May the Best Man Win (8 page)

Jase threw the car into Park and leaned both arms over the wheel as he stared out the windshield in disbelief.

It was Emily, all right. Sprinting across the icy church parking lot with her strapless gown hiked up around her knees, a pair of heels hugged close to her chest and—what the hell?—bare freaking feet.

A quick glance at his car's temp display showed it was a whopping thirteen degrees outside—then add, or subtract, from that the windchill factor. She was beyond asinine.

And she was still only halfway across the sprawling lot to the church.

With a curse, he slapped at the temp control, cranking the heat, and then flung open the driver's door, exchanging one curse for a fresher, more potent variety. The wind sliced at him as he started to jog across the lane of cars, undoing the buttons on his coat as he went.

* * *

Each step was like a thousand tiny needles stabbing into the soles of her feet, between her toes, and around her ankles.

She'd been so careful, navigating the roads with skill and attention—determined to get to the church and deliver Romeo's ring. All the way from the Willsons' she'd been fine, right up until she'd crept into the far entrance to the church lot and her car had started its horizontal slide across the ice and landed her in a ditch. There was no way her little Fiat was going to pull out without the assistance of a tow. A tow Emily couldn't call for, thanks to the jeweler's son knocking her phone from her hand when he slipped on the ice in front of the Willsons' house. Fortunately, he'd been fine, but her phone…not so much.

So no phone meant she'd been stuck several hundred yards from where she needed to be, no help in sight, in fresh snow up to her ankles and only one solution she could see working. Run for it.

Her only consolation in this disaster was the hope that if she was picking up every bit of bad luck within a six-thousand-mile radius, there wouldn't be any left for the bride and groom, and their special day would go off without a hitch. That and at least there were no witnesses to her total idiocy. Specifically, no Jase Foster. Who would have called her names and laughed in her face, letting her abject misery warm that vacant chamber in his chest.

The ground was as slick as she'd ever encountered it, and within a few feet of the car, not only was each step terrifying and riddled with face-planting possibilities, but it was clear she'd never be able to navigate it in her heels.

This just got worse and worse. She stripped off her shoes and started again. The ceremony was set to begin, and with so many people missing from this important day, she didn't want to be another. She'd make it. She pushed forward with that resolve past the next lane of parked cars, right onto the raised shard of ice that sent her tumbling forward into an awkward split and skid, facing a wipeout of epic proportions. She was going down, and it was going to hurt bad.

At the last second, her fall was arrested when strong arms and a black…blanket—no overcoat…engulfed her. And then her descent wasn't just arrested; her trajectory was completely reversed. Instead of going down, Emily was being pulled back. Her breath left her in a rush as she slammed into a solid wall of muscled chest. She wanted to put a hand out to brace against it, but the coat she'd been engulfed in wrapped her arms close to her body and nearly covered her face completely, leaving only a sliver of tuxedo shirt visible. It was a groomsman. Thank God.

And his coat was so very warm around her. Nothing had ever felt as good as this. She wanted to pull her legs in, because the burn of her feet was bad enough that she was starting to wonder if her toes were going to break off before she got inside.

Wiggling her arm between them, she tried to work her fingers past the lapel to get a better view of her savior. It had to be Max. The guy was built like a linebacker and so solicitous to all the girls. A real protector. She wanted to thank him, but as she fiddled with the fabric, his grip tightened and a voice that most definitely didn't belong to Officer Friendly filtered in through the wool.

“Don't move.”

Not exactly a gentle suggestion.

Jase
.

Instinctively her muscles went still. Frozen in a way that had nothing to do with the bitter elements she'd stupidly found herself caught in.

Jase was carrying her princess-style across the lot. Her number one least-favorite person in the world—the guy who made her angrier than she'd ever been in her life without doing anything more than locking that damned accusing stare on her—was now doing her a solid, the likes of which she'd never known.

God.

She was going to have to be nice to him after this.

