by Elle Kennedy
Dedication
Dylan fans, this one is for you!
Prologue
Three Months Ago
“Your friend looked wrecked,” Claire McKinley said as she followed her future brother-in-law into the darkened front hall of his townhouse. She bent down to unlace her sneakers, feeling Dylan Wade’s green-eyed gaze boring into the top of her head.
She expected him to make a bitchy remark, inform her that his friend’s state of mind was none of her beeswax, but he did none of the above.
“Sophie taking off like that really shook him up. Shook me up too,” Dylan confessed.
“Yeah, me too. I keep thinking about what would’ve happened if we hadn’t found her…” She shuddered. “Oh God. Imagine losing a child.”
The silence that followed was surprisingly free of tension. Weird. Since the moment they’d met, she and Dylan could barely be in the same room without sniping at each other, but almost losing that little girl at the carnival had been so very sobering. Tonight, Claire had witnessed a different side to Dylan. He’d been focused, self-assured, calm under pressure. Which was double weird, because normally he was a cocky, antagonistic asshole, pardon her French.
He was still watching her, even as he kicked off his boots and shrugged out of his blue button-down shirt, which left him in a snug white T-shirt and cargo pants. Claire couldn’t help herself—she swept her gaze over his handsome face and incredible body, so hard and muscular and annoyingly drool-worthy. Chris was in great shape too, but there was something thrilling to be had from the knowledge that Dylan’s ripped six-pack came from bona-fide SEAL ass-kicking, and not the gym that Chris visited three times a week.
Your fiancé’s brother…
The little reminder jolted her out of her thoughts. Oh for heaven’s sake, she had no business admiring this man’s chest, no matter how deliciously ripped it was.
She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I’m going to bed.”
“At nine o’clock? Gee, dear, did all the excitement get to you?”
Claire frowned. Of course. She should have known he couldn’t maintain the cordial act for long. “Annnnnd he’s back.”
“You know you missed me.”
His roguish grin succeeded in raising her hackles—and making her heart skip a beat. She ignored the latter response and took a step toward the doorway.
“Missed the smartass remarks and not-so-veiled barbs about my character? Sorry, can’t say that I have. Good night, Dylan.”
“’Night, honey.”
Her back stiffened. She’d told him on more than one occasion how much she despised it when he called her honey. She was not this man’s honey.
As she stalked down the darkened corridor, a flash of silver winked up at her, drawing her gaze to the two-carat princess-cut diamond on her fourth finger. The engagement ring Christopher James Wade had slipped onto her finger nearly five months ago. Usually the sight of that gorgeous sparkling ring brought a smile to her lips. Tonight it just pissed her off. Chris had pissed her off. He’d convinced her to join him on this overnight visit to San Diego, promising they’d spend some time together after he wrapped up his meetings, but what had he done instead? Deposited her on his brother’s doorstep and abandoned her to hang out at a country club with his colleagues.
Cut him some slack. He’s got a lot on his plate.
Claire forced her muscles to relax. She entered the guest bedroom and sat on the edge of the double bed, releasing a weary breath. Chris did have a lot of headaches to deal with. For the past year and a half, he’d been working his butt off to fix the mess his mother had made.
The mess that Chris’s brother couldn’t be bothered to help clean up.
Anger rippled through her as she dwelled on the sheer selfishness of that. She understood that Dylan was serving their country, but he couldn’t be bothered to offer some assistance? Maybe send some money home every now and then? Someone ought to give that jerk a real tongue-lashing.
What’s stopping you?
Claire’s brows dipped in angry contemplation. Why shouldn’t she confront Dylan? After all, Chris refused to do it. He insisted that as the man of the house, it was his responsibility to take care of their mother, not Dylan’s. But enough was enough. She’d promised Chris she wouldn’t interfere, but her fiancé wouldn’t be killing himself at work if his brother would just step up and carry some of the load.
