The Groomsman: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Billionaires of Club Tempest) Read online

  “That would be me,” he admitted. “Do you like art?”

  “I love it,” she said.

  I almost missed the flash of irritation on Sam’s face and would have paused to consider the implication if Mac Walsh hadn’t taken that moment to clear his throat, sit up straight in the booth, and say directly to me, “My god, you have to be about the most delicious-looking piece of arse I’ve seen this side of the Atlantic.”

  He said it so clearly and with such confidence that it literally stunned me — and the rest of the table — into silence.

  Henry was the first to react. “Mac!” he said sharply. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Wuh?” The drunken tinge was back in his voice.

  “Don’t— Don’t worry about it,” I said, trying to defuse the situation before it exploded. I grabbed Daniel’s leg beneath the table and squeezed it as tightly as I could to keep him from speaking up while simultaneously glaring daggers at the drunk man in front of me. He had the balls to give me a lazy wink in return.

  Despite my hand, Daniel started to make a biting remark, but I nudged him, hard. I could feel the annoyance radiating off him and it infected me, mirroring it back in equal forces at the both of them.

  “Forgive him,” Sam said wearily. It sounded like this wasn’t much of a surprise. “Mac is the owner of Mac Walsh Liquor. It’s practically his job to be a drunk.”

  So that was why his name sounded familiar. I’d always assumed Mac Walsh was just the brand name, like Jack Daniels, not connected to an actual person.

  “And because he’s Irish,” Daniel spat out.

  Mac’s face went from smugly self-satisfied to angry in a flash. “What’d ya just say about me?” he demanded.

  “Daniel, shut up,” I hissed to him and then rounded on Mac too. “And leave him alone.”

  Kylie stepped in, trying to change the subject by addressing Henry Blackburn, the one she’d been eye-banging since the moment they’d stopped us in line. “And what do you do, Henry Blackburn? I’m prepared to be impressed.”

  The group gladly moved on as Henry started talking about investing and bank accounts.

  Mac was still staring at me with a mixture of lust and playful glee. He knew this was making me angry and he was loving it, maybe as much as he loved riling up Daniel. Well, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of getting a rise out of me. Daniel, on the other hand, was the one I had to worry about.

  Mac was pretending to ignore him, staring at me instead. When he ran his tongue over his top lip and wiggled his eyebrows, I preemptively stuck a foot out over Daniel’s and caught him as he tried to lash out at Mac under the table. That wasn’t going to get him anywhere other than the hospital.

  I heard Sam ask a question and latched myself onto it so as to escape the mental confrontation these two half-drunk idiots were having across the table. I could feel myself losing any control I had over Daniel and I was checking out. It wasn’t even about me, if it ever was. It was the proverbial dick-measuring contest. If either of them had a single ounce of self-awareness, they might realize they should be standing back-to-back instead of whipping it out.

  And I wasn’t going to have any part of it.

  The question Sam asked had been about what we were up to tonight. It was a low ball. I was a New Yorker in my mid-twenties — talking about where I’d been and what I drank came as naturally as flight to a sparrow.

  “Well we started off at Hopcat, just a couple rounds and an appetizer. That was back at five. We,” I nodded at Beck, “came right from the office and met up with a few friends. Kylie and Jordan didn’t come until…” I looked at them questioningly.

  “Caesar’s,” Jordan said. “That creepy place on West Eighth Street.”

  “Yep, that’s right,” I said.

  “What makes it creepy?” Mason asked. “And why do you go there anyway?” He was listening, interested, while Sam seemed to have checked out the moment I started talking and was instead staring in Beck’s general direction with a concentrated look of doubt and dilemma. Beck was staring at the floor with a pretty similar expression. Yeah, those two were definitely going to bang again.

  “Uh, well the prices are great, and it’s near everything. But…” I trailed off and looked to Jordan for confirmation.

