Last Groom Standing

by Kimberly Lang

  The aroma alone helped clear the cobwebs from his head, and the caffeine kicked in in the taxi. By the time it pulled to a stop in front of his building, Dylan was feeling marginally human. The doorman merely nodded as he made his walk of shame through the lobby to the elevator.

  By the time he’d showered and let the hot water pound the stiffness from his muscles—Marnie’s friend Sven desperately needed a new mattress—some of the morning made sense.

  Based solely on what he knew about Marnie from Reese, he’d almost expected Marnie’s morning-after regrets to come from some kind of old-fashioned moral objection. But he was still questioning all that he thought he knew about Marnie, especially since she wasn’t at all the sweet innocent thing Reese had painted her to be. Reese’s assessment of Marnie seemed to be several years out of date. She might look like an angel, but his skin was still burning with the memory of last night.

  No, Marnie’s regrets seemed to stem from a loyalty to Reese.

  Loyalty to a friend was a good and noble thing, but Marnie was taking it a little far, in his opinion. He and Reese had been over months ago, and since Reese had so obviously moved on, it seemed ridiculous for Marnie to obsess on that part of his past.

  Not that being roped by his ex-fiancée into interviewing the woman he’d slept with the night before for his ex-fiancée’s job wasn’t weird—he’d give Marnie that much—but honestly, he couldn’t understand the extent of Marnie’s freakout.

  And honestly, he didn’t want to. Drama and freakouts were for people with nothing better to do with their time. It was one of the reasons he and Reese had gotten along so well, and if Marnie had a penchant for the dramatic, he wasn’t sure she was quite as suited for the job as Reese claimed.

  Maybe Reese didn’t know. Maybe Marnie’s dramatics were a new development. It’s not like they were all that close. Which also added to the absurdity of Marnie’s stress over Reese finding out they’d slept together.

  Just another reason not to drink and pick up women in bars. The drama.

  Dressed, shaved and feeling human, he went back down to the lobby and had the doorman hail another taxi. He’d humor Reese and do this, and then he’d figure out what, if anything, would happen next with Marnie—professionally at least. On a personal level, he had his answer.

  It’s was a good thing Marnie didn’t really want the job anyway.

  THREE

  I really, really want that job.

  Marnie dropped her keys and purse onto the coffee table and collapsed onto the couch. That knowledge had settled on her before their entrées had arrived and had only grown stronger in the subsequent hours.

  While that had quite possibly been the absolute most uncomfortable interview she’d ever had, Marnie was absolutely sure about one thing: the job was perfect. Exactly what she wanted. The sad but true fact was that much of her experience from the Refugee Center would transfer easily to a battered women’s organization like the Brookes Foundation. She knew people at every social service office, staffing agency and housing department in the Tri-State area, as well as every doctor, lawyer and therapist who’d work on a sliding payment scale.

  Granted, her fund-raising experience wasn’t nearly what it could be—or possibly should be—for the position, but Reese could coach her on that, and she could mine the memories of all that fund-raising her mother had done for various charities in Savannah.

  I could do that job. I’d be awesome at that job.

  Hell, it was practically the perfect job.

  The only real problem was Dylan.

  To give him credit where it was due, he hadn’t said or done anything to hint at what happened last night. Even in her hypersensitive looking-for-every-possible-double-entendre state of awareness, no one would have been able to guess he’d seen her naked just hours before.

  If anything, Dylan had been cool, aloof, nearly patronizing, as if the whole interview was simply his way of indulging a wild scheme of Reese’s when he had better, more important places to be. It had set her teeth on edge, and she’d wanted to reach across the table and smack him more than once. It was the Dylan she knew before—and a completely different man than the one she’d spent last night with. She was having a hard time reconciling the two in her mind.

  Obviously, Dylan needed large amounts of alcohol in order to become human. Or maybe she’d been drunker than she thought last night and she was the one who needed large amounts of alcohol to tolerate him.

