Butterface

Pep talk completed, she pivoted and headed for the door without giving Ford another look—she just couldn’t. Even with her high humiliation tolerance, this was right on the edge of what she could take. Her hand was on the doorknob when his voice stopped her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice soft, apologetic.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment to block out the kindness in his tone, because that was the last thing she needed if she was going to make it out of here without falling apart.

Steadier after a breath, Gina opened her eyes and pulled open the door. “Yeah. Me too.”

Then, her throat tight, she walked out the door.

If there was a silver lining to this shit cloud, it was that she’d never see Ford again.

The door felt like it weighed a million pounds as she started to pull it closed behind her. And saw the shocked faces of her brothers. She was too startled to even wonder why these two were at the same hotel as a cop’s wedding.

Rocco and Paul gaped at her. Both had their arms slung around women she’d never met before and wasn’t supposed to, guessing by the scarlet flush eating its way up Paul’s throat as he moved to stand in front of the bottle-blonde in the micro mini-skirt swaying just a bit in her four-inch heels.

“What in the hell are you doing here, Gina?” Rocco asked, his tone calm, not that that fooled her.

Older than her by four years, he’d assigned himself the role of guardian-in-chief when their parents moved down to Florida. The fact that she was a grown woman or that he wasn’t exactly on the legal up-and-up didn’t seem to make any difference.

Stuffing her granny panties farther down in her small clutch before reaching behind her for the door handle to steady her, she glared at her brothers. “I had a wedding.”

“In a hotel room?” This from Paul, who was recovering his equilibrium, no doubt as his suspicions grew about why she was walking out of a guest room.

“Not exactly,” she said, attempting to finish shutting the door behind her as subtly as possible. Too bad something hard blocked the way. If she had to guess, she’d peg the obstruction as one that belonged to the man she’d been in bed with moments before.

Some of her annoyance must have shown on her face, because Rocco dropped the hand of the tall redheaded woman he was with and took a step closer, peering over her head into the sliver of darkness slipping through the not-quite-closed door.

“Who’s in there with you?” he asked.

She yanked harder, but Ford didn’t take the hint. The obstruction remained. “No one.”

One of Paul’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “If our mother heard you lie like that, she’d be lighting candles at church.”

Their mother had been doing that for all of them since they’d been born—not that it had helped. Gina was still single, and her brothers were still involved with the wrong people. The blonde behind Paul took a weaving couple of steps forward and flashed a friendly smile at Gina. The woman may not be the smartest for getting involved with Gina’s brothers—definitely love-em-and-leave-em types, but that wasn’t Gina’s call to make, just like it wasn’t theirs to get all judgy on her. Of course, that didn’t mean she wanted them to know anything about the guy lurking behind the door, and he was lurking. She knew that because she’d tried to yank the door closed twice now and he hadn’t moved his stupid foot. Time to get her brothers out of here. Now.

Gina gave her brothers her most innocent wide-eyed look. “You two look busy, why don’t you just go—”

Rocco interrupted, “Who are you with, Regina Marie?”

Her middle name? Really? Like she wasn’t thirty-one years old with a mortgage, job, and brain of her own?

“You’re not Mom or Dad, so don’t use that tone with me.” She let go of the doorknob so she could cross her arms and give her oldest brother the death glare he deserved, with a popped-out hip and everything. “And for the last time, I’m—”

The hotel room door swung open.

“With me,” Ford said from behind her.

And totally not shockingly at all, the floor did not open up and swallow her like she so wanted in that moment. Instead, she got an up close and personal look at her brothers’ faces as they turned blotchy with anger way out of proportion for even her overprotective, we-wish-we-lived-in-the-caveman-times brothers. Instinctively, she took a step back so she blocked a direct line of attack against Ford and, hopefully, made it harder for her brothers to notice that the other man was wearing only a sheet.