The Scotsman drew back, his eyes widening. I slapped a hand on his back and gave him a little push. He stumbled inside, caught himself, and straightened. The whooping mutated into cheers and catcalls. The Scotsman halted two steps inside the room.

I took a step across the threshold, and from my sidelong vantage, I glimpsed his shocked expression. I tracked his line of sight to the spectacle that had stopped him. Across the room, one of the ladies had just stabbed a paper penis onto the cartoonish image of a naked man. The first round of Pin the Junk on the Hunk had commenced.

The bridesmaid whipped off her blindfold and her attention snapped to the solitary man in the room.

“Wooo!” she hollered, pumping her fists in the air. “Time to get the party started!”

A throng of champagne-addled women surged toward the stripper, whose face went ashen.

“Take it off, baby,” Sienna said, her black hair flailing as she jumped up and down. “Show us what you got.”

The Scotsman staggered backward, smack into me. My heels tripped me up, sending me tumbling to the floor outside the doorway.

“Shit!” The expletive burst out of me at the same instant the kilted dancer hustled out of the room backward, tripped over my legs, and hopped sideways to avoid crushing me. He threw a hand out to brace himself on the wall, preventing his own fall.

Inside the room, someone shrieked. Tara rushed to the doorway, eyes wide, face blanched. “Calli, are you okay? What happened?”

Pushing up onto my elbows, I blew my hair out of my face. “The exotic dancer trampled me.”

The Scotsman stared at me, his jaw dropping.

My elfin cousin offered me a hand. I grasped it, letting her lever me up off the floor. The second my right foot contacted the linoleum, pain scorched through my ankle. I hissed and grabbed the doorjamb for support, frowning at the man in plaid. “What’s wrong with you? A stripper ought to be used to being pawed by salivating women.”

Tara aimed a chastising look at him and slipped an arm around my waist. Her head barely reached my shoulder. “Yeah. What’s your damage, Kilt Boy?”

His palm still flat on the wall, Kilt Boy gaped at us.

“I’m getting a refund,” Tara said. “I don’t want a nutso stripper, even if he is wicked hot.”

“Refund for what?” the Scot asked. He looked first at Tara, then at me, with utter confusion. “Did you call me — You women are cracked. Ahmno a stripper.”