To Have and to Hold (The Wedding Belles #1)(15)

Seth didn’t even pause as he added more weight to the bar. “I have some energy I need to work out.”

“Right, because I’m just a delicate canary with no life stress whatsoever,” Grant muttered. Still, he didn’t protest when Seth lowered himself to the bench and rested his hands on the familiar silver bar, taking a deep breath before Grant helped him lever the weight over his chest.

Seth wouldn’t go so far as to say he liked working out. It was a sweaty, time-intensive affair. But somewhere along the line he’d gotten hooked on the habit. Five days a week, at least, and twice a week he and Grant went together.

His friend always joked it was the manliest possible way for two adult men to maintain a friendship.

“You’re doing more than last week,” Grant observed as Seth moved through his reps. “You want to talk about it?”

Seth didn’t reply. This sort of interaction was pretty typical: Grant talking at him. Seth ignoring, Grant pestering anyway.

From anyone else, it would have driven Seth up the wall, but since friendships didn’t come more loyal than Grant Miller, the least Seth could do was let the guy talk at him.

Still, more than two decades’ worth of unshakable friendship didn’t stop Seth from rolling his eyes as his friend started humming what seemed to be an awkward attempt to rap to some Top 40 nonsense in which every other word seemed to be ass.

And Grant was right about the weight. He had added extra, and it was because he had something to work through.

Namely a certain blond wedding planner who seemed determined to haunt his every waking thought despite the fact that he didn’t even know the woman.

He finished his reps, panting as he sat up and holding out his hand for a towel. Grant was now adding dance moves to his song, so Seth leaned down and fetched his own towel.

“Hey, did you see that email from the Sydney branch?” Seth asked. “About the check-in touch screens being shit.”

Grant stopped “dancing” and motioned to Seth to move before he folded his lean, six five frame onto the bench, making it look uncomfortably small.

“The screens aren’t shit. The people are.”

Seth stared down at him. “That’s what I get? This is what I pay you for?”

Grant wiped down the bar before tapping his temple. “This. You pay me for my big-ass brain.”

Seth rolled his eyes. But Grant’s claims about his big brain were, in fact, annoyingly true—Grant had started at the company as a college intern, just like Seth, and had been promoted to CIO a couple of years earlier by Hank, who in a very controversial and widely criticized decision had passed over older and more-seasoned candidates to give Grant the position. Lucky for Grant, Hank had never given a damn what people thought or said about him. “You sound like a douche.”

“Impossible,” Grant said solemnly. “You’ve always cornered the market on douche bag. I can’t bear to take it away from you.”

“Such loyalty,” Seth said.

“Right? Okay, but seriously, dude, you are extra pissy lately. All your bad vibes are harshing my mellow. What’s up?”

“Harshing your mellow? Really?”

His best friend pointed a long finger at him. “Don’t change the subject. Speak.”

Seth crossed his arms, half wanting to tell his friend to shut the hell up, half wanting to unload some of the tension that had been hovering around him ever since Maya had dropped her getting-married bomb.

A tension that had only increased once Seth had realized that he had a serious boner for the Barbie-esque wedding planner who was not at all his type, and yet who he hadn’t been able to stop fantasizing about in the week since he’d seen her.

Brooke Baldwin.

Even the name was bubbly.

Grant gave a knowing laugh. “Oh damn. I should have figured it was a woman that’s got you tied up in knots.”

For once, Seth wished his best friend didn’t know him quite so well. It was bad enough that he and Grant had been able to read each other from the moment they’d been assigned as science partners back in the fifth grade.

Most of the time he was grateful for having his best friend working just a couple of floors below him in a corner office nearly as impressive as Seth’s. But right now, when Seth wanted nothing more than to brood in silence over his sister’s marriage to a gold-digging playboy, and maybe, just maybe, fantasize about a hot blonde with a fantastic rack . . .

“Oh, come on,” Grant persisted as he took a slug from his water bottle. “You can’t get that look on your face and then not spill.”

“I can,” Seth replied mildly. “Seeing as we’re no longer thirteen, eagerly counting the days until we get to touch an actual breast.”

“Speak for yourself. I touched my first tit at twelve.”

“You did not.”

“I did. Crystal Perkins, remember?”

Seth snorted. “You keep trying to sell that one, but I refuse to believe it. She was a year older and hot.”

Grant lifted a finger to gesture over his tall, fit physique. “Chicks dig this.”

“Yeah, now. But back then you had braces, acne, and walked like a newborn foal.”

Still, Grant had a point. Women did seem to go crazy for him. Somewhere around twenty he’d grown into his tall frame, going from awkwardly lanky to athletic and ripped thanks to a rigid workout schedule. Add in a crooked smile, messy reddish-brown hair, and light brown eyes that his more besotted female fans deemed gold, and Seth’s best friend was pretty much a bona fide ladies’ man.