May the Best Man Win by Mira Lyn Kelly
Lena looked past Emily to the door, like she was already considering that sprint. “He’s okay?”
Okay would be stretching it. “He’s waiting for you up front, hon. I guess his shoulder is banged up a smidge”—and his arm is safety-pinned to his jacket to hold it in place—“but it’s nothing that would keep him from marrying you today.” True story.
Satisfied, Lena smiled at Rachel, Marlene, Lorna, and the rest of the attendants hovering around the mirror, helping one another straighten straps and smooth hair. “Time to line up, ladies. I need one minute with Emily, and we’ll be good to go.”
The girls filed out the door, and then it was just the two of them.
“Today is because of you, Em,” Lena said, squeezing Emily’s hands. “If you hadn’t been there three years ago…I don’t think I would have been able to leave. I wouldn’t have found Dean. None of this would be happening today.”
Emily’s heart gave a soft thud as she looked into her friend’s sweet face. She was so happy, so confident: so different from those first months Emily had known her, when there’d barely been any light in her eyes at all. Emily had recognized in Lena the kind of quiet despair that had shaped her own life so significantly.
“No, Lena. You’d have gotten through it on your own.” She had.
Lena shook her head. “You were with me through the worst days of my life. And nothing makes me happier than to have you here at my side through the very best one.”
Blinking past her tears, Emily pulled Lena in for a tight hug. “You deserve this.”
Lena pulled back and, with an arched brow, replied, “You deserve this too.”
“Someday, maybe,” Emily said with the smile she wanted Lena to believe. “But today’s all yours. Are you ready?”
Her friend blinked back her own tears and nodded quickly.
“Then let’s go.”
Paul was standing at the door, his arm out, waiting to walk his only daughter down the aisle.
Emily adjusted Lena’s skirt and handed her the bouquet before taking her spot in line ahead of them. The groomsmen who’d been waiting to the side paired up with bridesmaids.
A text alert vibrated the phone she’d managed to camouflage within her bouquet, in case of any wedding emergencies. Heart pounding, she checked and, seeing the message was from Jase, stifled a groan.
You got your end done?
Jackass.
She texted back what was bound to be the truth.
Better than you.
Then, with a tilt of her head, she flashed a winsome smile toward the front of the church, where Jase was waiting to walk up with Dean. He saw. The scowl said it all.
The music changed, and a hush fell over the church as the processional began.
Lena’s words echoed through Emily’s mind. You deserve this too.
She might, but that would mean inviting someone to get closer than she ever let people get. It would mean opening herself up to something she wasn’t so sure she could handle again…whether she deserved it or not.
* * *
“I said it was an accident,” Emily hissed beneath the celebratory din of laughter, big-band sound, and clinking crystal.
Cold blue eyes fixed on hers, hard and flat. Readable only in their blatant accusation.
Not surprising, considering first, she’d just skewered the butter-soft leather of Jase’s tuxedo shoe with her stiletto, and second, when it came to Jase, who was groaning like she’d just run him over with a tractor, accusation was about the only thing he had to spare for her.
And after ten years of it, Emily had about reached her limit.
“I heard what you said,” Jase growled through clenched teeth.
The implication being that he hadn’t missed her omission either. He invariably considered an apology his due, but it absolutely, unequivocally, would not be forthcoming. Because if Jase hadn’t been practically tripping over himself trying to avoid physical contact during this stupid, mandatory wedding-party dance, she wouldn’t have nailed him. And while her misstep had, in fact, been accidental, after Jase’s little stunt with the trash bag that morning, she didn’t feel bad about it in the least.
The guy ought to learn to lead.
Or, better yet, take off. Get out of her hair, get out of her life—just get lost.
“Christ, lady!” Jase jerked back, his face blanching as he sucked a breath through his nose.
Oops. Now she’d nailed both feet.
She really wasn’t a very good dancer—at least, not when it required coordinating shared floor space with another person.
“Oh, man up and stop being such a crybaby.”
Jase seemed on the verge of apoplexy, so she flashed her widest smile and leaned in close—reluctantly conceding that it was nice to go onto her toes rather than lean down to whisper in a man’s ear—to murmur softly, “Or do I need to get you a tissue, princess?”
He tensed, the air between them beginning to crackle.
The hand that had been barely hovering above her waist through the first half of the song firmed against the small of her back as he jerked her into hard contact with the solid planes of his body, the unexpected impact pushing her breath out in a whoosh. She barely had time to tell herself to breathe when the world spun. Suddenly, Jase had tipped her back into a dip so deep that she had no choice but to cling tightly to his shoulders and meet his unyielding stare.
His breath rushed over her jaw and neck, leaving a wash of unwelcome chills in its wake.
“Emily, you’re going to apologize for stepping on not one of my feet, but both. Nicely.”
Like he’d apologized for the vomit?
“You’re delusional.”
“Oh, you’ll apologize, all right, and you’d better make me believe it. Because if you don’t, in about five seconds, I’m going to dump your sweet ass on this floor.”
