I had never liked the idea of being at odds with my husband’s best friend, and if things kept going as they were, I wouldn’t have to.
David came in soon after and he nodded at Brent in greeting. There was a strange look on his face, like he wasn’t entirely happy to see the man, but it was probably just my imagination.
Surely David knew he had no reason to be jealous, after the incredible night we’d just had in each other’s arms.
Well, I definitely didn’t want to cause any trouble, so while I was polite to Brent, I made sure most of my attention was on David. I chatted with both of them and we ate a nice, relaxed, comfortable breakfast together.
Brent had to go to work afterward, so while David and I cleaned up the kitchen together, it was just the two of us. I figured it was a good time to ask him about the party.
“I think Brent’s lonely,” I admitted, scraping some plates into the garbage. I loaded them in the dishwasher, smiling a little. It was nice to be doing even this sort of boring, domestic chore, at least while I was with David.
“I think you’re right,” David replied, and then looked at me with his eyebrows arched, as though to ask what the point of my statement was.
Turning to look at him, I smiled a little. He was so handsome—as sexy to me in the kitchen as he was in the bedroom. Maybe even more so here, because it was everything about him that appealed to me, not just his physical body.
“We should throw a little party. We never had an engagement party or a housewarming party,” I pointed out, leaning against the counter.
He arched an eyebrow at me, a slight smirk quirking his lips upward. “Okay, Kaye, what’s this really about?” he asked, and I had to laugh. He could see right through me sometimes. I probably didn’t have an incredible career ahead of me as a spy or anything.
“I have single friends,” I admitted, grinning at him. “And, you know, Brent’s single. Maybe he’d be happier if he got with someone special.”
The strangest look crossed his face, like he was somehow conflicted—like part of him wanted Brent to be with someone else and part of him didn’t. It probably had something to do with him being afraid his best friend might have less use for him when he wasn’t single. Something like that.
“Did you ask him about it?” David asked, his expression thoughtful. I nodded, and David gave a little shrug. He considered it, then grinned at me and nodded back. “I think it sounds like a really good idea,” he murmured, and there was a strange, almost furtive light in his eyes, as though part of him was ashamed by what he was doing.
Probably just my imagination. Why would he think he shouldn’t hook Brent up with one of my friends? I was getting paranoid and seeing things that weren’t there.
“Okay,” I murmured and sidled over to him, nuzzling my face against his strong, warm chest. I could hear the beating of his heart, just as I had the previous night, and it comforted me deeply.
He put his arm around me and I snuggled into him.
“I’ll arrange it, then,” I continued smiling. This was going to be fun. It had been a long time since I’d done something that was just for fun with my friends, and hopefully if all went well, I’d end up helping one of them out too. Joan, maybe? Or Angela?
Or maybe neither of them, if they didn’t like Brent. I honestly didn’t see how they couldn’t, though. Even when he’d been slightly less than appropriate with me, his behavior had really only been questionable because I was already married.
My friends didn’t have the same impediment, and I couldn’t help but grin as I thought of it. Even if nothing happened, it should be a good time.
Something told me the party would be eventful, though. I wasn’t sure what it was. Call it some sort of intuition. I just had the idea something would happen, I just wasn’t sure what.
Hopefully, it was something good.
Clinging onto my husband, breathing his musky, masculine scent, I wanted this for everyone. For all of my friends. I wanted them all to be even half as happy as I was, and that went for Brent too.
It went for everyone in the whole world.
I held David and he held me, and for one moment at least, everything was completely perfect.
David
Kaye wanted to set Brent up with someone.
Damn it. She was supposed to be thinking of Brent at least somewhat romantically by now. Or, at least, she was supposed to want him sexually. What on earth was she doing wanting to hook him up with one of her friends? It defied all of my expectations.
And made me far too happy. Happiness was dangerous, and I knew that for a fact. Dad had been happy with mom once upon a time, until she’d left us both behind to do only God knew what. She had never bothered to let us know anything about her, other than that she wanted a divorce from my father and didn’t want custody of me.
I thought maybe I had accidentally shown just a little bit too much of my disappointment to Kaye. There had been a look in her eyes, sort of thoughtful, that made me think I hadn’t hidden my emotions as well as I might have wished.
How amazing would it be if Brent did fall for one of Kaye’s friends? I’d met them a few times and they all seemed lovely. Nowhere near as perfect as Kaye, of course, but who was?
Brent would fall for one of them, maybe, and then …
And then what?
I’d be out a lot of money.
To say I was conflicted was a definite understatement.
I didn’t know how to feel. I should be pissed off because Kaye was trying to set Brent up with someone else, but I was actually kind of relieved about it too. Confusing, to say the least.
“Hey, man.” Speak of the devil. Or, in this case, think about him. It was Brent, poking his head into my office, strangely reserved and almost sheepish as he slunk in when I waved to him.
“What’s up?” I asked, and I could tell something definitely was. I had rarely seen Brent as agitated as he was, fiddling with his own fingers and running his hands over his legs as he seated himself.
