But now the music had died and everyone was kind of paired off and chatting. Jessa and her friend Roni were huddled together, whispering in low, conspiratorial voices, glancing over at Dylan and his buddy, Ash. I didn’t even wanna know what that was about, though I was pretty sure it was about Roni, not Jessa.
Dylan and Ash were drinking and goofing around, as usual.
Brody, our band manager and another of my groomsmen, was sitting back in silence next to Maggie, our assistant manager, looking tense, just like he had the entire wedding. At least, whenever my sister was around.
And there was Zane, his arm around my wife and that infamous panty-wetting grin on his face.
“Unless, of course, you aren’t up to it.” Jesus; was he still fucking talking? At me? “Maybe you need a little nap? It’s been a long day, and you’re getting old. Pushing thirty. And you’ve been drinking… Maybe you just need someone to fill in for you. You know, get things warmed up—”
“That kind of comment didn’t fly when I was dating her,” I told him, keeping my tone casual. No way I was letting Zane fuck with me tonight, and just because he was a recovered alcoholic and therefore sober did not mean he got to win some imaginary hard dick contest. I was plenty able to fuck my wife. Didn’t matter how late it got or how many beers were passed around; I’d been pacing myself, too. “It’s definitely not gonna fly now that I’ve married her.”
Zane just laughed.
Fucking guy.
I could not wait ’til he fell in love. I’d have a fucking field day with that shit. The guy was always busting everyone else’s balls; he deserved some payback.
Of course, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting on Zane to get serious about a woman. Fucking around was kind of his lifeblood.
Case in point: we’d just finished jamming on an acoustic cover of “Brown Eyed Girl”—Zane’s idea. He’d sung it specifically to serenade my brown-eyed sister, probably in part because he was happy she was here—we all were; it’d been fucking years since she’d been home to see us all—but also in part to piss off Brody. Because nothing ramped up Zane’s meddling urges like a guy who obviously had it bad for a girl—yet failed to make a play for her.
“Hate to say it, but he’s right,” Brody told me, low enough Zane wouldn’t hear as he settled into a seat next to me; I was watching the cocky bastard whisper in Katie’s ear, making her laugh. “Just go back to your cabin and I’ll take care of things here. It’s past three o’clock. At this rate, your wedding night’ll be over before you consummate it.”
That may have been so, but I didn’t like being told when, how or where to fuck my own woman. It wasn’t Brody’s fault, though; he was just born bossy. Usually, I didn’t mind.
“How about you?” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Amanda?”
He sucked on his beer, looking gloomy. “Later.”
I doubted that.
Brody had brought his latest “girlfriend” to the wedding, but that didn’t mean much. It never did. They were always perfectly nice and perfectly pretty, with perfectly nice names like Amanda or Jennifer or Michelle—and he was always bored with them before they even got started. The odds of him actually sleeping with this one tonight seemed slim, what with the way he’d been acting around my sister all day… avoiding the shit out of her, then staring at her from afar like some lovelorn stalker.
My little sister was gorgeous; I got that. She turned heads everywhere she went, and not just because she was a lingerie model and looked like one. There was something about her that guys had always eaten up, even when she was a dorky little kid; I’d had to witness it all my life. It was this kind of awkward sweetness she had, some kind of dick-throttling magic that made boys follow her home from school and reduced grown men to idiots. Made them all—boys and men alike—want to get in her face, push her buttons; make her squeeze out a smile in their direction so they’d feel better about themselves.
None more than Brody.
I had no idea what shit had gone down between the two of them, though what I’d once assumed was a more-or-less mutual infatuation had obviously turned south—and now neither one of them seemed able to either completely ignore or tolerate the other.
I looked at my sister across the fire. Jessa caught my eye and swiftly flashed her infamous bratty look—the one that earned her the nickname “bratface” among my friends, years ago, when they were all crushing on her but wouldn’t admit it in front of me; it was the face she’d given me as a little girl when I pissed her off. I didn’t even know she was still capable of that look, yet she’d been in Brody’s vicinity for mere hours, and now there it was.
I didn’t love it, but not much I could do. I wasn’t exactly a relationship expert.
The fact that I’d managed to get Katie to the altar still kind of stunned me.
I looked at Brody. He pretended not to notice Jessa sulking and leveled me with a gray look. “Quit being a fucking hero and take your woman to bed,” he muttered.
“Uh-huh.” I stared at him, gauging his reaction to my words. “Guess someone should get laid tonight.”
He didn’t touch that. Just sipped his beer and pretended he hadn’t heard me. But he still wouldn’t look at my sister.
“Don’t worry
