Husband Rollover (Husband Series Book 4) Read online

  HUSBAND Rollover

  Book 4: Husband Series

  Louise Cusack

  Cover design © Hang Le byhangle.com

  Title: Husband Rollover

  Copyright © 2016 by Louise Cusack

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention. The author acknowledges the use of trademark names such as: iPad, Instagram etc.

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Acknowledgment

  More Books in the series

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  CHAPTER ONE

  Weddings suck.

  Because they’re happy until you cry. And when the vows are over, there’s way too much alcohol and time to think about how everyone else is married. Like, literally. Everyone.

  But me.

  “Fritha.”

  I glanced up from my empty table to find the bride’s cousin Kamal looming over me—Kamal Sutra as I’d called him during our weekend fling.

  Unfortunately, like every other man I’d met in the last two years, he hadn’t followed up on the sex.

  So I had to be doing something wrong.

  Instead of asking him about that—which I would require serious inebriation—I said, “S’up?” intending to sound cool. Unfortunately, because I was nervous, the word came out slurred and his frown deepened.

  “Are you drunk?” He wasn’t much taller than me, but his Mumbai hipster stubble and trendy groomsman tuxedo were Bollywood cool.

  “Give me time.” I tried for the sort of glare my friend and fellow bridesmaid Louella had patented, but I suspected from the slight shake of Kamal’s head that I was coming off lame.

  He pointed at the dancefloor. “We’re supposed to be part of the bridal waltz.”

  I glanced over and saw my three best girlfriends dancing. Two of them were with the hot, hunky men who had fallen head-over-heels and married them—one, only an hour ago. The third, Louella, was partnered with the shockingly handsome brother of the groom and her fiancé Nick was watching them very closely—yet another hot, hunky man who was head-over-heels in love.

  Which begged the question: Where was my sexily-ever-after?

  Kamal interrupted my envy with, “It’s not too late.”

  See if you feel like that when you’re thirty-five!

  I usually loved that fact that he was a spunky little munchkin, but he was in his late twenties with no biological clock at all. He would be the last person to settle down, so there was zero value in trying to explain my dilemma.

  “Fritha?” he said again, as if he thought I was deaf.

  I tried to shake off my maudlin thoughts with a shrug. “They won’t miss us.” But I had to look away from the dancefloor because my eyes were prickling with a shitty need to cry. Again. I glanced around for my glass, hoping to distract myself, but it was empty. “More wine?” I raised it in Kamal’s direction. Maybe getting drunk wasn’t such a bad idea.

  “What’s the matter?” He sat down beside me and the prickling eyes came back.

  Damn you.

  He took my hand in his, but it was clearly a first-aid gesture, rather than anything sexy. He tilted his head to inspect me more closely and said, “Is this an ‘Always a bridesmaid, never a bride’ thing you’ve got going on?”

  “If it was…” I snatched my hand back. “…I don’t think patronizing me would help.”

  Fucking men.

  Could you have been this intuitive when we were in bed together?

  Always nosing out your secrets when you least wanted them to. He was clearly aiming for ‘caring’, but his timing annoyed the crap out of me

  “S’up?” Nick Aston, Louella’s hunky ex-bodyguard and soon-to-be-husband slid into a seat across from me. He must have wanted a distraction from watching her dance with the best looking man in the room.

  “S’up with you?” I bantered back. He’d learned s’up from me, and said it to tease me whenever he could.

  “Nothing,” he replied, ever the poker face, but the fact that he had his back to the dancefloor spoke volumes. A bodyguard would always keep his attention on his charge, and though Louella was no longer in danger, the habit would have become ingrained. He must be feeling some major jealousy to ignore it.

  “Well, I’m being harassed.” I pointed at Kamal who only shook his head, looking even more patronizing if that was possible.

  “Yep,” Nick replied. “I can see how tormented you are.” Then he said to Kamal, “Is she drunk?”

  “I think so,” the little bastard replied. “She won’t dance.”

  Nick shook his head, adding to the chorus of disappointed men.

  I had to get back on top, so I leant across the table and said to Nick, “Fuck you for coming up with the idea of eloping with my bestie. That’s cheating.”

  “I’m impatient. What can I say?” Nick shrugged his wide shoulders and those bottomless blue eyes gazed into mine so directly, it made me wish all over again that I’d tried harder to nail him at Jill’s wedding, when he hadn’t even kissed Louella. Although, from the way he’d looked at her back then, it was pretty clear to all of us that no one else was putting their Jimmy Choos under his bed.

  Thankfully my inappropriate regrets were interrupted by Kamal standing up. “I give in,” he announced.

  He was leaving so I waggled my glass at him. “Wine?”

  He just shook his head and walked off.

  “I like the dress,” Nick said, clearly trying to distract me.

  Which he did.