And not fake nice. Real. Honest-to-goodness, would-you-like-something-while-I'm-up, how's-your-dad, thank-you nice.

Suspended in Jase's arms, she shivered as he adjusted his hold, swinging her around so his arm banded beneath her rear as he held her upright facing back over his shoulder, allowing the coat to slip open revealing…the wrong view.

Her breath sucked in as she swiveled around, confirming that Jase hadn't been carrying her toward the church at all.

“Hang on to my shoulder, Emily.”

“W-w-what are y-y-you d-d-doing?” she stuttered as her body dropped a few inches, sliding down Jase's front before he secured his grip. “The ch-church. The cerem-m-mony. We have t-to—”

Emily's heart dropped as she was swung forward and pushed into the front seat of an SUV. The door slammed quickly beside her, and she looked out the window to where Jase was already rounding the car, his eyes locked on hers through the glass, a dark scowl etched across his features as he pointed a single finger at her and mouthed the command “Stay.”

Then he was jerking his door open and sliding in fast, bringing another gust of biting cold into the car that was amazingly, incredibly warm.

“I wrapped the damn coat around you for a reason, Emily. Turn around in the seat and give me your feet.”

Okay, maybe the cold and the adrenaline and the worry and the hangover were getting to her. Because she had no idea what Jase wanted with her feet. Which had become a general pain that seemed to exist outside of anything as specific as shape. She tried to move her toes, but they were stiff and the shaking was making it hard to do anything.

“A-a-are you g-going to d-d-drive up t-to th-the f-f-front d-doors?”

The eyes that met hers were hostile and as dark as the curse he gritted out before turning to lean into the backseat for what ended up being a blanket.

It seemed she didn't need to wonder whether he'd be painfully polite with her after all.

“Give me your legs.”

Normally, she'd have come back at him with an offer to give him something else altogether, but right now, she was shaking so hard she couldn't bring herself to make the effort. Jase wasn't worth it. Even if he had rescued her from the arctic church parking lot, and even more than that, from falling on her face in the middle of it.

“Can you even move them?”

This time, his voice wasn't quite so harsh, and she realized there was an undercurrent of concern she never would have associated with this man—at least not in the context of her well-being.

Looking down at her legs, she started to pull at them, but it seemed as though her entire body had lost mobility. She just needed another minute…

A minute Jase apparently wasn't going to wait for. Shoving the blanket into her hands, he reached down and gripped both her knees, pulling them up and, in a series of swift moves, laying them across the console so they rested in his lap.

“J-Jase! Wh-what are you d-d-doing?”

He looked down at her feet, which had taken on a mottled, angry appearance, and growled, “What the hell were
you
doing?”

Opening her mouth to speak, she snapped it closed again when those big hands started rubbing over her abused flesh.

“Barefoot. No jacket. Running across the—” His eyes went to the roof of the car, and Emily had the distinct impression that Jase was within a hellfire's throw of blaspheming the sacred parking lot. “What? Didn't want to ruin your shoes? Couldn't be bothered with the hassle of a jacket? Is your vanity skyrocketing so high that the oxygen's too thin to feed your brain?”

Her chattering teeth ground together as heat born of too many years listening to Jase Foster sell her short started to burn inside her. Her arm snapped out, one finger pointing in accusation. “I appreciate the r-rescue, but I-I've about had it w-with the rest of your b-bull. I d-don't need you l-looking to tear me d-down every opportunity you can f-find. Not that you d-deserve it, but here's the d-deal.”

Through chattering teeth, she detailed the chain of events leading up to her rescue, starting with the missing ring, the limo driver taking off before she could get her things out of the back, her car, and the fact that no one seemed to even notice she'd gone into a ditch. With each clarification she warmed a little more, her teeth chattering a little less. “With all the ice under the s-snow, I thought I'd probably kill myself t-trying to cross the l-lot in those heels and figured my only option was to r-run. It wasn't about vanity, you arrogant, accusing j-jackass. It was about necessity. So screw off!”