“I have a confession,” Brent admitted, and he focused his eyes on mine, but it was like he was forcing himself to do it.
“Spit it out.” I tried not to grit my teeth. Whatever this was, I was absolutely certain by his reaction I wasn’t going to like it. Better to get it out of the way so we could focus on damage control.
I had no idea what to expect, but what he said next wouldn’t have made it onto my list of ten guesses, if I had made one. It wouldn’t have made it even onto a list of a hundred.
“When I seduce Kaye, I want to keep her,” Brent spoke quietly, as though ashamed of himself, but firmly, as though resigned to the shame. As though what he was saying was worth it.
“You want to do what?” I asked, feeling suddenly quite faint, my head spinning. I couldn’t have heard him right, or he was messing with me, or I was misunderstanding.
This can’t actually be happening.
“I like Kaye a lot. I think I might even …I’ve never loved a woman before, but if I could love one, it would be her.” He looked at me, and I looked back, utterly dumbfounded.
This was Brent—the most devoted bachelor in the world, one who was never seen in the company of the same woman more than a few times. The things coming out of his mouth were absolutely ludicrous in the face of his entire personality.
“You want to keep her?” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. It came out small and stifled and my heart barely seemed to be beating. My breathing was very slow as I almost held it to listen to his response.
“She’s one in a million,” Brent murmured, and he got this little smile on his face, one I could almost swear couldn’t be faked. I’d never seen him smile in exactly that way before and it would have been fascinating in any other situation. “I hope it doesn’t offend you, but I want her. I just …wanted you to know. I’m going to keep her for myself.”
He wasn’t even asking my permission, I realized. This was something Brent fully intended to do, and what he was tellin
g me—in his own subtle way—seemed to be that he had no intention of changing his mind, no matter what I thought about it.
And I was taking it pretty well, all things considering. Or I thought I had been, until I found myself on my feet, looming over Brent’s seat, bending over the desk, and glaring at him as though my expression could somehow keep this all from happening.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I said. Well, no. I didn’t say it. I yelled it, and I was glad for the good construction of the house, which should keep this conversation relatively private.
But my voice kept rising and I fought it for a short time, but ultimately lost the battle. I was soon screaming at him, looming over him, and he rose to his feet to face me.
“You can’t just take my fucking wife, you son of a bitch,” I growled, and I only realized my hands had clenched into tight fists when I saw his doing the same. He was getting ready to protect himself against me, and I wasn’t entirely sure he had no cause.
I wanted to rip him apart. My rage roared through me, a wild beast that wouldn’t be tamed. This man dared to come into my house and tell me he was going to just keep my wife! Of course I was going to be mad.
“David …”
Brent still wasn’t backing down. The bastard was standing his ground, even in the face of my anger. More than ever before, I found myself having to fight down the urge to tear him apart.
It was another battle I was losing, I feared.
When I saw his defiance, I moved around my desk, almost jumping over it as though it wasn’t even there. It had been all there was to protect him from me, and in seconds, it was behind us both. I stood in front of him, hands still clenched into fists.
I was going to destroy this man. Maybe I would even kill him for the things he had dared to say about my Kaye.
“Shut up,” I snarled. “Don’t talk to me, you son of a bitch. You stay the fuck away from my wife.”
Brent didn’t cower back. He probably didn’t have it in him. He was naturally a dominant person, even more than I was, and he stood up straight and tall, icy cold in the face of my fiery fury.
“You’re acting crazy,” Brent commented, almost offhandedly, where most people would have been trying to get away from me. I could be sort of intense, even when I wasn’t this utterly furious.
I just snarled at him, anger robbing me of my voice. My body tensed, flushed through with a fury that actually felt pretty good and numbed everything else I could be feeling. But he was once more undeterred.
“David, calm the hell down,” Brent demanded, and I tensed up, my whole body wanting to launch itself at him. I held myself back. Barely. It was quite hard not to knock the living shit out of the man I had considered my best friend for years. “You’re acting completely insane. Why do you care so much?”
The question took me aback, and I actually stepped backward a few paces. Something about his certainty undermined me, and I listened, still furious but not quite as unreasonable about it—a little bit back from homicidal.
Why do I care so much?
The plan was for me to have a legitimate reason to leave Kaye after all. Why couldn’t Brent keep her?
Oh, yeah, because I fucking love her, that’s why!
“I just do.” I managed to find my voice, and Brent actually had the nerve to smirk at me.
“That’s bullshit. You’re acting like a jealous husband. Like this marriage is real to you or something. Are you really in love with her?”
He was so bold, and it froze my tongue again, making me choke back any words. To hear my conflicting feelings said aloud by another human being freaked me the fuck out. I had only ever said those words to Kaye, and I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone else. Especially not Brent, who was supposed to be in this whole thing with me. Instead, he was busy falling for Kaye, too. Things had officially gotten too messy for me to deal with. “I …I …I …” that was all I could muster.
A smirk curved his lips—lips that wanted to kiss my wife. “If you do love her, then you need to think about what you’re doing.” Brent was actually lecturing me, and it should have infuriated me more than ever. Maybe it did, on some level, but I was also just listening to every word he said. “You could call this plan off right here and now and just be with the woman you love.”
