Mike laughed and shook his head. “I like my life just the way it is. Sorry, bro. You’re on your own.”
Sam rolled his eyes. Ever since his bachelor brother had fallen—hard—for Sam’s sometime partner and best friend, Cara, he was now wrapped around his wife’s cute little cowboy boots—when she wasn’t in uniform, that is. Where she went, Mike followed. Sam was happy for him, except that his single friends were dwindling fast. First Dare Barron, then Mike and Cara, and even their sister, Erin, had fallen.
Sam wasn’t jealous, but he could admit that his own life and the routines he’d always enjoyed had grown stale around him. But that didn’t mean he was open to escorting the female from hell, even for a good cause.
Cara rolled a pencil between her palms. “Do you already have a date?” she asked.
“Hell, no,” Mike said, before Sam could answer. “He hasn’t dated anyone in longer than I can remember. In fact, the last woman who remotely interested him since—”
No, he would not let his brother go there. “Don’t you have an office to get back to?” Sam pointed to the police chief’s workroom at the back of the station house.
Mike grinned. “Not when this is so much more fun.”
Cara elbowed him in the stomach. “Go. I’ll have more luck if you aren’t here poking fun at him and making this worse.”
Mike shrugged. “Hey, it’s not my fault he’s such an easy target.”
“Now that you’re happily married, you’re an even bigger pain in the ass,” Sam said to his sibling.
Mike smirked and kissed his wife on the lips, lingering way too long before he finally walked—make that swaggered—away.
“Get a room.”
“You, too, could find true love,” Cara said, leaning closer. “We all want that for you.”
But Sam didn’t want that for himself. He’d tried, come close, and failed in the biggest possible way. As a cop, he trusted his instincts, but when it came to women? To relationships? To personal choices? Not so much.
His so-called gut instinct had hurt one good friend and his gullibility led to him being betrayed by his fiancée and best friend. His family only knew part of the reason he remained wary. He’d never tell them everything. But with his siblings settled, Erin with a husband and a baby, they’d all turned up the pressure on him.
Cara leveled him with a serious stare. “I’m not asking you to marry Margie, just accompany her to the benefit. Make nice and go home. Can you do that for me? For Mike and the police station? Please?” Cara batted her eyelashes over her big green eyes.
She’d been his best friend long before she became family, and he’d have thought he was immune—except now she was his friend and his family and he didn’t like turning her down. Besides, as she’d pointed out, the fund-raiser was for a good cause and he’d be representing the police force.
He blew out a disgusted breath. “You’re only doing this because I can’t say no to you,” Sam muttered, shuddering at the thought of accompanying the one woman in town who sent fear into any single man’s heart.
“Is that a yes?” Cara tapped her pencil against the blotter on the desk, her expression almost gleeful.
“Yeah,” he muttered, knowing he would absolutely live to regret the decision.
“Yay!” She jumped up and hugged him tight before resettling herself into the chair behind her desk. “Okay, one huge problem taken care of. I promise Mike and I will stick by you all night. I won’t leave you alone with that leech.”
Sam narrowed is gaze. “So now you admit she’s a leech.”
Cara didn’t look up or meet his gaze but the red flush in her cheeks gave her away. Yeah, he was a patsy for his sister-in-law and a good cause.
“You know,” Cara said, peering out from beneath her long fringe of lashes. “You could avoid this whole kind of thing if you’d just—”
Find a woman of his own. “Let it go,” he said to her unspoken words.
“Okay, but Mike’s right. The last woman who interested you was—”
“Let. It. Go.” Sam set his jaw.
“Fine. I won’t say her name.” Cara buried herself in work at her desk, but she’d accomplished her mission.
She’d brought up the one female in over a decade who’d made Sam want to drop his guard and rethink his vow not to get emotionally involved with any woman ever again. But Nicole Farnsworth, the raven-haired beauty who’d triggered his current state of discontent, had left town months ago. And she wasn’t coming back.
• • •