Not one damned thing sexy about that.

  But his mind had gone straight to Lily’s gorgeous body moving temptingly beneath his on that couch in Las Vegas.

  He just needed time. Distance from the wedding day.

  So much was happening so fast. Monumental life changes. As it turned out, realizing his dream after twelve years of backbreaking work was a lot to process.

  So it made total sense that he’d feel some backlash.

  Lily had detailed some of his sister’s wedding plans for him over their nightly dinners. Discussing the somewhat luxurious lodge that the Hensen’s had used for all kinds of events, from barn dances to wakes to weddings. Lily wanted to repurpose a barn that had once housed the Hensen’s small, personal beef cattle operation into the event center, take out a part of the back wall of the lodge, making it floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the woods filled with hiking trails, and adding an outdoor gazebo with cleared ground for seating for the actual weddings to take place when weather permitted. She was hoping to have some of the work completed in time for Esme’s wedding the following month.

  He’d seen his sister’s vehicle on the property a couple of times. Had smiled each time. Couldn’t be happier for her.

  And felt a major prick in his sense of well-being when she texted him on Saturday, asking him to meet her and Lily at the lodge—a rustic, though quite nice place, complete with ballroom area for holding events.

  The fact that she’d sent the request, not Lily, made him uneasy.

  His business partner had conceded the task for a reason. He didn’t like not knowing what it was.

  As if Lily and Esme were in cahoots. Concocting something he might not otherwise go for.

  And, perhaps, he was letting his conscience get the better of him—pretending to be in love, and married for life—and needed to just suck it up and quit overreacting to everyday things.

  It was just... Esme, with her soft heart and quiet intelligence, tended to see through him more than most. Which could prove to be a major problem for obvious reasons.

  “If the gazebo isn’t ready, we could do the ceremony here,” Lily was saying as he walked in through a back, service door. “With the right lighting, maybe strings of little white lights, it’ll make the place look more magical. I can set this area off with white lattice room dividers, white wooden chairs for the guests, and the aisle would come from there.” She pointed to a hallway leading to the restrooms and a back area currently being used for storage. “I’ll have that room cleared out, carpeted, with changing areas, couches, mirrors...make it into a bridal suite...and then the reception can be in the ballroom area.”

  Her words broke off as she and Esme noticed him.

  He was smiling. Couldn’t help it. Lily was the best.

  Whether she was serving coffee or planning dream weddings, she gave everything to the moment.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” he told them.

  Esme grabbed his arm, pulling him toward the potential wedding area. “You aren’t interrupting,” she responded, dropping his arm. “Ryder and I want a simple, traditional wedding,” she said then. “We’re each picking out a couple of our favorite passages from books to read as part of the ceremony. Lily and Bea are my bridesmaids...”

  He looked at his friend at that one. She hadn’t mentioned that she’d been asked to be in his sister’s wedding. She’d need money for the dress and...

  They hadn’t had a single personal conversation in days. He hadn’t even asked how she was doing.

  “...and Ryder’s brother Brandon and Linc Mahoney are the groomsmen.”

  He’d been left out. Disappointing, but best that he not be paired with Lily, walking her down the aisle.

  “The two couples will each be walking a stroller down the aisle with the boys in them,” Esme was continuing. Painting a picture for him. One that made him happy for her. “That part was Lily’s idea, because I wanted them included somehow...”

  Asa looked over at the woman he’d married the week before. Wondering if it was hard for her, planning a real wedding when hers had been...not that. Knowing she’d never let it show.

  He wanted to tell her that she’d get her chance. As soon as they were divorced and she embarked on her new life, in a real home of her own, she’d meet someone, fall in love...

  The idea didn’t make him feel all that much better. More conscience backwash, he was sure.

  Her attention all on Esme, Lily didn’t even glance his way.

  “And then the next part is where you come in,” Esme was saying, yanking Asa’s gaze straight to her. His sister grabbed his hand and pulled him a step closer. “I’m hoping you’ll walk me down the aisle, Asa. That you’ll give me away.”

  Him? In a tux again so soon? Walking down a wedding aisle? Esme deserved someone who believed in that stuff.

  But... “Of course I will,” he told her. And as she teared up, he didn’t nudge her as he would have done any other time. Or lighten the moment with teasing. Instead, his chest tightened and he pulled his little sister into his arms. Silently promising her that he’d give her away, but not completely. Not ever completely. He’d be having her back until the day he died.

  It wasn’t until he’d pulled back that he realized Lily had walked away.

  She was inspecting the back storage area. Giving him and Esme their private family moment. As a friend would do.

  Funny, how it bothered him so much, her always ending up alone like that.

  If anyone deserved to be included in close family moments, it was Lily.

  Not him.

  * * *

  Esme had been gone about an hour on Saturday, when Asa stopped by the office.

  “This place looks great,” he said, looking around from just inside the door. It was the first time he’d been to her new space since their first day of ownership.

