May the Best Man Win (17 page)

“No. Not for you, man.” But in truth, that's about where Jase's head had been the night before. Seeing the way Emily had reacted to his hand on her arm, it had taken everything he had not to hop in his car, punch the gas, and drive until he had Eddie up against a wall and the answers he needed, obtained in whatever manner worked. But somehow he'd managed.

And then he'd followed the pull in his chest back into the bar, where he found Emily at the table with their friends, laughing like she didn't have a care in the world. Like she hadn't just been white as a sheet, flinching from his touch as she blinked back her tears.

She hadn't gone to hide in some corner.

She hadn't sought out comfort from a friend.

She'd just put on a face no one would ever suspect wasn't as genuinely happy, confident, and unencumbered as it looked, and she'd gone back to her night. And that was the worst of it. How good she was at covering up. How practiced.

Just the thought of her honing that particular skill made him sick. But he hadn't turned away.

He'd waited until Emily left with Sally and Romeo, watching her from across the bar until then, keeping his distance because the way her eyes skimmed over him without stopping for even a beat suggested that was what she wanted. And yet, she hadn't let go of his jacket once. He'd watched her walk out of the bar with it clutched in her hands.

And then he'd gone home and thrown up.

Because he could have stopped it. Whatever Eddie did to her, if he'd just opened his eyes for one damn minute, he could have ended it. He could have stopped it before it began.

He'd never forgive himself.

“I don't know what he did
exactly
. I don't know how bad it was, except to say it was bad enough that Emily's still got the emotional scars. She hides them really well, but last night”—his stomach wrenched again—“I saw.”

“She wouldn't talk to you?” Brody asked, shrugging out of his North Face jacket and then tossing it across to the chair in the corner.

“I tried, but she wasn't having any part of it.” Shoving his fingers back through his hair, Jase laced them behind his head. “Not that I blame her. She tried to talk to me a hundred times when all this shit was going on. When it mattered and I might have been able to do something about it. But I shut her down at every turn, and now it's ten years too late and—
the look on her face
, man.”

“So, yeah,” Brody planted his hands on the counter, leaning into the space above it. “You fucked up, big.”

That was the thing about Brody. The guy could always be counted on to tell you what you needed to hear. The truth.

“Here's the way I see it, Jase,” he said. Digging into the cabinets beneath the island, he pulled out a heavy sauté pan, then eyed it with blatant disapproval, but Jase was long past trying to keep his buddy satisfied in the kitchen. Besides, he knew Brody wasn't done.

“It sounds like Emily got a raw deal, and to some extent, you played a part in it. What's done is done, and while there's no going back to change the past, you can learn from it for the future, yeah?”

“Right.”

“So figure out how you let her down and make up for it.”

How he let her down? Easy. He wasn't her friend when he'd let her believe he would be.

Brody thumbed the blade of Jase's kitchen knife and scowled at him. “I sharpened this the last time I was here. What, have you been cutting through tin cans or something?”

He might have used it to break into the plastic clamshell his new running earbuds had come in.

Jase took Brody's coat to the front hall closet and hung it up, standing there a minute after thinking about what Brody had said.

Friends.

With Emily.

Before last night, he hadn't wanted to be her friend. He'd wanted her back in his bed. He'd wanted her to be his standing date from Saturday night through early Sunday afternoon. He'd wanted to take her to the next wedding instead of running into her there, and as much fun as all that hot, burning
will they, won't they
anticipation could be, he'd wanted to
know
that after the band shut down, she'd be going home with him.

But now, more than all that, what he wanted,
the only thing that mattered
, was making sure he never had to see that look on her face again. If he had any hope of being able to look himself in the mirror, for once he
needed
to do the right thing by her.

Pulling the phone from his jeans pocket, he headed into his office and sat down at his desk. It didn't feel right, so he moved to the couch. Stretched out, but then stood again before coming to grips with the fact that it wasn't the seat making him squirm.

Screw it, he'd get comfortable with this later on.

