The Best Man Problem (Mile High Happiness)

by Mariah Ankenman

  “Say no more. I’ll be over in ten.”

  “Are you sure?” Uncertainty rang in her voice, along with something else…edginess. “I wouldn’t want to pull you away from any important work.”

  “You’re not.” He’d been installing a new Linux distro on his home server and trying to figure out the driver for his GPU. Nothing he couldn’t attend to later.

  “Thank you.”

  He hung up, a huge smile tugging at his lips. She hadn’t wanted to call him; that was clear from her tone. But something else had been clear, too. She needed him, and not just for the computer problem. He’d heard the breathiness of her voice, the subtle longing when she said his name. He recognized it because it was the exact same need that colored his voice every time he talked about the woman. She may not want to want him, but she did.

  That was something, at least.

  Heading out of his apartment, he hopped into his car and drove toward Mile High Happiness, grateful Marie suggested putting the address in his GPS “just in case.” The streets of Denver were a maze of one-way confusion. In the short amount of time he’d been living here, he’d almost driven down the wrong street four times. Who the hell designed this city?

  He pulled into the building’s lot a few minutes later. The large, twenty-story building had office space on the first level and apartments above, so the parking lot was filled with mostly resident parking spots, but there were a few visitor spots up front, and he was lucky enough to grab one. Another thing he’d learned about Denver since moving here—the city had crappy parking options. But other than the weird streets and limited parking, he loved it. So far everyone had been really friendly, the restaurant options were diverse and delicious, and the mountains in the distance were breathtaking. He could see why so many people moved to Denver.

  Locking his car, he headed straight to Mile High Happiness. He opened the glass door with the etched frosted flowers and saw three women huddled around a computer: Mo, a woman he didn’t recognize, and, sitting right in the middle, the woman who starred in every single one of his recent dreams: Lilly Walsh.

  “Did you try this button?”

  “Yes, Moira.” Lilly shook her head, a frown marring her beautiful face. “I tried every damn button on this thing. It’s broken, okay?”

  Since none of the women realized he’d come in the door, he cleared his throat. “Mind if I take a look?” That was why she’d called, after all.

  Three heads popped up with varying expressions filling their faces. Mo broke out into a bright, welcoming smile. The woman he didn’t know tilted her head to study him with a smaller, uncertain smile. Lilly glared at the computer in front of her, but when she spotted him, he swore he saw a bit of relief filling those beautiful eyes. As much as he wished that happy gaze was for him, he’d bet his last bit of RAM it was for his tech skills.

  “Lincoln.” Mo hurried from behind the desk to greet him. “Thank you so much for coming. Another few minutes and I think Lilly would have hurled the computer into the wall.”

  “Don’t put it past me yet,” the seated woman muttered.

  He laughed softly. “Before you ruin your lease by damaging property walls, let’s see if I can be of help.”

  He stepped around the desk to Lilly’s free side. The woman standing beside Lilly held out her hand.

  “Hi, I’m Pru. The third member of Mile High Happiness. And you must be Lincoln, the…best man.”

  “Prudence,” Lilly growled under her breath.

  He shook the woman’s hand, wondering at her emphasis. How much did Lilly’s partners know about what happened between them?

  “Thank you for coming. Now, can you just fix this damn thing before it gives me a stroke?” Lilly pushed back from the desk, rising from her seat and motioning for him to occupy it.

  “I’ll do what I can.” It would probably be an easy fix. Most computer issues were operator error. He’d bet it would take no time to sort out whatever the problem was.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” Mo said a bit too cheerfully. “Why don’t Pru and I go grab everyone dinner while you and Lincoln fix whatever issue this is?”

  Why did he hear something other than computer issue in that offer?

  “We don’t need dinner right—”

  Mo cut Lilly off. “Yes, we do. I’m hungry, and I know Pru is, too.”

  “I am?” the other woman asked with a raised brow.

