Chapter One
Logan Dwyer adjustedthe flower pinned to his lapel for the tenth time and paced outside Tori’s hotel suite.
As the dude of honor, he was left waiting in the hallway as her sisters got her into her wedding dress. Some things weren’t for best friends to do when one best friend had a dick—especially when that dick secretly wanted the bride-to-be.
He left out a frustrated breath becausethatwas a thought he wasnotallowed to dwell on today.
It was Tori’s wedding day, and she was over-the-moon, ridiculously happy with Stephen. He was everything Logan’s best friend wanted in a man: stable, smart, and safe.
Everything that Logan wasn’t.
Hell, he’d barely made it to the wedding because his SEAL team had gotten stuck in the middle of a jungle for an extra seventy-two hours.
Not a big deal to him. That was his job. But for Tori? He’d have been gutted if she’d felt like he couldn’t be trusted to be there for her on the most important day of her life.
Since she’d accidentally glued his fingers together in grade three art—and then made him a series of increasingly silly Get Better Soon cards, until all she had to do was hand him folded up craft paper and they’d both dissolve into giggles—Victoria Fletcher had been Logan Dwyer’s best friend in the entire world.
They’d been through a lot together.
And as soon as whatever drop-dead-sexy lingerie she was wearing was safely hidden under a dozen layers of lace, he was going to be by her side until the second she said “I do” and he had to officially accept that he was no longer the most important man in her life.
In her mind, he probably hadn’t worn that label since college. He’d spent the last six years on the SEAL teams, flitting in and out of her life, often without any notice. He knew he was important to her, but in a guarded, who-knows-when-Logan-will-reappear kind of way.
It didn’t help that deep down, Tori would forever be special to him.
He turned around and glared at himself in the mirror across from the elevators. His damn flower looked just fine. It was his attitude that needed serious re-adjustment.
She could be special to him and get to live a fully realized life. He would never stand in the way of her happiness.
Behind him, the elevator started up again with a muted sound of gears, and a ding on a floor above or below. Logan never turned off his heightened sense of awareness. He listened again. Below, definitely. And as soon as the elevator started up, it slowed again, so before the doors opened on Tori’s floor, Logan was already turned around and facing the lift.
The groom-to-be was the last person he expected to see stepping off the elevator car. Both Tori and Stephen had been adamant they would follow tradition and not see each other before the wedding service.
Logan didn’t get it, but he didn’t mind, either. It meant that he had Tori almost all to himself last night. They’d gone out for drinks and dinner with her sisters, then retired to her suite and stayed up until two in the morning reminiscing about elementary school, lazy summers, and busy course loads. Nearly twenty years of friendship rehashed over and over again until their faces hurt from grinning.
Now Stephen McKenzie was in front of him. The man was about to marry the most perfect woman on the planet. He had no fucking excuse not to be smiling.
No reason to be pale. Sweating.
No reason to have his car keys clutched tight in his white-knuckled fist. The wedding was downstairs in the hotel ballroom in forty-five minutes.
Logan stood a little straighter. Yeah, he towered over the guy. At six-four, he towered over everyone. Usually, he didn’t care about using that to his advantage. Right now, the way the normally staid groom looked a little green as his eyes flitted nervously back and forth between Logan and the bridal suite door? Logan would use every bit of physical menace he could muster.
“What’s up, Steve?”
“It’s Stephen.” Logan would be hard pressed to like anyone who Tori married, but that kind of correction grated on him. Because in a moment where something was obviously wrong, where he was nervous about something, he still cared most about his name. Selfish prick.
“My bad. What’s up?”
“I need to speak to Victoria.” Stephen’s voice caught on Tori’s name.
Logan wanted to step in his path, but he didn’t have that right. Instead, he gestured toward the door. The words didn’t come out the first time he tried to force them past his lips, but they burned like hot rubber on pavement when he pressed them a second time. “She’s just getting dressed, but go ahead.”
Stephen didn’t move.
Logan gave him one last benefit of the doubt since the guy could be nervous for a lot of reasons. “Is someone hurt?”
“Ah…no.”
