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I needed to act as though I hadn’t noticed his absence because, in this moment, I couldn’t put my mind in a pre-Camden space to know whether that was a question I would have asked before.
He owned far too much of my mind now.
“What’s the occasion for tonight’s get-together?” I inquired instead as my best friend handed me a full glass of wine. “Did you guys land a big account? Win a trial? Or just awhy the hell notkinda evening?”
“The latter,” Declan said, reaching across Hannah to clink his glass against mine. “I don’t think anyone at this table, including you, Oaklyn, needs a reason to drink.”
I smiled at her boyfriend, the grumpiness to Hannah’s sunshine. “You’re not wrong about that.”
“Still, we’ve all been trying to get together,” Hannah said, “and it’s almost impossible. Someone’s always traveling or sick or can’t get a babysitter”—she pointed at Ford and winked—“so tonight is the night we’re all here. Even the Spades were able to join us.”
“Macon’s here?” I asked, instantly recalling the conversation Hannah, Camden, and I’d had about him at the bar when she mentioned—repeatedly—that she wanted to set me up with him.
“In the flesh,” I heard from behind me.
Shit.
That was Macon’s voice.
I could never forget that deep, gritty tone that dripped with lust.
I turned just as he was taking the seat beside me.
He held out his hand. “Oaklyn, it’s nice to see you again.”
“And you,” I replied, clasping our fingers together, mine feeling so tiny against his.
“So, the two of you remember each other. Perfect,” Hannah chimed in. “That saves me an introduction.”
When I glanced at her, her smile was so large that it was cartoonish. Now, I knew why she’d wanted me to come here so badly—she was obsessed with getting Macon and me together.
“Macon and his brothers just got back from Hawaii, where they finalized the land for their newest hotel.” Hannah nodded toward the two others who had just joined the table.
Cooper, the middle child, had almost a surfer look with golden-brown hair and dark blue eyes, and Brady, the oldest, looked like he had come straight from a Milan runway with jet-black hair and these piercing icy-blue eyes.
“Oh, yeah?” I said, turning my head to meet Macon’s emerald gaze. “That had to be an amazing and exhilarating trip. I’m impressed you made it here tonight. Usually, I’m dead for a week after I travel.”
“Mind over matter,” he replied. “Besides, there was a rumor that you were coming tonight, and I wanted to see if it was true.” His stare dropped to my chest and began to lower.
That was when I looked at Hannah.
This was all becoming too much.
And I pointed at myself and said to her, “A rumor that I was coming? Isn’t it funny how rumors get started?”
“If I had to carry you over here, you were coming,” Hannah said.
“That’s one hell of a best friend, always having your back,” Macon added, gaining my attention.
The guilt suddenly hit.
The thought of what had gone down tonight at the restaurant.
The feelings that I had of Camden that racked my chest as I sat here and looked at his best friend, Macon, who stirred nothing in me but a stale wind.
I lifted my wineglass and guzzled down several gulps.
“Some things that Oaklyn is far too humble to tell you are,” Hannah said, leaning closer to me so she could get a better view of Macon as I swallowed, “she’s one of the top marketing brand managers for her company, she just won President’s Club, she’s on a fast track of buying her own condo in WeHo, and even though she’d never admit it, she’s the most incredible cook.”