  And as if everything just wasn’t quite awkward enough because of the nakedness thing and Reese sitting right there, she’d felt off her game, stumbling over simple answers about her education and experience, because she’d get distracted by something stupid—like when his hand had absently slid around his coffee cup like a caress and she’d flashed to the way his hands had stroked her last night.

  Mercy, he had amazing hands, able to coax reactions from her in ways and with an intensity she hadn’t known existed. If she left her mind unattended or unfocused for even a second, it went right back to last night and her skin would start to burn.

  Even Reese had given her a couple of strange get-it-together looks, but, thankfully, hadn’t pressed her for an explanation of her behavior.

  Like there was a good way to say, See, I had amazing sex with this guy last night and I’m sitting next to you wondering if he did that amazing thing with his tongue to you, too, or if he’s making some kind of comparison between us and how I’m stacking up. Not that I want to know, but it’s damn hard to remember facts from last year’s performance review when my brain is far more occupied with a slo-mo replay of last night’s activities.

  Ugh.

  Okay, maybe Dylan wasn’t the problem. She was honest enough to say that the problem might just be her problem with Dylan.

  She felt guilty, but at the same time she didn’t regret actually sleeping with him. The only thing she did regret was that Dylan used to belong to Reese, which was rather like trying to get forgiveness for a sin only because it was a sin, not because she was actually repentant of the action itself.

  Well, it wasn’t the only thing she regretted. She hadn’t realized it was possible to get drunk enough to intentionally sleep with Dylan. She’d readily admit it was a hormonal, chemistry thing, but the impossible-to-believe part was how her hormones had completely rebelled against everything she believed in.

  She pulled a pillow over her face and groaned.

  She’d come home from Hillbrook and enrolled in Simmons State with the sure knowledge it was exactly where she belonged and spent the next three years doing exactly as expected. She pledged Kappa and was named a Sigma Nu Sweetheart all three years. Honor society, charity work...she’d done all of it. And she’d been unhappy the whole time. But she’d kept on, figuring that eventually doing all the right things would click, and she would be happy. She’d graduated in time to go home to watch Carter and Missy’s marriage start its death throes and take over Mama’s position in the Women’s Auxiliary after her funeral. And she still hadn’t been happy. It had taken the sight of Richard Lee Mayton the Third on his knees with a rock the size of Georgia in his hand to realize she would never be happy in that life again.

  Two weeks later, she’d been in New York, and she’d found herself and her happiness here, half a continent away from the life she’d been born and bred to have. And she wanted none of it. Including the men.

  Just the sight of a suit was normally enough to shut her libido down. Good Lord, Dylan Brookes was everything she didn’t want with a Yankee accent on top.

  Yet, she’d wanted him. Badly enough to overlook a pile of reasons not to and conveniently forget—if only for a little while—that he was the ex of one of her dearest friends.

  Which made the fact she really wanted this job a big problem.

  If only Reese had come up with this “brilliant” idea earlier in the week, she wouldn’t have let booze get the better of her libido and slept with him.

  It certainly wasn’t the ideal situation
to preface what she was sure was the ideal job.

  Pull it together.

  So it wasn’t the best start, but even the smartest people made stupid mistakes sometimes. It happened. She wasn’t entirely sure how one moved on in cases like this—short of a convenient case of amnesia—but it had to be possible.

  While Dylan was the head of the Brookes Foundation, from what she gathered today, he wasn’t necessarily in the day-to-day business. The position answered ultimately to him, but it wasn’t like he’d be around all the time. The man had a very busy law career to attend to, after all.

  Reese had been able to juggle working for the man and sleeping with him at the same time...

  Which wasn’t the same thing at all, as she wasn’t going to sleep with him again. It was a one-off, never to be repeated.

  Pity.

  No!

  Marnie wanted to smack herself. This was insane.

