Keri stepped forward and placed a hand against her shoulder. “Izzy—”
“Don’t.” Isabella drew back, breaking contact. “I’m not trying to put myself down. I’m just facing facts. And the fact of the matter is: a proposal from Randall Jarrett is like winning the marital lottery. He’s handsome, successful—”
“Okay. Okay.” Keri said and threw up her hands. “Stop trying to sell him to me. You’re marrying him not me. I’m just going to buy a big-o tub of popcorn and watch this fiasco from the sidelines.”
“Keri—”
Her hands ascended higher in surrender. “Whatever you decide, I’ll support you.”
“Good.” It was an obvious lie, but Isabella lacked the bravery to call her on it. But there was one thing she needed her best friend’s help with. “Uhm,” Isabella drawled and then swallowed the gigantic lump lodged in the center of her throat. “I, uh—”
Keri lowered her hands, but then crossed her arms while her eyebrows played a game of see-saw. “What? Surely this can’t get any worse.”
Isabella jabbed her hands onto her waist.
“I mean, better,” her best friend corrected. “It can’t get any better.”
Isabella trudged past the arctic sarcasm. “Randall doesn’t know I’m a virgin.”
“Surely, it’s not hard to guess.”
“Will you please be serious?”
Keri’s laugh erupted like a machine gun’s rapid fire. “I was being serious.”
Clenching her jaw in mutinous silence, Isabella poured coffee into a ridiculous-size mug with the logo: Geeks do it better!
Keri read the mug and just shook her head.
“It’s meant to inspire,” Isabella said after following her gaze.
“Of course it is,” Keri said with a roll of her eyes. “So, what’s your point? Randall doesn’t know you’re a virgin. And?”
Her feelings still bruised, Isabella shook her head. “Never mind. Forget it.”
“Izzy, spit it out before I strangle you.”
Squirming while her face scorched with embarrassment, she plunged ahead. “I don’t want to disappoint Randall. You know…on our honeymoon.”
“As long as you have a pulse, it’s fairly hard to disappoint a man in bed. And for some, a pulse is highly overrated.”
Isabella’s patience finally snapped. “Will you please be serious! I’m pouring my heart out to you and you think it’s amateur night at the comedy club.”
Keri’s hands shot back up into the air. “My bad. What is it that you want me to do?”
“Teach me,” Isabella said simply.
“Teach you what?”
“You know…how to, uhm, spice things up on our honeymoon.” One look into her friend’s amused face and Isabella regretted she’d ever brought it up, but Keri’s next words surprised her.
“All right. You have yourself a teacher.”
There were times when Derrick hated his job.
And flying to Washington in the middle of a thunderstorm was one of those times.
“You look green,” Charlie Masters, one of his best friends and frat brothers, shouted from the pilot seat. “If the storm is bothering you, why don’t you just sit back and close your eyes?”
A jagged bolt of lightning appeared to strike dangerously close to the airplane’s small wing. Derrick wondered how he let his buddy talk him into flying in this small death trap instead of him going commercial. These tiny things had a habit of dropping out of the sky.
“How the hell can you see where you’re going?” Derrick snapped, trying to hide his fear. He didn’t have much success given how the rain and the wind tossed the plane around like a paper kite.
“Relax,” Charlie said with an irritating chuckle. “I’ll have you on the ground in about twenty minutes.”
Derrick’s hard gaze speared his all-too-calm buddy. “You forgot to add alive and in one piece.”
Charlie’s hazel-green eyes twinkled with amusement. “Well, I’ll do what I can.” He laughed.
Derrick groaned because the alternative, punching the pilot, wasn’t a smart idea. Out of the six tight-knit Kappa Psi Kappa fraternity brothers, Derrick and Charlie’s friendship went all the way back to diapers—simply because their mothers had been best friends for over forty years.
The women had married around the same time and had even delivered baby boys ten days apart. The boys grew up thick as thieves. But where Derrick tended to be more aloof about his handsome looks, Charlie milked his GQ status for all it was worth with the ladies.
The plane’s turbulence worsened and Derrick’s hands tightened on the sides of his chair. “Charlie, land this damn thing.”
“Roger that!” Charlie tipped the wheel shaft down and the plane tilted into a nose dive.
Derrick shouted a list of profanities.
Charlie, the jerk, laughed.
An hour later, a frazzled Derrick and a happy-go-lucky Charlie checked in to the Hamilton Crowne Plaza off 14th and K Streets. The front desk clerk questioned Derrick several times as to whether he was all right.
Derrick grunted while Charlie slapped him on the back. “He’s just fine,” Charlie laughed. “Just needs to learn how to relax.”
Derrick shrugged off the heavy hand and cut a narrow gaze over his shoulder, however, the end result just further amused his traveling companion.
“I don’t see why you’re so upset,” Charlie mused as they walked down the hallway of the fifth floor to their suites. “I got you here in one piece, didn’t I?”
“Barely,” Derrick muttered, stopping before room 519 and cramming his card key into the electronic lock. “I’m renting a rental car and driving back.”
Charlie’s bark of laughter rumbled through the whole floor as he stopped at room 521. “Now don’t be like that.”
Derrick entered his suite and back-kicked the door. He could still hear Charlie after the door slammed. “It’s time to get a new set of friends,” he mumbled under his breath as he plopped his suitcase and overnight bag onto the bed and then realized he’d been given a double instead of a king-size bed.
“Just great.” At six foot six, a double meant he would either have to sleep diagonally or put up with his feet hanging off the bed—something he absolutely hated. “Don’t sweat it,” he coached. “You’re only going to be here for two days.”
He waltzed over to the window and opened the blinds. The view of the powerful political town was magnificent. The earlier thunderstorms had disappeared but left the day a blurry depressing gray. “Two days,” he reminded himself. “It’s probably going to be a living hell.”
Isabella wandered through the aisle of the Capitol Hill Bookstore’s Health and Wellness section, praying that she wouldn’t bump into anyone she knew. Her lame disguise of being dressed head to toe in black—complete with a black duster raincoat, black oversize sunglasses and black fedora hat only seemed to draw more attention to her.
“Relax, relax,” she mumbled and searched crammed bookshelves for the list of books Keri instructed her to buy.
A salesperson popped out of nowhere and asked, “Can I help you, ma’am?”
Isabella gasped and nearly jumped out of her skin before