Read the book: «Best Man...with Benefits»

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Extract

Copyright

1

QUESTION: HOW DO you know when someone is truly your best friend? Answer: you love her enough to put up with her semi-douchy fiancé and his completely douchy best buddy.

Asked and answered, Lauren Sanger thought, as she sat on a private patio of Hotel Messina, the swish resort located on a small island off the California coast where, in a few hours, she’d be maid of honor in her best friend’s wedding.

Built at the turn of the century, Hotel Messina had housed royalty and A-list celebrities, and been the setting for movies and thousands of weddings.

Amy Ruehl had dreamed of getting married here since she and Lauren had first seen the hotel in a movie back when they were kids. Her parents could afford the outrageous expense, and all the guests had made the trek over to spend the night, celebrate Amy and Seth’s wedding, and then go back to their much more mundane lives.

Or maybe that was just Lauren.

The wedding would take place at four in the afternoon. That’s what it said on the thick vellum invitations, and with the military precision with which the wedding planner and hotel staff had worked this thing, that’s precisely when the ceremony would begin.

It was two now, and the bride and her maid of honor were taking a late lunch break. Their hair was done, makeup awaiting final touches, and their dresses were pressed and neatly hanging.

She and Amy already wore their fancy underwear beneath the thick hotel robes with the gold M logo on the breast pockets.

While they munched on salad and cold cuts and sipped wine, they enjoyed a spectacular view of the white sand beaches and summer blue water that surrounded the hotel. The weather was perfect. A June day without a cloud in the sky and waves that seemed to laugh as they hit the beach.

“Are you nervous?” she asked her best friend. They’d talked about their weddings a lot when they were young. Amy was a firm believer in fairy tales and happy endings. Lauren not so much, but she couldn’t be happier that her BFF’s dream was about to come true. Seth wouldn’t have been her choice, but Amy was crazy about him and that was all that mattered to Lauren.

Amy shook her head, a smile of pure happiness on her face. She always took everything in stride and didn’t worry much about the future. Lauren wondered what it would be like to be such an optimist and was fairly certain she’d never know.

“Seth is the man I’ve waited my whole life for,” Amy said. Her voice trembled ever so slightly as she added, “I love him so much.”

“No messing up the makeup,” Lauren warned, leaning forward to pat her friend’s hand.

Amy blinked rapidly, dispelling the momentary wetness. “My only wish is that my best friend and Seth’s best friend could like each other, at least a little bit.”

Not even for her best friend would she lie and feign any affection for Jackson Monaghan. All she said was, “Hey, we both love you guys. That’s all that matters.”

“But we’re going to be seeing you two all the time. You’re the first people we’ll have for dinner in our new place, you’ll be the godmother of our first child, obviously, and Jackson will be the god—”

“You’re pregnant?” Lauren’s voice rose. How had she never suspected?

Amy waved a freshly manicured hand in front of her face. “No. I’m just saying.”

“Stop planning so far ahead.” She put a hand to her chest. “And stop freaking me out.”

Amy’s face suddenly took on an expression that Lauren would call fatuous if Amy wasn’t her best friend. She only wore that expression for one person.

She followed the bride’s gaze and, sure enough, two men came into view on the sand below them. Seth, the groom, and Jackson, the best man.

Clearly, the routine for the men of a wedding party was a lot more lax than for the women. The guys were walking barefoot in the sand, wearing their board shorts and sunglasses. They’d ditched their shirts.

She could picture the pair of them scrambling to get dressed fifteen minutes before the ceremony started.

They were a nice-looking pair, she’d give them that.

Seth was a little on the chunky side. He’d been a football player in college and working a desk job, he’d gone a bit to seed. Jackson, on the other hand, was pretty drool-worthy, she had to admit. He sported the torso of an athlete—no doubt, the result of regular workout sessions with a personal trainer at a fancy gym somewhere. He had the permanent five-o’clock shadow of a jaded rock star. His eyes were an Irish blue; his hair a tousled brown that she suspected was salon-highlighted. Everything about him annoyed her.

She scratched her arm. That’s what Jackson was like, she thought. Like an itch. The more she tried to get rid of him, the more he irritated her.

“Why don’t you like Jackson?” Amy broke into her thoughts. “Every woman I know is crazy about him.”

And that was one more thing that irritated her about Jackson Monaghan. He strutted around as if he was God’s gift, and the sad part was plenty of women were apparently foolish enough to buy in to the ridiculous notion.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it’s a chemistry thing.”