The breath froze in her lungs. “You wouldn’t.”
“Test me.”
Her fists tightened in the fabric of his jacket as her mind latched on to one thought: in the history of truly horrible bridesmaid gifts, Jase Foster was hands-down the worst.
Because, yeah, that’s how Lena had sold him at her New Year’s Eve engagement party eight months before. She’d been going on about how he was one of Dean’s best friends and how much she loved him and how great he and Emily would be together. And since Emily’s last interlude had been a while ago, the idea of a little masculine attention held a certain appeal. For about fifteen seconds, she’d entertained the idea of maybe. Maybe just for a few dates.
But then Lena had said it. “Dean was agonizing over who to pick as best man—you know how close he is to all the guys—but then I thought about the pictures, and this guy is tall, Emily. Like, way taller than you, even.”
And right there, her spidey-senses started to tingle. Because coming in at five foot eleven and a half, she knew the list of guys who were taller than her by enough to earn a “way” qualifier was quite short. Sadly, Jase was among them.
Sure enough, when Lena had grabbed her arm and pointed to the six-foot-five stretch of broad-shouldered, lean, all taper-cut and tuxedo-fine male striding through a sea of formal wear… Ugh. Of course, it was him.
“His name’s Jase Foster. And seriously, all tuxed up tonight”—Lena’s voice had dropped to a conspiratorial whisper—“tell me he doesn’t look gift wrapped!”
He might have, except that the bow tie dangling open at his neck, coupled with the roughed-up mess of dark-brown hair topping his ruggedly handsome face, suggested that at some point during the elegant engagement party the man had already been unwrapped and played with…extensively.
Typical.
“Any chance he comes with a gift receipt?” Emily had asked, keeping her voice light and teasing for her friend’s sake.
And that’s when
Real classy, Jase.
What a dickhead.
But then Jase had rubbed a hand over his mouth and jaw, wiping it clean of the flash of hostility he’d let slip. They were at an engagement party for friends close enough to slot them as the honor attendants in their wedding—and there was no place for a decade-old grudge in this celebration. Besides, she could rest assured that the depth of her loathing for Jase Foster was as clear to him as his was to her. And if not, she had the next eight months to reinforce it.
Now, staring up into the hard lines of Jase’s face as he held her suspended precariously over certain humiliation, she couldn’t believe she’d once thought this man could be her whole world. She’d thought he was her friend. She’d thought…
Well, lesson learned. Through bitter experience, she’d come to realize that Jase could only be counted on to let her down at the moment she needed him most.
Which meant she really needed to apologize—and fast.
Chapter 3
“Sorry.”
One word. Grudgingly issued. But still, Jase was taking it for the victory it was. Not that he’d have actually followed through on his threat. Not a chance. And that she believed he would… Well, he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.
“Very big of you, Em,” he offered, prepared to pull her back up when her soft eyes narrowed on him.
“And typically small of you.”
He sighed, looking down at the woman still caught in his arms, wondering when he’d finally be able to put her behind him.
Those damn legs of hers were the problem. Miles long and distracting as hell, they’d been strutting through Jase’s life since he was sixteen, walking over whatever bit of peace he’d found and then strutting right back out, leaving nothing but a path of destruction in their wake.
Still, he was the lucky one. Thirty seconds had decided it. Thirty seconds difference, and maybe he’d be the one whose life never recovered.
His molars ground down, because that wasn’t something he ought to be thinking about at Dean’s wedding, but every time he saw Emily working that honey-and-sunshine routine of hers, he wanted to puke. Why did she even bother? It had to be exhausting to pretend you were someone you weren’t 24-7. But maybe she liked the collection of friends that hiding the truth had garnered her.
Or maybe she actually believed her own bullshit, which was even worse, because how the hell was the population at large supposed to defend itself against that?
Jase pulled Emily up to standing, restoring the distance between them that he never should have breached.
“Thank you,” she said, and then winced as if annoyed to have given him even that much.
“You bet,” he answered, keeping the civil smile.
The song was almost over, and this dance was the last of the forced interaction with her—at least, until the next time their circles of friends happened to overlap in holy matrimony, and genetics once again threw them together as the tallest pairing in the wedding party. Maybe they’d luck out and it wouldn’t happen for another year or so…or, better yet, ever again.
The song ended, and sure enough, Emily wasn’t about to linger. No niceties being offered tonight. Without even looking back at him, she turned out of his hold. Fine by him.
Or it would have been, except that in her typical obliviousness to anyone beyond herself, Emily seemed unaware of how her body was lining up with his. Before he could pull out of the way, the bare skin of her arm met the back of his hand in a mesh of contact that could only be classified as a caress. Emily’s sharp intake of breath had Jase’s attention snapping to the widening of her eyes, then back to where his knuckles skated down the remaining length of her arm.
A second passed, and neither of them moved, both seemingly caught in the aftermath of a train wreck that never should have happened, in that jolt of electricity at first contact and the lingering low charge that seemed to sizzle through the duration.
