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Prologue

C.C.

Rosewood, Virginia, the wedding reception...

Gawd Almighty... could this wedding be anymore cliché?

Sure, the ceremony was just precious, what with the blushing bride and groom who were certainly old enough to know better, and please, don’t even get me started on the wedding colors!

Shades of pale blue and white? Really?

Was this some play on the Procol Harum song, “Whiter Shade of Pale”?

The groomsmen were dressed in traditional black-and-white monkey suits, so that was something which was kind of nice because thank the good Lord those men were handsome. But the bridesmaids? Well, those women were something out ofGone with the Wind!

Didn’t the bride know the Confederacy lost the war?

Sweet baby Jesus. Someone trussed those poor women up tighter than pigs in a blanket in those corsets. The sheer absurdity of the situation made it incredibly difficult to maintain my composure, and though I fought valiantly to keep from rolling my eyes, I ultimately failed when the preacher uttered the word ‘obey,’ and I erupted into a loud snort that immediately resulted in a sharp, disapproving nudge from my mother.

The only fucking way I’d ‘obey’ was if someone slapped a pair of handcuffs on my ass and threw me in the back of a squad car, and even then, my behavior would be iffy.

I guess I should be a little more proper.

This was a family wedding, after all.

Well, at least I thought it was. I wasn’t entirely sure.

Now, from my understanding, Uncle John, that’s Uncle Jack’s younger brother, who is Josie’s dad—Jack, not John. Anyway, Uncle John married a woman named Rosalie La Croix. Now, according to the family tree, Auntie Rosie was the first cousin to my momma, Glorianna La Croix DuBois, who is the oldest sister to Auntie Marabella, Wade’s momma, and Auntie Gail, that’s Sugar’s momma, who married John Porter not to be mistaken for John Orlean, Uncle Jack’s little brother.

Confused yet?

You should come to a family reunion. We all wear shirts with the word FAMILY written on them, just in different colors—the shirts, not the word.

I swear I needed a freakin’ road map to navigate this family.

Back to the groomsmen, or should I say groomsman?

Sweet mother of God and everything that was DIVINE... he was fucking gorgeous!

Those panty-melting moss green eyes, like the still, green water of the bayou after a warm summer rain, and that dark brown hair, so soft I could have buried my face in it and died happy—that’s the one I’m talking about.

Man, oh man, the way the light caught the sharp lines of his jaw and nose, the way his lips looked so soft and full, he was almost the perfect fuckstick. But then I saw his tattoos, and it was game over.

Call me crazy, but as the President of the New Orleans Chapter of the Ink Sluts, I was a sucker for some good ink and boy howdy, did he have that in spades! I wondered if I was really good for the next few hours, Santa would deliver him to me with a bow around his... well, you know!

Damn, that man was F.I.N.E!

Licking my lips, my mind raced with all the delicious, salacious, decadent things I wanted to do to him when the hunky adonis winked at me.

“You may now kiss the bride!”

Oh, thank Gawd!

Hallelujah! It was time to party.

Say what you will about the South, and my family in particular, but the one thing we southerners knew how to do was throw a fucking party!

Okay, I need to rescind my previous statement.

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