Claire grinned. “Deal.”
They spoke for a few more minutes, but it was nearly midnight in Sierra Leone, and when Natasha confessed she’d been up for the past thirty-eight hours working at the clinic, Claire felt so guilty she practically forced her friend to hang up.
Dropping the phone on the bed, she went over to her suitcase and unzipped it. Her plan was to take off this flimsy honeymoon dress, put on some comfy clothes, and reflect on this day from hell, but when she heard a clinking sound in her bag, the plan promptly changed.
She reached between the stacks of clothes and pulled out the bottle of Lagavulin single-malt scotch, which sold for three hundred bucks a pop. She didn’t normally buy such expensive liquor, but she’d wanted to surprise Chris on their honeymoon and toast to their marriage with his favorite brand.
As she traced the edges of the bottle’s label, she thought about the plan of action Natasha had just outlined. Getting tipsy sounded pretty damn appealing…but who said she had to wait until March? At the moment, she couldn’t think of anything better than getting a little wonky in the head and not thinking about this disastrous day for a little while.
With a decisive nod, she started to untwist the bottle cap, then froze when she heard muted footsteps coming from the hallway. She expected a knock on the door, but it didn’t come. Instead, another door opened and closed, and then there was nothing but silence.
Her face grew hot as she pictured Dylan and Aidan alone in a bedroom together. Embracing. Or maybe doing more than embracing…
She quickly banished the wicked thought before it put down roots and sprouted a whole bunch of dirty images in her head.
But as she opened the Lagavulin bottle and brought it to her lips, she couldn’t help but wonder what was going on in the other room.
Chapter Three
Aidan followed Dylan into the master bedroom, noting the rigid set of his roommate’s shoulders—and was that guilt in those deep green eyes? Clearly it was, because the second the door closed, Dylan lobbed an apology in his direction.
“I’m sorry, man.”
Aidan wrinkled his forehead. “For what?”
“For bringing Claire here without warning.”
Dylan dragged both hands through his dirty-blond hair before shrugging out of his black suit jacket. He tossed it on the king-sized bed, then loosened his slate-gray tie, yanked it off and threw that aside too.
Aidan’s gaze tracked the movement of Dylan’s long, callused fingers as they unbuttoned the top two buttons of his white dress shirt. Then the SEAL let out a weary groan and stretched his arms over his head, causing the muscles on that broad chest to flex in the hottest possible way.
The sudden, all-consuming arousal that seized Aidan’s body no longer startled him. He’d been attracted to both sexes for as long as he could remember, but his attraction to Dylan surpassed anything he’d ever experienced. He was addicted to the man, craved him on a whole other level, and no matter how many times he fed the addiction, no matter how many mind-blowing releases they gave each other, he constantly wanted more.
Snapping out of it, he leaned against the tall dresser and watched as Dylan flopped down on the bed. “You don’t have to be sorry. You did the right thing getting her out of town.” He hesitated. “Did Chris seriously just leave without telling her the wedding was off?”
“Yup.”
“Wow.” Aidan searched his vocabulary for an adjective with some tact, but in the end, he couldn’t control what came out. “Your brother’s a fucking asshole, man.”
“No kidding.” Dylan shook his head a few times, looking both angry and amazed. “He just left. I get that he was panicking—”
“No excuse.”
“—and that he didn’t want to hurt her—”
“No excuse.”
“—but that’s no excuse,” Dylan said, rolling his eyes.
Aidan offered a sheepish smile. “Sorry, I should have let you finish. But yeah, your brother needed to man up and talk to Claire. He planned on marrying the girl, for fuck’s sake. He owed it to her to tell her what was on his mind instead of dumping her via messenger and running away.”
“I know, but I couldn’t stop him. He pretended he was going to see her, and then he took off and left me holding the bag. And the messed-up thing? I think he made the right call. Not the running away part, but canceling the wedding. He and Claire were all wrong for each other.”
“Regardless, she didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.”
“Of course not.” Dylan’s green eyes darkened with displeasure. “But that doesn’t mean I want to spend the next few days holding her hand and wiping her tears and telling her everything’s gonna be okay.”
“You don’t want to, but you will.”