Amy sighed, finished her wine. “Well,” she said, “I’m going to do everything I can to get you two to like each other.”

Oh, goodie.

* * *

JACKSON MONAGHAN LOVED the feel of sun on his skin and sand beneath his feet. Wearing a monkey suit and being in a wedding party, not so much.

But, for the guy who’d pretty much saved his life, there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do.

He and Seth went way back. When Jackson had lost his folks, his grandparents hadn’t known what to do with a grieving twelve-year-old. They’d packed him up and sent him to boarding school.

He’d never been exposed to rich people. Didn’t know shit about life in a dorm, and the other boys had sensed weakness the way sharks smell blood.

He had been scrawny back then. Sensitive. He’d thought nothing could be worse than losing his parents to a car wreck. He was wrong.

Those first few weeks of boarding school were brutal. Until Seth stepped up. Seth was the kind of kid the other boys respected. He was big, tough, not so good at school but great at sports. From Seth, Jackson had learned how to be one of the boys. And he’d learned how to fight back.

So, if Seth wanted him to show up in a tux and pass a couple of rings to a minister and make a speech, he was down.

He wasn’t sure Seth had made the best choice in brides, but his buddy was clearly convinced that Amy was an angel and he wasn’t one to make waves. The fiancée’s best friend, though?

Ouch. Lauren Sanger was hot, no question. But that mouth that looked as though it had been designed to kiss sweetly and talk dirty mostly hurled insults. At him.

“In a couple of hours, I’ll be a married man,” Seth suddenly said.

“Yep.”

“I always knew I’d get married, have some kids—it’s what a man does. But now that it’s here, I can’t believe it.”

“I can’t believe you’re getting married, either.” Everything was going to change. The beers after work, the weekly squash games, the poker games that lasted all night, the Sunday afternoons spent tossing a football around in the park, the snap decisions to fly across the country to watch a hockey or a football game. All that would be over.

“Nothing’s going to change,” Seth said, sounding almost desperate.

“Of course, nothing will change,” Jackson assured him, knowing that nothing would ever be the same.

“Amy’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” Seth announced. He’d taken to gushing sentiments like this, and Jackson never knew what the correct response was. Usually he said something like, “That’s great.”

“That’s great,” he said now.

Seth stooped to pick up a smooth, round pebble. He turned and tried to skim it across the waves, but the pebble bounced once and sank.

“I just wish you and Lauren could get along.”

“Probably never going to happen.”

“What’s the deal with you two, anyway? She’s gorgeous, smart, funny.”

“I don’t know. Some kind of weird chemistry thing.” He’d thought gorgeous, smart and funny, too, the first time he’d met Lauren. But from that first conversation on, they’d pretty much disagreed on everything. She seemed to spare no effort to get up his nose. And, being a scrapper with a lot of Irish in him, he gave it right back to her.

Desperate to change the subject, he said, “But Amy’s great.”

That got them off the tricky subject of Lauren and they passed the rest of their time talking about Amy and Seth’s plans for the future. Seth had gone to work for his family’s real estate firm and Amy came from money, so it wasn’t as if their future was uncertain.

Not like his. With his brains and his education in software design, he’d been recruited by all the big firms, but he’d chosen to throw in his lot with a start-up. He’d liked that they were involved in clean energy, harvesting wind and wave power. Jackson didn’t have any money. His grandparents had spent what little money his folks had left on that boarding school and given him what was left to pay for university. With no money to invest, he relied on his own hard work. Going for the start-up over the sure thing was the Irish in him asserting itself again, he thought. He preferred the gamble, where he could seriously make a difference to a company’s future, to being just another software engineer at a global social networking company.

He and Seth returned to the hotel with barely enough time to shower and change.

The bride and groom had opted for a garden wedding with a ballroom booked as a bad weather backup, but one look at the sky told Jackson that no backup plan would be needed. Seth and Amy were probably the luckiest couple he’d ever known. Nothing ever went wrong for either of them. They were loved, pampered, rich and nauseatingly happy with each other. Of course there wouldn’t be a cloud in the sky on their wedding day.

Jackson took a final glance in the full-length mirror in his hotel room before heading out. His tie was straight, fly done up. Rings in one pocket, speech in another. He was good to go.

His room was on the third floor where most of the bridal party and a few of the guests were staying. The bride and groom were spending their wedding night in the penthouse bridal suite and the remainder of the guests were scattered throughout the hotel.

