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“We’ve got one more tonight,” he added before swallowing the rest of the super sweet tea down. “You up for it?”
She finished her own glass of bubbly, then slid an arm through his. “Lead the way.”
CAM
Cam tiptoed up the beach house’s spiral staircase, lighting his way with the screen of his phone. Jamie’s nieces had demanded a bedtime story from “Uncle Cam,” and since he saw them so seldom, he wasn’t about to refuse. He’d stuck his head and shoulders inside their pillow fort and woven a story about two rival dinosaurs who had become the best of friends after the Tyrannosaurus rex accidentally ripped off the triceratops’s horn. AJurassic Parkversion of his and Jamie’s meeting and friendship, the former basketball star having injured Cam in a game his junior year of college. They’d been best friends ever since.
Cam was searching for his best friend now, on the main level of the house, when his phone screen brightened. He flipped it over and read the text from tonight’s missing guest.
How’d the party go?Nic asked.Everything good with the house?
A work emergency had kept the Assistant US Attorney in San Francisco. Cam didn’t doubt that—Nic was as much a workaholic as any of them—but he also wondered if the prosecutor’s absence had more to do with some misguided sense of keeping the peace. Nic had dated Aidan what felt like eons ago, and despite moving past that, despite helping to save Katie last spring and the Talleys at Christmas, Nic still held himself back from Cam and their friends.
Good time. The house and the beer were perfect,Cam texted back. The beer at tonight’s festivities had been from the brewery Nic co-owned; the house belonged to his business partner.Everything good with work?
Busy. Caught a major break in the case Aidan and I are working.
The heist one?
Aidan, now Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s San Francisco field office, had kept Cam, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, in the loop on the heist case. Cam had also heard Aidan utter more than a few frustrated Gaelic curses over it. This bit of news, if Aidan hadn’t heard it already, would make a spectacular wedding present.
We’ll need to bring you up to speed before he leaves.Aidan and Jamie were headed to Dublin for their honeymoon once Jamie wrapped up his coaching duties for the season.
Cam glanced out the bay window, spotting Jamie on the patio below.Fill me in tomorrow?
If I can make it.
And there went Nic, withdrawing again.
Not so fast, if Cam had anything to say about it. He wasn’t putting on a tux only for his best friend’s benefit. He’d wanted something from Nic for a while now—smart or not—and he was counting on the tux to help him get it.
Dominic...he texted.
Nic’s one-word reply came right back.Boston...
Cam let him stew as he pulled two beers out of the fridge, hoping Nic would reach the answer he wanted.
The prosecutor got most of the way there.I’ll do my best to make it.
One more little push...Might be the only chance you get to see me in a monkey suit.
Oh, well, when you put it that way, I’ll be there with fucking bells on.
Cam grinned in the dark.Promise?
Goodnight, Boston.
Picking up the bottles—Gravity Imperial Stout, Cam’s favorite from Nic’s brewery—he started for the back door, typing as he walked.Don’t forget the beer.
It’s already at the hotel.
He searched his phone for the most obnoxious BoSox-Win GIF he could find and hit Send. Nic’s icy blues would probably roll right out of his head.
Not expecting a response, Cam pocketed the phone and headed outside, down the stairs to the patio. Jamie sat straddling one of the picnic benches, bouncing a St. Mary’s stress ball between his legs and staring at the Ritz up the beach, the hotel glowing like a haunted Scottish castle on its fog-shrouded cliff.
“Despite popular opinion,” Cam said, “Talley is not a leprechaun. He won’t magically appear, no matter how hard you wish it so.”
Smiling, Jamie hauled his other leg over the bench, righting himself to face Cam across the table. “It’s been a while since we’ve spent a night apart.”
