Page 45 of When You Are Mine

His mind crawled back into the stuffy hotel room Brad had secured for the party. As he’d anticipated, he’d been met with a wall of exposed flesh and cheap lingerie. He got it. It was a bachelor party. He had politely declined every stripper who had approached him, ignoring Brad’s goading that he was wasting perfectly good, already-paid-for ass.

He’d had almost no time alone with Cam before he had to go, to get out of there before he confessed everything in a loose-lipped, vodka-laced miasma. He couldn’t do that to Cam…could he? Walsh had never seen Cam happier. It was a bone-deep happiness Walsh had taken for granted most of his life. His parents’ divorce had been a war zone, but they had fought to ensure he remained a relatively well-adjusted kid. He had always sensed, though, that Cam was braced for an emotional blow, poised for flight. Was Walsh the only one who saw the steel-plated undercarriage of wariness beneath Cam’s carefully cultivated nonchalance? Tonight, his eyes had been clear and his face, genuinely open. Cam looked like he’d finally found a home. And it was Kerris.

Without his permission, Walsh’s feet took him to the kitchen, through the back door, and down the path to the guesthouse.

How had he gotten here? Not just at the guesthouse, buthere? In love with his best friend’s fiancée, soon-to-be wife? Here, sitting on the sidelines as the woman he’d connected so deeply with married another man? Here, fighting against his every instinct to charge into the guesthouse and compel her with kisses, coerce her with chemistry, and do everything short of abduction to stop this wedding.

He compromised with his inner warrior and settled on the bench beneath the stairs leading up to the guesthouse door. There was a ground-level garage, and the main rooms were on the second floor. He and Cam had sat on this very bench a thousand times under these very stairs, plotting, planning, laughing, confiding, dreaming.

A sound caught his attention, and he noticed Jo walking toward him from the garden. Probably making some last-minute adjustments to the decorations out there.

“What exactly are you doing, Walsh Bennett?”

“Kinda late for you to still be up and out, isn’t it, Jo?”

“I asked you a question.” Hands on hips, feet apart, chin lifted high. Maybe Jo was the real warrior of the family. “What are you doing skulking around in the shadows under the guesthouse?”

“Just chilling,” he mumbled, too steeped in vodka to be clever.

Jo settled on the bench beside him, laying her head on his shoulder.

“She doesn’t belong to you, cuz.” Jo wove thorns around the compassion in her whisper. “Don’t do it.”

Walsh went completely still and quiet. So Jo was as astute as he’d always believed her to be.

“I think I love her.” He dropped his head back against the wall, perversely glad to say the words aloud to someone other than himself.

“No, you don’t.” Jo lifted her head and grabbed his chin, forcing him to meet those penetrating gray eyes. “What you feel is no different from what every other man feels when he sees Kerris. It’s called a hard-on, Walsh. Not love.”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Walsh wrenched his chin from her tight grip, his tone low and fierce.

“Oh, okay. Don’t tell me. You have a connection with her, right?”

“Yeah, I do actually.”

“And I guess she’s your soul mate or something, right?”

“You don’t have to make it sound weird.” He rubbed his eyes against the soporific effect of the alcohol.

“Have you ever seen Cam happier?” Jo leaned in to look directly into his bloodshot eyes, not waiting for him to answer. “Let’s think about this. You pretty much hit the life lottery, Walsh. Looks, wealth, a great family—minus your dad, of course, who’s practically certifiable. Most people would choose your life. Cam got snake eyes. Crappy childhood. Bitch of a mother. Abuse. Shuffled from home to home. No family.”

“You can’t make up for that, Jo.” Walsh leaned forward, elbows to his knees. “I’m guilty of it, too. So is Mom. We all are. We enable, protect, and coddle him to make up for something that won’t ever change—his past. And I don’t think, especially in this instance, that we’re doing him any favors.”

“Oh, you are so noble.” Sarcasm twisted Jo’s pretty face. “You want what’s best for Cam. It has nothing to do with the fact that you want to screw his fiancée, right?”

Walsh literally bit his tongue. What could he say? How could he convey that, as selfishly presumptuous as it sounded, he just knew that Kerris was his. That sounded like some circa caveman crap, but it was the truth that hummed through him every time he saw her. He’d tried, but couldn’t change it. And the galling thing? He felt like she knew it, too, but wouldn’t admit it. Why? What had so thoroughly convinced her that what she’d have with Cam was so much better?

A heavy, uneven tread on the steps over their heads startled them both, their eyes catching and holding. They heard a persistent banging on the guesthouse door before it squeaked open.

“Cam?” Meredith asked, her voice husky with sleep. “What are you doing here? Do you know what time it is?”

“I think around one o’clock.” Cam paused and then said the next words in a rush. “I need to see Kerris.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Not this time. She’s here, right?”

“I’m here.” Walsh’s gut tightened at the sound of Kerris’s voice. “Is everything okay, Cam? It’s late.”

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