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“You’re right,” Mad said, releasing Cole’s arms. “You’re totally right. I can do this.” Closing his eyes, he inhaled through his nose and recited, “I am a calm, focused, evolved man who will not let his need for sex make his friend’s dick fall off.” When his eyes opened again, they were clear, crystal blue and glinting in the morning sun.
“Seriously, Mad.” Cole clapped a hand over his shoulder. “You’ve got this.”
“I’m so glad you’re here, Cole.”
For reasons he’d expected, and for one very important reason he hadn’t, Cole replied, “Me too, Mad. Me too.”
CHAPTERSEVEN
COLE
Sitting nextto Madigan’s dad, Conor, while his three younger brothers milled around the room like gorgeous, impeccably dressed antique shoppers, Cole leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and studied his best friend.
The man of the hour faced the full-length mirror in his tailored black pants and his white dress shirt, concentration sharpening his features while he struggled with his bow tie. Folding the strip of black fabric over itself, Madigan twisted, tugged, scowled, then tugged some more. There was something so deceptively ordinary about the scene—a man, a mirror, a stubborn tie. But it was Mad’s expression that hit Cole in the gut, the creases branching out from his eyes, his tightly clenched jaw. It saidIf I can just get this damn tie under control, everything else will fall in line.
Pushing up from the couch, unwilling to let Madigan continue to wrestle with the literal albatross around his neck all by himself, Cole asked, “Can I help?”
“Please.” Madigan dropped the ends of his tie, raised his chin. “Save me.”
When Cole took the tie in his hands, he was rewarded by a mouth-watering mixture of cedar and spice flooding his senses. “Good lord. Is that your beard oil?”
“You like it?” Madigan asked, the first smile Cole had seen on his face in hours making an appearance. “It’s called Man of the Woodlands.”
“You need to lead me to these woodlands, because that”—he sniffed Madigan’s beard—“is delicious.”
“It’s Ashley’s favorite.”
“She has excellent taste,” Cole said, then winked. “But we already knew that.” He tugged the ends of the tie. “Now let’s whip this bad boy into shape.”
Being good at tying ties around other men’s necks was one of Cole’s favorite random bisexual flexes, but after wrapping and pinching and tugging while Madigan’s brothers stopped whatever they’d been doing to watch, confer, then start taking bets on whether he’d pull it off, Cole huffed, releasing the still-crooked bow. “It’s cursed.”
“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” Maude Alice floated into their makeshift dressing room—which also happened to be her office—like an angel summoned from formal wear heaven. “Don’t you all look splendid.”
“Maybetheydo,” Madigan grumbled.
She frowned. “I beg your pardon?”
“His tie.” Cole motioned to Madigan’s neck. “We can’t get it straight.”
“Ah.” Crossing the room, her heels thudding quietly over the carpet, Maude Alice said, “Sometimes these things require a woman’s touch.”
When she dismissed him with a tap on his shoulder, Cole was more than happy to step aside to join Conor on the couch again, watching in awe as she made quick work of a perfectly straight bow.
“There.” She smoothed down the collar of Madigan’s dress shirt, her gaze going distant. “It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to do that.”
Snatching one of her slender hands in his, Madigan kissed her palm, and said, “Thank you.”
Conor cleared his throat, his gray-blue eyes shining like glass. “You look good, Mattie. Real good.”
“He looks like a monkey on steroids,” Madigan’s brother Sean quipped, ducking to narrowly avoid the couch pillow their youngest brother Brady threw at his head.
“I should have left you all at home,” Conor said, whipping out a hand to snag an end of Sean’s tie and tug it out of its bow.
“Nice one, Dad.” Pretending to slide his hands into his pockets, Sean caught Conor sleeping and yanked his tie loose in retribution.
“No,” Madigan warned, backing away with his hands raised when they rounded on him. “Nobody touches this tie and lives to tell about it.”
“So touchy,” Sean said, ducking another pillow hurled by Madigan’s third—and usually most serious—brother, Darryn.
