Bad Boy's Heart: A Firemen in Love Series Novella Read Online Free

until some guy doused the flames with a bowl of holy water.
    Carter's friends were laughing their heads off. Not him, though. He came to me, rested his hand on my shoulder.
    “Let's go outside. C'mon.”
    I nodded, and he held the door for me. Nobody noticed as we slipped out into the balmy spring evening.
    The reality of what just happened struck me as the door closed. I slumped into a bench, dropping my bouquet and not bothering to pick it up.
    Carter stood beside me. “You going to be okay?”
    In the building, I hadn't even felt much when Paul read that text. Out here, away from the chaos, the meaning of it all struck me, and I cried.
    How could this be happening? Three years we'd dated. We planned a future together. We looked at houses to buy after the wedding, and even talked about having kids one day.
    Sure, I wasn't head-over-heels for him. Sex wasn't that great, or frequent. And I didn't feel anything when he kissed me. Still, it was a comfortable existence.
    Carter sat with me and offered his shoulder to sob on. This wasn't the first time I'd wet his shirt with my tears.
    “I'm not real good with this sort of stuff,” he said, a bit weakly.
    “You're doing more than enough just by being here.” I looked up at him. “I'm glad you came.”
    “So am I.”
    His expression was stoic, impossible to read. Even as a dorky teenager, he got this way sometimes, always when something bad happened.
    “You have any idea he was planning to leave?”
    I played with the ring on my finger. “Obviously not. I just wish if he was plotting to bail on me, he'd have done it before three hundred people came to see me walk down the aisle.”
    The ring slid off into my palm. I'd worn it pretty much nonstop since Andy proposed to me a year back.
    Removing it was a symbol that our relationship was over. But you know what? I wasn't really that sad about it.
    In fact, I felt kind of free.
    “Maybe it's just me,” Carter said, “but you don't sound terribly upset about the whole thing.”
    “You always were good at picking up on my moods.”
    “Not a skill that's transferred to other women, I assure you. Most emotional girls only confuse the hell out of me.”
    I let the pleasant memories of Carter crowd out the bad ones of Andy being a total asshole. Back then, he was sensitive to my PMS-induced moments of rage. He'd bring me chocolate at school every month because, he said, that he figured hormonal chicks loved chocolate.
    “I'm not that upset. At least, not for the reasons you'd think. I'm more angry at myself for not seeing the signs earlier.”
    The rabble in the church was getting louder and louder. Mom accused Andy of running off on me with another woman.
    “I tried to warn my boy about your daughter,” Vivian shouted back. “I knew she was no good for him.”
    Carter looked sympathetic. “Don't listen to them.”
    The church doors flew open, and out stomped mom with fury in her eyes. She found me on the bench, glared at Carter for a moment, then grabbed me by the sleeve of my dress.
    “Let's go, Alicia,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “The reception starts at seven. Best we go get tidied up so we can be there to greet the guests.”
    Carter was about to say something, but I shushed him fast. When he got mad enough, he said whatever came to mind. Last thing I needed was mom hating him all over again – like the time she overheard him calling her a bitch for grounding me.
    Yeah, I was pretty sure she'd never forgotten that.
    “Wait a minute!” I dug the spiky heels of my shoes into the lawn; guess they were useful for something in the end. “What reception? Andy just dumped me. There wasn't even a wedding.”
    “The meal and evening's entertainment has already been paid for, and I'll be damned if we let it go to waste just because of this circus.” She tugged me harder.
    My bridesmaids spilled out of the church, offering their apologies and many reasons why Andy wasn't such a catch anyway, so it wasn't