  Enough was enough. That was certainly enough replays of last night. It was also enough worrying about the job for today. Nothing more could happen until Tuesday at the earliest, when Reese could contact the other people at the Foundation and get the ball rolling for actual interviews.

  Until then... Well, it was a holiday weekend. Surely there was something she could find to do to keep her mind off Dylan Brookes.

  You mean the Brookes Foundation.

  Exactly.

  Then go find it.

  The light on her machine was blinking. She pushed Play and regretted it the moment Carter’s voice filled the silence. She hit Delete. That wasn’t exactly what she’d meant when she’d wanted something to occupy her mind, but it did an effective job, as everything from yesterday landed on her in a big, heavy lump.

  God, she’d been a sanctimonious, self-righteous little bitch, and while that Marnie felt like a long-outgrown sweater—tight, itchy, and out-of-style—she couldn’t help but feel shame for what she’d done and the repercussions. She’d driven a wedge between her friends, expecting them to take sides, shifted blame...

  And poor Gina... She’d suffered the most. If the roles were reversed, Marnie wasn’t so sure she’d be willing to forgive Gina, so it was a little shaming to see Gina willing to move on and repair the damage—regardless of her relationship with Carter.

  Her anger at Carter—which was always there, simmering—bubbled to the surface. Carter had been responsible for her losing her friendship with Missy, as well. When this thing between him and Gina went bad—which it was bound to, regardless of Carter’s rather dramatic arrival and declarations yesterday—Marnie didn’t want to lose Gina again in the aftermath.

  Somehow, in less than twenty-four hours, her life had gone from somewhat normal to a death march through an emotional minefield.

  Marnie went to the kitchen for wine. It was only three o’clock, but the wine felt deserved.

  * * *

  Tuck dodged past him easily, and the basketball arced up and into the basket. Dylan caught it as it came through, attempting a rebound, but the ball went wide and bounced against the wall of the small court at the gym.

  Tuck laughed as he retrieved the ball. “Dude, you suck,” he drawled. His accent was different from Marnie’s, but like Marnie’s, it was still strong, like it was harder to shake than other accents, regardless of how long the speaker had been out of the South.

  “I was trying to take it easy on you. I assumed you’d be a bit tired after your wedding weekend. If you want your ass kicked...”

  Tuck snorted. “Like that could ever happen.” He tossed the ball to Dylan and headed over to the bench to grab a water bottle. Tuck’s knee injury may have ended his professional football career, but he was still an athlete in excellent shape, while Dylan was beginning to feel the effects of too much time at a desk. Dylan could still hold his own on the court, but ass kicking of any sort was probably out of the question.

  Dylan joined him on the bench for a water break. “So why aren’t you with your bride today? Honeymoon over already?” Dylan had been surprised when Tuck had called earlier. Their games had become less frequent recently since Tuck had all but moved to Ithaca while Cassie finished her research for her PhD, but he’d only gotten married Friday. He figured they’d be holed up in a hotel for a few more days at least.

  Tuck shrugged. “There’s a lecture of some sort at NYU today that Cas wanted to attend.”

  “She’s already ditching you in favor of actual stars?” Tuck might be famous, but Cassie was far more interested in the stars in the cosmos over the stars in Cosmo.

  “I’m lucky I pried her away from her computer long enough to get married.” He shrugged. “We’ll do a proper honeymoon once she’s done.”

  “A honeymoon in Antarctica... That sounds—” he paused “—horrible.” Even Dylan knew of Cassie’s research trip to Antarctica—although he didn’t know exactly why she wanted to go there. And while Tuck fully supported Cassie’s research aspirations, he was already grumbling over the necessary separation.

  “I agree. I’m thinking more along the lines of Aruba. It’s too freaking cold in Antarctica.”

  Dylan had always thought Tuck’s dislike of cold weather and snow to be unique to him—or maybe just Texans in general—but Marnie had expressed similar opinions Friday night. Maybe it was a widespread Southern thing. Why did Southerners move north, then?

