Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men 9)

“Of course. It’s right....” We passed another three doorways before the sign popped up. “Here.” With a flourish of his hand toward the sign, he grinned at me. “Here you go, my lady.”

“Thanks.” I gazed up at him—really, really loving his engaging, cheerful smile—as I backed toward the bathroom door and pushed my way inside with my shoulder.

Once inside the bathroom alone, I pressed my hand to my abdomen and blew out a long breath. Then I hurried into a stall.

After I did my business, I stumbled toward the mirrors and clutched the sides of the sink for balance before I met my own reflection in the glass. I was flushed, my gaze glazed, but most alarming of all, I couldn’t seem to stop smiling. When I realized the source of my uncommonly good mood, I sobered immediately.

Colton.

Brandt’s little brother.

I’d been so absorbed in Colton, pretty much no one else in the entire building had existed for a moment there. But it all came flooding back to me now. Brandt: the reason I was here, the reason Colton should be the last person I was grinning over, and the very reason I needed to leave the entire reception right this second.

But then Colton’s grin floated through my head, and temptation flooded me.

I felt like a giant, indecisive Ping-Pong ball. Thinking about Colton made me feel high, floating above everything wrong between us, where life was great and his smile and laugh were helium, keeping me suspended, until bam, the Ping-Pong ball smacked into the table of reality, reminding me of every reason why grinning over him was bad. Only for, yeah, the stupid ball inside me to float right back up with memories of flirty things he said and the heated way he looked at me, the way he had gotten me to talk about my mom.

Then, crack, my thoughts once again slammed back into the hard facts.

Until Colton had sat at my table tonight, my thoughts had only been about Brandt. And then they’d become only about Colton. It didn’t seem fair to him or right of me to switch my thoughts between brothers like that.

God, I could become one of those girls, one of those stupid, fickle, indecisive bitches who ended up going after two different brothers because she couldn’t seem to decide which one she wanted. And that would be bad. That would be so incredibly bad.

I was not one of those girls.

So I needed to go.

I needed to go right freaking now before I did something emphatically stupid.

Rushing for the door, I pushed my way out of the bathroom, ready to flee down the hall in the opposite direction of the reception, but as soon as I opened the door, I saw him.

He sat on the floor with his back to the wall and his feet spread out in front of him.

His eyes were closed.

Dread clutched my throat.

“Colton?” Rushing forward, I fell to my knees by his side and clutched his arm. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Colton, dammit, answer me!”

COLTON’S CHAPTER | 5

I came awake to the sleeve of my tux jacket trying to shake its way off my arm.

“Colton!” that cool, low yet sophisticated voice I was beginning to really dig said, except the tone was higher than usual, and sounded a little alarmed. It was still an awesome voice, though, and came from one of the sexiest women alive, a woman I decided wasn’t so bad after all.

“Colton, dammit, answer me.”

Actually, I think I liked her.

Grinning lazily over that thought, I opened my eyes slowly only to grin wider when my gaze landed on her.

There she was. Sexy as fuck.

“Hmm?” I asked.

“Oh, thank God, you’re alive,” she breathed, sounding relieved…for half a second. Then she scowled and smacked my arm. “Thanks for scaring the shit out of me, asshole.”

“Ouch.” My grin fell. I rubbed my arm.