That was the problem with Lilly. She pushed him, tempted him, challenged him, until he was ready to break. She had from the first time Hayden brought her into the bar. She’d given him that sultry smile around the mouth of her beer bottle, called him Soldier Boy, and then spent the next two hours shaking her perfectly sculpted ass on the dance floor until he was sure his hard-on was going to rip through his jeans. His intense reaction to her only served to make him angry. To feel out of control. He’d never had a problem refusing the women who teased and flirted with him across the bar. He’d never had a problem, because none of them had ever so much as stirred his interest. But not Lilly. She had managed to awaken something inside him that he didn’t have the right to feel. Men were in the ground because of him, and all she had to do was run her smart mouth and flaunt her body, and he was ready to drag her into the back room and slake a lust that hadn’t been quenched in years.
Finally he had. He’d brought her to his apartment and proceeded to have the most mind-blowing sex he’d ever experienced. Afterward, he’d known he fucked up. He’d known because instead of wanting to throttle her as he normally did, he’d wanted to hold her. He’d actually wanted her to stay. And that spelled nothing but trouble.
So, he’d done what he thought was the decent thing. He’d left her cab money on the dresser and gotten the hell out of Dodge before she could wake up.
Unfortunately, she took the cash to mean something else altogether.
“Look, are you sure she even wants to do this?” he asked. “I really can’t see Lilly agreeing to go anywhere with me. The last time I saw her she all but threatened to castrate me if I came within twenty feet of her again.”
“I think you’re being a little dramatic,” Jace drawled.
“Dramatic?” Nate barked out a laugh. “Her exact words were ‘Come near me again and I’ll put your nuts in a wood chipper.’ It’s going to be kind of hard to keep that kind of distance if she’s sitting in the cab of my truck.”
“Only because you’ve been a complete dick to her since whatever happened between you two last year. If you could get over your shit and be civil, be the guy the rest of us know and love, then it wouldn’t be an issue. She used to actually like you.”
“She doesn’t need to like me.” Which was exactly why he’d had to be a cold bastard to her every time they’d run into each other since that night. Pushing her away was the only way she’d escape him unscathed.
That night had been a cold splash of reality to the heat she’d sparked within him. He couldn’t give her what she wanted. Deep down, even then, he’d known his stay stateside would only be temporary. It was just a matter of time before the chaos in his head won out. Whatever part of him that might once have allowed him to love and commit to a woman…that fragile part of him had been seared away with the layers of his skin when that helicopter had crashed. Walking away from her had been his best—his only—move. She may have been hurt, but it was better than letting her be destroyed later.
“You’re my best man,” Jace said. “Which means making my bride happy is your responsibility as much as it is mine. This falls into your line of duty.”
Nate snorted. “That’s funny. I thought all I had to do was show up and look better than you in a tux. ”
“Joke all you want, but when I’m the one kissing the pretty girl in white, you might want to reevaluate who the more alluring brother is.”
“Right. It only took you, what, fifteen years to close that deal?” He smiled, picturing the irritated look scrunching up his little brother’s face. Despite all the ink on his skin and the cash in his bank account, Jace would always be a kid to Nate. The same kid he’d taught to throw a curveball. The same kid he used to find asleep on his bedroom floor in the middle of the night for months after their father died.
The same kid he’d left alone when he’d needed him the most…
Nate brushed off the memory, laden with guilt, when he heard Hayden’s voice in the background. Half Pint didn’t get upset too often, but by her tone, she sounded primed and pissed now. Something covered the phone, muffling their voices, and Nate rolled his eyes. He would have been annoyed by his brother’s pussy-whipped behavior if it hadn’t been like this ever since they were in middle school. Jace had been trailing after Hayden since they were kids. It wasn’t until last year that his brother had pulled his head out of his ass and realized he was in love with the girl he’d called his best friend since before puberty.
“What did you do to piss Hayden off this time?” Nate grabbed his well-worn duffel with the USMC logo and tossed it on the bed. “Leave the toilet seat up? Forget to use a coaster? Leave the throw pillows on the wrong side of the couch?”
Jace uncovered the phone and sighed. “She’s not pissed at me. She’s pissed at you.”
Nate halted his packing and raised a brow. “What the hell for?”
“Oh, nothing,” Jace said. “You were just supposed to pick up Lilly. Two hours ago.”
Chapter Three
When Lilly spotted Nate’s truck screeching into the parking lot, two hours late, a fresh wave of anger shattered her momentary relief. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was wearing her favorite pair of knockoff Louboutins she’d scored off eBay, she would have walked her ass home, torrential downpour or not. Some things in life you just didn’t risk, and Louboutins, imitation or not, topped that list.
She should have swallowed her pride and called Paige back to pick her up, but the truth was, she was humiliated. Sitting in a public café waiting on some arrogant, unreliable prick to save the day was something her mother would have done. Following in her mother’s footsteps went against everything Lilly had worked so hard to become. Everything she’d spent the past eleven years trying to escape. If she hadn’t exhausted every other option, no way would she have lowered herself to Nate’s level. But as much as she hated to admit it, Hayden was right. This wasn’t only the most logical option, it was her only option if she wanted to get to the wedding.
