He stopped dead in his tracks.

“Wow.”

His eyes lingered on her for another moment before he turned to Amy, gesturing. “This place looks great, Amy. You did one hell of a job.”

Amy grinned. “Nice recovery, Jack.”

Cameron walked over and touched Jack’s face, unable to resist. “You shaved.” She took in the classically handsome chiseled features he’d been hiding underneath the scruff, as well as how incredible he looked in his dark gray suit. It should’ve been illegal for a man to walk around like that without some sort of permit.

Jack grinned as she checked out his smooth jaw. “Don’t worry—it’ll be back in about two hours.” He took his time looking her over. “You look stunning.”

From behind them, Amy cleared her throat. “Not to break this up, but we have this wedding to get to . . . Cameron—you have your itinerary for tonight?”

“Yep. In my purse.”

“Jack?”

He patted his blazer. “Got all six pages right here.”

“As indicated on page two, I’ll see you in the gazebo for bridal party pictures in five minutes.” Amy pointed at Cameron. “Don’t be late and make me regret choosing you for this position instead of Collin.”

“Was he seriously in the running?” Cameron asked, slightly offended by this.

“Only briefly. But I figured his wedding toast would be filled with all sorts of lame sports references.” Amy’s expression was stern. “I’m expecting much better things from you.” She left in a whirl of blush and ivory taffeta.

Jack nodded at Agents Rawlings and O’Donnell, who stepped outside for a moment, leaving them alone.

With a warm smile, he turned to Cameron and held out his hand. “So? Are you ready for this?”

She took his hand, lacing her fingers through his.

“Definitely.”


AMIDST THE CLAPPING and cheering, Jack escorted Cameron back to their table. He leaned in to congratulate her on a job well done when Collin raised his glass and beat him to it.

“Fantastic toast,” Collin said enthusiastically. “A few laughs, a few tears—seriously, you smoked the best man.”

Cameron shushed him as she took the seat between him and Jack, with a pointed glance in the direction of the other two couples at their table. Friends of the groom, she had whispered to Jack earlier—part of Amy’s plan to encourage mixing and conversation amongst the various groups. He’d actually already known who they were, and who they were friends with, along with their full credit history and lack of priors, having texted their names to Wilkins for background checks as soon as they’d introduced themselves.

As Jack stood behind Cameron, helping her with her chair, he tried to focus on anything other than the bare satiny skin at his fingertips. It was quite artful, the way the dress covered her just so, right at the curve of her lower back. An inch lower and he might be able to see cheek . . .

He was going out of his damn mind.

“Aren’t bridesmaids dresses supposed to be ugly?” he grumbled as he took the seat next to her.

“As if Amy would let any part of this wedding be ugly,” Cameron said. Underneath the table, she rested her hand on his thigh and squeezed gently.

Jack sucked in his breath through gritted teeth. On the other side of her, however, Collin seemed wholly unfazed by Cameron’s appearance. Jack kept one eye carefully trained on him, thinking things had better stay that way. Gay or not, best friend or not, no one with a dick was getting within a foot of Cameron while she wore that dress.

“My only criticism of the speech is that I didn’t get as much airtime as I deserved,” Collin complained.

Cameron brushed this off. “You got plenty of airtime. I talked about how the three of us lived together senior year, didn’t I? I even mentioned how you used to make pancakes for me and Amy when we got home from the bars.”

“We’d talk about the boys we’d met that night,” Collin explained to Jack.

Jack was curious about this. Plus he needed something to keep his mind off Cameron in that dress. “How did the three of you meet?”

Cameron started to answer when Collin held up a hand, cutting her off. “Ahem. Since no one asked me to give a toast at this wedding, I will handle this question. Besides, I tell this story better than you do.”

Collin sat forward in his chair, lowering his voice dramatically. “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Cameron rolled her eyes. “Oh boy.”

