Double whoa.
Did the bartender turn off the A/C? Must have because it was getting really freakin’ hot in here, and it absolutely had nothing to do with the completely verboten thought of her best friend naked, giving himself a hand job. She snatched up her beer and gulped it, trying to cool her parched throat.
The scent of Cam’s favorite cinnamon gum surrounded her as he touched her shoulder, and she gazed down at his hand in a daze. She never noticed the size of it before—wide with a dusting of dark hair over the back. His long, tanned fingers engulfed her whole shoulder and she was in no way considered a petite woman. If anything, her shoulders were too wide from years of religious lap swimming. But as his fingers tightened in concern and she felt his leashed strength, she realized just how small she was compared to him. Despite all of the hours she spent in the gym, he could still hurt her without breaking a sweat if he wanted to. She suddenly hated him for that fact of biology almost as much as she was fascinated by it.
“You okay?” he asked.
She opened her mouth to answer, but no sound emerged. Oh. Yeah. Breathing was a good thing. She exhaled softly so as not to draw attention to the fact she’d been holding her breath, but his eyes narrowed and zeroed in on Preston over the top of her head.
“Linz,” he said with a distinct chill in the curt greeting.
Shit. He thought Preston had upset her. If he only knew where her thoughts had truly been…
“Wilde,” Preston said in the exact same cold tone, and then silence descended. The two men locked stares in their own private game of chicken. They’d never liked each other, and the end of her and Preston’s relationship had meant the end of any semblance of civility between them.
Eva returned her attention to her beer and the TVs, fully intending to ignore them both and leave them to do their macho thing, but a flash of blue fabric out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned on her stool to see the bridesmaid standing beside Preston, her blue eyes tracking from Preston to Cam and back. The woman’s beauty was even more stunning up close than it had been from across the room. Next to her, Eva felt like a kid playing make believe with her mother’s clothes and make-up.
“Oh, for godssakes.” The bridesmaid finally leaned between the men and held out a manicured hand in greeting. “If I wait for one of these He-men to introduce me, we’ll be standing here all day. I’m Lark Warren, Preston’s fiancée.”
The seat dropped out from under Eva’s ass and the room started a sickening whirl. Her stomach clenched as pain cleaved open the wound in her heart that had just barely healed.
“Fiancée?” she heard herself ask, but her voice sounded muffled like she was whispering through the roar of a waterfall.
“It’s all very recent.” Lark looped her arm through Preston’s and gave a dazzling smile. The ring on her finger caught and reflected the dim light from over the bar. “We’ve only been together about eight months, but when it’s right, it’s right.”
Eight months? Eva shut her eyes at the wash of fresh new pain, bitter and ice cold. Their relationship had ended only six months ago.
He’d cheated.
No wonder he’d wanted out. It had never been a case of him not wanting to marry—he just hadn’t wanted to marry her.
Cam’s hand left her shoulder, slid around her waist to keep her upright, and somehow, that gave her the fortification she needed to open her eyes and face Lark again.
The woman who was everything she wasn’t.
Chapter Four
Goddammit.
Cam tried to catch Lark’s gaze and motioned for her to ix-nay the marriage talk, but she continued to blithely crush Eva’s heart into dust with each innocent word out of her mouth. He didn’t think she was intentionally being cruel. She just had no fucking idea that the woman sitting across from her in stone-faced silence was once hoping for that ring, that wedding, and a ridiculous fairy tale happily ever after.
Goddamn Preston Linz.
Eva’s chest started heaving. He had no doubt she was on the verge of either punching something or breaking down and, shit, she wouldn’t forgive herself if she did either in front of her asshole ex. Cam wrapped his arm tighter around her and tucked her against his side, offering what little comfort he could. She was like an icicle beside him, cold and so very fragile.
She stared at her ex, but the hurt and betrayal Cam knew she was feeling was buried so far under the ice that nobody else saw it.