“Hey, Em, I know it's late notice, but I've got some people coming over to watch the Blackhawks play at two thirty and thought, if you didn't have anything going on, you'd like to come. You know…as friends.”

Friends
.

If any other guy had thrown her a line like that, Emily would have laughed in his face. Okay, she wouldn't do that because even guys with bad lines had feelings. But she'd have been thinking “Ha!” in her head as she nodded politely and then found a considerate way to say no…in no uncertain terms.

But this wasn't any other guy. This was Jase. The man who'd told
her
in no uncertain terms that she wasn't friendship material. And now he was asking her for a chance to try again. To show her that he could be the friend he should have been in high school. To prove to her that she could trust him…with more than just her body.

Talk about the stuff of nightmares.

Intentionally making herself vulnerable to the guy whose shabby treatment of her in the past had devastated her? She'd have to be crazy.

He knew it too. Which was probably why, when she'd been too stunned to even answer, he'd filled the silence with the simple statement, “Just think about it. I hope you'll come.”

She wished she could say that simple curiosity had kept her from dismissing the offer out of hand. A need to discover for herself what friendship, Jase-style, encompassed. If there was a benefits package. How quickly she'd be eligible.

Only deep down she knew it was more than that.

Which made the fact that she was standing outside his door—with bags of pretzels, Bloody Mary mix, an arsenal of drink fixings, and vodka in one hand, and a Pyrex dish of her favorite fatty, cheese-based dip topped with sweet-pepper relish in the other—absolutely insane.

It wasn't too late. She could still leave. He'd never have to know she'd been there.

Yeah, that's what she'd do. She'd take the dip, go home, and eat the whole damn thing herself.

She hadn't taken a step when the door opened. But Jase hadn't seen her yet. He was turned into the apartment, telling someone behind him that Molly was on her way up. She knew enough about Jase and his group of besties to know that Molly was Molly Brandt, Max's sister. The only double X chromosome in their group and, from the few brief encounters they'd had, a crazy lot of fun. She could do this.

Just then, Jase turned and the instant his eyes landed on her, that easy smile he'd been wearing was wiped from his mouth, replaced by a look of clear shock.

Emily shifted uneasily, her eyes darting down the hall for Molly, or anyone, before she looked back at Jase and, with a resigned sigh, handed him his jacket. “I didn't… Um… Thanks for this last night.”

Then clearing her throat, she nodded down to what she was carrying. “So I didn't know how much to bring.”

Suddenly, that smile he'd been wearing was back, only brighter and more devastating in every way.

“You brought yourself. That's all I was hoping for,” he said, stepping back to let her into the apartment instead of pulling her into his arms. Which made sense under the framework of friendship, she figured. And her hands were full. Then he was taking her bags and leading her back to the kitchen she knew in the biblical sense—where Brody O'Donnel was wearing a half apron tied around his waist, his jaw-length russet hair tied back from his face while sautéing something that smelled unbelievable.

“Hey, Emily, good to see you,” he offered, then held up a wooden spoon. “Try this, and tell me if it needs more heat.”

Jase was setting her bags down on the impressively sturdy breakfast table she'd been introduced to before when he turned back. “You still like spicy, right, Em?”

She nodded and accepted the taste, moaning in a way that only Jase had ever made her moan before.

Maybe he recognized the sound, because suddenly he'd stopped what he was doing and turned to her with a raised brow.

Heat rushed into her cheeks and she lifted her hands, laughing. “It was
that
good.”

“Better have been out of this damn world to earn that sound from you,” Jase teased, standing just close enough to keep it between them. Then—in the name of friendship, she supposed—he stepped back again. “She brought Bloody Marys.”

“Can I make you one?” she asked.

“Hell, yes,” Brody boomed with a smile suggesting she'd offered him a first-class upgrade on his international flight rather than a drink, and she found herself laughing for no real reason, except that the guy just had a way of making her feel good.