Jesus, some things never changed.
* * *
“You lying little hooker!” Lena gasped, her eyes bright with excitement. “You told me there was nothing between you and Jase, but then right there in the middle of everyone—”
Emily waved her off, walking past the new Mrs. Skolnic to the east bar, where the hunky bartender was as generous with his dimpled smile as he was with his pours. “That dip was just Jase being showy. Hey, Jimmy, could I get another glass of the pinot, please?”
Fresh drink in hand, Emily turned back to Lena, who was still staring at her with an all-too-smug look on her delighted face.
“I’m not talking about the dip, which was spectacular, by the way. I’m talking about after. When you guys had that”—Lena bit her lip and stepped closer, lowering her voice—“moment. It was like fifty shades of hot.”
Taking a cool sip of the crisp white, and then a slightly heartier swallow, Emily shook her head. “That was no Jamie Dornan moment, please.”
Lena’s neatly sculpted brow pushed up, and then, pulling Emily by one hand, she led her back to the table where six of the bridesmaids were sitting, all of them with their eyes locked on her.
Trying not to slosh the wine, Emily went for another sip, because the second she sat down—
“Oh my God! You and Jase—”
“That touch. Hawt—”
“And the linger? Like a slow burn, only—”
“And when she was looking back all slow and stunned—”
Okay, so maybe she could have waited for the wine until she sat down, because apparently no response was required here. The girls were completely absorbed in this fantasy they’d concocted about some fictional moment that didn’t exist.
“And he had that broody, WTF look—”
“Like he was struck by her—”
“I’m super sorry I half hit on him last night—”
“She is. Rachel had no idea you guys were—”
“But he totally wasn’t interested, so don’t worry about—”
“And if you get with Jase, you’ve gotta hook me up with Max—”
“Oh my God, you guys, let’s agree: Emily gets the bouquet—”
The bouquet? Oh, no way. If that thing came hurtling in her direction, Emily was spiking it straight into the ground.
“Enough!” she pleaded, looking from one expectant face to the next. “It was not a moment. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing between Jase and me.”
Lena crossed her arms on the tabletop, leaning forward and staring Emily down like a vendor trying to up their price. “So when did you guys meet? Exactly.”
As a rule, Emily wasn’t a huge fan of talking about that part of her life—or her past in general, really. She’d much rather listen and focus on the now. But with all eyes on her, she could feel the heat creeping up her neck. These girls were relentless. There was no way she was getting out of there without spilling something.
“High school. We were friends for a while, but it didn’t stick.”
Rachel leaned in then, same posture as Lena. “Friends, like friends who have something hot and unexplored between them?”
More heat crept up Emily’s neck. Because for a few months, there had been something between them. Something that made her heart beat twice as fast when their eyes met in the hall, holding just that extra second. Something that left her a little breathless when he smiled at her. Something that felt like it was growing, getting bigger every time they talked. But whatever it was, one day it was there, keeping her up nights with her belly twisting and churning, wondering if he’d finally ask her—and the next day it was just gone. Jase was as friendly as ever, but apparently the guy’s attention span toward females
She’d been confused at first, but then she’d accepted it and moved on.
“Friends, like I dated his best friend for about a year.”
This time, Marlene was closing the circle around her, her eyes gleaming. “So you were his best friend’s girlfriend, but you’re not anymore. Maybe he’s thinking about a second chance?”
“No.” In this, she was confident. Jase would never see her as anything but Eddie’s girlfriend. The traitor who ruined Eddie’s life. The scapegoat Jase blamed for everything, because if he didn’t, he’d be forced to take some of the responsibility himself.
But she couldn’t say any of that, so instead, she kept it simple. “Honestly, Jase and I don’t get along very well. You’ll just have to believe me. Neither of us would ever consider something more.”
One by one, the girls sat back, and Emily relaxed.
“Sure, I believe you.” Marlene nodded, casually smoothing a few strands of her jet hair back into place. “But just out of curiosity, why hasn’t Jase taken his eyes off you the entire time we’ve been sitting here?”
* * *
It was after midnight when the party finally shut down. Dean and Lena had said their good-byes a half hour before, and the band had already cleared out. The Skolnics had taken the gifts, and Emily was doing one final sweep to make sure nothing had been left behind when she came to the black tuxedo jacket hanging from a chair at the wedding party’s table.
Someone would definitely be missing this.
Draping it over one arm, she caught the barest scent of cologne—good cologne—and raised the jacket to her nose. It was familiar, but she couldn’t remember which one of the guys—
“Not going to lie, Em.” The gruff voice from the doorway brought her head up in a rush. “The jacket huffing is kind of creepy.”
Jase, he of the persistent, pointless glare. Of course.
Bow tie hanging loose from his open collar, sleeves cuffed to just below his elbows, he started across the ballroom with an easy, long-legged gait. “But I’m betting they’ve got some twelve-step program to help with it.”