Put a Ring on It (25 page)

“I take that back. I think I love you, Lia.” Dane bowed to her.

“Much better.”

“I’m going to go and see if they will light the torches for us. I’ll send someone out to take the drink orders as well. Excuse me.” Nalani headed off toward the resort.

Gas powered torches came to life around the edges of the cove, and servers came down the path from the resort carrying boxes.

Kieran snuck a look at his phone. One hour, seven minutes past schedule. Past island time. The officiant had forgotten or gotten lost or gone fishing. Theo…. Theo just wasn’t coming.

Jax picked his way across the beach with a brimming shot glass in each hand. Kieran shook his head. “Yeah, well, you have to take it, or Theo’s dad is going to yell at me.”

Kieran raised his brows but took the shot, plastic and sticky, between two fingers. “And that would be bad?”

“Hell yeah. Look, Kieran. Don’t worry. Theo loves you. Trust me. He’s always late. It’s because he’s got to make an entrance. He’s worse than Dane.”

“Not true.” Dane came up to stand with him. “Theo at least has a reason. I just don’t care about other people’s time.”

“Inconsiderate but honest. How does that work for you?” Finn asked.

“Not as well as he thinks it does.” Gideon held his shot cupped in his palm.

It felt familiarly like a setup. People carefully arranged around him, like the flash mob in Times Square. If Theo had done this, made Kieran ready to puke from nerves, Kieran was going to punch him right in his sexy, deceitful mouth.

But no one burst into song. And Theo didn’t magically appear from the crowd.

Theo hadn’t set it up. But his friends had. They were making sure Kieran wasn’t standing all by himself.

“A toast to everyone’s health,” Theo’s father called out, raising a shot glass.

His uncle raised one of the bottles. “
Ya mas
.”

Everyone drank, and Theo’s family threw their shot glasses on the sand. That was the reason for plastic. Even in the middle of this mess, Kieran had to admit that Nalani was good at her job.

“Kieran,” Gideon said like a schoolteacher waiting for an answer.

What the hell. Kieran drank the shot. “I appreciate this, I do. You guys aren’t the complete dicks I thought you were, but I think I’m going to need a little breathing room.”

“You sure?” Jax asked.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“We’ll be back with refills,” Dane promised.

“Kier?” Finn asked.

“I’m good.” But before he could move away, his sister grabbed his arm.

“Oh my God, oh my God.”

Kieran stared at her. She was squealing like a teenager. Actually, she technically still was, but just barely, and she’d never acted like one before.

“Do you know who that is?”

“Ash, do you know what is going on?”

“Yeah, your fiancé left you at the altar. But oh my God. That’s Brian Anderson. From
Family Daze
. He’s even cuter than on TV. I have to text Tiara. She is not going to believe this. Thank God your fiancé blew you off. I never could have played with him here.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the groom’s sister.” Gideon came up, holding out another shot. “If it makes a difference, I did think he was going to make it.”

“It does. Thank you. I feel so much better now.”

Gideon shook his head, lips twisting in a sneer, but as a long practitioner in that art, Kieran could see the admiration behind it, so he did not throw the shot in Gideon’s face but drank it.

“I found him,” Nalani called from the top of the path.

Kieran turned.

Not Theo, of course. A big guy, bare to the waist, a traditional Hawaiian loincloth wrapped around his hips. As he came closer to the torches, Kieran saw his slicked-back long hair and beard were copper red. Skin freckled and white-guy tanned.

“
I
found him.”

Theo stepped out from behind the guy, looking like he’d been thrown in the pool in the Armani slacks and white linen shirt he’d brought for the ceremony. “I am really sorry to keep everyone waiting here, and yes, it is all my fault.” Theo’s voice carried easily across the cove. “I hope you’ll all wait just a few more minutes, because I really have to admit to Kieran what a giant assh—ass I am.”

“No one will mind. I have a third bottle of ouzo,” Uncle Spiro yelled.

Theo pressed the back of one hand over his mouth and grabbed Kieran’s hand with the other one.

Kieran didn’t know what he would have said if he found his voice before Theo had led him halfway back up the path.

“Oh, shit.” Theo’s teeth chattered for a second.

“Are you cold? What the fuck happened?”