Collin held up his hands. “What? It was a dark and stormy night. I should know—I walked you home that evening, remember?” He turned back to Jack. “It was our sophomore year. I was living in my fraternity house and had been having a rough time of things in college, struggling with the issue of whether I was gay. I was at Michigan on a baseball scholarship and homosexuality was not something one discussed casually within the athletic circles. Anyway, one night early in the year, my fraternity had an after-hours party and it was pouring outside. I was hanging out by the front door, drinking my usual—which back then was Jim Beam and Coke—when Cameron blew in, huddled under a red umbrella with Amy and another girl. They were all laughing, and when they closed the umbrella, Cameron stepped into the room and shook out her hair. It was like something out of a movie—she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”

Jack toyed with his silverware. This story could go south very quickly . . . When his hand came to rest on his steak knife, this may or may not have been merely a coincidence.

“So I struck up a conversation with her and we hit it off right away,” Collin continued. “We started meeting up after classes, on the weekends, and I knew that this was it: if it was ever going to work with a woman, she was the one. A couple weeks later, we were hanging out in my room on a Saturday night and I had it all planned out—that was the night I was going to make my move.

“We were sitting on my couch listening to the radio—it was an eighties flashback night—and ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ came on. And Cameron sighed and rested her head against the back of the couch and said, ‘I like this song.’”

Cameron cut in here. “Then you inched closer to me and turned your face to mine. And you said, ‘I like this song, too.’”

“And I knew that was the moment,” Collin said. “So I leaned over and kissed her.”

Cameron took her hand off Jack’s thigh and removed the steak knife that mysteriously had made its way into his grip. He threw her an innocent look. Like he would ever harm one precious hair on Collin’s head . . . with witnesses around.

Nearing the climax of his story—for his sake, hopefully only in the literary sense—Collin continued. “The kiss went on for a bit, and I’m telling myself, ‘Okay, maybe this is actually working.’ So I pull back to see if she’s into it, and she gazes up at me with sort of an amused expression and says . . .” He gestured to Cameron.

“‘I’ve licked stamps who were more excited than you by that kiss.’”

Jack burst out laughing.

Collin shook his head with a grin. “I know, right? Jack, I’m telling you—I was crushed. But only for a moment, because then she reached up and held my face between her hands and said, ‘Collin—we’re friends, right?’ And I knew, even after only a few weeks, that this was a person who was going to be a very important part of my life. So I nodded yes, and she says, ‘Good. Then listen to me: you need to get over yourself and just admit you’re gay.’”

Collin looked at Cameron. “Hearing it said so matter-of-factly like that was liberating. So the next day, I decided to go to a very different type of after-hours party, on the other side of campus. And I kissed a guy for the first time.”

“Patrick,” Cameron said.

“You remember.”

“Of course I remember.”

Collin smiled. “And when I got home that night, she was the first person I called to tell about it.”

Cameron covered his hand with hers. “You’re right. You do tell that story better than me.”

“I like it,” said a voice from behind them. “I’ve never heard it before.”

Jack instinctively rested his hand on the harness under his suit as the three of them watched a blond, athletically built man in a well-cut suit approach their table.

Collin, who appeared shocked, was the first to speak. “Richard.”

Jack relaxed, recognizing the name. The ex-boyfriend who’d refused to come to the wedding.

“What are you doing here?” Collin asked him.

Richard’s face momentarily filled with emotion at the sight of Collin, then he collected himself and checked out the reception. “So this is Michigan. Not bad.”

There was an awkward pause as Collin remained silent. Richard shifted nervously.

Jack whispered in Cameron’s ear. “Why don’t we go dance?”

“I think that’s a great idea,” she said.

They said quick hellos to Richard before heading over to the dance floor to give them some space. Cameron glanced over her shoulder, and Jack’s eyes followed hers and saw that Richard had taken the seat next to Collin and appeared to be doing most of the talking. Collin was at least listening, however, and at one point he rested his hand on the back of Richard’s chair. Cameron smiled at the sight and turned back to Jack.

He led her toward the far corner of the dance floor, where he could be alone with her while keeping his eye on everyone else. Taking her hand in his, Jack pulled Cameron into his arms. He held her close with his other hand on her bare lower back as they began to dance. They fit perfectly together; in her high-heeled shoes, the top of her head came right to his chin.

“Thank you for this. For everything. I wouldn’t have had this night if it wasn’t for you,” she said.