  “Yes, you are. Besides, we need to show Lincoln we appreciate his help somehow.”

  Lilly narrowed her eyes at her friends. “We can pay him.”

  “Dinner sounds like a perfect payment to me,” he chimed in with a grin.

  She sent a death glare his way, but he was having too much fun to be intimidated by it.

  “Perfect, then we’ll just head out and let you two figure this out.” Mo grabbed Pru by the arm and practically dragged the other woman out of the office despite her soft protest. “Bye!”

  The moment they left, he released the laughter he’d been holding in. “She’s not subtle, is she?”

  “About as subtle as a Mack truck,” Lilly grumbled.

  He tapped away at the keys, but the screen remained frozen. “So, I can assume the no-sex-with-wedding-party-members is a personal rule and not a company-wide policy?”

  “You can assume whatever you like.” Her haughty voice sounded in his ear as she leaned in close to see what he was doing. “You know what they say about assuming.”

  Yes. He was familiar with the saying.

  After trying a few more key combinations, he realized that whatever happened to this computer, it needed a hard reboot. Nothing else would bring it back from the frozen screen of death. He held down the power button, noticing the main reason it might be malfunctioning was because it had to be a solid ten years old. A dinosaur, in computer terms. His fitness tracker probably had more RAM than this thing.

  Once the computer started back up, he went into the system console and scanned for any new errors, happy to see there were none.

  “There. All done.”

  “You fixed it?”

  “I fixed it, but you might want to think about upgrading to a newer computer soon.”

  Lilly leaned over him, staring at the screen as if it held the answers to life.

  “Just like that? You came in here and solved my problem with a few clicks of the keyboard?”

  Not quite so simple, but basically. He’d figured it’d be a fairly easy fix; what he couldn’t understand was why she seemed upset by it.

  “Yup. Happy to help.”

  With a huff, she pushed herself up and started to pace back and forth from the wall to the desk, frustration fueling her every step.

  “Of course you’re happy to help. You’re always happy to help. You’re just one helpful, happy guy.”

  “Um, did I miss something?”

  She ignored him, continuing to pace.

  “You can’t even have the decency to be an asshole or have a bad habit. No, you’re just so damn helpful and sweet and sexy.”

  That got him to smile. “You think I’m sexy?”

  He kind of figured she didn’t find him hideous, since she had slept with him. But it never hurt a guy’s ego to hear an insanely beautiful woman found him attractive. He rose from the chair, risking life and limb—or at least the very real possibility of a knee to the nuts—by moving into her pacing path. She didn’t slow down, didn’t even notice he moved, merely crashed into him. He reached out to grab her arms, steadying her when she would have tumbled.

  “Ugh! You even smell good. This isn’t fair, Lincoln. You’re impossible to resist.”

  His brow rose as it dawned on him that her anger stemmed from sexual frustration. And he was the source of it. That went a small way to easing his bruised pride from waking up the morning after their amazing night together to find
her gone.

  “Really?” His gaze roamed over her face, pausing on her lips. Lips he tasted once, lips he tasted every night in his dreams, lips he burned to taste again. “You seem to be doing a pretty good job of resisting me so far.”

  Her hands came up—to push him away, he’d bet—but he bet wrong. Lilly grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt. With a frustrated moan, she tugged, pulling him down as she lifted her chin. Her mouth crashed against his, those sweet lips colliding with his own, tasting even better than he remembered.

  Surprise kept him immobile for all of 0.1 seconds before he came to life, tugging her by the grip he had on her arms, pulling her into him until he could feel every inch of her soft, heavenly body pressed against his.

  Yes! This was what he’d been missing, been craving. This passionate, fiery woman who knew what she wanted and took it. This was the Lilly he met that night at the hotel. The one who brought him to his knees. He’d known she was there, hiding under all that prim and properness. Though he had to admit, the prim and proper thing was hot as hell too. Seemed no matter what this woman did or how she acted, it never ceased to get his motor running.