She started on the drinks, happy to have something to do rather than stand around ogling Brody's cooking or, worse yet, Jase in his jeans, sexy bare feet, and Blackhawks jersey.

“Hey, boys,” a singsong voice called from where Jase had left the front door open. Then Molly was breezing in, a shock of fuchsia mixing with her flyaway white-blond hair. She stopped, her mouth dropping open. “Emily, so cool you're here. And with drinks too!”

Molly piled her load with the rest, unloading a couple of bags of chips, a tub of french onion dip, and three beers. “Max is running late, but he'll be here in about thirty, and Sean will be up anytime. He was stuck on his phone out front, doing that thing where he pinches his temples with one hand and looks like he's talking to his shoes. I'm guessing it's his dad.”

Molly ripped open a bag of her chips and stuffed one in her mouth, chewing with an indulgent smirk. “Tasty.”

“How you doing, Molly?” Jase asked, walking over to take her coat and grab a chip of his own.

“Better now that I'm here.”

Jase popped the chip into his mouth, coughed, and grabbed the bag, his face a mask of horror.

“Dill pickle? Jesus, if I were less of a man, I'd be spitting that shit in the sink.”

Molly laughed and called him a pussy. Which of course had Emily laughing too.

Then Molly was leaning against the wall beside the counter where Emily was assembling skewers of cheese squares, pickles, and a cooked shrimp for the Bloody Marys. “Those look awesome. I would've brought more beer, but that douche drank most of the twelve-pack I picked up yesterday.”

Brody's head shot up, and his pan clanked against the burner. “Are you fucking kidding me? What did I tell you about him?”

For a moment Emily struggled to remember Molly's relationship status, but thinking back, she couldn't recall ever seeing her at a wedding without one of these guys. And at parties or when they ended up at the same club, well, Molly had always seemed part of the crowd rather than
with
anyone in particular.

“Yeah, yeah. He needs to go,” she agreed, accepting a drink from Emily with a wide smile. “And he will, just as soon as I find someone else to cover his rent.”

Jase and Brody spoke up together: “I'll cover it.”

Which had Emily's brows pushing high.

The guys exchanged a look and shrugged.

“Aww, you two. Thanks, but pass. I'll handle my roommate myself.” And in case either of them had any ideas about pushing the topic, Molly gave them a look eerily reminiscent of one of her brother's and added, “End of discussion.”

Wow. Molly had always struck her as pretty cool, but now Emily was really looking forward to getting to know her better.

* * *

The rest of the guys eventually straggled in, all of them far too polished in the art of wingmanship to show even a hint of surprise at Jase having invited her to join what she'd heard was a fairly closed group. They were welcoming, and the conversation and laughter never stopped.

“Any updates on Janice?” Max asked, returning with what had to be his sixth plate of food from the kitchen.

Holy cow, the guy could eat, but he didn't have an ounce of fat on him.

Jase's head rocked back, and he covered his stomach with his hand like he was suddenly sick. Emily sat up a little straighter.

“Nothing. I talked to her this morning—”

Molly held her skewer up, now down to only the cheese cube. “Wait, you made your secretary, who's thirteen months pregnant, talk to you on a Sunday morning? There's a special place in hell for you, mister.”

But then Jase was waving her off, giving her an annoyed, but not really, look before going on. “Okay, first, she called
me
,” he said, defending himself.

At which point, Emily cocked her head. “Your pregnant secretary calls
you
on Sunday mornings?”

Jase's head snapped around to her and he put up a staying hand, warding off whatever unholy thought she'd had about this Janice.

“It's not like that. We've been working together for years, and I care about her a lot. She's thirty-five, this is her first baby, and she's just—”

“She's scary,” Molly cut in matter-of-factly. “I mean, I love her. But—”

“But she's already six days past her due date, and I'm concerned for her. Like any boss would be.”

Emily felt something deep in her chest warm at the thought of Jase worrying over a pregnant woman.

This time, Max piped up. “I don't know, man. I'm not sure just any boss would be quite as involved as you. How big is the binder these days?”