She finished on a rush of breath and then snapped her hand back under the blanket, quickly looking across the lot at the church. This guy didn't deserve an explanation. She wasn't supposed to care enough about what he thought to feel the need to give him one. But after everything else that had gone wrong today…

Whatever.

The heater blowing was the only sound. Then, “Are you okay?”

“I'm frustrated, Jase. Not about to b-break down and s-sob all over you or anything. Can you just drive up to the entrance and drop me? I c-can get in on my own from there.”

“Physically okay is what I'm asking. Your car is in a ditch. Did you bump your head or strain your neck?”

“Oh. Um, no. I was taking the turn into the lot pretty carefully, so when the wheels lost traction and started to slide, it was kind of a slow-motion event.” At his skeptical look, she let out a laugh. “I can't believe you care, but really, it's the truth. My heart was going faster than the car, I think.”

He gave a stiff nod. “That's good, then.”

Okay, so they were back to being civil. “Do you think you can drop me at the front?” she asked again.

Jase looked out the windshield. “I'll carry you in, but yeah, I'll get by the door first and then run back out. Can you wiggle your toes?”

Her feet were in his lap, her legs stretched across the console between them. Her heels rested between his thighs, and he was rubbing the life back into her abused soles.

She wiggled her toes, and while they were a little stiff… “I don't see an amputation in my future.”

Jase laughed, then seemed to catch himself and look out his driver-side window. But she could see through the reflection that he was still looking at her.

His hands moved over her feet, rubbing and squeezing the blood through them. Circling with his thumbs at the center of her arch. Stroking the muscle that ran along the bottom. It felt good. Really good. Like maybe even a little too good because that slow, steady, warming touch was starting to relax her in a way she wasn't accustomed to when it came to Jase.

He palmed her heel and rotated her ankle, his fingers extending just the slightest bit up her calf. Enough that for one second Emily thought about how it would feel to have those big hands coasting up past her knee.

She gave her head a solid shake and tried to pull her foot back. But Jase just told her to relax—because he wasn't taking her anywhere until he'd gotten her warmed up—and then moved back to her other foot. His long fingers spread over her chilled flesh. Pressing exactly the right spot. Rubbing so it took everything she had not to moan.

The silence was starting to feel strained, but maybe that was just because for a second there she'd thought about Jase in a way she'd been working very hard not to. And that wasn't cool. They had mutual loathing down to an art form. They were good with it.

Anything else would just be…weird.

He rotated her ankle and then knuckled up the sole of her foot—and this time, the moan of pleasure slipped past her lips before she was able to yank it back.

“Wow, Em. You need a minute alone?”

Heat rushed into her cheeks, but she wasn't going to let Jase have the last word or the upper hand. Even if he had just pulled off what could only be described as a rescue of Prince Charming proportions.

“Yes, please. And if you've got a s-snapshot of Max to leave with me, that'd be swell.”

“You know, Em, the key to a successful burn is keeping a straight face. Or short of that, stifling the snort laugh.”

She gaped, her eyes locking with his, and damn it, more laughter bubbled up in her chest. “I did not snort.”

His brows raised in smug satisfaction. “Okay.”

She leaned forward, amusement and indignation mingling in her next words. “I didn't.”

She thought he was ready to deliver the next slam. She might even have been anticipating it, just a little. But instead of him waiting the mandatory beat and letting her have it, his brows drew forward, his gaze darkening.

She followed his stare to where his hands were cradling her leg. The long, thick fingers on one of his hands were splayed wide to cradle her calf, the other hand resting over her knee where her dress had piled up.

She hadn't noticed it before. Hadn't even been aware of where his hands had ended up when she shifted forward in her seat. But now, now she could feel his fingers like a brand. Feel that tingle of awareness, that low charge working its way outward. Riding the line of her leg, the bend of her knee, the length of her thigh. She could feel the heat of his palms, the press of each finger where it lay against her skin. God, she could feel her blood heating beneath them.