A Very Merry Bromance (Bromance Book Club #5) (2)

“I’m leaving. I have a lot to do today.”

“When can I see you again?”

She blinked.

Well, this was a first. “I—I can see you again, right?”

She chewed on her lip. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She stepped around him, searching the floor again. She let out an ah at the sight of her shoes. She bent to pick them up, one finger hooked through the sexy black slingbacks that had damn near given him cardiac arrest last night.

“Wait. Just wait. Can we start this over, please? I feel like I’ve screwed something up, but I have no idea what.”

“You didn’t screw anything up. It’s me. I shouldn’t have done this. I’m sorry.”

“Shouldn’t have done what?”

“I started this. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

“I was a willing participant. More than willing.” He set his hands on his hips and was instantly, painfully aware of his own nudity. And not in a good way.

She stopped her frantic searching and hugged her things to her chest. “Look, I know everyone felt sorry for me last night. Even though I never had anything serious with Mack, and I mean, I was actually at the wedding for Liv because she and I have become friends, but still, I felt everyone looking at me as if I was about to break or something, and I know you only approached me to dance because of that—”

It was his turn to laugh. “You think I asked you to dance out of . . . pity?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged.

“I asked you to dance because you had the same reaction to Liv’s mother that I did when she almost fell out of her chair.”

Her lips quirked finally with a smile.

Thank God. He took advantage of her stillness to creep closer, lowering his voice as he approached. “And then I kept asking you to dance and pretty much never left your side after that because you might be the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”

Her cheeks flushed, and he had the most delicious flashback to that very color on her face when she arched her back and shuddered his name.

But that wasn’t the look she was giving him now. She shook her head and pressed her warm hand to the center of his chest, right above the spot where his heart was gearing up for a game of brink of death. “You don’t have to do that.”

He quickly covered her hand with his. “Do what?”

“Soothe my ego. I’m a big girl. I know what last night was.”

“You mean incredible and the start of something that could be amazing? I agree.”

Her blush deepened. “Look, I had fun too. But this would never work between us.”

“It worked pretty well last night.”

She started rapidly backing away from him. “But now it’s today. And you’re you and I’m me, and—”

“And we could be a pretty damn good we.”

She smiled softly. “That sounds like one of your songs.”

“Gretchen.” He held out his hand. She stared at it with unmistakable longing.

But then she snapped out of it and walked to the door. “Thank you,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “For everything.”

Colton crossed his arms. “You can say anything you want except that. Just don’t thank me.”

She paused once again before turning the handle. “Can I count on you to keep this between us?”

“Trust me, my lips are sealed.”

Then, without a single backward glance, she walked out the door.

For the first time in his life, Colton Wheeler was someone’s dirty little secret.





CHAPTER ONE


One year later

Colton Wheeler lived by very few hard and fast rules, but one of them was when someone asked you to keep a secret, you took it to your grave. So it was with no small gut punch of betrayal that he realized that these guys, of all people, would go back on their word to him. They were supposed to be his best friends.

Colton adjusted the strap of his duffel bag on his shoulder with an annoyed jerk. “You swore you wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Come on, man,” said Gavin Scott, a yoga mat tucked under his arm. He wore a sleeveless training shirt that showed off the line across his bicep that separated pasty-white shoulder from perpetual farmer’s tan. “It’s not like we told total strangers.”

“It doesn’t matter who they are. I promised her I would keep this quiet.”

“We didn’t mean to put you in a bad position,” said Del Hicks, jumping in. “Honestly.”

“And we didn’t even think you’d be here anyway,” Gavin added, officially pouting.

“Why wouldn’t I be here?”

“Because of the meeting. Isn’t that today?”

Ah, yes. The Meeting. It had taken on such infamous significance that it was now preceded only by the followed by a capital M. The Meeting in which he would find out if he still had a career left. But his friends didn’t know that. They only knew he was meeting with the music label to discuss his next album after a two-year recording hiatus.

And now he was the one who felt guilty, an emotion he’d become all too familiar with in the past year. How could he expect these guys to live up to some standard of friendship when he was betraying them every single day with the things he’d been keeping from them?