His Best Friend's Wife (Bachelor Best Friends 2)

Swallowing a bite of gooey pecan pie, he washed it down with a sip of coffee before replying deliberately vaguely to his grandmother’s question. “I’ve been really busy with the business lately, Mimi. We’re just slowing down a little for winter, but summer was crazy.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” his dad asked.

“You bet. Tate and I have been pleased with our growth this year.”

“And what about the book?” his mother inquired. “How’s that coming along?”

He and Tate had been working on a photo-essay book about urban gardening, collaborating with a young local photographer who’d shot some of their most successful and impressive projects during the summer. “We

haven’t made much progress, but we’re hoping to put some time into it after the first of the year, before the spring gardening rush starts again.”

“And the scholarship?” his sister, Caroline, asked, joining in the inquisition. “How’s that going?”

He took another bracing sip of coffee. “Very well. Renae Sanchez has been working with us to nail down all the details before we start accepting applications for next year.”

Caroline eyed him narrowly while the others got sidetracked with a discussion about which of their friends could be counted on to contribute to the scholarship fund. Three years his senior, Caroline was the one member of his family who would best understand his mixed feelings about working so closely with Renae.

Caroline had been the one he’d gone to the night of Jason’s funeral, and to whom he had poured out his grief, his survivor’s guilt, his dismay that Lucy placed so much blame on him. And his hurt that Renae had said nothing in his defense when Lucy all but accused him at the funeral of causing Jason’s death. He had looked at Renae, hoping for support, or at least a sign that she didn’t agree. Instead, she had put an arm around Lucy’s shoulders, turned and led her away without looking back at Evan.

Reading between the lines of his outpouring of words, his sister had asked him that night if he was in love with Renae.

“Maybe I could have been,” he had answered her after a long, choked pause. “But she loved Jason.”

“And so did you,” Caroline had said, placing a hand on her brother’s cheek.

Covering her hand with his, he had struggled against tears. It had been the last time he’d cried—for Jason, and for himself.

Caroline caught him alone a short while after Thanksgiving dinner, while the various other members of the family mingled elsewhere in their grandparents’ home. “So, you’ve been working with Renae Sanchez.”

He nodded, glancing around to make sure no one else could overhear. “We meet once a week to, uh, talk about the scholarship.”

As close as he was to his sister, he wouldn’t tell her everything that had gone on between himself and Renae during the past few weeks. Maybe he had his flaws, but he still tried to be a gentleman.

Snugly zipped into a fitted coat, with a pretty scarf wrapped around her throat, his brown-haired, brown-eyed sister reached out absently to pluck a shriveled leaf from a bush in their grandmother’s garden. “It’s been—what?—six years since Jason died?”

“Seven.” Sometimes it felt like yesterday, he mused, staring at a bubbling concrete fountain without really seeing it. Other times it felt like a lifetime ago, almost as if he were a different man than the reckless kid who’d zipped along those country roads on a battered motorcycle.

“Renae hasn’t remarried?”

“No.”

Caroline slanted him a sideways glance. “Is she still as pretty as you remembered?”

He gave her a look, but answered candidly. “Prettier.”

She turned to face him fully. “So?”

Pushing his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, he shrugged. “So—what?”

“What are you doing about it?”

“Caroline...”

“What?” she asked with a quizzical frown. “You just said it’s been seven years, Evan. Do you really think you’d be betraying your friend to ask her out now, after all this time?”

He shrugged, uncertain how he felt about that, exactly. He hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on what Jason might say at the prospect of his best friend and his wife being together. But he knew very well what Jason’s mother would say.

“Renae lives with her mother-in-law. Lucy Sanchez,” he said bluntly. “They’re still very close.”