Seth knocked on his door and he opened it. “Ready to do this thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” And they strode off down the hall.

The wedding planner had given them a staging area in the lobby, and they showed up with a minute or two to spare. The woman standing there with a headset and a clipboard wasn’t the main planner. She was some kind of assistant. She checked them out, stepped forward and straightened Seth’s tie. “You have the rings?” she asked Jackson, and he nodded.

She spoke into a headset. “I have the groom and best man ready to go.”

They stood around for a few minutes like soldiers waiting to go into battle. It would have been less nerve-racking if there were more guys in the platoon than just him and Seth. But for all that she’d wanted a fancy wedding, Amy had insisted she only wanted Lauren to stand up for her. Which meant Seth only got a best man. No groomsmen.

The assistant pulled out two florist’s boxes, and he was forced to stand there while she attached a white rose boutonniere to his jacket. The smell of roses always reminded him of the only funeral he’d ever attended. He hated that smell.

“And you’re cleared to go,” the young woman said to them, as though they were a pair of jets on a runway.

“Good luck, buddy,” he said.

Seth turned and gave him an awkward hug. They slapped each other on the back, and then they made their way out to the wedding venue.

The garden looked like something out of a cheesy movie he would never watch. Something with Hugh Grant in it and a load of English accents. There were flowers everywhere—on a rose arbor that he and Seth had to walk under, on the chairs lined up precisely on the lawn where the guests were already seated, and all over the gazebo where the ceremony would take place. A harp was playing softly.

The guests were dressed so well, some of the women in hats, that he barely recognized anyone.

He trod down the aisle and paused, as they’d rehearsed, in front of the minister, who consulted a book so earnestly it looked as though he was refreshing himself on the words of the marriage ceremony.

Behind him, he heard shuffling and low conversation. Somebody was sniffling. Crying already? Or allergies? he wondered idly.

After a minute or two, the intro to “Here Comes the Bride” started up. He knew the piece had a real name, but he only ever heard it played at weddings.

He and Seth both turned, as did every person in the audience.

Lauren started walking up the aisle.

He might find spending time with her as fun as, say, stumbling into a hive of hornets and escaping only to land in a field of poison ivy, but he had to admit she looked good.

Gorgeous, even.

Her dress was a pale green that left her shoulders bare. He’d never really noticed what nice curves the woman had or that her legs were spectacular.

She wore her dark hair piled high and whoever had done her makeup had highlighted her big, dark eyes and colored her lips so they looked plump and kissable.

As though she felt his gaze on her, Lauren looked his way and he felt sucker punched.

Quickly, he averted his gaze but not before he’d seen her eyes widen and felt a completely unexpected and absolutely unwanted stab of lust.

That was the trouble with weddings, he’d always thought. They made a person act like a fool. People were forever hooking up at weddings with girls they wouldn’t be caught dead with normally.

He wasn’t going there.

Even as his breath caught in his throat, he assured himself he wasn’t going there.

2

LAUREN WENT THROUGH the motions of being the perfect maid of honor. She took the bouquet from Amy when it was time for her and Seth to exchange rings. Helped her adjust her dress after she and Seth had kissed and they were officially married, then fell in behind the beaming bride and groom with Jackson by her side.

There was an invisible force field between her and the best man. They couldn’t stand each other, so what had that strange moment been about when he’d stared at her as though he’d never seen her before and she’d felt for a second as though she couldn’t breathe?

No doubt he’d seen as much crazy hooking up at weddings as she had. Or maybe he was one of those guys who thought bridesmaids always wanted sex.

She’d rather have sex with—well, she couldn’t think of anybody she’d rather have sex with right at the moment, but the point was she didn’t want to have sex with Jackson Monaghan.

Although, looking around the crowd at the number of women checking him out, she seemed to be the only single woman who didn’t.

They were stuck side by side in the receiving line, and she shook hands and kissed cheeks and smiled politely as guests passed by on the way to congratulate the bride and groom. A woman named Cynthia who had gone to school with her and Amy held on to Jackson’s hand a little too long.“You look so good in a tux,” she gushed. Then, still holding his hand, she turned to Lauren. “Doesn’t he? Doesn’t he look good in a tux?”

“Yes. He looks like you could slip him a twenty and get seated at the best table in the house.”

“Oh, I know exactly where I’d seat you,” he said to her, his eyes narrowing.

Cynthia giggled awkwardly and moved on.

She blinked her eyes. “Not the best table? What would that take? Fifty bucks?”

