closer, towering over her five-six-ness with his six-five-ness.

Wow, his eyes are such an unusual shade of hazel—gold with green speckles.

“You were what?” he asked. “Going to pretend to be her friend, bring her some more champagne, and then get her to talk?”

Yeah.
That had been the plan, but now she felt a little sorry for the woman. Harper was going to try to win her over by keeping her away from sexy-vulture Ken.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Harper argued, giving him the once-over. “I’m not a complete douchebag, like
some
people.”

Anger lit the man’s beautiful hazel eyes. “Douchebag?” he growled in a low, deep voice. “Me? I told her immediately who I was. You were trying for the sneak attack. I think that makes
you
the douche.”

Harper gasped. “Did you just call
me
a douche?”

He looked her up and down and then crossed his arms over his strapping tuxedo-clad chest. “If the bag fits—”

Harper slapped him right across his stubbly cheek, and his head whipped to the side.

Shocked by her own act of aggression, Harper gasped and placed her hand over her heart.
Why did I do that?
She’d never hit another person in her entire life. Okay, there’d been that time when she was nine and those stupid boys were making fun of Austin, but surely that didn’t count.

Rage flickered in the man’s swoon-worthy, handsome face, and Harper noticed his fingers twitching to his side.
Oh no! Now I’ve done it. He’s going to hit me back!

Looking like a pot of soup about to boil over, Ken’s nostrils flared. He moved his hands toward Harper’s shoulders, as if he was going to give her a good shake, but the drunken bride stumbled right in front of him.

Being that Christina was several inches taller than Harper, his hands landed right on Christina’s breasts. Of course, Harper couldn’t see the action, but Lord, she saw Ken’s face looking like he just might die of shame. And, of course, Christina yelped before attempting to quickly move away from the accidental, public-grope situation, but instead stumbled again. Harper watched in slow-motion horror as the bride fell and crashed into the wedding cake.

“Crap,” was about all Harper managed to say before being nabbed by two security guards. “Oh, sure, but the hot guy gets to stay!” she yelled as they threw her out of the persnickety Marin country club on her ass. Yes, right in front of a thousand paparazzi.

Turned out, Harper would be the scoop that day.

“Zel, just calm down. It was that a-hole Ken Doll who pushed Christina into the cake. Not me.”

Harper’s editor and longtime friend, Ixtzel, sat behind her desk in the office overlooking San Francisco’s famous Ferry Building, arms crossed and face beet red. “Ken Doll?”

“Okay, he looked more like the new Superman, Henry-whatever.”
But hotter. With a scruffy jaw and really beautiful hazel eyes. And that body…

Harper resisted the urge to fan her face.

“Harper, I don’t give a shit if he looked like Thor in his birthday suit! His ass isn’t on the cover of a goddamned tabloid!” Ixtzel, a bottle blonde in her forties and a total sado-perfectionist, pointed to the front page of the rag-mag with her perfectly manicured fingernail. The picture was of Harper flat on her back in front of the country club, legs sprawled in the air. There was a black bubble over her girly parts.

Harper cringed. “I was wearing underwear. They put that there to make it look worse than it really was.”

Ixtzel slammed her fist down onto the desk. “Dammit, Harp. I put my ass on the line to help get you this column, but instead of delivering Christina Bass-Andrews on her wedding day, you end up humiliating us both!”

“I had nothing to do with the cake incident.”
Not really.
“It was that scummy reporter who was flirting with her. He pushed—”

“It doesn’t matter, Harp.” Ixtzel pressed her blue eyes closed and drew a breath before snapping them open again. “I have to be upstairs in three minutes to talk to Dan.”

Harper’s eyes widened. “Dan?” That was the owner of the paper. His motto was “Chop heads. Chop arms. Chop legs. Ask questions next lifetime.”

Ixtzel rose from behind her desk, but her head sagged. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell him.”

Son of a bitch. If I ever see Ken Doll again, I really am going to castrate him with my teeth!
But then an idea popped into Harper’s head.

“Tell Dan that I have something better than Christina.”

Ixtzel stared with skepticism.

“Do you know St. Helena?” Harper asked.

Ixtzel quirked an angry blonde brow. “St. Helena? As in Napa Valley? The quietest, quaintest little town in the world?”

“Christina met her husband in some coffee shop there. Only, it’s not a coffee shop.” Harper wiggled her brows suggestively.

Ixtzel rolled her eyes.

“It’s true. Women—wealthy women—are apparently going there to hook husbands. I heard Christina telling her friends that’s where she’d met her groom, and her friends responded by saying they had already scheduled their visits.”

Ixtzel’s brows crinkled. “Seriously, Harper? You think a dating service is newsworthy?”

Harper shrugged. “No. But if Hollywood A-
listers and lonely socialites are signing up for arranged marriages? This could be some weird new fad.”

Ixtzel blew out a breath. “You’re absolutely sure that’s what you heard?”

