His first thought was that she looked beautiful. The next, more urgent and overriding realization was that something was wrong. Huge, wounded eyes stared out from an alarmingly pale face.
“Hey, Sophie,” Colt said. “What brings you down—”
Sophie held the note card out in a shaking hand. “Your vows. Kady thought you might need them. You”—her attention shifted to Logan and her eyes narrowed—“can consider your duty done. I hope the time we spent together wasn’t too boring for you, but the good news is, you don’t need to waste another second on me.”
With that, she spun and stalked off.
Duty done? What the hell was she talking about? His mind replayed the conversation he’d been having with Colt before they noticed Sophie and his gut tightened. Oh shit…
“Sophie!” He sprinted after her, hooked her elbow, and pulled her around to face him.
She struggled out of his grasp and slapped at him. “Don’t even. Get your hands off me. Don’t ever touch me again.”
In his peripheral vision he saw Colt rush up and then heard his best friend’s shocked, “Sophie, what the fuck…?”
“That would be me,” she practically spat, and pulled away. “The duty fuck. Ask your friend.” She raked Logan with a look that suggested he’d crawled out of a drainpipe. “You”—she pointed at Logan—“Stay. Away. From. Me.”
He considered himself a strategic thinker, but right then and there, strategy went out the window, and all he could think to do was tell her everything, immediately. “Sophie, wait. You’ve got the wrong impression. Okay, yes, I originally sought you out as a favor to Colt, but it stopped being a favor somewhere between racing through the sprinklers and waking up in your bed. And it’s a hell of a lot more now. I know what you think you heard, but I need you to listen to me, and trust me, because—”
“You’re a liar.” With that, she rushed off in a whirl of blue silk.
“Fuck it, Sophie, stay put for one second and let me explain. I screwed up and I’m sorry. I should have told you everything days ago.” She didn’t so much as pause, so he started to chase after her, but his best friend’s fist in the middle of his chest stopped him.
“I’ll repeat, what the fuck is going on?” Colt pushed him into the wall and then closed in until he was right up in Logan’s face. “Talk fast because I’m about three seconds from inflicting serious bodily harm here.”
“I love her. Sophie. I’m in love with Sophie.” Saying the words aloud to Colt lifted a weight he hadn’t realized had become so heavy.
“Christ.” Colt stepped back, groaned, and rubbed his hand down his face. “She’s my sister, man.”
“I’m painfully aware. Look, kick my ass if you have to, but I didn’t plan this. God knows I never intended to drop the news on you hours before your wedding, but it’s true.”
“Well, obviously she doesn’t feel the same way because…” Logan could practically hear his friend replaying their interrupted conversation in his head. Colt scrubbed his face again and said, “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, shit,” he agreed and sank down the wall until he sat on the floor.
On the opposite wall Colt did the same. “Want me to talk to her? Explain that when I asked you to look after her, that wasn’t code for—Jesus—being your pimp. Or hers—”
“No.” He shook his head and then thumped it against the wall behind him in an effort to kick-start his brain. “What she overheard was bad. She pinned me down at Spago and asked me, point-blank, if you’d bribed me to babysit her. I told her no, because I didn’t want to get you in trouble—or maybe because I already sensed there was more to it, for me, than that—but I didn’t level with her. I thought I’d made the right decision, at the time, but it turned out to be a huge mistake, not being honest. The irony is, just last night I told my board of directors to find another CEO.” He laughed at the timing. “I agreed to stay on as president, but I realized my role needed to change if I expected to find time for a personal life. I wanted the freedom to relocate to Los Angeles—or wherever—to be with her…a woman who now thinks I’m the kind of man who would toy with her for a week as some kind of favor to her brother.”
Colt blew out a breath and then stared at the ceiling. He rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes, then blinked. “Why didn’t you just tell Sophie how you feel about her?”
“I planned to talk with her after the wedding, but my feelings have been strongly implied. I assumed she knew. She ought to know.”
“Dude, women are intuitive creatures, but when it comes to love, they need to hear the words. ‘Strongly implied’ does not cut it.”
“In case you missed it, I just begged her to trust me and listen to me—”
“I’m not taking her side,” Colt said, “and I’m not taking yours either. I’m just saying.” He pulled himself to his feet and then kicked Logan’s heel. “If I’d relied on my assumptions, Kady would not be about to become Mrs. Colton Brooks.”
Okay, message received. Good to know he and Colt were on the same page, because he hadn’t planned on giving up. Logan forced a smile and stood as well. “That’s how you think she’s going to refer to herself. Seriously?”
“That’s how the holiday cards will be signed. Mr. & Mrs. Colton Brooks. Mark my words.”
“Yeah right. I bet you a grand right here and now the holiday cards are signed, The Dresco-Brooks, and another grand says you’ll be the one signing them.”
“You’re gonna owe me two thousand bucks.”
“What’s a couple thousand between family?”
“Family? Jesus. Don’t get ahead of yourself, McCade. And don’t jack things up with my sister, or I will have to kick your ass.”
…
Stupid. Stupid. How could you have been so stupid?
Sophie gave herself five minutes to hide in her room and bawl her eyes out. Now everything made sense. The way he’d cajoled her into attending the Spago dinner that first night. The way he’d stuck by her side the entire evening. The afternoon of the scavenger hunt. The climbing expedition. All that t
ime she’d been slowly but surely falling in love with him, he’d merely been keeping a promise to her brother. She was nothing more than a favor.
New Sophie? What a joke. All the makeup and sexy underwear in the world didn’t change a thing. She was still the same shy, awkward, uninteresting person she’d always been, just more pathetic for actually believing Logan had found her fascinating. Lesson learned. Painfully and indelibly.
When she could inhale without her breath hitching on the cold, jagged shards of her shattered heart, she washed the mascara tracks off her cheeks and did her best to hide the evidence of her meltdown. No way could she return to the bridal suite looking like the walking wounded. Doing so would only arouse concern and lead to questions. She didn’t feel anywhere near ready to discuss the humiliating mistake she’d made, and Kady didn’t deserve that kind of drama on her wedding day.
She thought she did a decent job of hiding her emotional wreckage behind a smile, but when Julie opened the door, she took one look and said, “Honey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” A quick glance around the room assured her everyone else was occupied. “I might have had an allergic reaction to the mascara. My eyes started to burn and water. I had to wash it off.”
“Ugh. I feel your pain. That happens to me, too. I know they’ve got the hypoallergenic kind around here. Elise?”
The beautician led Sophie to the vanity and repaired her makeup in no time. The woman was a magician. No one would guess she’d been crying her eyes out a few minutes ago.
A voice shouted, “Okay girls, here I come,” from the bedroom. The double doors opened and Kady stepped out. All the chatter in the room stopped, and a collective gasp filled the silence.
Kady lifted her hand and touched her veil. “Somebody say something.”