The Bridesmaid's Best Man

by Susanna Carr

  “Why do you think it’s Robin? She hasn’t gotten along with Heidi for years. Why act now?”

  “Because Heidi had something Robin wanted.”

  “And you think she caused an accident so she could be promoted to maid of honor? No, my money is on Brittany.”

  “How would she have hurt Heidi?” Angie asked. “She was the center of attention at the bachelorette party.”

  “Not for the whole party,” Cole said. “And who was it that found Heidi? Brittany.”

  He had a point. “Brittany wouldn’t do it,” she insisted. At least, she hoped Brittany didn’t. The woman was marrying her best friend.

  “Maybe we should go back to the strip club and see if it was possible.”

  Angie groaned. “Do we have to?”

  “Don’t worry, Angie.” He gave a comforting pat on her hand. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

  “Okay,” she reluctantly agreed. “But first I want you to take me somewhere.”

  “Name it.”

  She paused and stared at him. “I want to see your agency.”

  Cole tilted his head back in surprise. “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I’m curious.” His apartment and his car never held any personal items. No trinkets, souvenirs or pictures. His office may show something different.

  Cole gave a long and deep sigh. “I really am a private investigator.”

  “I know and I’m sorry I questioned that. I was angry,” she said. “You don’t have to show me your license. But I’ve never seen a detective agency and I’m curious.”

  “It’s not that special.”

  But it may show what was special to him. “Cole, let me be the judge of that.”

  10

  COLE MADE ANOTHER attempt to slide the key into the lock. He hoped Angie didn’t see how his hand shook. Quickly glancing at her, he noticed she was brushing her fingers along the lettering on the window.

  “Foster Investigations,” she read softly. “Sounds very impressive.”

  He shouldn’t be nervous. He was proud of his business. It was small and struggling, however, it was his. The agency was in a neighborhood mostly populated by college students who couldn’t afford much and plenty of seniors who’d been there for years. It was humble in every sense of the word, yet he wanted Angie to see what he’d done on his own. He didn’t realize how important her opinion was until he opened the door.

  He stepped in the outer office and flipped on the lights before he let Angie inside. Glancing around the waiting room, he tried to see it from Angie’s perspective. The room was small and beige. There were a few antique chairs, a coffee table and lamps. Nothing that would wow and amaze her.

  “This is nice.” She trailed her finger along the stained-glass lamp. “I like this. Where did you get it?”

  “Antique store,” he said gruffly and ignored her look of surprise. He didn’t want to explain how he wound up looking at antiques or how he bought the lamp because it had been handed down from generation to generation.

  He bought the furnishings more for the story that came along with them. Every piece of furniture he had in his office and in his home had once been important to a family. He didn’t have heirlooms of his own, but he took care of the ones people discarded.

  Angie stepped in front of a framed print of Norman Rockwell’s The Runaway. She looked confused and yet charmed as she studied the police officer sitting on a stool at a restaurant while talking to a runaway boy.

  When she left the picture and focused on him, he felt as if she were studying something else. She was trying to understand the connection between him and the print. “What kind of clients do you have?” she asked.

  It was a simple question and he could give an easy answer, but the knot in his chest tightened. “Families, mostly.”

  “What do you do for them?”

  “Contact missing relatives for one reason or another. I track down people who don’t want to be found or think they’ve been forgotten. A have a few cases finding heirs named in a will and a few deadbeat dads.”

  Angie strolled around the room. “So the case with Heidi is different for you.”

  “It’s the kind of work I want to do.”

  She looked at him sharply. “Why is that?”

  “Years ago, Heidi and her parents had a falling-out because of her substance abuse. They lost contact with her and they were worried. Heidi didn’t know that her family was looking for her. They didn’t know if she was alive or in trouble. Now they have a second chance.”

  “I knew you were good at your job at Missing Persons, but you never explained why it was your passion.”

  He didn’t discuss it because it would have brought up his family life. Working in this field was a constant reminder of what he didn’t have. There were no worried parents looking for him. He didn’t have a family who wanted him to come home. He had used his skills to find his parents, then waited years to contact them. Unfortunately, they didn’t want him to find them.

  “What’s in here?” she asked as she stood by the doorway that opened into a darkened room.

  “That’s my office.” He almost stopped her from going in. That room felt more personal but there was nothing private in there for her to see. He slowly followed her as she turned on the light. Cole watched her eyes widen when she saw the two mismatched sofas and a low coffee table. A laptop computer sat on a small wooden desk in the far side of the room.

  “This isn’t at all what I had expected,” she said as she slowly entered the room. “I thought I would see a gun collection and a couple of fedoras. It looks like a place where people hang out and talk.”

  “Most of my work is done on the computer. I use this room when I’m interviewing the families.” He spent countless hours listening to people tell their stories, their side. He saw and heard it all. The lies and the excuses. The good and the bad memories. He saw the tears and anger. The shame and the regret.

  “I never thought you were a Norman Rockwell fan,” she said as she pointed at the famous print of a big family having dinner. “You think you know a person...”