He squinted his eyes like a gunslinger at high noon. “We could work together. In that dress you look like the cigarette girl at the bar in Mad Men.”

There was a break in the stream of guests coming down the receiving line. Amy turned to her and said, “How are you holding up?”

“Fine. Except Jackson thinks I look like the cigarette girl at the bar in Mad Men.”

Amy’s eyes grew wide. “That’s so weird. That’s exactly what you said when you first tried on the dress.”

It was one thing to say it about yourself, and another thing to have a guy say it about you. But Amy had already turned to greet the next guest who stopped before her.

The wedding was designed so that guests could enjoy drinks and appetizers outside while the wedding party had their photos taken and then move inside for dinner and dancing later.

Amy was so happy it was impossible not to feel happy for her and an equally elated Seth, pleased everything had worked out for them and hopeful for their future.

The wedding party spent an hour with a professional photographer who had the easiest job in the world since the location was nothing but one big photo op and Seth and Amy were two blissful, attractive people.

But Gunter, the photographer, was German and a perfectionist. He took ages setting up each shot, ordering his assistant to move Amy’s bouquet slightly to the left, waiting for the slight breeze to drop before snapping a photo of the newlyweds.

Then he brought Jackson and Lauren into the photos. They stood stiffly side by side, not touching. Gunter stared through his viewfinder, shook his head, muttered, “Nein,” and then muttered some more in German. He stepped forward and placed Lauren’s bouquet in her right hand and took her left. He picked up Jackson’s right hand and posed his arm so that Lauren rested her left wrist over his, her palm resting on the back of his right hand. Gunter then turned the two of them so they angled toward the bridal couple, which put her body up against the best man’s.

She felt ridiculous and awkward with the warmth of his arm beneath hers and the feel of his hand under her palm. She felt the rigid hardness in him that was probably a combination of muscle tone and the same tension she felt.

“Smile like this is the happiest day of your life,” Gunter instructed them.

“I’m not that good an actress,” she muttered before pulling out a fake smile for the camera.

Amy suddenly turned, breaking the stiff pose. “Isn’t this fun?” she cried. “Can you imagine anything better?”

“Being trapped in an airless glass tank crawling with tarantulas?” Jackson said softly.

“Swimming with sharks while bleeding from an artery?” Lauren said.

“Plunging to earth right after the parachute doesn’t open?” he countered.

She was so glad when the photo session was over and they were released to join the party.

Even though Amy and her mother had tried to keep the numbers down, there were well over a hundred guests. Including the frat boys, as she and Amy called Seth’s school friends.

The frat boys had all grown up together in a fancy boarding school, and as far as Lauren could tell, they’d never outgrown their schoolboy pranks.

If Amy and Seth walked into the bridal suite and found a naked porn star reclining on the bed, or a copy of Sex for Dummies on Seth’s pillow, she wouldn’t be surprised.

She wandered among the guests, chatting to those she knew, making small talk with strangers. Her index finger throbbed from where she’d burned it last night. She’d stayed up late finishing her wedding gift for Amy and Seth. She was a stained-glass artisan and she’d completed a tricky window for the townhouse Amy and Seth had bought in downtown San Francisco with some generous financing from their parents.

She hoped Amy liked the piece. It was one she was really proud of. She fished an ice cube from the glass of ice water she was drinking and held it to her sore finger.

“What happened to your hand?”

She hadn’t even noticed Jackson come up beside her. “I burned it.”

She waited for some smart-ass comment, but he actually looked like a human being for a second. “Ouch.”

They both looked down at her hand. Her nails were short, and with her line of work, she almost never painted them so it was strange to see them perfectly manicured in pale pink. “Occupational hazard.”

“I thought you worked in a winery.”

She glanced up, surprised that he knew even that much about her. He seemed a bit embarrassed himself. “Seth mentioned it,” he said.

“I do. Leonato Estate Winery funds my real work, designing and making stained glass. Not a high-paying profession.” She dropped the ice cube back into her drink with a plop. It was true. She loved what she did. Had found her calling when she’d traveled to Europe after college. She and Amy had gone together, and as much as she’d enjoyed seeing the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum, it was the churches and cathedrals with their stained glass that had transfixed her. Venice and its glass makers had inspired her to change her career plans from a vague notion of getting a business degree to studying the ancient art of stained-glass work with an eye to making it look modern.