  She moaned, low and deep, the sound causing him to harden to the point of pain. She backed them up, lips still fused as if their lives depended on it, until he felt his back hit the hard, solid wall. He didn’t care. She could bash his head against all the walls she wanted as long as she kept kissing him. Because kissing Lilly was the best damn feeling he’d ever experienced.

  Second best.

  Being inside her held the honor of the first.

  “Dammit!”

  Her muttered curse reached him through a fog of lust. One second she had her tongue halfway down his throat, and the next she was gone. Pulled out of his embrace and standing a foot away. Felt like a million miles to him.

  “Lilly?” Her name came out shaky, because he was feeling damn shaky. The woman had that effect on him.

  Her dark hair was mussed, clothing wrinkled, glasses slightly askew on her sharp nose. She adjusted her frames with a single finger, then pointed that finger at him.

  “That did not happen.”

  “Okay…” But it had.

  Any further discussion was halted by her friends coming back, arms filled with bags.

  “We got burritos from— Hey!” Mo stared in confusion as Lilly hurried past her. “Where are you going? We have food.”

  Lilly stopped, her gaze swinging back to him. “I’m not hungry for food.”

  She was hungry for him and not happy about it. He read that clearly in her gaze.

  “I need some air.” And with that, she stormed out the office door and was gone.

  “Okay.” Pru headed to the back desk, setting her bag on it and taking food containers out. “That was weird.”

  You could say that again.

  Mo made her way to Lilly’s desk, giving him a soft smile. “You’ll have to be patient with her. She’s not used to being attracted to a guy she considers off-limits. It’s kind of messing with her head.”

  Fair enough—she was messing with his head.

  “But, Lincoln?”

  He tore his gaze away from the door where Lilly had stormed out and focused on her friend. Mo’s smile slipped, a deadly calm entering her honey brown eyes.

  “If you hurt her, I’m going to make you a special batch of my nonna’s laxative brownies. Got it?”

  He nodded. He got that—solidarity in friendship and all—but her friend had him and Lilly all wrong. They were about the physical connection, not an emotional one. Right? He thought he’d been pretty open with Lilly about what he could give to a woman, but maybe he should clear the air again. Maybe she was resisting so much because she thought he wanted more of a commitment—which he sure as hell did not—and worried what would happen when everything went south.

  Nothing would go south, because Lincoln didn’t want more than another night or two, or twenty, in Lilly’s bed. She wanted the same, right? His stomach tensed. Maybe he should take a step back from all this until he and Lilly had a real talk about what they wanted. Of course, that would mean the woman would have to sit down and actually have a conversation with him without either biting his head off or kissing the daylights out of him.

  Chapter Nine

  Three days after Lilly lost her freaking mind and kissed Lincoln in her office, she stood in the large ballroom of Enchanted Dance. The locally owned dance studio catered to everyone, from toddlers all the way up to adults. The sisters who owned and ran the studio for the past three decades provided classes in many styles of dance, from tap to ballet, hip-hop to belly dancing, and, of course, ballroom.

  Mile High Happiness had worked out a contract with the studio to provide a free class to all their couples. It benefited both companies. They were able to offer their brides and grooms a free dance lesson, something most people jumped at when they were preparing for a formal event where the first dance tended to be a big thing, and the studio saw a boost in enrollment, as many couples signed up for a few more classes to polish their moves for the big day.

  Tonight, the class was filled with various couples, Kenneth and Marie, a few members of their wedding party, and her. Normally Lilly didn’t attend the free dance night, but Marie had insisted she come, and she was finding it hard to resist anything the sweet bride requested. Which was why she found herself in her favorite yellow sundress, smiling as she watched her clients try to waltz across the dance floor. Poor Kenneth had two left feet and kept stepping on Marie’s toes, but the woman didn’t seem to mind. If the smile on her face was any indication, Marie thought her fiancé hung the sun and moon. Who would mind a little toe smashing with a guy who could do that?

