I Do (Hate You) by Sienna Blake

Shell

“Good luck,” Miguel whispered as he headed leftat the end of the path while James and I broke right.

“We’ll need it,” James mumbled, then shoved me behind a bush when he saw my cousin Shawn and his wife Emily coming around a corner.

We lay there in the mulch as we listened to them argue about why he needed to go get snorkeling lessons from someone named Ken, who he met at the swim-up bar yesterday.

“It’s snorkeling, Shawn. Why do you need lessons? You just put on flippers and goggles and put your head underwater.”

“I just thought you might enjoy a day at the spa while Ken showed me the finer points of snorkeling.”

She sighed and agreed, saying she’d get a facial, wanting to look her best for my wedding tomorrow. My own face was mashed in between a bush and a rock at that moment, and I wondered how bad I would actually look for the wedding and if I’d still be wearing James attached to my wrist.

When the pair passed out of earshot, James propped his head up on his free hand in the mulch and grinned. “I’m pretty sure Miguel’s right about your cousin.”

“Totally. But as long as Emily doesn’t know, then it’s none of our business.”

I got up to my knees and spit out some mulch that had made its way into my mouth. James crept up beside me and we looked over the top of the bush like two naughty children hiding from their mums.

“The nightclub is a five-minute walk. We need a better plan if we’re going to get there without being caught,” he said.

“What do you suggest?”

He cut his hand back and forth. “Zigzag patterns from bush to bush. Harder for the enemy to spot us.”

“Where did you learn that? You’ve never been in the military.”

“Video games,” he said, motioning like he had a controller in his hand.

“Great. The fate of my upcoming marriage and reputation depends on your ability to play with your joystick.”

James doubled over with laughter. “I mean…”

“I know, I know. I heard it as soon as it came out of my mouth,” I said, wanting to scream in frustration but knowing it would bring at least two dozen people running. “Since you’re the expert, how about you lead the way?”

We both got to our feet, squatting behind the bush.

“Let’s go,” he said, and this time it was him dragging me along.

We shuffled sideways in a crouched position from bush to bush along the path like two bickering crabs. It worked, at least at first. At the end of the second path, I yanked James behind a statue in one of the gardens just as two uniformed workmen walked past with a shop vac.

“Yeah, the pipe in the suite was pulled from the wall,” the lanky man told his short, pudgy coworker. “It was the darndest thing. Those pipes were all redone last year, but it still got yanked off and spewed out a ton of water.”

“Sounds like overtime to me,” we heard the pudgy man say before they disappeared in a door.

“Let’s go before they get back,” I said. “No more zigzag, just a full-out run.”

My “full-out run” was several kilometers per hour slower than James’s. I did my best to keep up. He barely broke a sweat, his powerful legs eating up the ground while his free arm pumped back and forth. I was reminded again how sexy his muscles were, but I was easily able to resist him since I was dripping sweat and panting.

We made it to the nightclub without seeing another person and walked into a ballroom that looked like a sparkly rainbow had thrown up on it. The walls were painted in neon and the floor was sticky with spilled drinks, glitter and confetti.

Cages lined the sides of the room that I hoped were for cage dancers and not something more terrifying. A dance floor filled the center, surrounded by high-top tables covered in empty booze bottles and half-full glasses.

“Holy hell, Shell. Logan and Rhys said all we did was smoke cigars and drink port at the buck’s party. What did you ladyfolk get up to?”

“It doesn’t look that bad,” I said, more to convince myself than James.

He pointed to a massive multi-colored chandelier on the tall ceiling, dragging my cuffed hand up with his. “I count two bras, a pair of panties, and I think that’s a feather boa up there. The women were either swinging from the chandelier or shooting their underthings up there like slingshots. Either way, that’s a hell of a party.”

James was right. This was not the civilized hen’s night that I had promised Rupert. This was a complete and total shitshow. I would normally have loved it, but I had told my fiancé that we were going to have a low-key spa night and dinner, getting pedicures and sipping champagne. By the rows of empty shot glasses along the bar, it didn’t look like we had “sipped” anything.

I tried to put the best possible spin on it. “If it was just girls, then I don’t see why we couldn’t drink a little and fling our brassieres around. What’s the harm in a bunch of women dancing around by themselves?”

James picked up a large black thong that was obviously made for a man. “All-girl party, huh?”

“It could be a woman’s,” I argued. “You don’t know.”

“This is a man thong with room in the front for your package. The brand name is ShlongDong. They are breathable, washable and come in sizes extra-small to extra-large.”

“H-h-how do you know that?” I managed to squeak out.

He stared at me a beat, then said, “Don’t ask questions that you don’t want to know the answer to.”

I found my voice. “Never mind!”

James grinned, then noticed something on the table behind me. “Hold up. What’s this?”

It looked like the pants from a cop’s uniform. They were blue with dark stripes down the side and a holster belt with various vicious things hanging off of it.

“Oh no!” I cried and looked around frantically. “What happened that we had to call the police? And where is the officer now?”

James picked up the pants and ripped them apart while I gasped. “You didn’t have a police officer at your hen’s party, Shell. You had a stripper. Police don’t have rip-off Velcro sides on their uniform pants.”

Right-o.

I stood there with my mouth open as the staff came in, carting mops and brooms, recycling bins and wheeled trash cans. The guys who were fixing the broken pipe had been excited about a little overtime, but these staffers deserved some type of medal.

As I stared, a man came in with a standing ladder and put it directly under the chandelier.

He quickly climbed the rungs, then started flipping bras and panties into a trash can that his coworker pulled out. The man wheeling the trash can kept moving it, but the ladder man kept sinking “baskets.”

They didn’t even notice us until James yelled, “Three points!”

“Can we help you?” a woman sweeping the floor asked. I suddenly felt every eye in the room on our cuffed hands.

“Do you want to explain, or do you want me to?” James asked me out of the side of his mouth.

I ignored him. “We’ve had a bit of a…mishap, and we need to find the keys to these handcuffs. Have you seen any?”

No one had. As they shuffled their feet and looked embarrassed for us, I could tell they knew who I was.

“Tell you what, if you keep quiet about this, you’ll all get a bonus check, and if you find the key, you’ll get a double bonus!”

The staffers exploded into action. The trash can guy stuck his head in the bin and started digging. The chandelier guy came down the ladder and said he’d search the men’s room. Someone turned the lights on full blast, and everyone worked like crazy for the next twenty minutes.

No luck.

The staffer who seemed to be in charge assured me they’d keep looking and call my cellphone if they found the keys, but I didn’t hold out hope. After she promised to send me everyone’s names so I could make good on that bonus, James and I walked back out to the back of the building.

“You don’t want to ask the girls what happened, Miguel says he doesn’t have a clue and the cleaning staff was no help. Who’s left?” James asked.

We came to the answer at the same time.

“Aunt Tillie.”