“Okay, what?”
“I’ll go along with your plan. I’ll back out of the wedding planning if you promise to keep me apprised about everything—the planning, and the guy. Those are my terms.”
Brooke let out a little laugh. “Done. That was easier than I thought.”
He held her gaze. “I’m trying to trust you, Ms. Baldwin. Don’t make me regret it.”
“And don’t let your guard down, either,” Grant advised her. “You know Seth’s just going to Google you the second he goes to the bathroom. In fact, I’m surprised he hasn’t already.”
“I thought about it,” Seth said, his eyes never leaving Brooke’s. “But some mysteries are far more interesting to unravel by yourself.”
“I’m not a mystery,” she said quickly. Damn it, she sounded defensive. “And don’t pretend you’re at all interested in peeling back my layers, or whatever. You had me all summed up as a ditzy airhead within moments of meeting me.”
“Right. And I’m sure you withheld all judgment on me,” he said. “No snap assumption about who I might have been, hmm?”
She pursed her lips. He knew she’d thought he was the groom.
Fair enough.
Maybe getting it out in the open would make this whole thing feel less . . . tense.
She turned to Grant. “I thought Seth was the groom when I first met him. He’s all riled up about it since clearly he’s a classic marriage-phobe.”
Grant’s usually at-ease expression flickered, and he gave Seth a wary glance as though Brooke had her foot hovering over a land mine.
“Sorry,” she said quietly. She didn’t even know what she was apologizing for, but instinct told her she’d jabbed a sore spot. And even though her brain was racing with curiosity, her heart knew all too well what it could be like to have someone pick at your wounds when you weren’t prepared.
Still, the thought of Seth Tyler having wounds seemed implausible, to say the least. He was so rigid, so deliberate in everything he did. It seemed impossible that anyone would get the drop on him to hurt him.
But someone had hurt him, she realized as she studied him under her lashes. It was written all over the tense lines of his mouth.
“Don’t apologize,” Seth said curtly. “My idiot friend here is apparently under the impression that I was once closer to the altar than I actually was.”
Grant opened his mouth as though he wanted to argue but snapped it shut and picked up his drink.
“I proposed to my ex,” Seth said in the same bored monotone voice someone might use if they were announcing that it was raining. “She said no. End of story.”
Brooke tried to keep her expression blank, but poker face had never really been her thing. Her heart hurt for him, but more than that, she hurt for the way he thought he had to hold it inside.
She knew all too well what it was like to put on a brave face when your insides were in splinters.
“Stop that,” he muttered quietly.
“Stop what?”
“Feeling sorry for me.”
“Seth hates pity,” Grant explained.
“Who doesn’t?” Brooke said quietly.
For a moment, her eyes met Seth’s, and a brief spark of understanding flashed between them. Two people who’d been hurt but who would go to their grave before admitting it, even to themselves.
Then the moment was over, and he lifted his glass in a silent, mocking toast.
Grant leaned forward to grab his cocktail off the table, finishing the last sip in one swallow before slapping his palms on his knees and standing. “Well. This has sure been fun.”
“Where the hell are you going?” Seth asked.
“Got a date,” Grant said, pulling out his wallet and extracting enough bills to cover all of their drinks plus tip.
“With whom?” Seth challenged.
Grant ignored this, instead reaching down for Brooke’s hand and raising it up to his lips as he bent, kissing the back of it in a gentlemanly gesture that Brooke found oddly charming. “Ms. Baldwin, you are beyond lovely. It was a pleasure.”
Seth rolled his eyes, and Grant gave Brooke a sly wink before stepping back, clamping his friend on the shoulder in farewell, and strolling out of the hotel bar without a backward glance.
“Do you think he really has a date?” Brooke asked.
Seth shrugged. “I doubt it.”
“Why, because he’s in love with your sister?” Brooke asked sympathetically.
Seth’s face went blank in stunned confusion. “What?”
Brooke froze. Was this not common knowledge? It had taken her exactly five minutes of being in Grant Miller’s company to figure out that he had it bad for Maya, but judging from the stricken look on Seth’s face, he had no clue.
“He’s like her brother,” Seth said.