“Do you mind if we sit down?” Theo dropped onto the grass in his soaked Armani slacks.

Kieran sank down next to him.

“What happened?” Theo and his dramatic pauses. “A lot of shit. Let me do this in order. First, thank you.” Theo held out his arm. On his wrist, the wire lion’s head, brightened by the chrome plating, dangled from the black cord bracelet Kieran had picked out. “I had already worked out the I’m-a-giant-asshole part by the time I opened it, but it helped to know you might actually still be willing to have me.”

Kieran grunted. “It depends on the rest of the story.”

“Apology second. You were right. About everything. I do this. All this shit, the managing and the shows and my clothes and the condo and Christ, even that goddamned crazy stunt in Times Square, because I’m ashamed. I’m afraid that if I don’t have all that, if everyone doesn’t see how perfect things are, they’ll realize I’m just Dorie Medina, a scared queer kid from a big, loud Greek family who embarrasses him. And I pushed you so hard because I was afraid if I didn’t, you would see him too.”

Theo grabbed Kieran’s hands. “And I never wanted that to happen. But you didn’t care about my apartment or job. I think I knew you were it for me that first morning.”

“You brought me flowers, and I had a big allergy attack, and my eyes and nose ran for twenty minutes.”

“Hey, coffee and flowers in bed is one of my best moves. At first I thought you were crying because you were so touched. And then I realized you were sneezing. I was so embarrassed, and you just shrugged it off and wiped your nose on my D. Porthault guest towel like it was a tissue.”

“I don’t want to know how much that towel costs, do I?”

“No. But you didn’t care about it. You were just there for me.”

Kieran smiled. “Not just you. I’d never been deep-throated before.”

“Yeah.” Theo scratched the back of his head. “How am I doing?”

“Let me hear the next part.”

Theo seemed to need to gather himself before the next part. “Okay. I do all that shit and pretend to be perfect. But I’ve never lied to you, except last week.”

“What happened last week?”

“More what didn’t happen. Until last night. I’ve been having trouble staying… up. It’s why I didn’t finish in you and why I haven’t wanted to do anything but blow you.”

Kieran couldn’t help it; his eyes went right to Theo’s crotch. “But you were hard.”

“It gets there, and then it fades out. I went to my doctor.”

“What did he say?”

“That it was stress. He couldn’t completely rule out physical with just the exam, but he said he was sure it was psychological. He said I shouldn’t obsess about it. That I should just relax and let it happen.”

Kieran clenched his jaw against a snort of laughter. It huffed out his nose anyway.

“God bless you.” But Theo’s eyes were narrowed.

“
Your
doctor told you to not obsess and relax? Has he met you?”

“Yeah, well, I kept thinking that once the wedding was over, the stress would be too and it would be okay.” Theo looked straight at Kieran. “So. An egotistical asshole who acts like a big shot so you won’t know he’s really pathetic, who may or may not be able to perform where it counts. Husband material, am I right?”

“Depends.”

“On.”

Kieran shoved him onto his back on the grass. “On why I spent the last ninety minutes thinking you left me. On whether you have a good excuse for making me look like a giant failure in front of my mother.”

“Okay. This is actually the good part of the story. If I could stage it, I would. I was on my way to the rehearsal and I saw Nalani in the lobby and she said that the officiant texted that he was running late but he was on his way.”

“Yeah, that’s what she told us when she came to the beach. But there we all were, and you weren’t.”

“If it helps you to remember my deep-throating ability and lung capacity at this point, please do so.”

Kieran straddled Theo. “You aren’t getting up until I get the whole story.”

“Your balls.” Theo lifted his hips.

Jesus. He was still soaked and cold besides.

“Okay,” Theo said, “I had the brilliant idea that if, when I did come grovel and apologize, you still wanted to marry me, we’d do it right then. Before I fucked something else up. We had the license, and everyone who matters was here. And you would see—I could show you—”

Kieran waited.

“Sorry.” Theo sighed. “It’s a lifelong habit. I wanted you to know that what mattered was being with you. And I didn’t care how everything looked.”

“Which is why you went back to the room while you were waiting for the guy and got into your wedding clothes.”

Theo grinned. “Well, I still wanted to look hot for you.”

