Free Wedding Survivor by Julia London Page A

phone and tossed it back inside Olivia's bag. She was thinking that he was awfully good-looking to be so bossy when a moan from the back of the room startled her, she jerked her head up and stared at the beads in the doorway, still swinging slightly from Olivia and Ari's push through.
    She heard another moan and felt a tingle in her groin. Slowly, she stood up… could that sound be what she thought it was?
Nah
. No way! Ari was her spiritual advisor!
    But when Olivia emerged a half hour later, she was smiling that dreamy smile, and her hair was mussed and her little miniskirt was twisted around.
    "You should really check out this new kabbalah," she said sweetly as she picked up her bag. "Come on, I could really use a smoke."
    Marnie looked back at the beads swinging in the doorway again, then dumbly followed Olivia out, her jaw practically dragging on the floor.
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Chapter Seven

 
    MARNIE'S folks lived in a standard-issue California bungalow that looked like it had been built circa 1930. It had a tile roof, a back alley and garage, and lots of windows. In the drive were a Buick Regal, a Dodge Spirit van, and the smallest BMW they made.
    As Eli climbed out of his Z-250 pickup truck, he absently wondered how many times a teenaged Marnie had climbed out a crankcase window in the middle of the night to terrorize the neighborhood, because he could certainly envision it. If her audition was any indication, it was a fortunate thing her house wasn't a split-level, or she probably would have hurt herself trying to climb down a tree.
    He actually smiled at that visual image as he walked up the drive.
    A man with silver-gray hair and a little taller than Marnie appeared from the detached garage and stood just below the roof eaves, eyeing Eli curiously. He was holding a rag and polishing something in his hand. "Hello there," he said. "Friend of Marnie's?"
    "Yeah… Eli McCain," Eli said, striding forward to shake the man's hand.
    "Bob Banks," he said, wiping his hand before taking Eli's. "She's inside with her mother and the book club. Just knock on the door there, and if they don't hear you, go on inside. I'll warn you, it's a gaggle of geese—they can't hear one another speak because they all talk at once."
    He said it with a grimace that Eli understood very well. "Thanks for the warning," he said with a grin, and walked on, to the front door.
    He hadn't even reached the porch before two women appeared behind the glass storm door to peer out at him. They were wearing tight tank tops and short skirts. Both of them were holding tumblers with a suspicious-looking, tea-colored liquid.
    One of them said something to the other, and they both lit up like twin Christmas trees.
    The woman with dark red hair flung open the glass storm door. A huge, lumbering mutt came bounding out and launched himself and his nose at Eli's crotch. "Well, come in, stranger!" the woman insisted, while the other woman laughed unabashedly at the dog's sniffing of him. "Bingo! Stop that!"
    That laughter, as it turned out, was the call of the wild, for three more women suddenly appeared behind them, all dressed in short pants or tight skirts, and all holding identical tumblers with a drink that was most definitely not tea.
    "Don't be afraid," the woman with yellow hair called out. "It's not like we're going to eat you."
    That prompted another howl of laughter from all the women. Eli stopped midstride. The woman with the dark red hair instantly stepped outside and smiled at him—Marnie's smile.
    "Mrs. Banks?"
    "How could you tell? Come on in, Eli, and don't mind us. We're just having a little fun. It's not often we get such a handsome man at the door, you know. Girls, this is Eli.
    Now Eli, don't call me Mrs. Banks, that makes me sound so old! I'm Carol, just call me Carol. And this is Linda, she lives next door and has for thirty years, and that's Alicia who lives in the cute blue house right over there, and Bev who lives behind me—you can't see her house, but