“True.” Sucking down her Guinness, she shook her head. “Who would have thought I would be worried about getting laid too frequently? Sam and I had sex once every two weeks.”

“That’s because he was banging random chicks the other thirteen days.”

“Thanks for the reminder. See? This is why I question Rhett’s behavior. It’s out of my realm of experience.”

Eve laughed. “I think you just need to enjoy the fact that your husband is so into you. Though now when I look at him I’m going to be watching to see if he’s popping Viagra or something. Two hours? What the hell?”

“He’s twenty-five,” Shawn reminded her. “He is erect or semi-erect on average eighteen hours a day.”

“I’m going to puke,” was Eve’s opinion.

Harley came rushing back to the table and dropped into a chair, her eyes wide.

“What’s wrong?” Shawn asked her.

“Cooper’s here.”

Uh-oh. “Your boss?”

“Yes. He’s dancing.”

Cooper Brickman was a man-whore driver who Harley had just started working for as a nanny/prison guard for his obnoxious twelve-year-old niece. It was safe to say Harley had a King Kong–size crush on him, though he seemed like the last person on earth she would be interested in. But there was no accounting for attraction. Shawn was just worried she was doomed to unrequited lust.

“So dance with him,” was Eve’s suggestion.

“He’s my boss!” Harley looked aghast and downed half her rum runner in one gulp. “I can’t dance with him! Besides, he’s dancing with Charity. I need another drink.”

“You might want to sip the next one,” Shawn suggested. “And tell Charity you have a thing for him so she isn’t horning in. You shouldn’t have to sit here and watch them dancing together.” She could see them out there on the crowded dance floor. Charity was engulfed in Cooper’s octopus grip, his hands lower on her back than was strictly appropriate.

“You’re identical twins and he’s hitting on Charity. Don’t you think that means he’s actually interested in you?” Eve asked.

“No! There is nothing identical about Charity and me.” And she crossed her arms over her chest in a clear signal that she wanted to pout about it, not talk about it.

Danny and Sammy came back over, tossing back their hair and laughing. “Come on, we’re riding the mechanical bull! Who’s in?”

“I’ll do it,” Eve said, tossing a smirk her way. “And I dare Shawn to do it.”

Damn it. One of these days she was going to pass on a dare. She was going to be mature enough to realize it didn’t matter in the slightest if she didn’t rise to the bait. That her worth as a human being was not based on how many challenges she could accept and accomplish.

That day was not today.

This was her bachelorette party and she was not going to be shown up. So she shrugged in total nonchalance. “I’ll do it. It looks easy.”

Eve laughed. “Talking smack, huh? Twenty bucks says you can’t stay on for forty-five seconds.”

Shawn tried to remember her previous experiences watching other women ride the bull at various bars around town. Usually they took it easy on them, preferring the setting that bounced the bull up and down, creating a crowd-pleasing breast jiggle. Once she’d had the misfortune to see a woman get tossed off in a miniskirt, flashing the whole bar her girl bits. Shawn was wearing jeans, and she had enough strength in her thighs from playing volleyball and doing yoga that she was confident she could hang for forty-five seconds.

“No problem.” She turned to her sisters-in-law. “Who wants to lay down their money? Me or Eve, who can stay on the bull longer?”

“Oh, Lord,” Harley mumbled.

Purses were flung open and money was waved around.

Shawn eyed the bull from across the room and sized up her competition. Eve had the advantage of wearing jeans with some spandex in them. Otherwise, it was a level field.

She cracked her knuckles and strode over to sign the waiver.

* * *

RHETT watched his brother-in-law going for some kind of basketball shooting record and decided he was bored out of his mind. He didn’t want a bachelor party with strippers or to wind up puking in the backseat of Jared’s car, but hell, he wanted something a little more exciting than an adult-oriented arcade. His sister’s husbands all had kids and didn’t get a night to themselves very often, so they were all pumped to be drinking beer and playing Skee-Ball, but Rhett was feeling understimulated. Nolan didn’t look to be having that great of a time either, though he had managed to score a boatload of tickets off the water pistol game.

“What do you think the girls are doing?” he asked Nolan, when his brother came strolling over to him, tickets dangling out of his back pocket like paper sausages.

“I think they’re getting drunk at the bar and egging each other on to see who can dance the most like a stripper.”

“I wish we were there to see that.” He did. Most sincerely. He missed Shawn. He didn’t want to deny her the fun of a girl’s night, but he thought they would both have more fun if they were together. “We should crash their party.”

“Are you crazy? Do you want to lose your nuts the day before you get married? Or celebrate being married, since you are already married?” Nolan shook his head. “You’ll just piss Shawn off, you know.”

“I don’t think so.” He didn’t. “She’ll think it’s funny. The guys did it in Mamma Mia and every woman in existence loves that movie.”

“Mamma Mia?”

“The musical. The dudes crash the bachelorette party.”

Nolan gave him a long sidelong glance. “I’ve never seen it. And it scares me that you have.”

“That’s because you’re like a hundred years older than me. When I was a kid, I had a pack of sisters who wanted to see every chick flick in existence. I saw Bridget Jones’s Diary at ten years old. Pretty Woman at five. Five years old.” He held one hand up to make his point. “That ain’t right. And they conned me into A League of Their Own by telling me it was a baseball movie.”

Nolan snorted. “Well, why did you go?”

“Because I didn’t have a choice. The girls were babysitting me.”

“Where was I? I feel kind of bad, little brother. I should have tried to save you from time to time.”

“You were always at the track or chasing tail.”

Nolan grunted in acknowledgment of the truth behind that. “Where was Mom?”