  I sat up straighter to look down at my bridesmaid gown. At the last wedding, Jill had given me free rein, so I’d worn layers of rainbow tulle. This time, the bride had put her foot down. Angela wanted a pink satin theme, so the version I’d been given was a pink satin floor-length skirt with a cute bow at the waist—not sexy—and a tight rainbow beaded bodice which did have a V-cut to the waist.

  That should have been sexy, but breasts weren’t my best asset. B cup at best. Legs were my ticket into a man’s pants, and in a long gown they weren’t getting any attention.

  So I was basically screwed when it came to…getting some.

  I could have felt melancholy about that too, but instead I pulled on my cranky pants and pretended to glare at Nick. “Don’t bother pretending this ‘intervention’ is motivated by warm and fuzzies.” I pointed at Louella and raised my voice to annoy him. “You’re just here so you don’t have to watch her dancing with the best looking man in the room.” Soldier boy Cal was hot, from the top of his crew cut, down past all those scul
pted cheekbones to military muscles that practically burst out of his tuxedo.

  All that gorgeousness had made his we hardly know each other rejection all the more painful. And yes, I probably shouldn’t have come right out and said I was available for sex. I ‘got’ that it weirded some guys out, but I frankly didn’t have time for courtship. Or maybe even foreplay. In my misery, I wanted plain, old, sweaty-between-the-sheets sex and I didn’t understand why it was so damn hard to come by—excuse the pun.

  Nick tilted his head in acknowledgement of the obvious—he couldn’t bear to watch Louella dancing with someone else. To his credit, however, he managed to frown as if he was concerned when he said, “But I’m also worried about you.”

  A waiter came past and I helped myself to a glass of champagne off his tray. “No you’re not. Louella sent you.”

  “Louella sent me,” he agreed, snitching the drink right out of my hand and putting it out of my reach. “But I owe you for bringing me to the wedding so I could propose to her. Technically, I am your date.”

  Hello.

  “Well then…” I narrowed my eyes, wondering just how far I could milk this. “If you plan to sleep with Louella—”

  “I do.”

  “Then you better set me up with someone else.”

  It took him a few seconds to say, “Seriously?”

  As if his disappointment knew no bounds.

  But this wasn’t all about emotional neediness, it was…tradition, and he clearly needed educating, so I tapped a pink fingernail down onto the table. “Bridesmaids always get laid at a wedding. It’s law.”

  “Louella didn’t at Jill’s wedding,” he countered, and he would know, because despite the fact that he was stuck at look-but-don’t-touch back then, he would have been watching her every move. “And neither did Angela,” he added, nodding at the bride in her beautiful gold sari, waltzing with another hot man I’d never get to bed—her hunky outback cowboy husband Jack Davenworth.

  So what was wrong with me? Where was my hot man?

  “Fritha?” Nick said, as if he was worried I’d drifted off.

  Which I may have.

  But belligerence saw me raising my chin. “Then I must be the only slut,” I said succinctly.

  Nick only smiled, which infuriated me further. “You’re not a slut. You’re just promiscuous. Currently. And didn’t you tell me you were in a long-term relationship once with…Alex…?”

  “Alec.”

  “…a few years ago.”

  “Fucker.” I was not getting into a discussion about being cheated on. That would feel worse than the whole stuck-on-the-shelf thing.

  I shook my head and felt something slide down my back. Hair. My updo must be unravelling. Why did that always happen? Bloody red curls. I hated when they fell in my face and got in the way of drinking.

  “In any case,” Nick went on, unbothered by my hair malfunction. “Sex and alcohol are not helpful anesthetics, at least not in the long-term. Voice of experience.”

  I shook my head at him. “I only drink at weddings.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “…or whenever things are shitty.”

  He waited.

  “…and also when I’m sad.”

  “So are you sad right now? Or are you shitty?”

  He sounded as if he really cared, and that was too much. My stupid eyes started stinging again, and I lurched up from the table. “Toilet,” I blurted, and turned on my very high heels, catching the edge of a chair leg and careening straight into Rosie Tatts who happened to be walking past.

  She grabbed my arm and steadied me, then said, “Bathroom?”

  I nodded, more curls falling out of the hairdo Angela had planned so carefully. But I couldn’t think about that, because it would only add to the burden of sad, so instead I let Rosie lead me through the tables, trying not to gawk at her. She was Angela’s super-hip singing agent, a celebrity in her own right, and as big in LA as she was in her hometown of Sydney.

  Plus, she looked the part in a white-lace straight skirt and matching crop top with some sort of white fur around the knee-length hem and the neckline. She was impossibly cool with her lilac ankle tattoo of a boxing kangaroo and sky-high heels that matched her mauve cropped hair.

  “You’re stunning,” I said, stating the obvious as we walked arm in arm.

  She grinned, and I wished then that I was bi, because she was gorgeous. Only, I’d tried girlsex and it was all soft and meh. So I put that thought out of my head and concentrated on not falling down because I may have twisted my ankle. It was certainly wobbly.

  Either that or my three glasses of champagne were actually catching up with me.

