The Longest Night

Noah took another sip of coffee. God, he really didn’t need to have these conversations in the morning. “Yes.”

“It’s about her.”

“Her?”

“Beth,” she said, spitting out the name. “She wants the wedding of the season when I have the rightful claim. No way will she rob me. Spencer always told me, ‘City hall, darling. It’s romantic.’ What does she get? Stained-glass windows by Tiffany and a caterer imported from New York. It’s a war, Noah, and I’m going to win.”

“I’m not going. Goodbye,” he repeated, yet still not awake enough to open the door.

“Please,” she said, using her wheedling tone, a tone she had used when they were little, and he would be the one to inevitably end up in trouble. It still bothered him.

“No.”

“Most of Chicago’s city council will be there, Noah.”

Noah stopped. Okay, that was tempting. He had been trying to get onto the list of bidders for the new transportation project. For fourteen years he’d done construction work overseas, but this would be his first project in the U.S. His first project since he’d come home. “How would you know who’s been invited?”

Joan smiled and lifted an eyebrow. “It only takes one well-greased request to the wedding planner and you’d be surprised what you can find out.”

If it had been any other female, he would have been shocked. Unfortunately, Joan was his sister. His only sister. He knew her good qualities, her bad qualities and her worse qualities.

So, the city council would be there. Alderman Brown, Alderman Showalter and Alderwoman Weller among them. Spencer, aka the groom, covered the city beat for the Herald so it wasn’t a surprise.

“Why don’t you want to go?” asked Joan.

Noah shifted in his seat. “I don’t like weddings,” he said. It was a good answer, but not the right one. He didn’t want to go because he knew exactly who would be there and that worried him.

Not the Chicago city council. Not the state of Illinois’ biggest politicos. No, he was worried about one Cassandra Ward. The Windy City’s original party-girl. Vamp extraordinaire, she could seduce a man with a single look. Breasts like B-32s, but it was her mouth that took on mythical proportions.

He had turned her down once and he wasn’t man enough to do it again.

“The groom is your brother-in-law,” Joan said, ripping him away from thoughts of long, leisurely nights with Cassandra.

“When you divorced him, he officially became not-my-brother-in-law.”

Joan shrugged. “Don’t split hairs. He’s family. You need him.”

What Noah didn’t need was the raging erection he got every time he thought about Cassandra. And then there were the dreams. Wet dreams were supposed to stop with adolescence. Noah blamed it on lack of sex.

There were plenty of women available. All nice, all lookers, but they just didn’t fire his blood. Six months ago Cassandra had ruined him for any other woman. If he saw her again, he’d be ruined for another six months. No woman was worth a full year of celibacy.

Damn.

He sighed, pulled out a tattered copy of the Herald, and pretended to read.

“So?” asked Joan, not taking the hint.

He knew he’d go, but he wasn’t going to tell her yet. Let her worry. Noah wanted to make her pay. He was still ticked off about being woken up because he had really, really wanted to finish that dream.

THE SOLOIST was already singing when he slipped into the back of the chapel. Five minutes late wasn’t so bad. The church was full. Five hundred heads or so, he guessed. Of course, according to Spencer, the bride had been planning this wedding for seventeen years, so it wasn’t that much of a shocker.

The bridesmaids started down the aisle. Some new faces. Some not.

The first was cute and teary-eyed. Behind her was a tall, nervous-looking one in geeky glasses.

The last one was Cassandra.

They had put her in a demure dress, deep maroon, long sleeves, no cleavage. It wouldn’t have mattered. The color made her hair darker, made her eyes more mysterious. She had kept her hair loose, falling in big curls to her waist. God, she could make a man want.

Currently, he wanted. He should have been terrified by the thought. One look in those deep pools of brown and a man turned to stone, or at least the important parts did.

Deliberately, Noah turned away and began to studiously examine the toes of his shoes. He had never been one to run with the pack, instead choosing his own way, and damn if he was just going to be another notch on her lipstick case.

He kept his eyes downcast as she walked past, but he didn’t need to look to remember. He had every curve of that perfect body committed to memory.

Yeah, him and the rest of Chicago.

That was the big drawback to Cassandra. Her body was the sort that haunted men and she was the sort of woman who loved to act on it.

Not that he was going to judge her, but Noah had always been proprietary. What was his, stayed his, and all his life he’d stayed away from the girls who were busy on Friday nights. He knew men who had gotten burned by obsessing over Cassandra. Noah knew better.

He looked up and his hot gaze followed her as she walked down the aisle. But sometimes just knowing better wasn’t enough.

THE RECEPTION was a beautiful thing, with a string quartet and a bubbling champagne fountain. Each table was covered with white daisies. Cassandra smiled from her table located in a back corner. The ceremony had been exquisite—the perfect mix of style and heart. Beth had cried like a baby, exactly like they had all known she would. Beth could be a sentimental fool, but Cassandra always had a soft spot for her anyway.

Mickey made her way across the room and sat down in an empty chair next to Cassandra. Mickey was not nearly as sappy as Beth, although sometimes the brainiac tortoise-shell lenses misted into a soft shade of rose. “What you doing?”

Cassandra pointed to her plate of desserts. “I’m eating my way to exercise class tomorrow.”

Mickey snorted. “Hand me one of those,” she requested, snagging a cream puff.

“You need to try the éclairs,” said Cassandra, who believed that dessert belonged predinner rather than post. “Where’s Dominic?”

Dominic was Mickey’s husband and the subject of a large percentage of Mickey’s goofier moments. “He’ll be here in a minute,” she answered, polishing off the dessert. “Had to go and make a call. Why didn’t you bring a date?”

“No one was worthy,” offered Cassandra with a shrug. She hadn’t brought a date to any of her friends’ weddings. It didn’t seem right. Her men fell into one category, her friends into another. And Cassandra didn’t believe in category mixing.

“Off week, huh?”

“Never,” she said, flashing her mysterious smile. She liked building upon the Cassandra mystique. And the more her best friends coupled up, the more Cassandra played it up. Maybe it was shallow, but she wanted to remind them that single life really did have its own rewards.

“There are some eligibles here, by the way. A couple of men from the Herald, plus, all Beth’s waiters are here.”

Cassandra scoped out the hotties who were tending bar and laughed at the familiar faces. Thomas, Seth and Charles. Beth had opened a tearoom, highbrow and staid, except for the waiters in tuxes that made it smolder, Chicago-style.

“They’re just babes in the wood,” answered Cassandra, though she had actually considered it at one time.

“Beth told me who Noah was. Quite conveniently we noticed that he’s alone.”