  He wasn’t about to explain the pictures. He didn’t think he could. Whenever he looked at them, he felt conflicting emotions. They reminded him of too many broken promises. What he didn’t have, but what he could get for others.

  Angie sat down on the edge of a sofa. “Okay, I know you’re not ready to discuss it, but I have to ask. Were you a runaway? Is that the personal stuff you were going through with your family?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Your interest in missing persons,” she said as she began to tick off a list with her fingers. “The pictures in this office. The fact that your family isn’t part of your life anymore.”

  Cole forced himself to remain where he stood. “And you think I chose that?” He couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of his voice.

  She leaned back on the sofa. “And there’s the fact that you walked out on me.”

  He crossed his arms. “I told you why.”

  “Yeah, you didn’t like the idea of living together. You weren’t ready to make a commitment.”

  “That’s not exactly how I would put it.”

  She glanced at the framed print and then returned her attention on him. “Did you run away from home?”

  “No, I stayed.” Until he was driven out. Until it was made very clear that his parents did not love him. That no one could love him. “That’s when I learned to rely on no one. I had to stand on my own if I wanted to survive.”

  “That’s a very bleak outlook on life.”

  “It is, but I managed to do that for a long time.” He had survived. Thrived. For a time he had convinced himself that he wasn’t missing out. “And then I met you.”

  She winced and covered her face with her hands. “I scared you off. I knew it.”

  “Not in the way you think. You made me believe I could be someone different. Someone better. But I can’t.”

  An
gie leaned forward and rested her arms on her knees. “Cole, I don’t want you to be different.”

  “You say that now. If we had lived together, you would have kicked me out within a month.” Probably sooner, he decided. She would have been under no obligation to stick around.

  “Ah.”

  Cole scowled at her. “I hate when you do that.” It meant she had figured out something he rather would have had kept safely hidden.

  “That’s why you ended our relationship. It wasn’t because I was unladylike and too aggressive in bed. It was because I was getting too close.”

  “Aggressive?” He didn’t know if he would call it that.

  “You weren’t comfortable with me seeing the real you. All of you. Well, guess what, Cole. It wasn’t easy for me to bare it all with you.”

  “Get back to that aggressive-in-bed part.”

  “Oh, please. What was I supposed to think? We had talked about moving in once and it was maybe a month before you ended things. But two weeks before you left, I had become a little...” She waved her hand as if she were trying to find the right word.

  “Demanding?” he said, remembering one intense night they had shared. “Passionate? Strong? Confident? Take your pick.”

  “Pushy,” she said. “I know guys don’t like that much of a challenge in bed and I thought I scared you off.”

  “Angie, I never had a problem with that. You know what you want and you’re not afraid to go after it. That’s kind of hot.”

  “Right,” she said with a twist of her lips. “It’s so hot that you had to be in charge last night.”

  “I wanted to show you how much I missed you. How much I still wanted you. I didn’t want there to be any question about that.” And he had made the wrong move. Instead of showing how he felt, he managed to raise more questions. “Next time you make the first move.”

  She scoffed at his suggestion but he saw the flare of interest in her eyes. “Like that’s going to happen.”

  “Don’t deny it,” he said with a knowing smile. He thought of Angie’s warmth and affection. “Last night you proved that you want me as much as I want you. You can’t keep your hands off me and I don’t see why I can’t encourage it.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What happened to my making the first move?”

  He wasn’t that patient. He had one night with Angie and he wanted more. He wanted it all. “I never said I was going to be a gentleman about it.”

  “I should have known,” Angie said with a small smile as she rose from the sofa. “In that case, I should leave and remove the temptation.”

  “Leave?” How could he have gotten this all wrong? “I don’t understand.”

  “I need to meet with Brittany,” she said as she headed for the door.

  “That’s not it. You’re making excuses.” Cole tried to hide the frustration from his voice. “Why don’t you want to make the first move?”

  “Because no matter how good we are together, nothing has changed,” she said. Angie averted her gaze as she walked away. “History will repeat itself and I can’t go through that again.”

  * * *

  ANGIE LOOKED AROUND the nail salon Brittany had reserved exclusively for her bridal party. Everything was sleek, modern and blindingly white, from the walls, chairs and tables to the nail technician’s uniforms. This was a side of Seattle she didn’t know. Located downtown between the famous designer stores and small expensive restaurants, Angie felt on edge.

  She wished she were back in Cole’s office. She had finally seen a side of him she hadn’t expected. He wasn’t hiding in that office. If anything, he was sharing with his clients. He was sharing his hopes and his disappointments.

  And she couldn’t get those framed prints out of her mind. They didn’t reflect how she saw Cole—a cynical loner who hid in the shadows. Those pictures represented a positive, almost innocent, time. They obviously meant something to him.

  Angie wished she knew more about his life. All this time she had assumed he had been orphaned as a teenager. She had made this conclusion by the few things he said about his childhood and his clear enjoyment of being surrounded by her relatives. She figured he missed having a mother. She assumed he longed for a family. Now she realized that she had been completely wrong about him.

  It was a startling feeling. It felt like her world had shifted. The man she loved was someone else entirely. Or was he? He didn’t have contact with his family and the way he acted with her family was genuine. Maybe these clues would give her a better understanding about Cole.

