Page 1 of Luck of the Draw

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ALGIERS POINT, NEW ORLEANS

Nothing will make you give up on love quicker or more permanently than watching the love of your life—the person you one hundred percent believed was your soulmate—marry someone else.

Especially when the guy she’s marrying is one of the best friends you have.

Especially when she herself is the other best friend you have.

And for Brennan Riley, that was today.

The day he officially gave up on love. Because this was the day he had to officially let her go.

It was the tail-end of the reception of the wedding of Brennan’s two best friends, and he stood across a large courtyard from them, basking in the warm, yellow glow of hundreds of Edison bulbs strung along the thick, sturdy branches of hundred-year-old oak trees. Brennan watched Connor Deneau and Liza Hardin—who was now Liza Hardin-Deneau—slowly sway together for their fourth or fifth dance of the night, and he reached for his hidden flask.

Dressed in the Marine Corps dress blues—a uniform he’d never wanted to wear again but did because it was what Liza wanted for her wedding—Brennan found that the front pocket wasn’t ideal to adequately conceal the small, sterling silver vessel that contained the fine Irish whiskey he needed to make it through the day. But nobody seemed to care that he had it anyway.

A large, muscular arm that was clad in the same stiff uniform draped over Brennan’s shoulders. “Whaddya say, Riley?” Luke Martinelli, another good friend of Brennan’s and also one of Connor’s groomsmen, cut into his thoughts. Luke was gripping a beer bottle by the neck and waved it at the guests who were spinning on the dance floor to an old New Orleans jazz ballad. “The party’s almost over, and you haven’t picked your chick for the night. Who’s it gonna be?”

Well, it damn sure wasn’t going to be her, the spectacular brunette wearing an antique, ivory lace wedding gown and tenderly kissing his best friend.

“Not going to be anybody, Corporal,” Brennan said casually before tipping the flask to his lips. “I’ve been telling Liza since the day Connor proposed that I’m not looking for company at this wedding.”

Luke scoffed and retracted his hand from Brennan’s shoulder just so he could slap his back. “Why not?” He waved the beer bottle again. “Look at her friggin’ friends, bruh. They’re hot. And you know she’s been telling them all about how amaa-aazing you are. And they’re all going back to Texas before the weekend’s over. This is like ideal circumstances for finding a one-night-stand.”

“Really not interested in getting involved with one of Liza’s friends,” Brennan mumbled before sipping from the flask again.

“Okay, fine,” Luke went on, and then pointed his bottle at Connor’s two younger sisters, who were at an opposite corner of the courtyard with their parents. “How ‘bout that redhead? We all know you’ve got a thing for redheads with long legs. You could go after her while I go after the blonde.”

Brennan did have a thing for redheads, especially the long-legged variety, but that particular redhead was not one of them. “How drunk are you?” He turned his head to squint incredulously at Luke. “Did you miss the part about how that is Whitney? And the blonde is Brina? And that they’re still Connor’s sisters, even though they’ve been living on the west coast for the past ten years? And that Connor would definitely eviscerate the both of us without a second thought if he saw either of us even looking at them?”

Luke laughed heartily and slapped Brennan’s back again. “Nah, I know it’s them. That’s why it would be funny. I’d love to fuck with him at his wedding like that.”

Brennan gave Luke a deadpan look before turning his gaze back to Liza and Connor. The song was wrapping up, and Connor pressed a long, deep kiss to Liza’s mouth before lowering his forehead to rest against hers. They looked at each other with so much love and devoted adoration that it felt like a vise clamped painfully around Brennan’s heart.

Love sure was complicated as fuck.

After all, this wasn’t your average unrequited love scenario.

After all, half the reason this marriage materialized at all was Brennan’s own meddling in the lives of his two friends. There were moments over the past year or so that the only reason Liza hadn’t gone back to Texas was because of Brennan convincing her to stay for Connor. Reassuring her that she and Connor were meant to be, and she just needed to give him some time to get over himself so they could kiss and make up. Connor and Liza had broken up a decade earlier, and when she randomly showed up as a new employee at the record label where Connor and Brennan worked, it was Brennan who made it his personal mission to get them back together.

But not before Brennan had seen Liza first, not knowing who she was, and he had become instantly ensnared by insta-love.

There was just something about her that he felt connected to; connected in a way that made him believe in reincarnation. The second he laid eyes on her, Brennan had an overpowering sense that something inside of him was intimately familiar with something inside of her; that they’d not just known each other in some previous life, but that they’d belonged to each other. He’d never believed in soulmates before, but in that moment, he suddenly did. And he believed his soulmate was this beautiful brunette, who’d happened to accidentally get into his cab that morning.

Only an hour after Liza had stepped into his cab, Brennan was informed by Connor that this stunning new woman in their midst was his ex—theex. The one for whom Connor had grieved and missed the entire ten years that Brennan had known him. That immediately rendered Liza off-limits to Brennan, and he purposefully redirected his new feelings of longing and insta-love to building a friendship with her while playing Crescent City Cupid for them both.

Unfortunately, while building a tight-as-hell platonic friendship with Liza, Brennan only managed to fall even deeper in love with her. The more time he spent with her, the more he loved her in a meaningful, concrete way that was based on the person she was rather than just the feeling of having a soul tie to her.

And that was the secret Brennan Riley would take to his grave.

The fact that he—New Orleans’ most eligible bachelor and most infamous ladies’ man—could get any woman he so much as looked at…except for the one he wanted. Because, in this lifetime at least, she belonged to his best friend.

And that was okay. Brennan loved his two best friends, knew the kind of heartache and tragedy they’d both endured to get here today, and couldn’t be happier about anything.

Except maybe it being him that Liza had been destined to be with in this lifetime.

But never mind that. Tonight was a celebration of love conquering all for the two people in the world Brennan loved more than anyone else.

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