Setting her jaw, she stood up and marched out of the guest room, but when she heard the murmur of male voices coming from the front hall, she stopped in her tracks. Crap. Chris must be back. She couldn’t tell his brother off in front of him.
Especially when he’d explicitly ordered her to stay out of it.
She was about to turn around and abandon the plan when she heard a loud thump, as if something—or someone—had slammed into a wall. Fighting a flicker of apprehension, she crept forward. All the lights were off, and the house’s layout was still unfamiliar to her, making her feel disoriented as she tiptoed her way back to the main entrance. She rounded a corner, peered at the shadowy doorway—and froze.
Holy fucking shit.
Claire’s jaw fell open. Eyes widened. Brain kicked into overdrive, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
Clearly she was hallucinating.
Right. She had to be. Because no way was she witnessing Dylan kissing another man.
She blinked a few times, but the scene in front of her didn’t disappear in a puff of hallucination smoke. There he was. Dylan Wade, her fiancé’s infuriatingly sexy, self-absorbed brother.
Kissing another man.
Claire blinked again, focused on the dark-haired guy whose lips were glued to Dylan’s. She couldn’t see his face, but his body was equally hard and incredible, and the two men were going at it like they had one minute left to live and they planned on making every last second count.
The punch of lust that hit her was completely unexpected. But…oh sweet Lord, shock and confusion aside, this might actually be the hottest thing she’d ever seen in her life.
“You sleep with anyone else this summer?” The question came from Dylan’s visitor. Or, Dylan’s…lover?
Her thighs clenched at the thought.
“Yes.” Dylan’s raspy voice sent a shiver running through her and shot Claire up to a new level of arousal.
She shrank back into the shadows, ordering herself to walk away, to respect their privacy, to duck into her room and make herself come like right now, but she couldn’t tear her gaze off the two men. Their voices lowered for several moments, making it difficult to hear, so she studied their body language instead. The stranger had one hand on Dylan’s broad chest, the other behind Dylan’s neck. Dylan’s right palm rested on the other man’s shoulder, his left one idly stroking the man’s hip, and when they kissed again, the flash of tongue she glimpsed made her bite back a moan.
That moan damn near slipped out when the man spun Dylan around and pressed his groin against the SEAL’s ass.
A second later, Claire’s entire body went up in flames as she watched Dylan reverse positions so the dark-haired man was the one facing the wall now.
Her senses went on overload. She had no idea what to focus on. Their words? Their mouths? Their bodies?
She was so close to exploding she could barely think straight. She couldn’t believe she was watching her fiancé’s brother making out with another man, and suddenly a hundred questions started buzzing through her head.
Was Dylan gay?
Did Chris know?
Why was she so turned on?
The sound of a door clicking shut jarred her back to the present.
Dylan’s friend—lover?—was gone. The blond SEAL flicked the deadbolt, then turned around with a grin on his face.
A grin that dissolved the second he spotted Claire.
Their gazes locked. She could see the wariness swimming in his eyes.
Claire gulped. “I…”
Her gaze swiftly dropped to her feet. Oh man. What did one even say in a situation like this?
She opened her mouth and tried again. “I…” After a beat, she raised her head and met his gaze head-on. “I won’t say anything to Chris.”
Then she darted away before he could respond.
I won’t say anything to Chris?
She wanted to kick herself as she hurried back to the guest room. That was the best she could come up with?
In her defense, she was still too stunned to hold any sort of coherent conversation at the moment. Her heart continued to beat in a frantic rhythm, her mouth was drier than the Sahara, and her clit was actually aching. Pulsing. One touch away from orgasm. If she brought her hand between her legs right now, she would literally self-combust.
The bad girl in her wanted to let it happen. To picture Dylan’s tongue in that hottie’s mouth, slide her hand inside her panties and enjoy the results, but she forced herself to derail that train of crazy.
This was Chris’s brother. Chris’s gay brother? The same questions flashed through her mind again, but there was one in particular she couldn’t seem to let go of.