He had purposely provoked my jealousy. The sneaky bastard. And one hell of a best friend.
I backed off as the urge to hit him retreated. I fell into my chair and my eyes were fixed on him, but I was hardly seeing him.
Why wasn’t I calling the whole plan off? From what Brent was saying, he would back right off if I made the decision not to go through with it, and I could have Kaye all to myself.
I was in love, but what it came down to was simple. Love wasn’t forever. I had my own mother’s example to prove it. She had been in love with my father once, at least presumably, and I knew he’d been in love with her.
Love doesn’t last.
What did last, at least if managed right, was money—money and the legacy I would build in my grandfather’s name. My father’s too. Women wouldn’t stay around, but the money would.
“Fine.” My voice was dull and flat, and I refused to look at the other man. “Fine. I don’t give a shit. Take her. Do what you want with her. It’s none of my business, as long as you hold up your end of the deal and seduce her in the first place.”
If Kaye ever did cheat on me, as the plan was meant to make her do, I couldn’t be around her anyway. She had held out this long, but what were the chances she would continue to do so? She was sweet and loving and loyal, but she was also human.
“Are you sure?” Brent asked, and I could hear eagerness in his voice. He was a good friend, though, I supposed. He cared enough to let me know what his plans were, so that was something. “I’ll back right off. You just need to give me the word and she’s all yours.”
Tempting. Far more tempting than I ever would have thought when I put this whole thing into motion in the first place. In the end, though, old habits won. Brent would seduce her—I couldn’t imagine a scenario where she didn’t eventually give in to him—and then I would want nothing to do with her anyway.
“I’m sure,” I said, then sighed softly. “Get out of here, man. I have work to do.”
Mercifully, he left, leaving me with my own shattered, depressed thoughts.
I’d made the right choice. I knew it. But if that was the case, why did it feel so very wrong? Why did it nag at the edges of my mind, no matter how I tried to ignore it?
Should I have told him the truth—that I loved Kaye and probably always had?
Chapter 20
Kaye
I’d gone all out, decorating the lounge with some funky purple and green Mardi Gras decorations I’d found at a thrift shop in town. I didn’t want it to feel pretentious. My friends weren’t wealthy, and I didn’t want anyone to feel any different than anyone else. It was working—everyone was getting along well.
The party was hopping—the music was fun and upbeat. People were dancing, talking, drinking, and mingling all around me, but there was something very important missing from it for me.
Something. Or, to be more accurate, someone.
David wasn’t there.
He’d said he would be here eventually, and I settled in to wait. At least the party was fun, and I got to watch Brent meeting my friends, talking to them, laughing, flirting, and just generally seeming to have a good time.
Eventually, he and Angela paired off, and I smirked to myself. I’d sort of called it. My guess had been that, if he was going to be interested in any of my friends, it would be her. They had the same sort of sense of humor.
The drinks were flowing freely and I couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, Angela and Brent would want to get to know each other better. They certainly seemed to be talking intently about something, though the music was far too loud for me to be clear on what it was.
After awhile, Angela broke away from Brent and gr
abbed herself a fresh drink. She came to sit down on the couch with me, and I smiled at her. She wanted to talk to me, obviously, and I thought I might have some idea why.
What she said, however, was not something I expected.
“What’s Brent’s deal?”
I frowned. What did she mean? I arched an eyebrow, encouraging her to continue. “What do you mean, what’s his deal?” I really had no idea what she could mean. They seemed to be hitting it off so well.
“I mean, what’s his obsession with you? Is he in love with you or something? David must be pissed off about that.” Her words dropped my heart into my feet.
Was Brent really in love with me?
And why the hell would he be? Why would he do that kind of thing to his best friend?
Blushing, I shook my head. Angela didn’t know what she was talking about, that was all it was. Once, I might have thought she was right, but I’d had a really good talk with him and I thought I had made myself quite clear about where we stood.
“No way,” I insisted, and Angela gave me a deeply knowing look, one that irritated me immensely.
“He does. He has a thing for you. He wouldn’t stop talking about you and asking about you …” Angela smirked at me. “You have yourself a problem, pretty lady. Married lady. Wow, two completely hot men have fallen in love with you right at the same time. What are the chances of that happening?”
I had no idea what those chances might be. But I did know one thing for absolute certain: I loved David. I loved my husband. Brent was not going to derail our marriage, no matter how he felt about me.
I bit my lower lip and looked over at Brent. He was looking over at us and he did seem to have a somewhat besotted look on his face. He could have been looking at Angela, though.
“You’re crazy,” I told her affectionately, and she grinned at me and shrugged a little, as though to concede the point. But I wasn’t thinking she was the crazy one. It was probably Brent who was the nutty one.
“Maybe. But it’s probably good David’s not here anyway. He strikes me as a bit of the jealous type.” She frowned and looked around. “Where is your Prince Charming, anyway?”
No Promises: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance Page 40