Read Blissed (Misfit Brides #1) for Free Online Page B

“Mommy!”
    Her heart squeezed, and she dropped down to his level. Her reason for living shot into her arms, a streak of blue dinosaur shirt and brown hair and love. He must’ve had another growth spurt overnight, because his legs seemed to barely dangle a foot off the floor when she stood up with him. He hadn’t been that tall yesterday. But he was still solid and warm, and he still smelled like little boy sweat. She buried her nose in his dark wavy hair. “Hey, baby boy. Let’s go home. You want some spaghetti?”
    “Can my meatballs be made out of dinosaurs? Because Grandpa says if I drink my milk I’m a cow. So if I eat dinosaurs, I’m a dinosaur, and I want to be a dinosaur. Can I be a dinosaur?”
    “You can be anything you want to be.” And it was Natalie’s job to make sure he could.
    She’d screwed up everything else. She couldn’t afford to get this one wrong too.
     

Chapter Three
     
    T HE LIQUOR MIGHT’VE been free at the wedding, but at least it was squawk-free across town at an off-the-wall joint called Suckers. Tonight, CJ’s headache demanded that his frugal side shut the hell up and let him indulge.
    He had fulfilled his familial duties at the wedding reception—made Bob and Fiona comfortable, danced with the obligatory percentage of female relatives, suffered through the requisite number of not-so-subtle inquiries as to his emotional state, warned Dylan of the consequences of mistreating his new bride, spent his allotted hour making sure Gran didn’t goose any of the waitstaff—and now CJ was happily seated on a red leather stool at the steel semi-circle bar breathing guilt- and in-law- and family-free air.
    Several of the bride and groom’s big-shot musician friends had staggered in looking for females who weren’t related to the bride, all dropping names like Toby Keith and Tim McGraw and Billy Brenton to attract the attention of the single women in the bar.
    They could have ’em. CJ was done with women today.
    Feeling like he didn’t fit into his family anymore might’ve been bothering him too. He’d been too slow to keep up with the friendly jabs and inside jokes flowing around him at the wedding, and his mind kept drifting back to the confessional. The more he thought about all of it, the more pissed he got.
    If he hadn’t escaped the reception, his mood would’ve ruined what was left of Saffron’s big day. Too bad he wasn’t able to escape himself.
    One seat over on his right, a tallish older guy with salt-and-pepper hair and a mulish, I-wanna-get-shitfaced expression was concentrating on a full shot glass. CJ had taken himself around the world the last few years, tending bar to pay for his next BASE jump or scuba dive or hang gliding trip, and he had a solid feeling this guy wasn’t where he belonged. 
    Made for good odds the guy wouldn’t want to make chitchat.
    Perfect.
    But CJ had barely gotten his own drink from the big tattooed bartender when his privacy got shot to hell. To his left, Basil appeared and inhaled an audible, about-to-open-his-mouth-and-be-annoying kind of breath. “I suppose it’s my duty as your arm man to enlighten those poor young ladies as to the unlikelihood of your bank account supporting your buying them a drink.”
    “Wing man,” CJ corrected without thinking. He lifted his Jameson to his lips, purposely not looking at Basil or the ladies. If he ignored them all, they wouldn’t be there.
    “Might want to check them out,” His Holy Piousness said. “Never know where you’ll find a woman willing to support you in the manner in which you’ve become accustomed.”
    CJ supported himself just fine. Man didn’t need possessions to have a life, and he’d had a hell of a good time the last few years. Lived more in those years than most people did in a lifetime.
    Basil gave a holy sniff. “Can’t recall if you like brunettes or blondes better, but you’ve got your pick over there.”
    It was like having one of his sisters here.