The Best Man (Alpha Men 2)

“She would?”

“Okay, maybe not,” he confessed sheepishly. “She’s curious. She’d want to know what the strippers’ go-to moves were and then she’d—” He stopped talking abruptly and cleared his throat. “Anyway, no strippers.”

Fascinated by the way his brother refused to meet his eyes, Spencer grinned. Well, then, wasn’t Daisy McGregor the little dark horse? He was tempted to hire a stripper just to give his brother a fun night of role-playing, but he didn’t think Mason and Daisy needed any help in that department.

“Okay, so the good doctor will be joining us. Anyone else?”

“Daff and Lia aren’t seeing anybody right now, are they?”

“You’re about to become their brother-in-law, wouldn’t you be more qualified to answer that question? And why do you want to know, anyway?” He sounded cagey, even to himself.

“Well, they may want their boyfriends included, and it’ll pad the numbers.”

“You need more friends.”

“I have a shit ton of friends, just not in this country. If you had more friends, we could invite them.”

“Not my wedding.”

“What about old school friends? We may have a few of those in common.”

“We didn’t have school friends,” Spencer reminded.

“Who needs friends when I have you?” Mason quipped, but there was a note of sincerity in his voice and Spencer smiled.

“Ditto, bro. Okay, so seven guys? We can make that work.”

“It’ll be awesome, man.”

“I just hope Daisy’s lady friends don’t outnumber us when it comes time to merge the parties.”

“She doesn’t have too many friends, either. Her sisters, her mom, that chick Tilda, and a few others. It doesn’t matter if the numbers are uneven—it’s not a hookup party.”

“Yeah.”

Mason focused on his game and sank two more balls. He sized up the table while dusting the tip of his cue with some chalk.

“So Daisy tells me you and Daff had dinner last night.” Spencer, who’d been in the process of taking a sip of beer, nearly choked and quickly lowered the bottle, clearing his throat vigorously in the process.

“Hmm.” He grunted for lack of anything better to say.

“That go okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where did you go? Daisy and I were at MJ’s last night and didn’t see you there.”

“Why’d you go to MJ’s? Spying on us?” Spencer asked suspiciously and then instantly regretted the question when Mason gaped at him.

“Why the fuck would we do that, man? Daisy burned dinner last night, and instead of starting from scratch, we decided to eat out. We thought we’d run into you guys.”

“Sorry.” Spencer scrubbed a hand across the nape of his neck. “I don’t even know why I said that. I took her to Leisure Isle.”

“In Knysna?”

“Figured it’d be a nice change and right up her alley.”

“Like a date?”

Spencer winced at the incredulous note in Mason’s voice. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Spence, c’mon, you know she treats you like dirt most of the time. Why put yourself in the position to get rejected yet again?”

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t like a date. She made sure to point that out a few dozen times.” Mason grimaced. “Sorry, buddy.”

“Nothing I wasn’t expecting.” Spencer shrugged. “We managed to have a pretty pleasant evening for the most part.” Followed by unpleasantness . . . followed by the most confusing and intense sexual encounter of his life.

Speaking of which, it was time he wrapped this up and got home, just in case Daff decided to grace him with her presence tonight.

“Daisy still with her sisters?” he asked casually, and Mason checked his phone.

“Looks that way. She said she’d text me after they left.”

“Can’t believe they kicked you out of your own home.”

“Apparently a lot of this wedding stuff is super-secret, in addition to being a crap ton of work.”

“I always figured it was a party, and how hard can planning a party be?”

“Right?”

“This stag party, I thought you, me, a bunch of guys, some alcohol, and music. Sorted, right? But now it’s become an ‘event’ with ‘activities’ and ‘speeches.’”

“You’re using air quotes,” Mason scoffed, and Spencer snorted.

“That’s because I’m quoting Daff.” These were some of the things they’d discussed over dinner last night.

“Wait, why would there have to be speeches at a stag party?”

“I don’t know.” Spencer threw up his hands in frustration. “Man, I don’t fucking know. It makes no sense to me. But Daff . . . she seems to know what she’s talking about.”

“She did help plan Lia’s wedding,” Mason said dubiously. “So she has some experience.”

“That wedding was a failure.”

“But it was flawlessly planned.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Spencer grinned, reaching into his front jeans pocket and dragging out a bill. “This should cover my beers. I’m headed home.”

“Hey, hold on a second, I was winning,” Mason protested. “You can’t just leave in the middle of the game.”

“Sure, I’ll give you this win,” Spencer said magnanimously. Mason had never beaten him at pool, and he knew this was going to seriously piss his brother off. Which was exactly why he was doing it.