The Bet (Winslow Brothers 1)

Of course, standing behind the clichéd velvet ropes that are guarded by a pair of bouncers, there’s a line a mile long of people waiting to get the coveted invite inside.

I’m starting to feel way too fucking old for shit like this.

“Hey there. You’re the guy who just rode in on that hot Harley, aren’t you?” a female voice asks from behind me, and I turn around to find a skinny blonde with plastic tits standing there giving me the kind of come-hither eyes that say she’s down for a lot of things she probably shouldn’t be down for.

She’s attractive, yes, but not my type.

“Good God, I’d like to do more than take a ride on his bike,” the brunette standing beside her whispers loud enough for me to hear.

First of all, honey, I never take anyone on the back of my bike. And secondly… Well, confidence is one thing, but being this obvious and superficial is an absolute turnoff for a bastard like me.

But I don’t tell them that. Instead, always sticking with the priority of being a gentleman, no matter the situation, I simply offer a smile and move back to my task of trying to get inside this fucking club.

Once I’m standing closer to the velvet ropes, I grab the attention of one of the bouncers with a head nod. “Hey, man, I know you’re busy with all this—” I pause and glance over my shoulder “—bullshit.”

“Yeah.” He laughs. “What can I do for ya?”

“My brother told me to come by here and grab a drink with him,” I explain briefly. “Jude Winslow. You might know him?”

The bouncer nods, his face reacting in a similar way that anyone who knows my baby brother seems to do. “Ah, hell yeah! Jude’s a good time.”

Yeah. That’s what they always say too. It’s one of the things I’ve always loved about Jude. He’s just so fucking lovable that it takes a serious effort not to like him.

I grin. “That he is.”

“Come on in,” he adds and moves the velvet rope for me. “Pretty sure Jude is in the VIP area.”

“Thanks.”

Once I make it into the club, the house music grows louder and more persistent inside my skull as I near the main area where the dance floor and DJ are located.

I almost pull out my cell and text my brothers to figure out how in the hell I’m supposed to find them in this chaos of gyrating bodies and drunken fools, but I get lucky when I spot Remy at the bar.

“You made it,” he says and claps a hand onto my shoulder when I step up beside him.

I did, indeed, make it, made obvious by the fact that I’m standing right here. I don’t bother acknowledging the evidence of my presence and, instead, move on to information I don’t know. “Where’s Ty?”

“Hell if I know. Said he had something come up last minute.”

I glance around for the man of the hour, the one who was annoyingly insistent on getting me to come here tonight. But when I don’t spot him right away, I meet Rem’s eyes again. “And Jude?”

My elder brother lets out a deep sigh. “Fucking hell. He’s a mess.”

“What do you mean?” I jerk my head back, and Rem simply tosses his thumb over his shoulder to lead my gaze in the direction of our baby brother, who is currently on the dance floor with a bunch of women surrounding him.

A bottle of champagne is in one hand as he shakes it up and squirts the liquid around on the crowd before him.

“Ah, fuck,” I mutter.

“You said it, brother. That’s spiraling if I’ve ever seen it.”

“What happened?” I ask just as memories of my conversation with Jude outside of Marco’s start to float around inside my head.

Don’t tell me I had a part in this meltdown…

“Not sure,” he answers with a shrug. “Been trying to figure that out for the last hour, but the train wreck is just chugging along, as you can see.”

Honestly, I’ve been feeling guilty about that conversation ever since it happened. I make a point never to put my nose in my brothers’ business. That’s Remy’s and Winnie’s job, not mine. But there was just something about his recklessness with Sophie that didn’t sit well with me.

She seemed like a really nice girl, and the more I saw the way she looked at Jude, the more I started to get worried that Jude wasn’t keen on what was really happening.

I look back at the dance floor just in time to see a woman with long red hair sidle up to my brother. She’s in the shortest dress I’ve ever seen, and she’s doing everything in her power to get Jude’s attention.

When he looks at her, he smirks, even lifts his bottle of champagne into the air and pours her a long drink. But then something changes. He shoves his bottle of liquid courage into the chest of a random, dancing man a few feet away and proceeds to put as much distance between himself and the flirtatious woman as he can.