Page 25 of Accidental Mile High Daddy
But Matt didn’t leave my side. Not for a second, not since the moment he’d appeared in front of me and kissed me like he had every right to — which, I supposed, right now, he did.
I tried not to think about how I also had the right to kiss him in return.
He moved with me through the crowd like we’d been doing this for years, with his hand low on my back and his voice warm and raspy in my ear when someone introduced themselves. His touch was casual but constant, guiding, grounding.Remindingeveryone who looked at us exactly who I was with, who I supposedly belonged to.
And he looked like the devil’s gift to women everywhere while he did it.
It was just a suit, just a stupid, tailored suit, but the way it fit him set my veins on fire. Black, soft, and perfect, with a crisp white shirt and a blood red tie. I wondered, briefly, how he’d known what I’d wear — but he must have known what I’d had altered at Regale. Still, though, I could have picked the black dress or the emerald one, and it made my stomach knot when I considered the idea that he knew me well enough to know I’d ramp up my outfits throughout the weekend.
The champagne he’d placed in my hand with a muttered,“Don’t drop this one,”was fantastic, and I took a second glass when the server offered it from a tray a couple of minutes later. I let it loosen the coil in my chest just enough to feel like I could breathe, let it settle me like a balm. I still hadn’t looked in Ryan’s direction. I couldn’t. I knew what direction he was in from the way Matt kept occasionally glancing, and I avoided it like the plague.
“What are they doing?” I asked him as we stood near the open door that looked out at the dark water of the Caribbean, sipping my drink as a smirk crossed his lips.
“She’s avoiding looking at you,” Matt chuckled quietly. “Like you are with her. And Ryan keeps looking like he’s about to strangle one of us.”
“Are they standing with each other?” I didn’t break eye contact with him.
“No. She’s with a few girls over by the fire pit behind you and to your left. They’re all in oranges, think they’re bridesmaids,” he explained, absentmindedly reaching up to play with one of the waves hanging around my cheeks. “She’s grinning. I’m pretty sure she’s actively trying to pretend this isn’t happening.”
I rolled my eyes. It was just like her to ignore me entirely, to keep going as if she hadn’t systematically dismantled my life months ago—or rather, over a year ago when they first started sleeping together—and then erased me from hers. “And Ryan?”
Matt snorted. “Ryan is currently standing alone at the bar for the first time all evening, staring at your back like he’s both confused and mortified all at once. Probably thought you were here to crash the wedding until I walked up to you.”
“Did you warn him?”
He shrugged. “Told him my girlfriend was arriving separately when I got here this morning. Didn’t explain beyond that.”
A laugh bubbled up my throat as I thought about Ryan standing there, utterly perplexed at his brother having some kind of romantic life—because he absolutely would have been, knowing Ryan—and the crash it must have been to see that person beme. I covered my mouth, trying to suppress it, but Matt’s hand wrapped around my wrist and pulled it down.
“You’re cute when you laugh,” he said, but his voice wasn’t low this time.Part of the act.
My cheeks heated, but I let them, the alcohol making it easier to handle him. “Careful,” I said quietly, tilting my head a little as I looked up at him. “You keep calling me cute and people might start thinking you actually like me.”
Matt’s answering smile was lazy, far too confident, but his voice was lower when he spoke. “Well, we are trying to sell it, remember?”
I blinked up at him, my brain exhausted and fried from work and my body lax from a couple of glasses of champagne, and let my eyes drop to his lips for a split second, to the stubble around them that he wore with pride and didn’t bother to shave down all the way. “Then kiss me,” I said, the words falling out before I’d thought them through.
His smile turneddevious. “Are you asking me because you want me to or because you want him to see it happen again?”
I swallowed. “The latter,” I said. “Obviously.”
Matt held my gaze for a second that felt likehoursbefore he leaned down, his free hand wrapping fully around my waist, his mouth just an inch from mine. I could smell the whiskey on his breath, the familiar scent of his cologne wrapping around me like a blanket, and just before I could force him to claim the final inch, he shifted.
His lips pressed against my cheek.
Gentle.
Teasing.
“Liar.”
I opened my mouth to respond, to tell him he was an asshole and absolutely wrong, but a voice that sent prickles of ice down my spine cut in before I even had the chance.
“Sienna.”
Matt’s hand tightened around the back side of my ribs. Slowly, like he was retreating from a predator, he lifted his head from where it nudged up against mine.
And Ryan took up the entirety of my peripheral vision.