  Lily had rearranged furniture so she had a picturesque view of the property from her desk. She had also thrown out two grocery bags of things that were of no use to her and Asa, and had been through the entire filing system. Fortunately, Val Hensen had kept great records, and had them in easy to follow order.

  “It’s getting there,” she told him with a happy sigh. “Now that I know I’m going to be working here long term, I’m thinking I’d like to paint the walls—they’re so smudged and dirty—but that can wait a good while.” Business. It was all they talked anymore.

  “You want to go get some beers?”

  He wanted to go to the Corral? Had he read her mind? Did he know how badly she missed his friendship? “Now?”

  His shrug was off, not easy and casual like before. “Maybe after dinner.”

  “Okay.” She glanced over at him, still bothered by the somber look on his face. “Or we could go now and have wings for dinner.”

  It was the Corral. It wouldn’t be a date.

  And dinnertime was for business talk, so if that was what he needed, if he had something to discuss with her that he wasn’t sure she’d like, best do it at the Corral.

  Where her feelings would be under wraps, as though held by the people in town who, collectively, were her family. In the house she was currently sharing with Asa, she felt too raw.

  Made no sense, but there it was.

  He offered to drive. She accepted. No way she could see him riding around in her little beater. And it would be too weird for them to drive separately. In the past it had made sense. They’d been coming from and returning to two separate places.

  So much change, so many nuances, she hadn’t considered.

  She led the way into the bar, waving at people as she went, heading for the only open table, in a back corner of the front room. She and Asa usually sat at the bar. But for some reason, she didn’t want to eat up there that night.

  He didn’t say anything about her change in seating location. Just dropped into the chair across from her and pulled the wing menu out of the metal holder at the end of the table. He suggested a combo platter. She agreed, and, rather than waiting for table service, he went up to the bar to place their order. Came back carrying two beers.

  She took hers. Sipped. Telling herself to relax, as she faced another first.

  The first time she was nervous sitting at the Corral with Asa. They’d promised to be friends forever, but it was beginning to seem like, after only one week of marriage, they were hardly friends at all.

  His gaze almost accusing he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me that Esme asked you to be in her wedding?”

  Whatever she’d expected to come her way, that was not it. She frowned, not at all sure where he was going with the question. “Because she didn’t want anyone to know she’d chosen her bridal party until she asked you to walk her down the aisle.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have no idea.” She told him the truth. “I didn’t ask.” Then added, “But I can take a guess if you want me to.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Please.”

  “She didn’t want to make the announcement without you in it.”

  His features relaxed for a second. But not long. And she waited. They might not be acting as friends, or in any way normal around each other, but she’d known him, adored him, for a lot of months, and could still at least read his expressions with some accuracy.

  “You haven’t spent any of the money I deposited into an account for you.”

  Again, not anything she’d expected him to be bothering about. Him going crazy having her living in the same house as him...that wouldn’t surprise her. But this threw her for a loop.

  “I haven’t needed to,” she told him. “I’ve been working full-time since I graduated high school, and it’s just me. I’ve got a little bit of money put away.”

  “And?” he asked when she stopped talking, keeping the rest to herself. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who could read faces.

  “And I don’t like it that you can see the account, see what money goes out and where.” There. She’d said it. “If we were really married and had a joint account, then I’d be fine with it, but it makes me feel like I’m your charity case, or kept woman or something, you having ownership on my bank account. Or even depositing into it like that. I’d rather just get paid from the ranch like everyone else.”

  He watched her. She could see his features softening, almost like he was morphing back into the man she knew right before her eyes. “Or, for the time we’re married, we could have a joint account, with all profits from the ranch that aren’t going back into the business, deposited into it, and we both spend from it personally as needed.”

  Her heart leaped. He wanted a joint bank account? You didn’t do that if you were only into something for a few months.

  “And when we split, we’ll divide whatever money is in the account equally. Then the ranch can start to pay you.”

  Or maybe you did do it even if you were only in it for a few months.

  Remembering her sister telling her to hold on to hope that the marriage could become real, Lily nodded. And felt like she’d been thrust over rapids and come out intact on the other side. She nodded as Asa told her he’d take care of it on Monday, as though they’d been discussing...fat veins in beef. Something he’d have talked to her about in the olden days.

  So hard to believe that had only been a week and a half ago.

  Putting his beer down after a long sip, he said, “This is all really strange, huh?”

  “Yeah. Kinda.” Completely, one hundred percent.

  He signaled for another beer. Took a long sip after it arrived, and said thickly, “I feel like I’m losing you.”

  Her heart leaped up and started to thud. Hard. “You aren’t going to lose me,” she assured him, able to pour herself fully into that response. “If you haven’t figured it out by now, I value your friendship more than just about any other.”

  Or, maybe more than any other, period. Her gaze dropped to her beer. From the night she’d met Asa, something in her had settled. As though she’d met her soulmate.