  “You look very serious,” Robin complained, disrupting her thoughts. “Have another sip of champagne.”

  “No, thanks.” Angie stared at the bright pink polish applied to her toenails. It almost hurt to look at and she was sure it would clash violently against the bile-green bridesmaid dress. “Where have I seen this color?” she asked.

  “Definitely not in nature,” Robin muttered and shared a smile with her.

  Angie snapped her fingers. “Oh, now I remember. It was that drink at the bachelorette party. The psychedelic pink one.”

  “The Britini,” Cheryl said without looking up from tapping the keypad on her phone. “It was made in honor for Brittany’s special day.”

  “I didn’t get a chance to try it,” Angie said. It didn’t sound like her kind of drink, anyway. She didn’t drink anything that pink on principle. “What does it taste like?”

  “It was a martini made with bubble-gum-infused vodka,” Cheryl informed her. “It was a hit at the party.”

  Angie pursed her lips. “Seriously?”

  “They’ll have it available during the rehearsal dinner and wedding reception,” Cheryl said as she stood up to speak privately on the phone. “You should give it a try.”

  “Does it really taste like bubble gum?” Angie asked Robin.

  “Yes, it’s very sweet,” Robin confessed in a whisper and looked over to where Brittany was getting her nails done. “But it wasn’t a popular drink. Cheryl kept trying to get people to order it because it’s named after Brittany.”

  Heidi probably ordered the drink to please Brittany. She had noticed a bright pink stain when they put Heidi in the recovery position.

  “So, how’s it going with the stripper?” Robin asked, wagging her eyebrows.

  “Stripper?” Oh, right. Cole was supposed to be a stripper. She almost forgot that was how the bridal party met him. She wanted to tell Patrick and her friends what Cole was really doing. That he had been investigating Heidi and needed to know if someone intentionally hurt her. He was determined to find out if it had something to do with her troubled past or if she were in trouble now.

  Angie wanted everyone to know that he was using his skills to help others. That he was an honorable and dependable family guy. He was still the man she fell in love with. “His name is Cole. Cole Foster.”

  “It sounds like it’s more than a one-night stand,” Brittany called over from where she sat getting her nails done. “I saw them this morning at Starbucks.”

  “I knew him before the bachelorette party,” Angie was quick to clarify. “He’s an ex-boyfriend.”

  Robin leaned back and studied Angie, from her messy ponytail to her tank top and yoga pants. “Yeah, about that. What’s his deal?”

  Angie frowned. “His deal?”

  Robin gestured at her. “Is he into muscular women?”

  “Does he have a sports-bra fetish?” Brittany asked with a sly smile.

  Angie clenched her jaw. This was why she couldn’t wait for her bridesmaid duties to be over. She could do without the sharp remarks. Just when she thought she was finding common ground with these women, they put her down with a zinger or two. “Is it so strange that he finds me attractive?”

  Robin drew back as if she weren’t prepared for a pointed question. “Well...no,” she said, “but did you get a good look at him? He could have anyone.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Angie agreed, faking the confidence she wished she had. She l
eaned back comfortably in her chair. “And if he plays his cards right, he can have me.”

  “Seriously, Angie—” Brittany took a sip of champagne and gestured to the empty glass “—how did you catch him?”

  Angie looked at Brittany and then at Robin. They didn’t know anything about Cole. He said little and tried not to show what he was thinking, but the man felt things deeply. Intensely. He tried to keep it in because he felt vulnerable. Unworthy. Cole had been devoted to her but broke up with her because he didn’t think he was good enough. What had he said? He was afraid she would have seen his unlovable side.

  She knew that feeling. All this time she thought she wasn’t good enough for him. That he would eventually dump her for someone glamorous and beautiful. Yet every time he had looked at her, she had felt sexy and brazen. She had seen the desire and adoration in his eyes. She’d seen how his features tightened with lust when she made the first move. She had felt his wonder and awe when they lay exhausted after making love.

  But once he was gone, she had questioned everything—the smoldering looks, the secret touches and the anticipation that throbbed between them. They faded from her mind to the point where she thought she’d imagined it all. She’d allowed other people to question and revise what she had shared with Cole. They couldn’t understand why he was attracted to her.

  “Are you freakishly flexible or something?” Robin asked.

  “He’s attracted to me because I’m strong, beautiful and smoking hot.” At least, that was how he felt when they were dating. She didn’t really know if what he felt now was pretend or not.

  The women exchanged looks. “Is that what he told you?” Brittany asked with apparent disbelief.

  “Yes.” Angie smiled and closed her eyes. “Every time he’s with me.” And during the weekend, she would make sure he found her irresistible.

  11

  ANGIE TRIPPED WHEN she reached the front door of Foster Investigations. She slapped her hand on the door frame and fought for her balance. Damn shoes. She checked and was grateful no one was around to see how clumsy she was.

  How do women walk in these things? She looked down and glared at the black platform heels. Whoever designed them was just evil. Angie stood straight and paused until she stopped wobbling. She smoothed the black bandage dress down her hips and then flipped her long hair over her shoulders.