Jase flushed, and Emily sat straighter still. “Binder?”

Brody laughed and slapped Jase on the shoulder. “With all the safety reports Jase started printing out for her when he found out she was prego.”

Sean—who was apparently the grown-up of the group, the most reserved and polite by far—turned to her, a pitying look in his eyes. “He researched breast pumps.”

And that was when everyone in the room, Emily especially, fell apart.

* * *

The game was a nail-biter, going into overtime before the Hawks brought home the win. Emily had had a great time, never once feeling left out. The guys made it a point to include her, going to the trouble to give her the backstory whenever an insider joke came up—and there were dozens.

They grilled her about Jase in high school, and despite their past, she had more than enough cherished memories from those early days to share with the group. It was funny to think that these people had known Jase almost as long as she had. They'd all lived in the same dorm freshman year—except Molly, who was three years younger and hadn't gone to college except to visit her brother at his. Apparently, she'd spent enough time there the school had been ready to start charging her rent. And while technically, Emily had known Jase longer, these friends knew him in a way she didn't. They knew the guy he'd been
and
everything that had happened along the way to make him the man he'd become today.

They were lucky.

“Have fun?” Jase asked, coming up beside her as she loaded the remains of her cocktail bar back into her bag.

She smiled. “I did. Thank you for inviting me. You sure I can't help clean up?”

“Nah.” He met her eyes, but then looked down to the floor and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “But maybe we could all hang out like this again sometime? We play darts at Belfast on Wednesdays. And before you get all nervous that I'm trying to trick you into a date and planning to show up with flowers and a box of candy, Wednesday is friends' night. We used to call it guys' night, but then Molly got all pissy because she'd been tagging along since the start—and anyway, it's not gender exclusive. Wednesday is for friends. Been that way since college.”

“And no way would you break that code.”

His mouth slanted into the smile that left Emily thinking thoughts that weren't exclusively friendly.

“These guys would never let me live it down. Meet us there?”

As appealing as it was to believe that somehow she and Jase could become friends, especially after the afternoon she'd spent as part of that inner circle, the truth was it didn't seem possible.

This time, she was the one to look away. “Maybe.”

* * *

When Jase walked back into the apartment, cleanup was in full swing. Brody was scrubbing out the sauté pan, Molly was on drying duty, and Sean was bagging up the garbage. Meanwhile, Max was reorganizing Jase's refrigerator. Again.

“Thanks for waiting until she was gone,” Jase said, returning the platter Molly had just dried to the cabinet over the fridge. Yes, he was interested in more time with Emily, but he'd been worried about what would happen if she stayed. If somehow she'd ended up being the last one there. If they were alone, and the part of him still hungry for Emily in his bed got in the way of the part of him working to become her friend.

Based on what had happened at the club, Emily might not have minded. But once the sex was over, they'd be right back to her walking out of his place, thanking him for a good time—and PS, don't bother calling.

That wasn't what Jase wanted. Not anymore. And now that he'd admitted it to himself… Well, drastic measures were needed until all parts of him got in line.

“So Emily, huh?” Sean asked, propping a hip against the counter. “Molly said there was something going on with you two, but after Skolnic's wedding, I thought she was full of shit.”

And with the audience gone, Sean had let his hair down.

“I told you so,” Molly sang quietly, the small smile playing at her lips making her look a hell of a lot sweeter than she actually was.

Jase grabbed the stack of plates next. “I know. And sorry for springing her on you. It's just that she and I go back pretty far. And there's some stuff I need to make up to her before I can—”

“Do her,” Max suggested, that too-serious face of his split into a mischievous grin.

Molly shook her head, muttering something about Max being the funniest guy she knew, earning a snort from Sean.

“Bite it, Max. It's not like that… I mean, yeah, I'm into her.” What fool wouldn't be? “But with all the crap we've been through, my first priority is proving to her that she can trust me. Showing her that we can be friends.”

Max closed the fridge and crossed his arms, the grin gone.