  “But speaking of people who should be elsewhere,” Tuck continued, “I figured you’d be in the Hamptons for the weekend.”

  He dribbled the ball absently between his legs. “I ended up having a lunch meeting on Saturday, and by the time that was done, I wasn’t in the mood to drive.”

  “What kind of lawyer works on Labor Day weekend?”

  “The very expensive kind.” He ran a towel over his face and neck. Ass kicking or no, he’d worked up a sweat. “But it wasn’t billable hours, unfortunately. It was Foundation stuff. Reese wants her friend Marnie to take over her old job, so we went to lunch.”

  Tuck looked at him sideways. “You had lunch with Reese?”

  Dylan knew Tuck felt stuck in a bad place. Reese was his cousin, after all, and his loyalties were divided—however unnecessarily. “And Marnie, too,” he added. “And it was just business.” That wasn’t entirely true, but his unprofessional thoughts hadn’t involved Reese.

  The lunch meeting had left him undecided on Marnie. Personally and professionally. He had to admit that her résumé was impressive, but Marnie hadn’t presented herself all that well at the meeting. She’d seemed distracted and uncomfortable which, considering what happened the night before, was somewhat understandable. Even Reese had mentioned her behavior afterward, saying, “I think you make her uncomfortable for some reason.”

  Unfortunately, it didn’t tell him if Marnie would present differently in a business setting, or if time would make it easier for her. He was at the Foundation quite a bit and she’d have to work with him, so if he was the problem, that was a problem.

  But he could tell Marnie had a real passion for what she did—when she did manage to get her thoughts in order, she could be quite articulate and expressive about her enthusiasm for helping people. He’d definitely recommend her for an interview with the Director and staff, though, based on her résumé and Reese’s recommendation.

  But it left him in a quandary about Marnie herself. He was attracted to her—physically, for sure—but there was something else, as well. It was the “something else” that gave him pause, though. She didn’t seem unstable, per se, but she certainly didn’t sail on an even keel. Normally, that lack would be enough to send him in the other direction at top speed, but he’d found himself thinking about her over the weekend a little too often for comfort.

  “Hel-lo?”

  Dylan jumped as Tuck waved a hand in front of his face.

  “Sorry. What were you saying?”

  “I said you’ve really got to stop taking Reese’s calls.” There was exasperation in Tuck’s voice, but something like concern underneath, as well.

 
“Why?”

  “Because you’ve got to move on.”

  A lush, naked Marnie popped instantly to mind. That had to count as moving on, but considering Tuck’s connections to two of Marnie’s friends, it probably wasn’t something he should bring up just now. He didn’t want Tuck to feel more divided. “What makes you think I haven’t?”

  “Because Reese keeps calling you and you keep answering.”

  “So I should ignore her? That’s a bit childish, don’t you think?”

  “She slept with another man just days before your wedding, and you’re acting like it’s no big deal. You just handed her off to Mason with a shrug. At the very least, you should be furious with her. But you’re not. Hell, I seem angrier with her than you do.”

  He’d been angry at first, sure, but the anger had passed quickly. Feelings of betrayal had been fleeting, at best. His ego and his pride got a little dented, and the very public nature of everything had been a bit embarrassing, but he’d actually come out ahead. Women had flocked to console him, and Reese had caught the greater amount of flak for infidelity and flightiness. The fact that he and Reese were still friends had probably been the saving grace of the entire situation. It was damn hard for folks to get too worked up over something when the major players were so completely not making a big deal out of it. Thankfully, things had died down quickly, with the minimum of possible drama. He couldn’t really ask for more than that.

  “What did you want me to do, Tuck? Drag her to the altar by her hair? Challenge Mason to a duel?”

  “Maybe. You could have put up some kind of a fight.”

  “She loves someone else.”

  “But—”

  “Living life in the tabloid headlines has really warped your perspective. Real life isn’t a soap opera, and normal people don’t seek out that kind of drama.”

  “Especially you.”

  “What?”