  “Yeah,” she said, “it’s full of old, creepy drunk dudes. Serious wandering hand syndrome. You won’t leave untainted when it’s crowded. Plus they have a whole ‘Ancient Rome’ theme and way too many guys come in wearing togas like they’re fucking hilarious. And trust me, when the cloth falls the wrong way, you can see everything.”

  Mac laughed. It was a deep boom, and the entirety of his body shook with it. “Sounds pretty damn funny to me,” he said.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. They’d both moved on and the night would be—

  “Yeah, must make you feel right at home with all the drunks and cocks.”

  Do I even need to mention who said that? Yeah, it was fucking Daniel. And Mac was far from pleased. Pretty damn far from pleased.

  “What the fuck you sain’ to me, boy? Who the feck are you? Seriously, who the feck is this son of a bitch comin’ in to my bar, drinkin’ my booze and talkin’ down to me like I just feckin’ rowed over here in a goddamn po-tater!” The tirade exploded out of him in a drunken roar, snapping Sam and Beck out of their trance and getting the attention of the other VIP couches nearby.

  “Hey, hey,” Mason said loudly, grabbing Mac’s arm, trying to calm him down.

  Daniel crossed his arms and his mouth curved into a smile at getting the reaction he wanted. “Come on,” he cracked. “Why are you so offended? It’s not like I stole your pot of gold.”

  I punched him in the shoulder as the three guys groaned almost in harmony. Beck, Kylie, and Jordan had their mouths open. Oddly the statement seemed to calm Mac more than anything. A decision flicked behind his green eyes. He stood and cast us in his shadow.

  “All ‘ight. Outside. Now.”

  Daniel’s smile slipped off his face. “What are you talking about?” Finally there was a note of hesitation in his voice.

  Mac cracked his knuckles and I noticed just how big his hands were. They looked like anvils. “I’m not kicking yer ass in my favorite bar because I’d like to come back inside when I’m done.”

  Sam looked like he was trying to hide a smile, but even though Daniel was acting like a complete idiot, I wasn’t about to stand by while his loud mouth got his ass handed to him.

  I stood up. “Okay, that’s enough. We’re going home.”

  “Wait a minute,” Daniel said, standing too. “I’m not afraid of him.”

  You should be. I tried to communicate the thought with my eyes but I supposed our relationship hadn’t progressed far enough to get to that point.

  I tried one last time to be the voice of reason. “Let it go,” I said. I turned to Mac. “Both of you. I’m sorry he’s being an ass, but it’s not worth it.”

  “There’s where I’d disagree with ya, love,” Mac said. “I think yer little friend needs to be taught a bit of respect.”

  Faced with the sudden new reality that he was actually going to have to fight this hulking Irishman, Daniel made a decision in his mind. It was one that any reasonable person would have told him was completely inadvisable. He must have assumed that, with one good punch and the element of surprise, he could end the fight before it even began. The problem was, as Daniel’s fist collided with Mac’s face, while he did have the element of surprise, the punch was far from good. It didn’t even stumble the much larger man. Instead it transformed Mac’s expression from one of anger to one of complete wonder, wonder at this slim kid who dared to sucker punch him.

  But the expression only lasted a moment. Because then Mac brought his own fists up and showed Daniel, and the rest of us, exactly what one good punch was capable of.

  1

  Mac

  One Year and Four Months Later

  * * *

  Here�
�s an analogy for ya:

  You ever find yourself in the car with a buddy, barreling down the highway at ten or twenty over, having a good time and talking shit, the both of you just trying to forget about tomorrow? And has it ever happened that, at some point between the mile markers, you see, just out of the corner of your eye, a crazy chick in a Jeep going just as fast but also she’s got her face in her phone and she’s driving with her knees while smoking a cigarette, and she’s in the lane beside you but you can just tell by the way the wheels are starting to drift that she’s about to enter yours? And your buddy driving the car doesn’t see or know that his whole world is about to get screwed in the ass and there’s no time for a warning, nothing you can do to stop it except grab the wheel and get him out of the way before all of you — your buddy, yourself, even the stupid chick in the car — go up in flames?

  Ever had that happen to you?