  Her gaze wandered the crowd of dancers on the floor, landing on a certain man who inspired something a bit more earthy than the deep, abiding love she spied between Kenneth and Marie.

  Lincoln Reid. Lust inspirer.

  Heat still rose on her cheeks whenever she thought of the brazen way she’d pushed him against her office wall and taken his mouth. It hadn’t been a gentle kiss. No softness or romance, but a demanding claim of her body declaring she wanted more. Even though her mind knew it was a bad idea.

  Bad decisions make great stories.

  Her roommate’s favorite saying. But Mo didn’t have to deal with Lilly’s bad decision or the raging case of need it awakened in her. Dammit! She never should have kissed Lincoln. Again. The man was a potent keg of sexual dynamite. How could she have forgotten that one touch only made her crave more? She blamed her weakness on the constant nearness. But that was a lie. Even when she had zero contact with the man, she still wanted him, dreamed about him, desired him.

  Unfortunately, the man in question harbored no such difficulties where she was concerned, if his current situation was anything to judge by. Something dark and ugly and suspiciously close to jealousy burned in her gut as Lilly watched Lincoln dance with the maid of honor, laughing at something the small, delicate woman said.

  Not fair. Lilly wasn’t one to judge another woman on her appearance. Besides, Lincoln was a few inches taller than her, until she put heels on. At five foot eight, she towered over most women and a number of men she’d dated. It never bothered her, but many of her dates called it quits the moment she rose from the table. She was a tall woman who liked even taller heels, so what? She didn’t mind being taller than her date; unfortunately, many of them minded being shorter than her.

  “Excellent form, Mr. Reid,” Piper Phelps, one of the owners and tonight’s instructor, praised Lincoln. “You must have taken dance before.”

  His lips curled. “My parents enrolled me in cotillion classes as a child.”

  Of course they had. The only thing Lilly’s mom had ever enrolled her in was after-school care so she could have more time with her latest boyfriend. Lincoln had the perfect childhood with the perfect parents, makin
g him the perfect man.

  No!

  He wasn’t perfect. He liked role-playing games. She wasn’t one to judge, but she could never get into that dragon-and-elf-type fantasy play. And he drank pumpkin spice lattes! Two people who didn’t share hobbies or interests didn’t last long, in her experience. That went on the noncompatible side of her list. The side that was sorely lacking but she was determined to fill.

  The maid of honor laughed again at something Lincoln said, causing Lilly’s gut to churn. Salacious flirt. There—she could add that to the list of why Lincoln Reid was a bad bet. Mr. No Relationships was probably trying to carry out the tired, old bang-the-maid-of-honor routine.

  “She’s married.”

  Lilly turned at the voice, startled to see Marie standing beside her. When had the woman left the dance floor? She’d been so focused on Lincoln, she’d lost sight of her bride- and groom-to-be. How unprofessional. Various forms of shame filled her, but she pasted a smile on her face as she asked, “Pardon?”

  Marie tilted her head, short black hair held back with a beautiful silver headband. “Rachel.” She indicated Lincoln’s dance partner with a nod. “My matron of honor. She’s married. To Leticia.”

  She had no idea where the woman was going with this, so she simply smiled brighter.

  “I only mention it because you look like you want to scratch her eyes out for dancing with Lincoln.”

  Lilly sputtered, trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for her obvious staring. “O-Oh, no. I wasn’t…” Nothing. She had absolutely nothing. “It’s not like that.”

  Marie smiled, stepping closer to her side to speak in hushed tones as she stared at the couples on the dance floor. Specifically, Lincoln. Forcing Lilly to do the same.

  “Really? Because I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

  Crap! Had she been that obvious? The last thing she needed was to get into another heap of trouble with a bride over a member of the wedding party. She’d assumed she had her thoughts and reactions to Lincoln under wraps.

  “And,” Marie continued, “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”