The door dinged and, clenching her jaw, Lilly looked up to find Nate brushing rain off his black leather jacket. Six foot three of Marine-made muscle filled the entry door, looking like the shiny new toy most mothers warned their daughters not to touch. And Lilly wasn’t the only one to notice. She ground her teeth in annoyance as half the women in the café stopped talking to stare. The only one who didn’t seem to notice was Nate.
The last time she’d seen him, his hair had been buzzed military-style, so close she could’ve traced the exact path of the long white scar on his scalp. But now his hair had grown just long enough to mask the evidence of the hell he’d survived overseas. His electric-blue eyes looked up, doing a quick scan over the room, only taking two seconds to find her.
At least the bastard had the decency to look guilty. Not that it helped the violent urge she had to pick up the nearest blunt object and pound him with it. He started across the crowded space, and Lilly’s grip nearly crushed the to-go cup that held her Frappuccino. She couldn’t help but wonder if he was taking his sweet time on purpose, or if his snail-like pace was just a product of her imagination and the five cups of coffee she’d consumed waiting on him.
At last he ambled up and braced his hands on the back of the chair across from her. “Hey. Need a ride, Princess?”
She tensed at the mention of the nickname he’d saddled her with the day they met. He’d taken one look at her polished exterior and assumed she was just some spoiled brat who’d never experienced a hard day’s work for fear of breaking a nail. If only he knew how far he was from the truth. She’d done everything from work as a professional pooper scooper in an animal shelter to sweeping floors in an auto body shop just to survive after her mother had died. Lilly was as far from a princess as you could get. Unless you counted Cinderella and her floor-scrubbing days…
“Well, look who finally decided to show up.” Lilly stood, smoothing her dress over her thighs. “Sergeant Unreliable is alive and kicking, after all. And here I was hoping you’d fallen down a well or something.”
“You know, Lil, when I think about fifteen hours of you busting my balls,” Nate said, “I gotta say, the well sounds tempting.”
Lilly took a deep breath and plastered on a fake smile. “You can rest easy, Nate. I have absolutely no interest in your balls. Just your truck.”
Ignoring the dangerous glint in his eyes, she turned and bent over at the waist to grab her suitcase, knowing exactly what he would see. She felt immensely gratified when she heard the choked sound behind her. Her lips twitched with a satisfied smile as she slowly stood, deliberately giving him a good look at the body he’d never have the pleasure of touching again. When she turned around, luggage in hand, his eyes blazed, still lingering on the hem of her dress.
“Enjoying the view?” She raised a brow.
He lifted his gaze unapologetically, and anger lined the hard edge of his clenched jaw. “The view is a little hard to miss in that dress, Princess. I wasn’t aware Kleenex had come out with a women’s fashion line.”
Lilly inhaled, silently counted to ten, and gave him a tight-lipped smile. “As much as I’ve missed your uncanny talent to insult me, I’d really like to get on the road, if it’s all the same to you. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can part ways and never see each other again.”
“For once we can actually agree on something,” he muttered.
She turned her back on him before she did something extreme. Like pour her Frappuccino over his head. He followed, reaching out to grab the handle of her suitcase. She tightened her grip, refusing to let go.
“Come on, Lil.” He held the door open for her as she struggled through to the parking lot, hands full. “I’m not a total dick. Let me take your bag.”
“First of all, yes, you are.” She stopped and turned to face him. “And second, the only way you’re getting my bag is if I shove it up—”
His hard chest collided with hers and her coffee cup exploded between them. She screamed and jumped back, allowing him to take the brunt of the Frappuccino eruption.
He looked up, eyes wide, and held his dripping hands out to his sides. “What the hell?”
“Seriously?” She shook her fingers, splattering him with more of the sticky-sweet excuse for coffee, and scowled at him. “Weren’t you in the army? Didn’t they teach you grunts to look forward when walking?”
Tension stiffened his big frame and a muscle in his jaw ticked. “Marines.”
“Yeah, well the Marines must have skipped the watching-where-you-walk chapter along with the lesson on punctuality. Or maybe you just bailed that day. You seem to be good at that.”
Anger flashed in his eyes like a storm warning. He took a slow step forward, and without thinking, she took a step back on the asphalt and into the rain, cringing when her heels landed in a puddle. Damn it. Less than ten minutes in his presence and already he had her tripping all over herself. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be teaching him a lesson. She needed to take control of this situation, and fast.
A few more steps and her back hit the side of a truck. His, thankfully. He stopped in front of her and stripped off his coffee-soaked shirt, tossing it in the bed of the truck without taking his eyes off her. She froze, the sight of his chiseled bare chest enough to make her brain short-circuit. What in God’s name was he doing, stripping in a parking lot? If Paige could see this, her panties would be melting all the way over on Fifth Avenue.
“W-what are you doing?” Who the hell did he think he was? Matthew McConaughey?
Nate braced his hands on the truck roof above her and leaned in, his jaw tight, his gaze intense. “Setting some ground rules.”