Best Man With Benefits (McCade Brothers 3)

She checked the time on her phone. “I’d say so. Rough night?”

“You could say that,” he muttered, and she got the distinct feeling all was not right in Tyler’s world. Remembering the looks he and Christine had exchanged at the party the first night, she figured she might know the source of his irritation.

“You enjoying yourself so far?” he asked. “Fitting in with the girls, causing trouble, and breaking hearts along the way?”

That was her…Sophie Brooks, Trouble Causer and Heartbreaker. She lifted a shoulder and gave him what felt like a weak smile. “A girl never tells. How about you? Fitting in with the girls?”

He snorted. “Oh yeah. You know it.”

“Is that why you slept in? Were you fitting in with one a little bit too late?”

Tyler pointed his muffin at her. “That’s enough of that talk, little sister.”

Little sister? She couldn’t quite hold her brow down. “I’m not your little sister.”

“Might as well be after this wedding.”

She laughed. “I think I’ll pass. I heard how protective of the girls you are.”

“Who told you that? Let me guess. Kady?”

Sophie merely smiled and scanned the crowd in front of them. When she caught sight of Kady standing with the other bridesmaids, she waved good-bye to Tyler and headed toward the bride-to-be.

She squeezed in next to Kady and whispered that her bridesmaid’s dress was back safe and sound. With one ear, she caught Regan teasing Julie for assaulting Reed with the kind of scorching look Sophie normally only encountered in the pictures and video clips decorating the Eve’s Closet website. Her knee-jerk reaction to that piece of news was relief. If Julie had eyes for Reed, she probably wasn’t still fixated on Logan.

She spared a glance at Reed, saw him staking a claim to Julie from several feet away, and was shocked to realize he’d fallen for Miss Sunshine. He was Colt’s friend, not hers, but she’d spent enough summers tagging along with them to know Reed had a dark side—and exactly where it came from. None of those guys had a modest bone in their bodies, but there were weeks when Reed would always swim with a shirt on. Stretches of time when he wouldn’t come around at all, and then he’d finally show up with a faded bruise on his jaw, or a puffy eye. She’d overhead enough angry comments from her dad about Reed’s, usually laced with terms like “worthless drunk.”

Julie offered an unconvincing denial to Regan, and tried to pretend the palpable chemistry in the air didn’t exist, but Sophie read the tension hidden in every line of Reed’s not-so-casual stance. Maybe the match wasn’t completely counterintuitive. He’d had enough darkness in his life. He deserved some sunshine, and Julie practically radiated warmth.

“No, she’s right,” Sophie said. “I’ve only been here a couple minutes, but it was long enough to recognize first class eye-fuckery.”

Christine and Regan gave her shocked, it-can-speak stares, and then broke into laughter. What the heck. She knew eye-fuckery when she saw it, even if only from the internet. Besides, it could be Julie needed a bad boy, if the steamy glances she cast Reed’s way when she thought nobody was looking offered any in

dication. Sometimes, apparently, opposites really did attract.

Julie turned her pretty blue eyes to Sophie and lifted one blond brow. “Sophie, I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think you’re starting to come out of your shell.”

She shrugged. This wasn’t about her shell, and she wasn’t so easily distracted. “So…you and Reed?” she asked Julie.

“I thought you were gunning for the best man,” Christine said.

“Logan,” Sophie offered, grateful for the chance to put the question of “dibs” to rest, once and for all. “Yeah, what about that?”

“I’d love to indulge all your curiosities, but I believe we’re running late—”

“So you’re not going for Logan?” Regan asked. “Nice. Best man’s back on the market.” She flexed her fingers and winked. “Game on.”

What? No, no, no. Logan was…well…not “hers”—she wasn’t smoking crack—but not up for grabs either.

Before she’d had a full second to get depressed over the prospect of watching Logan fall like a bowling pin under the force of Regan’s allure, Kady pushed two scavenger hunt lists at her. “Would you wait for Logan, Soph? I don’t want him to get here and have no idea what’s going on.”

She was still trying to stammer out a plausible reason why she couldn’t when everyone headed out for the hunt. Resigned to her fate, she trudged back to the lobby, over to her quiet, out-of-the-way seat in the corner, and kept an eye on the elevators. And waited. And stewed in her own juices like a rotisserie chicken.

Regan wanted Logan, and she came across as the kind of girl who generally got what she wanted. The kind of girl who didn’t mumble, “Um, sure, no problem,” when the man she was about to have sex with checked his phone and suddenly realized he needed to take care of some supposedly urgent business. She would have made sure business was the last thing on his mind.

Was he attracted to Regan? Stupid question. He was a breathing heterosexual male, so obviously, yes. Equally obvious, he wasn’t particularly attracted to her, considering how quickly he’d applied the brakes this morning, shifted gears, and sped out the door. A nasty voice in the back of her mind piped up, sounding suspiciously like her mother. Wake up, Sophie. There was no big crisis requiring his attention. He just latched onto work as an excuse to get the heck out of your room without flat-out telling you, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Humiliation flamed through her, followed by a back draft of indignity. No, he hadn’t asked for…what she’d done to him that morning…but if he really wasn’t interested in her, why focus all of his charm on her last night? Why snuggle up next to her in bed? He’d made her want him, and he dang well knew it. A man as experienced as Logan had to have known she’d wake thinking she actually had a shot at him. Did he get some perverse charge out of throwing a bone—no pun intended—to the homely girl? The whole thing was just too cruel, especially since as soon as Regan arched one perfectly shaped brow his way, he was going to come running and Sophie Brooks might as well cease to exist.