  Well, its been a long damn time since I rode in the front seat of a car, but I don’t have to be barreling down the freeway to know when disaster is about to strike. And a warning shout isn’t going to do any good because, as much as I love my buddy, he has to be the densest motherfucker I’ve ever met in my life.

  Otherwise why the fuck would he be getting married?

  Henry’s private jet hurtled us toward Mexico and insanity and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

  I sat in a chair toward the back of the plane and carefully watched Sam’s eyes, looking for signs of a mental breakdown. They still looked like his, sparkling with the same humor as before. But there was no way that was still Sam inside. The guy I befriended so many years ago would never have gone through with this madness. And he was only thirty-three for Christsake! That was way too young to get married. Hell, he was too young to have a steady girlfriend, another mistake of the past year and a half.

  I took another sip of my scotch. It was my own brand, my original recipe, the one I’d made my fortune on. There was a comforting familiarity in it, and I needed the stability right now as the rest of the world went crazy around me.

  Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t have anything against Beck Harris. She was… fine. Gorgeous, cute accent, seemed smart and driven and all that ‘important’ bullcrap. I tried my best not to hold anything against her while they were dating. It wasn’t her fault Sam had gone and convinced himself he was in love. He was sick, that was all. A fever of the brain and maybe the heart that had convinced him that, since he was at the top of his game professionally, he had to go screw up his life in some other way to even the scales.

  Any issue I may or may not have had with Beck came after he’d proposed and she’d just encouraged the sickness by saying yes.

  I’d tried to throw some hints Sam’s way. Isn’t it strange that Beck met you her very first night in New York? Didn’t she have close to nothing before you? Hey, NYT crossword, ten letters — another name for the prospectors that went to California in 1849? Starts with a “g”? End with a o-l-d-d-i-g-g-e-r? But as subtle as I was, Sam never seemed to get the hint.

  And to make matters worse, they’d decided they didn’t want to wait to get married. Instead of staying engaged, they were just jumping right into it. I mean, damn. At least give yourself some time to change your mind. By the time they realized it wasn’t going to last, they’d have already screwed everything up for all of us.

  The others might not want to admit it. Hell, maybe they didn’t even know. But I’d been through this before and I knew that, when one guy in a group of friends got married, that was the beginning of the end of all of them. By this time next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sam was completely gone from our lives. And who knew which of the others would catch the bug from him?

  I watched Sam cross the plane, moving to sit next to Henry. Poor old fool. He had no idea what was coming.

  “Looking a little menacing there, sport.” I stiffened; the voice whispered into my ear like the devil on my shoulder.

  But no, it was just Twain. He’d popped up over the seat behind me. I hadn’t realized he was back there, probably passed out.

  “I’m thinking,” I said stiffly. When he didn’t move out of my ear, I added, “Don’t you have something to snort?”

  Twain snorted as if following my cue. “We’re going to Mexico, baby. I’m doing a tolerance break.”

  Tolerance break, my ass. Twain didn’t know the meaning of the phrase, and that was pretty rich coming from me.

  “Come on,” he insisted, moving away from my ear and instead leaning over the back of the chair next to me, bringing his face sideways into my peripheral vision. “Talk to the tinker. Tell me your troubles and woes.”

  Twain was the odd one out in our social club, the Knights, and I supposed that should make me feel sorry for him. I didn’t though. He fit our only two parameters — be under thirty-five and be a self-made billionaire — but his inclusion only made me wish that we had more rules. Like a minimum age.

  Twain was about five years younger than the rest of the Knights and the only one who didn’t work. All that money combined with unlimited time and fame was more a disservice than a gift. I wasn’t exactly building the Mac Walsh brand too much anymore, but I was at least the head of the board. There was a reason to throw on a suit a few times a week and not be trashed out of my mind every day.

  Twain, on the other hand, had started selling his book series when he was seventeen. I hadn’t read any of ‘em — I wasn’t a big reader — but it seemed like everyone else in the world had. And those that missed the books had definitely seen the movies. Why he needed to be a part of a low-key club like the Knights was beyond me. He had enough Hollywood parties to go to, enough starlets and models hanging off his arm.