  Which was why she was in the predicament she was in—tangled up in truth and pretense. Because Asa had needed her, so she’d needed to be there for him.

  His finger touched the back of her hand, briefly. Enough to get her to look up at him.

  “You know that I consider you my best friend, right?” he asked.

  She’d thought so. Hoped so. Then nodded, more tentatively than she’d have liked.

  “The sex is the problem,” he blurted then. Softly. But it hit her like a megaphone to her ear. “It’s like there...between us...holding us apart.”

  Was he saying he wanted more of it? That wanting it was what was in between them?

  “We can’t go back and undo it,” he continued.

  “Do you want to?”

  “Hell, yes.” His head dip emphasized the words even more critically. To the point that her mouth dropped open in horror.

  Apparently her expression was so filled with shock, she didn’t even notice until Asa said, “Oh, hell, Lil, that didn’t come out right.” Reaching over, he took her hand. “I’m not saying it wasn’t great. Because it was. But that’s the crux of the problem, right? If it hadn’t been good, we’d both have shrugged it off, and it wouldn’t still be here mucking things up between us.”

  She’d never, in a million years, have considered their lovemaking to be something negative, but with what Esme had told her the other day about Asa, about them growing up, and him living his whole life ensuring that he was never ensnared as his parents had been, she understood what he was saying.

  Enough to lose some of the anguish his Oh hell had immediately stirred within her.

  “It’s not mucking things up for me,” she told him then. Thinking of him. And of herself, too. “We’re healthy adults, Asa. We’d had a bit to drink. Things happen sometimes. Like...sometimes, when there’s white cake around with buttercream frosting... sometimes I just eat too much of it. It’s there, tempting, and I’m free to help myself to it, right? So sometimes I do. That’s all.”

  Not quite. By a long shot. But, sort of.

  “White cake, huh?” he asked, a slow grin spreading across his face.

  She shrugged. “Only with buttercream icing. None of that whipped crap for me.” She grinned back. Just as she’d have done any other time they’d been sharing beers together.

  He nodded. “White cake,” he said again.

  “This is what I missed this week,” she told him then. Something inside of her pushing to be heard. “This right here. You and me.”

  His face sobering, he nodded again. Looking her in the eye. “Me, too.”

  And she wasn’t quite done. She could roll with most punches. Could take all the change happening overnight. She just didn’t want lose him. She’d bear it if she did. She’d find her happiness wherever she ended up. A lifetime of doing so told her that.

  But she couldn’t just sit back and take it this time. She had to fight for him. “It seems to me that people quit being friends when they quit sharing...whatever it is they share,” she told him. “This...” She pointed between the two of them, their beers, their conversation. “This is what we share.”

  “And right there is why you’re my best friend,” he told her, grabbing her hand again, giving it a squeeze. Sending her insides into a major quiver.

  Giving her hope.

  And then letting go.

  Chapter Eleven

  Saturday’s conversation with Lily at the Corral stayed with Asa as he dived into ranch business the following day. They’d stayed for hours, drinking and then sobering before he drove home. Discussing ranch business a lot of the time, but only because they were both so invigorated by the task they’d taken on together.

  Their chitchat the night before was what prompted him to stop by the office for her when a call came in about a water leak in the cabin they’d just rented the day before. A young professional couple looking for a few days away from work was staying here. “Since you’re the one who checked them in, I thought maybe you’d want to do your thing with them, make sure there’s nothing else that’s not to their liking, while I fix the sink.”

  “You thought maybe I’d entertain them while you fix the sink,” Lily said, grinning as she followed him out to his four-wheeler. “You’re definitely a guy who likes to be left alone when he’s on a project.” She stuck out her tongue as she finished.

  And his groin grew instantly.

  At the sight of that teasing, moist, tongue.

  What the hell...

  However, his immediate problem disappeared as quickly as it had arisen when he pulled up to the cabin to the sound of tense voices coming from an opened window.

  Lily glanced at him. “Maybe there’s more than just a water leak? You sure that’s all they said was wrong?”

  The couple had called the ranch’s maintenance number, which rang to a cell phone Asa was carrying until he could hire a full-time maintenance man. Mr. Hensen had handled a good bit of the ranch’s fix-it problems himself during his lifetime, but after he died Val had called a guy in town anytime she’d had a problem.

  “That’s all they said,” he told her, grabbing the plumbing bag he’d put together when he’d sorted through tools earlier in the week.

  Tense sounds came again, male that time. He couldn’t make out the words.

  “Maybe we should come back,” Lily said, but he shook his head.

  “I told them I was on my way.”

  She didn’t have to accompany him. He was still glad she did, though, as he climbed the couple of steps to the cabin’s front door.

  He’d barely ducked under the kitchen sink before he quickly diagnosed the problem—a crack in the trap—and went to shut off the water, pulling a new trap piece out of his bag as he returned to the kitchen. Grabbed his little can of purple PVC pipe glue, too. And the pliers he’d need to unscrew the old trap and apply the new.