Why didn’t she and Chris have that? The passion. The intensity. That need to consume each other.
Dylan and his dark-haired stranger had craved each other on a primal level Claire had never experienced—or dreamed possible.
She sucked in a shaky breath, unable to erase those dirty images from her head. She wondered if she ought to go and talk to Dylan about it, actually talk instead of blurting out a random promise and sprinting away. But she couldn’t force her legs to carry her to the door. She and Dylan might have called a brief cease-fire tonight at the carnival, but they weren’t friends, and she got the feeling he wouldn’t appreciate her poking her nose in his business.
The best thing to do was pretend she hadn’t seen what she’d seen. Never mention it to Dylan again. Never think about it.
And never, ever masturbate while thinking about it.
A shudder racked her body, and it took Claire a moment to realize that her hand, of its own volition, had slid beneath the waistband of her Capris. And her fingers were already sneaking their way inside her panties…
After a beat of indecision, she decided to give her fingers permission to continue. One time wouldn’t hurt, she assured herself.
Just one little indulgence.
And then she’d pretend tonight never happened.
Chapter One
Present Day
“You have to tell her I can’t marry her.”
Dylan Wade gaped at his older brother. Okay. Well. That was not what he’d expected to hear when Chris had summoned him to the elegant suite of the sprawling mansion that housed the Marin Hills Golf Club.
It took a second for him to snap out of his shock. “Yeah, right. Very funny, Chris.” He managed a hasty laugh and clapped his brother on the arm. “Come on, pal, it’s time to go. The ceremony starts in—”
“The ceremony isn’t going to start,” Chris interrupted with frazzled green eyes. He shoved Dylan’s hand away and made a wild dash for the wet bar across the room.
Dylan watched in dismay as his brother picked up a glass, poured whiskey all the way to the rim, and slugged back half of it in one gulp.
“I can’t marry her. I can’t do it. You have to go tell her!”
Shit. Chris had crazy-person eyes. And crazy-person hands—he was gesturing wildly, even with the hand holding the glass, and his frenzied movements caused the amber-colored liquid to slosh onto the rich burgundy carpet beneath Chris’s black leather wingtips.
It was becoming painfully clear that Chris was not joking around.
“Put the whiskey down,” Dylan said quietly.
His brother ignored the order and swallowed another mouthful.
With a sigh, he marched over and forcibly grabbed the glass from Chris’s shaky fingers. The suite had a dressing area on one side of the room and a living area on the other, which offered a set of leather armchairs situated in front of an enormous stone fireplace. Dylan promptly dragged Chris over to one of the chairs and forced him to sit.
“What’s going on? Why can’t you marry Claire?” Rather than sit, he crossed his arms and loomed over his brother.
“Because she’s not the right woman for me.”
Are you fucking kidding me?
He tamped down the retort before it could pop out of his mouth. But come on, Chris was only reaching that conclusion now?
Dylan had known from day one that Claire McKinley wasn’t right for his brother. He’d been hoping Chris would eventually see it too, but he hadn’t expected it to happen ten minutes before the couple’s frickin’ wedding. And it wasn’t just a small, private gathering that could easily be disbanded if Chris was actually serious about all this. This was an expensive, showy affair that would unleash waves and waves of gossip if the ceremony were cancelled. The senior partner of Chris’s law firm had graciously rented out the country club for the day so the couple could marry there. There were five hundred people waiting in that banquet hall, including Dylan’s mother, Shanna, who was over the moon about welcoming a daughter into their family.
Shit. His mom was going to be crushed.
“I’ve been deluding myself for months,” Chris was saying, his voice lined with so much misery that Dylan felt a pang of sympathy for the guy. “I kept telling myself that I’d made the right decision by asking her to marry me. Claire’s smart, she’s successful, she’s beautiful. But she’s got a lot of flaws too, and…I thought…”
Dylan sank into the other armchair. “You thought what?”