Kieran shook his head. Theo would never change, and that was okay, as long as he could admit what he was doing in front of his audience of one.

“I was waiting to talk to the guy, and it was getting to be a half hour, and so I went looking.”

“Patience is—”

“A complete waste of time. I got his name from the desk, but there’s no answer at his number. The bartender told me that yeah, he heard a bunch of guys are night surfing at Hanakaoo Point and that Red is probably there. I asked if I could walk, and he said sure. If I get to the Starbucks at the Marriott I’ve gone too far.

“Either it was a lot farther than he thought or the beach just gets really long at night. And because I always plan ahead, I’d left my phone in the room so it didn’t get wet.”

“Night surfing,” Kieran said.

“Are you keeping up? I get to the point, and there’s a guy coming out of the water. Of course, it being night, I can’t see if there’s anyone out there surfing. He tells me yeah, Red is out there.”

“So you very sensibly asked to borrow his phone or for a ride back so you could explain where you’d been,” Kieran suggested.

“Ha. I told him I need Red to marry me tonight. After the very entertaining Red-is-already-married exchange, my pleading made him give me his board, and I went out to get him.”

At first Kieran’s brain was stuttering over the idea of Theo in his Armani slacks paddling a board out into darkness. “Jesus, Theo. You know why night surfing is so dangerous, right?”

“You mean besides the fact that you can’t see a damned thing, including things in the water with big teeth.”

“Considering the fact that you leave the room if someone even mentions
Shark Week
, that about covers it, yeah.” A wave of dizziness hit, and Kieran rolled off Theo onto the grass. “Let me get this right,” Kieran said to the stars. “Because you’ve decided you just pretend being a cool guy in order to fool people, you are so desperate to marry me that you paddle a surfboard out into the ocean at night to find someone who can do the service for us.”

“Yes.”

“Theo. That is kind of the coolest thing anyone has ever done. And you did it for me.” Kieran dragged himself to his feet. “Let’s go.” He held out a hand to help Theo up.

“Wait.” Theo grabbed Kieran’s hand and twisted the ring off his cold finger. “Where’s my answer?”

Kieran dropped back on top of him, caught Theo’s wrist, and got his ring too. “Where’s my question?”

“On three?” Theo asked.

Kieran nodded.

“One,” they said together. “Two.” They put the rings over their left hands. “Three.” The rings slid down. They kissed.

“Kieran, new question. Will you still sign off on this if I tell you I’m not kissing you again until you get that ouzo out of your mouth?”

Kieran looked at the ring on his hand. “Yes. I will.”

The words rang like the vows he was about to give. In public. In front of Theo’s friends and Kieran’s family. But if Theo could brave sharks and the destruction of his Armani, Kieran could handle that.

By K.A. Mitchell

Former child star and deeply closeted adult actor Jax Conlon needs a boost to his flagging career. He promised his mom, just before she died. He hopes he’s found it in a guest spot with the latest directorial prodigy, but his research for the role gets derailed by an encounter with a handsome stranger with more… hands-on experience.

Oz Parsons is a devoted dad to two amazing little girls. Maybe a little too devoted—he hasn’t had anything resembling a personal life since his ex left, leaving Oz and the girls with broken hearts and abandonment issues. So a hook-up with a hot guy is just what he needed, to let off some pent-up steam without any complications. There’s something about Jax, though, that’s got him finding reasons to draw things out.

With their goals and families pulling them in two different directions, Oz and Jax have to figure if white-hot chemistry and desire that won’t quit is enough to roll the dice and risk now on forever.

Coming soon from

www.dreamspinnerpress.com

“I’LL OVERNIGHT
a baby to you. You still subletting at that address?”

Jax took his gaze off the Cross-Island Parkway traffic and stared hard at his phone in its cradle as if he could see his agent’s face, figure out why the hell Cliff had suddenly lost his goddamned mind.

“A human baby?” Brake lights flashed bright in front of Jax, and he tapped the Lexus’s brakes to jump lanes, sliding behind a delivery truck.

“Christ, what are you smoking? Not a real baby. One of those lifelike dolls. I’ll try to get something like a newborn. Handle it. Diaper it. You’re going to need to look like you’ve actually touched one, or have you got some parenting experience I don’t know about?”