The Best Man (Alpha Men 2)

“You and Jake were sleeping together when I met him? Why didn’t you say something?” Why was she only hearing this now?

“Right. Like I’d let you know that you managed to steal the guy I wanted. How smug that would have made you.”

“You were my friend. I would have backed off,” Daff said incredulously. How had Shar developed such a skewed view of Daff and her sisters? Her unfounded jealousy had made her irrationally competitive.

“Whatever.” Shar shrugged, flipping her artificially blonde locks nonchalantly. “It’s ancient history now. The fact is you stayed with Jake for three years, so you must have been into the BDSM stuff. After you broke up, I thought it would freak out a few of your potential boyfriends if they knew about your particular kinks, but they never seemed particularly fussed by it. So no harm, no foul.”

Daff stared at the other woman for a long moment and then smiled. She was relieved to now know why men had behaved the way they had with her. And simultaneously surprised by how little it actually mattered to her now that she did know. She wasn’t even angry with Shar. Just sad for her. She had allowed petty jealousy and vanity to ruin her perception of the women she had called her friends. She was a sad, pathetic, desperately vain woman who deserved pity more than hatred.

But right at this moment, Daff felt neither emotion toward her. She felt curiously apathetic and keen to get away from the woman and the messed-up past she represented.

“Jake Kincaid?” Daff said, leaning toward Shar confidentially as she spoke. “You could have had him. All you had to do was tell me you liked him. Because that’s what friends do. But you wouldn’t know that, would you? Because you’ve never been a true friend to anyone. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go slumming with my man. You know the one? Big, gorgeous, sexy Spencer Carlisle.”

With that, Daff turned away from Shar and the past. More than ready to fight for the man and the future she deserved.

Monday seemed endless. The expansion that Spencer had been so excited about just last month now couldn’t ignite a flicker of interest in him, and he passed just about every nonessential task to Claude.

The day dragged on, and all he could do was stare at Nelly. Mason was out fishing with his buddy Sam and kept sending selfies of them posing with huge fish. Apparently the fishing at the river mouth—Kleinbekkie—was “epic as fuck” today. Spencer seriously considered ditching work to join them, but in the end he couldn’t even summon up enough interest to play hooky.

After eight hours of doing absolutely nothing, he left the store right at the stroke of 5:00 p.m. and went straight home for an evening of much the same. He was contemplating dinner and his lack of appetite when he saw her. Just sitting on his porch swing and watching the car come up the drive.

She didn’t move when he got out and watched him somberly as he climbed the three steps up to his large porch. There were three midsize cardboard boxes at her feet and he kept his attention on those, because it hurt less than looking at her.

“What are you doing here, Daff?” he asked her feet.

“These are for you,” she said, getting up. The movement automatically drew his scrutiny to her face, and he locked eyes with her and found himself quite unable to look away. Was it his imagination, or was she as miserable as he was?

“What are they?”

“This”—she gestured to the boxes as a whole—“is not who I am.”

What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“What?” She had the grace to look embarrassed and shrugged self-consciously.

“It’s a gesture,” she admitted, her cheeks flushing. “Just, please . . . go with it, okay?”

Confused, Spencer peered at the boxes again. They weren’t taped shut; the flaps were just folded over.

“I’m supposed to open them?”

“Yeah, of course, Spencer,” she said, sounding a little exasperated. “Why else would I say they were for you?”

He lifted his hands, palms up, trying to placate her. She looked apprehensive and kept lifting her forefinger to her lips as if to chew before remembering that she had kicked that habit and lowering it again. The little display of nerves bolstered him a bit, and he warily sank to one knee in front of one of the boxes and opened it up.

He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it definitely wasn’t a stack of Miles Davis CDs.

“You like jazz?” he asked, confused.

“No,” she said, her voice soft as she sank back down onto the swing. “I hate it. But Jeremy Boothe loved it. I dated him for about two months five years ago. And during that time I absolutely loved jazz. Jeremy and I could talk about jazz for hours. He thought we had a real connection. We had so much in common.”