She was doing okay for an artisan. She sold her work through a couple of galleries and high-end craft markets and a few architects called her from time to time. Maybe she wasn’t getting rich, but she was managing. In a couple of years, if her sales continued to increase, she’d be able to quit the winery and work on her glass full-time.

“Amy’s mom sent me to find you. Dinner’s about to start.”

“Oh. Right.”

They entered the ballroom together into a sea of tables. The surfaces of the tables were crowded with the printed wedding programs, place cards and specially made chocolates wrapped in foil the same color as Lauren’s dress.

Naturally, she and Jackson were seated at the head table with Amy and Seth and both sets of parents.

Her place card put her between the two douches.

She knew exactly what food would be served and which wines, just as she’d known the foiled candies would match her dress. Because Amy had discussed every detail with her.

Even if she’d been bored by the details, she had to admit that Amy had been right. All her planning was paying off. From the wafer-thin slices of smoked salmon and capers, to the main meal (a choice of beef Wellington, chicken in a champagne sauce or a vegetarian plate) everything was perfect. From her perch at the head table, Lauren could see that everyone was having a wonderful time.

The frat boys acknowledged the solemnity of the occasion by banging on their wineglasses with their cutlery until Amy and Seth kissed.

“If I ever get married, I’m eloping,” she muttered.

She didn’t realize she’d been heard until Jackson said, “Me, too.”

The frat boys made Amy and Seth kiss a few more times throughout the meal until, finally, it was time for the speeches. To her surprise, Jackson’s toast to the bride was both intelligent and funny. Seth’s toast to the maid of honor was more about himself and how lucky he was that Amy’s best friend liked him, to which Lauren gave a good-natured two-thumbs-up, hoping that thumb-raising didn’t constitute actual lying.

Just when it seemed that the formal part of the evening was ending, the frat boys started banging away on their glasses again. Really, those servers needed to take their spoons away and send them to their rooms.

Amy and Seth rose, and Willy, whom she’d nicknamed Head Frat Boy, yelled, “Everybody at the head table. Let’s see some kissing.”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Oh, no,” she said.

At the same moment, Jackson muttered, “I don’t think so,” but as the sound of cutlery on glassware increased, the two sets of parents struggled to their feet. She and Jackson both remained seated until Amy and Seth laughed down at them, Amy saying, “Come on, you guys,” and Lauren realized they’d only appear more foolish refusing to play along.

“I am so eloping,” she said as she rose reluctantly to her feet.

“Me, too,” Jackson agreed. “Let’s get this over with,” he added, in the tone he’d probably have used on his way to a firing squad.

And then he kissed her.

Glasses clinked and wolves whistled and wedding guests clapped and cheered.

And she felt his mouth on hers. Warm. Not icky at all, in fact, but kind of nice. It was pretty much the briefest possible press of closed lips to closed lips, but still, there was a tiny buzz of something that snapped back and forth between them.

She sat back down as quickly as she could, banging her butt on the chair.

A couple of dances, she said to herself, circulate, make more small talk, and then I can go to bed. She’d been up way too late working, and then Amy had called her way too early this morning to remind her to bring a bathing suit. “Because we are going to hit the spa.”

Lauren had no idea when they were going to squeeze in time at the spa, but she’d thrown her bathing suit in her suitcase anyway and, giving up on any more sleep, padded to her tiny kitchen to brew coffee.

The short night and long day were catching up with her now. One of the perks of her position of maid of honor was that Amy’s parents had insisted on paying for her room. She had a lovely room on the third floor overlooking the ocean. It was dominated by a big, decadent bed, where she could sleep as long as she wanted.

Hotel Messina was the kind of hotel that contained a sprung dance floor at one end of the ballroom and a stage large enough for a big band. In its heyday the hotel had boasted its own band and the rich and famous had waltzed and fox-trotted many a night away here. The French doors were all open to the breeze when the orchestra struck up, and the MC called out the wedding couple for their first dance.

“Hope I don’t fall off my heels,” Amy said as she walked behind Lauren and giggled.

“You’ll be fine,” she whispered back.

Maybe it was corny and sentimental, but she had a moment, watching her best friend dance with her brand-new husband. They held each other briefly and then began to move with the music they’d chosen. She’d tried to talk Amy out of it, but ever since she’d seen Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on the prow of the Titanic she’d been determined that “My Heart Will Go On” would be her wedding song. Lauren had assumed she’d grow out of that idea, but no. And yet, as she watched her best friend in the arms of her new husband, waltzing to Celine Dion, she felt a real hope that they’d be this happy forever.