“That she would change.” Chris shrugged helplessly. “I was hoping she’d eventually start acting like…I don’t know, like the woman I wanted her to be.”
“For fuck’s sake, Chris, you were waiting around hoping your fiancée’s entire personality would change?”
It also didn’t escape him that his brother hadn’t said a word about love. Not even once. But he decided not to point that out.
“I’m an idiot, okay?” Chris dragged a hand through his perfectly groomed blond hair. “Deep down I knew it wasn’t right, but I kept telling myself I had to go through with it. The invitations were already sent out, and Mom was so excited, and then Lowenstein booked us the Lavender Ballroom at the frickin’ Marin Hills Golf Club as a wedding gift—I couldn’t exactly tell the senior partner of my firm, hey, no thanks, the wedding is off.”
Chris’s breathing grew labored. He was visibly trembling now, and Dylan had never seen his brother’s face so pale before.
“I should have listened to Maxwell,” Chris muttered. “He told me she wasn’t a good enough prospect, he—”
“Wait a minute, what?”
“Pres Maxwell—he’s one of the associates at the firm. He and his wife are members here—they’re the ones who nominated Claire and me for membership—and last weekend we had lunch with them. I played a few rounds with Pres and the boys, and Claire spent some time with the other wives.” Chris’s lips tightened. “I don’t know what was said exactly, but Pres pulled me aside on Monday morning and said that Claire told the women some personal details about her past. And they weren’t respectable details, if you know what I mean.”
Dylan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He sometimes forgot what a prude his brother was.
“Okay, so she talked to the country club ladies about sex. Are you telling me that’s why you’re breaking it off?”
His brother’s eyes flashed with annoyance. “I told you why I’m doing this, Dylan. That was just one example of how she’s not a good match for me.” Chris abruptly shot to his feet. “I can’t marry her. I can’t be with a woman who doesn’t respect me.”
“Who says she doesn’t?”
“Th
ere’s a lot more you don’t know,” Chris said darkly. “Unlike Claire, I’m not going to talk out of turn. Our personal shit and certain indiscretions aren’t anybody’s business but ours. Just trust me when I say that I need to end this.”
Dylan narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying she fucked around on you?”
“I’m not saying anything.” Now those green eyes were imploring him, shining with fear. “You’ve got to tell her the wedding is cancelled.”
“I’m not breaking up with your bride for you, damn it.”
“But you’re the best man,” Chris protested. “And you’re my brother.”
“As your best man, I’m in charge of holding on to the rings and standing next to you at the altar. As your brother, I’m responsible for supporting you and clapping politely when you kiss the bride. Neither of those roles requires me to call off your fucking wedding!”
“Please, Dyl. I can’t do it. I don’t want to hurt her.”
Dylan’s jaw fell open. “Dumping her five minutes before your wedding is going to hurt her. You realize that, right?”
“I know. But…goddammit! If that friend of hers was here, she could be the one to talk to Claire, but Dr. Dyke couldn’t be bothered to fly in, so—”
“Whoa,” Dylan interrupted, an edge to his voice. “Uncool, dude.”
Chris’s expression conveyed a flicker of remorse. “Shit. I’m sorry. That was rude. I’m just so irritated that her so-called best friend skipped the wedding.”
Maybe she knew there’d never be a wedding.
Dylan bit back the snippy remark. “Well, Claire’s BFF isn’t here to do your dirty work, and I won’t do it either. You have to talk to her, bro. You have to clean up your own mess.”
The panic that erupted in Chris’s eyes would have been comical if it weren’t so infuriating. “Dylan—”
“I mean it. You can’t dump this on anyone else, no matter how painful and uncomfortable it’s going to be. You’re a thirty-two-year-old man, Chris. You can’t ask me to break up with Claire for you.”
After a long moment of silence, Chris’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “I know. You’re right.”
