Page 1 of The Best Man

Chapter One

I’ve always looked forward to getting married.

Not for the pretty dress or the party, but because to me, getting married meant becoming part of a family.

I never had that.

My mom went through a string of boyfriends, but none that ever meant anything to me. My father left when I was too little to remember much about him. There’s a sliver of a memory of him sitting on the couch with me watching a cartoon while Mom brought me a snack, but that’s about it.

Mom had to fill in the gaps. She says he was an asshole, hard to please, didn’t care about anything but his own selfish needs. Maybe it was her bitterness talking, but I figured at least some of it must be true. He left his child to go live a string-free life, after all.

She stuck around to raise me, I guess, but she’s not much better. She is missing myweddingto go to a concert a few states away with her newest boyfriend.

So, when I met Joey, I thought all my dreams were coming true.

He’s a handsome man with a good job in his family business. His mom and dad are still together, and he’s the youngest of five strapping boys. I desperately want a family, so while I’ve never admitted it to anyone, good genes are something else I look for in a man.

And Joey hasexcellentgenes.

When I met him, I couldn’t believe how handsome he was, and more than that, I couldn’t believe howhumblehe was. Surely a man like that must get fawned over all the time, but he didn’tbehavelike super-hot men usually do. It impressed me that he managed not to have a big head.

Then he took me home on the Fourth of July to meet his family for a cookout.

I met his brothers and his father.

I’m not sure how, but Joey is the least handsome of them. It seems like each older brother gets more and more handsome until you make it to the original masterpiece—their father.

I’ve never hung out with the most attractive people in the room before, and I was anxious about his family liking me on top of it. I felt like he really should have warned me that his brothers had godlike physiques and roguish smiles that could melt every pair of panties in Victoria’s Secret. That way, I could have at least been prepared.

I was so shy I could scarcely speak the whole time we were there.

My shyness may have been misinterpreted as standoffishness, though, because I didn’t seem to make a great first impression.

I know his mom didn’t care much for me, but I’m not sure she would have liked anyone. She’s easily agitated and clearly favors the daughter-in-law she got through Jared’s marriage. Since she enjoyed the existing family dynamic, she did not seem enthusiastic about expanding and letting someone else in. I was nothing but nice to her when we did speak, but she was grumpy and treated me like an annoyance she’d rather be rid of. No matter how hard I tried, I could tell she wasn’t impressed.

Her husband Marcus Sr. was nice, though.

The eldest son, also Marcus, picked on me a lot.

Jared is married. He’s not nice, but his wife is.

Then there was Matt. He was nice to me, but he has the bluest eyes, and I had a hard time holding his gaze for too long.

James was too busy flirting with his brother’s wife and the neighbor’s pretty wife to pay me any mind.

I’d been excited to meet them, but I guess I didn’t make the best impression.

Joey’s family has money, and his eldest brother made a point to mention the gifts Joey had bought me—the new shoes, new dress, new designer handbag to wear to the party to meet his family. I didn’t ask for any of those things, but Joey wanted me to look a certain way, so I went along with it.

Unfortunately, his mother started calling me an opportunistic little golddigger after that.

His brother Marcus has been the worst of them. He seemed to set the mood for whether the rest of them would accept me, and he decided pretty firmly against it.

He makes jabs he pretends are good-natured every time he sees me—which unfortunately is more than any of the others since he’s the head of the company Joey works at behind their father. The first family gathering after the Fourth of July, when Joey brought me to Thanksgiving, Marcus upset me so much I snuck upstairs to cry by myself.

I’m not used to people hating me so much for no apparent reason.

I’m used to it now, but not happy about it.

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