“I don’t know. Nailing Dad?” They looked at each other and cracked up. “That was their Saturday afternoon thing, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Nolan watched Mark throw his arms up in triumph. “And I wouldn’t call me old around your wife, you know. She and I were born the same year. You’ll have your ass handed to you on a platter if you’re not careful.”

“Good point. But come on, let’s go to the bar they’re at. You want to see Eve drunk, don’t you?”

“I’ve seen it. It’s highly entertaining.”

“I can’t say as I’ve seen Shawn drunk.”

Nolan glanced at his cell phone. “By now, they’re probably challenging each other to a drinking contest or who can deep throat the penis straw. You know how they are.”

“And you don’t want to see that? Because I do.” Rhett was hard just thinking about it. He loved the competitive side of Shawn. And deep throating a penis straw? He was in.

“You make a solid case.” Nolan finished his beer. “You okay with it if Shawn gets mad at you?”

“Yeah.” Rhett gave him a smug look. “I know how to handle her.”

“Oh, big words, little man. We’ll see.” Nolan clapped him on the back. “Hey, guys!” he called to the rest of the group. “Let’s roll!”

There was resistance from the others, who were envisioning very pissed off wives waiting for them, but in the end, since Rhett was the new groom, he made the decision.

Which is how he wound up walking into the Silver Buckle just in time to see his wife throw one leg over the mechanical bull and hoist her sexy ass up onto it.

His sisters were hooting and hollering, and Eve was standing on the edge of the pen, arms crossed.

“Uh-oh,” Nolan said, coming up beside him. “Eve has her psyche-out-the-opponent look on her face. Twenty bucks says the girls have a bet going already.”

“You want me to bet you that they’re in the middle of a bet? That’s stupid.” All Rhett wanted to do was grab a seat and watch the action unfold for a while, unnoticed by the women. “Hold back for a minute. Let’s not let them know we’re here yet.”

Considering there were six of them, it wasn’t going to be easy to stay incognito, but they could manage five minutes.

“I hope to God my wife isn’t planning on riding that bull,” Dave said. “I can see it now—she’ll throw out her back, and that will be the end of life as I know it for the next two weeks.” He shook his head, glum.

Rhett nudged him. “Come on. She’s not that stupid. She knows her limits. Unlike my wife.”

“Your wife is riding like she was born with a bull between her legs.”

“Excuse me?” Rhett glared at him before swiveling his gaze quickly to see Shawn, her slim thighs straddling the bull as it slowly reared up and then back down. Her posture was loose, her body fluid, moving in harmony with the mechanism. She looked relaxed and hot as hell.

“Sorry, that didn’t sound right.”

“No, it sure in the hell didn’t.” Rhett unzipped his athletic jacket and put his hands in his front pockets. “You can go get me a beer to make up for it.” He was too busy watching his wife to hit the bar himself.

The bar employee had turned up the bull, much to everyone’s delight, and Shawn was working harder now to stay on, her thighs clamping in a way that made his tongue thick, her breasts bouncing with a vigor that got his blood pumping.

“Fine,” Dave grumbled.

“Dawn. Straight ahead,” Nolan told him.

Their middle sister had spotted them, and she was picking her way through the crowd. “What the hell are you guys doing here?” She glared at her husband. “You guys can’t crash a bachelorette party!”

Rhett didn’t respond, mesmerized by Shawn as she held on but then lost control and sailed off the bull in a graceful dismount, landing on her perfect bottom. She bounced up immediately, and there seemed to be some haggling going on between her, Eve, and Charity.

“It’s a free country,” Nolan told her. “Hey, what are they doing, besides the obvious? Do they have a bet going on? Eve has her serious face on.”

“How can you tell the difference?” Rhett asked.

Nolan punched him in the arm.

“They have a bet to see who can stay on the bull longer. Best combined total time out of three runs.”

“Seriously? Leave it to them to not be satisfied with just a sudden-death one-shot ride.” Nolan grinned. “God, I love my wife.”

Rhett had to say he loved his as well.

He started. He loved her?

God, he did. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, maybe gradually, one laugh, one orgasm at a time, but over the last ten days, he had fallen hard for her. He admired her gumption, her strength, her sweetness. He took immense pleasure in giving her pleasure night after night, in making her more and more his.

“Shawn will win, I can guarantee it,” Rhett told his brother.

Nolan’s eyebrow shot up. “What makes you so certain? Eve is as stubborn as they come. If anyone can make a mechanical bull her bitch, it’s her.”

“Oh, good grief,” Dawn snapped. “You’re going to turn their competition into a secondary competition? You’re worse than my kids, I swear.”

Eve was up on the bull now, and she pulled an impressive ride, one that was arguably the same length, if not longer than Shawn’s. When she fell off, she leaned over and mimicked “Call me” to the bull with her thumb and pinky up to her ear.

Nolan let out a laugh. “That’s my girl.”

“This is Shawn’s last run,” Dawn said.

While Rhett’s cock grew harder and harder with each bounce and jolt of Shawn on the bull, her thighs clamped on like she was riding him the way he had instructed her to the night before, hands behind her back. Damn. He loved his sexy wife.

“You look feral,” Nolan told him. “Ease up, brother.”

“What? Shawn is hot, I can’t help it.”

She lost control and flew off the bull. There was haggling and an intense discussion to the side, with Sammy clearly the timekeeper. She raised Shawn’s arm, declaring her the winner, as Shawn whooped in triumph. Eve didn’t look pissed. She was grinning.

“Should we announce our illustrious presence?” Nolan asked him.