  I wanted him out, but he and Keegan got along and Henry found him funny, so he stayed in. Sam and I didn’t care much for the guy. Too high strung (or strung out) and too much of a kid. Mason, bleeding heart that he was, seemed to think that he’d grow out of it with guidance, but I’d bet that the only thing Twain was going to grow out of was what little morality he still had.

  “I’m not telling you shit,” I growled. “Get outta my ear.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with Beck does it?” Twain also had a really annoying habit of seemingly being able to read thoughts.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Patience… I really was trying not to be a cantankerous idiot, but old habits did die hard.

  “What the hell are you even talking about?” I asked, just to keep my silence from being an answer.

  “You jealous? ‘Cause here I was thinking you wanted to fuck her friend. What was her name again?”

  That was it. I stood quickly and turned around, towering over Twain with murder in my eyes. Well, maybe not murder. But at the very least aggravated assault.

  Twain fell back into his seat as if the glare I gave him had physically shoved him back. He looked up at me with a lazy grin. “Come on, man. Don’t be a dick. I’m just joking around with you.”

  It was always ‘just a joke’ with Twain. Maybe he’d recognize the line if he understood the consequences for crossing it. The way I was feeling, a fight would do me some good anyway. I hadn’t properly gone at it in a while, and if it had to be one of the Knights whose ass I kicked, I’d rather it be Twain’s any day of the week.

  “What’s going on, Mac?”

  Well that was fast. Mason had come over to keep the peace. As usual.

  My friendship with Mason Reads was a paradox to everything that I knew about myself. If you’d told teenage Mac that one day he’d be friends with — even hold a lot of respect for — a man who’d never once been in a fight, didn’t know shit about motorcycles, and probably fucked like a lover, he’d never have believed you (and then probably would have beat your ass for even talking to him in the first place). And yet, somehow, Mason tended to be the only one out of the Knights that could back me down or even keep me from getting worked up in the first place.

  He also tended to get on my last ever-lovi
ng nerve with his hippy-dippy, emotionally-intelligent bullshit, but we all have our flaws.

  Mason stood with his hands tucked into the pockets of his light-gray suit pants. His eyes flicked from me to Twain like a principal catching two boys fighting in the hall.

  “Twain’s being a piece of shit. Though what’s new?” I spat.

  Twain’s cat-like eyes narrowed. “I’m just making conversation,” he said, punctuating the sentence with a yawn. “I don’t know what Big Mac is on about.”

  “That’s it—” I started. He knew I hated that nickname.

  Mason put a hand on my arm. “Mac…” he said.

  I shook it off, but didn’t go further. Behind us, Henry and Keegan still had Sam distracted on the other end of the plane.

  Mason fixed Twain in his cool gray eyes. “Dude, it’s four hours on a plane. Can’t you go that long without antagonizing someone?”

  “Suppose not,” Twain said, examining his fingers.

  “Well, we’re going to land soon,” Mason said. “And then you can go find something to stick your cock into.” He jerked his head back toward the guys. “Just go entertain Sam. I want to talk to Mac.”

  Twain hesitated, looked for a moment like he might even refuse, but then got up and walked, smirking, past me. God, what a rat-faced little feck…

  “Your fists are clenching,” Mason noted, taking a seat across from the one Twain just vacated. “You need to chill out, man. You’re not gonna make it through the week.”

  I took a deep breath and sat down across from him. “I’m fine,” I said, though my tone told the truth. “Just ready to get off this fecking plane.”

  “Come on, Mac,” Mason said. “I know you. You’ve been off for a while now. What’s getting you?” He looked over at Sam. “Is it Sam getting married?”

  Bingo, nail on the head. Of course Mason could guess, maybe he already knew. He and Sam were close. I’m sure my less than subtle hints had made it back to him.

  “Hey, if Sam wants to throw his life away, it’s not my problem,” I said, downing the rest of my scotch. “It’s up to him.”