Tempting the Best Man(34)

Lissa gasped and then grinned. “Mitch asked me out when we’d known each other close to two months.” Her wide smile turned on Chase. “You won.”

He shrugged as he toyed with the stem of his wineglass. Although a lot of eyes were on him, a lot of smiles, Maddie stared straight ahead.

“Betting aside,” Chad went on, “we all knew that Lissa and Mitch were the real deal. No two better people could’ve met. So cheers!”

Glasses rose and a roar of liveliness filled the room. Chase was surprised his brother had relatively behaved himself during the speech. Then it was his turn, and as the best man, he was honor-bound to humiliate his buddy, but like Chad, he kept it simple: short and sweet.



The food arrived and the dinner progressed as it should, for the most part. Everyone around him was celebrating the union   of two people who deserved it, but him? He was thrilled for them, but…

Chase glanced at Maddie as she spoke to one of the bridesmaids.

He was an asshole. There was no way around it, and he knew deep down that she was never going to forgive him for his offer. Not that he blamed her. It was tantamount to offering her money for sex. Worse than anything his father did.

Appetite vanished, he pushed his plate back and tried to listen to what one of his college buds was saying. But he noted that Maddie stayed away from the wine. At least there would be no repeat of her dancing with the dickhead.

A possessive feeling surged inside him as he recalled the guy putting his hands on her hips, lifting her off the bench. That guy had no right touching her.

Chase sucked in a sharp breath.

Hell, he had no right to touch her.

When dinner was over, the party broke into small groups and he couldn’t help but notice Maddie steered straight toward her brother and family. Pressure built in his chest, like a sudden weight, settling hard.

Knowing he needed to fix things, but not sure if he could, he felt his mood plummet from bad to shit, which wasn’t improved when Chad sauntered up to him and dropped a heavy arm over his shoulders.



“Little brother,” he said. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

Chase casually shrugged his brother’s arm off but took the beer he offered with his other hand. “What look?”

“The same look you had before you knocked the crap out of Rick Summers for getting too friendly with Maddie in the car that one night.”

Chase didn’t like where this conversation was going.

“It’s the same look you got when Maddie was a freshman in college and some guy in your econ class said he wanted to tap that ass.”

The muscle in Chase’s jaw started to tick. Only Chad knew about that. He’d witnessed it. Recalling the little punk and the horseshit he’d been saying pissed him off all over again.

“And it’s the same look you got on your face last night when she was dancing with that guy,” Chad went on. He smiled when Chase sent him a look. “Yeah, I noticed. And you’ve sat through dinner like someone kicked your puppy into traffic, burned down all three of your bars, then pissed in your face and shoved a fat one up—”

Chase laughed dryly. “I get what you’re saying.”

“You didn’t even smile during my toast.”

He rolled his eyes.

“And man,” Chad said after a moment. “What did you do to Maddie? Because she had the same look on her face the entire time.”

“It has nothing to do with Maddie.” He downed half his beer. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”



Chad shook his head and ignored Chase’s words. “It’s always her.”

He went stock still, staring at the bottle of beer. “Is it that obvious?” he asked on a choked breath. He expected Chad to joke with him, but he remained dead silent.

“Yeah, it’s that obvious,” Chad said finally. “Always has been.”

“Great.”

Chad smiled then. “So what happened?”

He took another long draft of his beer and then told Chad a brief, not-so-explicit version of what happened. As expected, his brother stared at him like he was the biggest kind of idiot.

“I can’t believe you made that offer.” Shaking his head, he laughed. “What did you expect? For her to jump right on that?”

Honestly, looking back, Chase wasn’t sure what the hell he’d expected. Somewhere between the incident in the wine cellar and seeing her in the bathtub, so absurdly sexy surrounded by bubbles, it had been the best thing he could come up with.

Chase tugged a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“That’s the problem,” Chad said. “You were thinking too much.”