“What about me?” he asked abruptly.
Nate sat back and waited him out. His coffee was going cold, and it wouldn’t take long.
“I mean, in theory,” Max said. His expression was a mixture of stubbornness and panic that made him look like a hangover had just hit. “Why not?”
“Well, for a start, because the last time you saw me naked, you said ‘is that it’?’”
“I had been watching a lot of porn.” Max muttered the excuse awkwardly. “And it was cold, so you were not… looking your best.”
Nate snorted. “You’re my best mate, Max, but I’d smother you in your sleep if we were dating. To be honest, when we shared a flat, there were a few nights I came in and stood over you with a pillow.”
“Very funny,” Max said sulkily. He slouched down and absently picked at the rim of his cup. “Flynn, though?”
“I like him,” Nate said. “Maybe he’s a prat, but he makes me feel good.”
Max mimed sticking a finger down his throat and gagging. Then he sighed and leaned over to hook his arm around Nate’s neck and bump their heads together.
“You really want to do this?” he asked. “Him?”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “He makes me happy.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say after two dates, even if they had been real dates. Despite that, it sounded so convincing that Nate almost believed it himself. He wasn’t usually that good a liar. Maybe that’s why Max bought it.
“Fine,” Max grumbled and sat back. “It’s your funeral, which the dickhead probably won’t attend.”
“Well, at least I get a funeral,” Nate said. “Last week I just got eaten by cats.”
Max rolled his eyes, finished his coffee, and slouched back onto the couch. He grabbed a cushion and stuffed it under his head. “I’ll enjoy saying I told you so when it all goes wrong.”
A niggle of annoyance caught in the back of Nate’s throat. Okay. So he knew it was going to go wrong, but he had insider knowledge. Max was just making assumptions. If he really liked Flynn, he could make it work.
He couldn’t get into it with Max right then, so he swallowed hard and redirected the annoyance into something more immediate.
“What are you doing?”
Max folded his arm over his eyes. “I need some shut-eye.”
“You have a bed.”
Max lifted his elbow enough to give Nate an arch look. “And you said you aren’t interested.” He wagged the eyebrow that Nate could see. “Now you want to know about my bed.”
“Get off my couch.” Nate whacked Max’s leg.
It didn’t do any good.
“There’s someone in my bed,” Max said. “And Dad’s looking for me. Just give me an hour to nap, Nate. You can judge my life choices while you still have the high ground.”
Nate picked up the spare cushion and mimed smothering his friend with it. In the end he just whacked him with it and took his coffee back to the desk. He had five other wedding-music auditions to arrange, along with one “dramatically offbeat” musician, and then back to Katie and Bradley.
He checked the time and mentally sliced the rest of the day into manageable segments. It was doable—if a certain someone didn’t spend any more time distracting him.
On cue, Max started to snore.
“IT’S JUSTso weird,” Katie said. She sat cross-legged on the loveseat, wearing bright pink yoga pants and a bra. The view didn’t do a lot for Nate, but he couldn’t help but see she had abs too. He tried to sit up straighter. Maybe he should revisit exercise. Katie didn’t notice. She slapped her hands on her knees to underline what she was saying. “We just met your boyfriend last week, and then he saves my fiancé’s life. It was, like, some weird fate.”
The fiancé in question gave her a fond, slightly skeptical look. “I wasn’t on theTitanic, love,” he said. “I could probably have swum to shore if I needed to.”
Despite everything, Nate was still an island boy at heart, and he knew better. Even in the height of summer, that was a stretch of treacherous water, with unpredictable riptides and no easy shore to wash up on. At the dog-end of the season, at night, and in a storm? Bradley was an athlete, but fitness wasn’t enough. But the story of how the island had lost a rugby player out there one August—drunk, stupid, and on a dare—wasn’t wedding appropriate.
