Best Foot Forward (The Best Girls 3)

“As in, she left before the game was over? She didn’t stay to watch the end of the game?” When had Grace ever failed to watch the end of a game?

“I’m fairly certain that first kiss upset her enough she couldn’t watch anymore.”

Brad felt a strange sense of pleasure because she’d been jealous. Perhaps she had feelings for him after all. “Maybe it was good then. Maybe she needed to see me with someone else.”

“Oh yeah. It was great. In fact, I’m pretty sure she wretched in the bathroom.” Now Ben fixed him with a cold stare. “If you’re going to treat her like that and be happy when you hurt her, you don’t deserve her anyway.”

“I never said I wanted to hurt her.”

“No, but I’m your brother, and I recognize that satisfied look on your face. Just forget it. I’m not helping you anymore.”

“I never asked for your help in the first place.”

“Fine!” Ben folded his arms across his chest.

“Fine!” Brad grabbed the remote and switched on the television, flipping aimlessly through the channels.

“After she came out of the bathroom, she was wearing Horatio’s diamond ring.”

Brad froze, cutting his eyes toward his brother. Was he fabricating a story to rile him up? But his face was impassive.

“She was wearing a ring? A diamond ring?”

“I shouldn’t even tell you. All you want to do is hurt her anyway. I suppose you picked that girl on purpose. It was worse because you went with someone she knew.”

Brad frowned. “She doesn’t know Kara.”

“Grace knows her. She said her name was Leanne.”

“She’s got her mixed up with someone else. The girl I was with was Dr. Kara Dickson, and Grace doesn’t have any way of knowing her. But what were you saying about a ring?”

Ben gave a lazy stretch. “Nothing really. She just had this humungous diamond ring Horatio was trying to get her to wear. But according to the text I just happened to see on her cell phone, she was telling him she was already engaged to another guy. So I thought to myself, she really doesn’t like this Horatio and she’s already trying to blow him off. But after she saw you sucking face on television—”

“I wasn’t sucking face!”

“After she saw that kiss, she came out of the bathroom with that ring on her finger. So I guess you helped her make up her mind. Good job, brother. Like I said, you don’t deserve her anyway. Who knows, you might not like her with short hair anyway.”

“Short hair?” It had only been a week. How could so much have happened to Grace in a week?

“Yep, she chopped it off short. She’s cute, like a little elf. By the way, I asked her out.”

Brad threw the remote across the room, where it hit the wall and cracked open, double-A batteries rolling across the floor. “I told you to keep away from her.”

Ben didn’t flinch, but raised a single eyebrow as one corner of his mouth kicked up. “Temper, temper. Once you turned your baseball game into a real date by kissing that girl, I assumed I had the go-ahead.”

Something snapped inside. He grabbed his brother’s shirt collar and shook him, barely resisting the urge to break his jaw.

“Hey! Ow! Man... I think you made me break a molar.” Brad fished in his mouth and pulled out a small chunk of enamel. “Look at that. You broke my tooth.”

“It’s your own fault. You know good and well I didn’t kiss her—she kissed me.”

“That’s just semantics.”

“You don’t read—you don’t even know what that word means.”

“Audiobooks, Brother. Who needs to read when I can simply listen? But the point is, the kiss made it a date. You are dating someone else, so you have no say in who Grace dates.”

“I’m not dating Kara. And you’re breaking the brotherly code by asking her out.”