But at the moment, Jess wished she’d been able to find an excuse not to come. When Margie, the clinic receptionist and third team member of their tiny practice, had realized she wouldn’t be able to attend the wedding because it clashed with the Pacific-island cruise she’d booked with her husband, it had been too late for Jess to retract her acceptance.
At least if Margie had been here, Jess would have known someone. It wasn’t that she was a wallflower, really. It was just hard being the odd man out, so to speak, in a room full of people who otherwise all knew each other.
Unfortunately, she’d been seated at the table with Hailey and Rob’s university friends. Jess could understand the logic—a lot of them were single, too, and they weren’t family. But they were all Hailey’s and Rob’s age—making them at least ten to twelve years younger than Jess—and that made her feel like the grown-up who’d been seated at the kids’ table. While they’d made occasional polite attempts to include her, they’d spent most of the night getting very drunk and reminiscing about their shared history and university high jinks and pranks. It had been fun, at first, but it was only possible to stay enthusiastically interested in such things for so long.
Especially when she was sober.
How early could you politely leave a wedding reception, anyway? Weren’t you supposed to wait until after the bride and groom left?
She stifled a yawn as she watched the happy couple grooving on the dance floor. Didn’t look as though they were in any hurry.
The thought of her bed had never been more appealing.
Jeez, when had she turned into such an old, boring grump?
“You look like you could use one of these.”
A misty glass of champagne appeared in front of her and Jess looked up to see mischievous green eyes twinkling down at her with a predatory grin beneath.
“I, uh...” Her hand took the proffered glass more out of reflex than anything else, but her temporary wine waiter took that as encouragement and sat down beside her, placing his own glass on the table.
“I’m Sean Paterson. Best man. And you are?” he asked.
It was such a smoothly delivered line Jess’s instant reaction was to shoot him down, but he was the first person who’d approached her since her tablemates had all moved to the smoking area outside. At least with someone sitting with her, she wouldn’t look like such a loser.
Not to mention that he was the man she’d been trying hard not to stare at all afternoon. In this instance the term best man was more than a job description.
His short, rich brown spiky hair had been artfully arranged; his jaw showed the shadow of a beard that held more than a hint of ginger. Those mossy-green eyes had flecks of gold in them, making them look as if they were constantly sparkling—as if there was some joke going on that only he knew about. He was tall but not freakishly so—only just making it to six feet Jess would guess—a good thing because very tall men always made her feel uncomfortable about her own five-feet-four-on-a-good-day. His tuxedo fitted him perfectly; tailored to suit his broad shoulders and narrow waist.
He was, in short, devastatingly gorgeous.
And he was Hailey’s husband’s brother.
Jess knew all about him. She’d known his name was Sean before he introduced himself. He was a writer of comic books or schlock horror novels, or something like that, and a nomad, apparently, of no fixed address. The black sheep of the Paterson clan—the one they didn’t like to talk about at family gatherings. He’d dropped out of his accounting degree at university and run away. There had been, according to Hailey, a massive fight over Rob’s insistence on having his older brother as his best man.
He was also—what were the words Hailey had used? Oh, yeah—irresponsible and reckless and immature. Hailey said they were the adjectives his own mother invoked.
Sean was the center of most of Hailey’s more extreme hysterics about all the things that could go wrong on her wedding day. Sean would forget the rings. Sean would refuse to wear the suit properly. Sean would bring a hooker as his date. Sean would simply not turn up.
Jess had listened patiently to Hailey’s rants. Listened, while secretly thinking that Sean sounded kind of thrilling, only to silently chastise herself immediately. She had appalling taste in men. Her attraction to Hailey’s brother-in-law-to-be, just from a description of his faults and the potential chaos he could cause, was yet further proof of that.
When she’d seen him standing at the front of the church next to Rob, she’d inwardly sighed. Of course he was the most attractive man she’d seen in years. Of course that would be how it worked.
He was hot. And so off-limits it wasn’t funny. Not that anything like that was likely. It just wasn’t something she did these days.
Yep. Somehow, when she hadn’t been paying attention, she’d turned into a miserable old spinster who preferred to be at home in her slippers than dancing the night away in heels.
What a depressing thought.
“I’m driving,” she said, putting the glass he’d handed her on the table. But she twisted a little in her seat to face him. It would be rude to ignore him, after all, and there was no harm in talking. “Thank you anyway.”
“Strange name.”
“Sorry?”
“‘I’m driving.’ It’s a strange name.”
He was teasing her because she hadn’t answered his question. She thought for a moment for a witty comeback but nothing sprang to mind. “Jess. Jess Alexander,” she said in the end. Really sparkling repartee there, Jess.
“What kind of car?” he asked, putting his own champagne down on the table untouched.
“Huh?”
“What kind of car do you drive?”
“Oh, a Subaru. Station wagon.” A sensible car that was large enough to transport animals occasionally but not too large to maneuver in the city.
He nodded, looking as if he was waiting for something. Finally Jess caught on.
“What kind of car do you have?” she asked politely.
“My car was used for the wedding.”
“Ah. Yes, of course.” Jess remembered that particular conversation with Hailey now. It was the one thing that Rob had insisted on for the wedding—apart from having his brother as best man. He’d been adamant that they use his brother’s pride and joy as the bridal car. Hailey had cried buckets because she’d wanted white limousines, not a red ’70s vintage muscle car with black stripes down the hood.
It had been Jess who had suggested that perhaps the groom should have just one thing in his own wedding that he’d decided upon. Jess had tried—gently—to advise Hailey that a great deal of marriage was about compromise. But then her own marriage had not exactly been a shining example to hold up for comparison, so once the irony of the conversation had occurred to her, she’d shut up and kept her advice to herself.
Something of that conversation must have penetrated Hailey’s wedding-addled mind, though, because in the end, Rob had been given final say over the wedding cars. And truly, Jess had thought the car was a fun and quirky touch this afternoon as the happy couple had climbed into it outside the church.
“It’s a nice car,” Jess said, as she knew she was expected to.
He looked pleased, and Jess steeled herself for a conversation about carburetors and horsepower. The guy was too good-looking not to be totally self-absorbed. But he surprised her by asking instead, “So, do you know many people here?”
He sat sideways in the chair, resting