  “Here we are,” she said as she got me into the ladies’ room, then she steered me toward a cubicle.

  “Thanks,” I said, and let her go to transfer my grip onto the toilet door, not trusting my balance. “It’s not a good look when you pee your pants.”

  I heard her laughing as I shut the door and rearranged my skirts so I could pee.

  “Especially not in a bridesmaid’s dress,” she said from the other side.

  “Pale pink. Stupid color for drunks.” I shook my head. A darker color would hide a multitude of sins. Not that I was expecting to pee my pants. I hadn’t done that since I was five, but if there was a spilled drink, I’d be near it, that was for sure. I mumbled on some other rubbish about wondering what a woman had to do to get laid in this place, etc. Then I flushed and let myself out of the cubicle, surprised to find Rosie still standing there.

  I must have had a quizzical look on my face, because she shrugged. “Thought you’d like an escort back.”

  I washed my hands and flapped them under the air dryer, trying to think of something dismissive to say that wasn’t rude. Because I seriously needed to lose myself in some sweaty, meaningless sex, and having a stunner like her around would cramp my pick-up ability. No man would look at me if she was within range.

  But when I turned back to the mirror, I suddenly realized she was the least of my problems. My hair was catastrophic!

  “Fuck,” I said softly. One of the tight plaits that had been braided around my curls to hold them against my nape was loose and sticking out sideways with a waterfall of red locks poking past it and down my back. I looked like Pippi Longstocking on drugs.

  “We can fix it,” Rosie said.

  I shook my head in horror. “I look like a moron. More of a moron,” I amended, because even on my best day I resembled a stick insect in Doc Martens.

  “Nonsense,” she said briskly, and pointed at the padded stool to one side of the hand basin that had a makeup bench and power points in front of it. “Sit,” she demanded, and I did as I was told.

  Five minutes later the pins and braids were out, and my hair was fluffed around my head like a lopsided orange poodle. “Shiny,” I said and shot her my best sarcastic glance in the mirror. But she ignored that and pulled a miniature hair straightener out of her tiny clutch purse.

  She held it up and gazed at me in the mirror. “I will fix this,” she promised, “If you will stop drinking.”

  I frowned.

  “Just tonight. Not forever,” she clarified, clearly assuming, as Nick and Kamal had, that I was drunk.

  “Oh. Okay.” It wasn’t bad advice when I had tears so close to the surface. Besides, being comatose wasn’t the best way to experience sex although, embarrassingly, I had been there in the past.

  “Sit still,” she said and I obeyed. Over the next ten minutes while other guests came and went in the bathroom, she straightened my waist-length red hair a section at a time with that tiny straightener, before scraping it back into a high ponytail and redoing my smudged makeup with some seriously smoky eyeshadow.

  When she was done, I looked like a different Fritha. A sexier, edgier version of myself. She’d even added blusher to highlight my cleavage so I looked like I had more than I was packing.

  She winked at that. “Skinny girl’s secret weapon.” />
  “Thank you.” If I couldn’t get laid now, there was something fundamentally wrong with the world.

  She took my hand and helped me up. “Thank you,” she replied. “You’ve distracted me from some very maudlin thoughts. Weddings!” She shuddered.

  I shook my head. “I thought I was the only bad fruit nobody buys.”

  “Oh, I’ve got a husband,” she replied. “Or at least, I think I have.”

  A beat of awkward silence followed while I frowned.

  “He has affairs,” she said softly, even though the bathroom was empty except for us. “But please don’t tell anyone. I’m not even sure why I’m telling you.”

  “Jill is the blabber. Don’t tell her,” I warned Rosie. “But I can keep secrets even when I’m drunk.” Which I wasn’t, and in fact, I was feeling soberer by the moment. “So why do you stay with him?” Not that it was any of my business.

  She looked like she was regretting her disclosure, but at last she said, “We have daughters.” Then she shrugged, clearly trying for nonchalance but her eyes were dark and tragic. “He’s a fabulous father.”

  “And a terrible husband.” Why wasn’t she angry about this? “Have you cheated on him?”

  She shook her head, definitely embarrassed now. “But I work long hours. I’m away from home a lot.”

  Was she justifying his behavior? “So while you’re off breadwinning, he’s rooting around?”

  “When you say it like that—”

  “He’s a shit, and you shouldn’t put up with it.” I couldn’t say it any plainer. “And not only that, by staying, you’re being a bad role model for your daughters.”

  Rosie blanched, and I had a moment of thinking I’d gone too far. I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings, but I also didn’t want her to go on accepting his bastardry.

  Jill’s father had been a cheater and I didn’t want Rosie’s girls to grow up with trust issues like Jill had. But I also didn’t know Rosie very well, so I said, “I’m sorry. It’s shit having kids stuck in the middle of that. But you don’t want them growing up thinking it’s an okay way to be married. Because it’s not,” I added, in case she’d somehow managed to convince herself it was some version of normal. After all, a lot of celebrities were unfaithful. She moved in that world.