Harper nodded. She was positive about what she’d heard, but she also knew she was making a serious leap. The place might be a social club or out-of-the-way hook-up spot. But she had heard the conversation, and it wasn’t your normal, “Hey, let’s go party and meet cute guys!” kind of conversation. Her gut told her there was something there.

“How much time do you need?” Ixtzel asked.

Harper clapped excitedly. “A week. I’ll leave right now.” It was still pretty early in the day, so if she left immediately she’d beat the Friday-slash-weekend traffic and make it up there in about an hour and a half.

“Fine. I want you to call me tomorrow with an update, but I need an article on my desk in one week.” Ixtzel pointed at Harper. “This is your last chance. If you don’t deliver something spectacular to make Dan happy, I’m going to fire you right before he walks me out. Got it?”

“Got it.”
Please be something juicy. Please?
she prayed to the gods of news-scoops. And if she was wrong, she could only hope Dan would not fire Zel. It was one thing to sink her own ship, but Harper couldn’t stomach sinking her friend’s, too.

~~

Although Harper was native to the Bay Area—where beaches, shopping, hiking, skiing, fine dining, camping, and “spa’ing” were plentiful—the last time she’d been to wine country, or anywhere relaxing, was about five years ago for a girls’ weekend.

Has it been that long since I had a vacation? Sad.

Most of her recreation consisted of grabbing drinks with friends or coworkers in the city after work, which really wasn’t as fun as it used to be. Now most everyone was married, some with kids, and all they wanted to talk about were the joys of domestic life.

Cray-
zeee!
She knew that it was just a question of time before they became secretly unhappy. Because, sooner or later, they’d discovered that love—the lasting, romantic sort—was a huge hoax perpetuated by Disney movies and fairytales shoveled into little girls’ brains from day one of life. Harper just wished her friends didn’t insist that she come along for the delusional ride. She was happy with her life and would never understand how changing things would improve it.

Change isn’t always good.

St. Helena, for example, was perfect and just as she remembered: a charming little town made up of antique shops, clothing boutiques, B and Bs, and a few dozen restaurants, all hugging the two-lane road that passed through the middle of everything. Wineries, both small and large, with bright flowery gardens, fountains, and miles upon miles of lush grapevines were the bookends to this popular stop along the Napa wine trail. It was so popular, in fact, that getting a room in mid-June was near impossible.

“Really, so all you have is the honeymoon suite?” Harper asked the young man standing behind the antique desk in his tie-dyed T-shirt and cut-off jeans. He was obviously filling in for his parents at this family-owned, Victorian bed-and-breakfast called the Muddy Duck (probably because of its brown and green exterior).

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. That’s all we got,” he said.

Harper sighed; that was not what her hotel finder app had said. And job promotion or not, three hundred dollars a night was steep.

Well, think about how expensive being unemployed will be, Harp.
Besides, this was the perfect location: only three blocks from the center of town and from the infamous
Café de los Pantalones Felizes
(translation: Happy Pants Café), as the Hispanic clerk at the convenience store down the road had said. It was the dangest thing, but there was nothing on the Internet about the café. No website, address, nada. Harper had stopped at several gas stations, asking for directions, before finding someone able/willing to help her.

“I’ll take it,” she said to the hippy boy.

“How many nights?”

“Six.” Harper was all-in at this point.

“Great, man. I’ll need a credit card and ID.”

Man? Seriously, look at these boobs!
Since age fifteen, Harper’s large Cs had won her the prestigious nicknames of “Harp Seal,” she assumed because of their buoyancy; “Harpy,” the mythological Greek creature with wings and giant ta-tas; and “Harboobs,” which she assumed was the combination of the words “Harper” and “boobs,” in an attempt to sound like the word “harpoon.” The irony was that up until that point of her life, she had been the flattest, most unfeminine creature to walk the planet since the invention of the park bench.

“Here you go, girl,” Harper replied and handed him her credit card.

He looked at her funny, but clearly didn’t get the comeback. Then again, no one ever really did. Harper’s humor was about as unusual as her personality and name.

Which is probably the reason you’re still single
. And it wasn’t for lack of trying, either. She’d had a few relationships over the years, but with the hours she worked—which included weekends attending weddings, fundraisers, and parties—it didn’t leave much room for a man. It also didn’t help that she didn’t believe in true love and spoke of it quite openly, even on first dates. Some men took it as a sign that she just wanted to slut around—wrong!—but most just thought she was crazy. Seriously, though, was it
so
difficult to believe that romantic, burning love was nothing more than a fleeting emotion? And like any emotion, the potency faded over time. That’s why relationships fell apart. Of course, that didn’t mean Harper wanted to be single forever. She simply wanted to find a pragmatic man who would be a loyal friend and give her an orgasm once a day.

Sort of like a dog that can cook and likes to watch movies combined with a vibrator?

Yeah, like that. But without the super-hairy back.