“Come on, Andie.” Megan gave me a gentle shove. “You’ve spent more time with him than any of us. Tell me you’ve never lusted after that bod.”
“Yeah,” Kaylee said. “You have to admit he’s tasty as hell.”
“No me gusta.” I wrinkled my nose and repeated the lie I’d been telling for years—the lie I could tell in my sleep at this point. “I don’t think about him like that. He’s my brother’s best friend and was over at our house so much when we were growing up, he might as well be my brother too.”
“You’re crazy,” Megan said, brushing her copper brown hair off her shoulder.
Not crazy, just realistic. I’d learned a long time ago not to think about Wyatt like that, because he’d never shown the slightest inclination to think about me that way. Wyatt treated me like another little sister, and he’d made it very clear over the years that I’d never be anything else to him. I was practically the only woman in town he’d never hit on, even jokingly. If that didn’t send a clear message…
Kaylee stood up straighter. “Oh shit, he’s heading over here.” She smoothed her shiny blonde hair, arranging the long locks over her shoulders while Megan scrambled to give her lipstick a quick check in her phone’s camera.
As I watched my friends primp, I wondered—not for the first time—if they’d invited me out tonight for my company or for my connection with Wyatt. Even Rain was swiping her fingers under her eyes to clear away any stray flecks of mascara.
I’d never understood why people bothered with makeup. If I was going to go out dancing and get all sweaty, I’d rather not have to worry about shit dripping down my face. How did that look any better than your actual, natural skin? Since my job at the state park involved a lot of tramping around outdoors in the woods, makeup seemed like a colossal waste of time and money.
The subtle scent of Wyatt’s cologne greeted me a second before he did, and I felt my stomach tighten.
“Hey you.” He gave my ponytail a tug before draping one of his tattooed arms around my shoulders.
“Hey you,” I said back, smiling as I looked into his familiar blue eyes.
As an avid collector of trivia, I knew that blue eyes weren’t actually blue. They had no pigment at all, and their blue appearance was merely a trick of physics—a result of scattering light similar to the effect that made the sky and water look blue. That meant Wyatt’s eyes had no set color, and their appearance depended entirely on the available light wherever you happened to be looking at them. Tonight, for instance, against his midnight blue shirt, under the lights of the dance hall, his eyes were a brilliant azure, like the ocean on a painfully clear day.
He pulled me into a crushing hug, his arms encircling my rib cage and squeezing hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. I closed my eyes as I pressed my face into his chest, savoring the sensation while it lasted. Which was never long enough.
Letting go of me, he turned to greet the other women at the table. “Evening, ladies.” His azure eyes twinkled, and his mouth tilted in a sultry smirk as his gaze traveled over all three of my friends. “How’s everybody doing?”
“Great!” Kaylee chirped, blinking rapidly. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to bat her eyelashes or if it was more of a deer-in-the-headlights situation.
“Better now.” Megan smiled brightly as she sidled closer to Wyatt, close enough that their shoulders brushed. “Where’s my hug?”
“Right here.” Wyatt grinned as he leaned in to embrace her. It wasn’t as vigorous a hug as he’d given me. Instead, he stroked his hands up Megan’s back in an almost sensual caress as he turned his head to nuzzle into her hair. I heard him whisper something I couldn’t make out over the music playing over the speakers, and Megan let out a peal of laughter.
Wyatt went around the whole table like that, passing out hugs and flirtatious comments calculated to make every recipient feel special. That was his gift—his ability to turn his charm on you and make you believe for one magical moment that you were the most important girl in the room. Even when you’d just watched him turn the exact same charm on every other woman in the room before you.
They all ought to know better than to fall for it. Wyatt had the attention span of a gnat when it came to women. Actually, scratch that. Gnats were persistent as hell—unlike Wyatt. No woman had ever managed to hold on to him for longer than a few weeks, and most didn’t even rate more than one night.
Yet here we all were, putty in his hands anyway.
As I watched Wyatt brush Kaylee’s carefully placed hair off her shoulder, I scowled and downed another mouthful of beer to chase away the bitterness in my throat. My friends were so busy envying my friendship with Wyatt that they’d probably never considered I might envy them.
At least they had a fighting chance. I would never be anything to him but his best friend’s tomboy little sister. Fun enough to hang out with, but forever beneath his romantic notice. I didn’t get sensual back caresses, hair nuzzles, or sweet nothings whispered in my ear. I got the same hearty hugs Wyatt gave my mom, who’d practically helped raise him, and my aunt Birdie, who’d been his preschool teacher. I probably ought to be honored by that, but it was hard when I’d been yearning to feel Wyatt’s lips on mine since I was old enough to understand what kissing was.
Wyatt continued to chat up our table as we waited for the band to take the stage. He had his arms around Rain and Kaylee, casually holding them both against his sides, but his eyes kept jumping to Megan with a heated sparkle I’d seen too often to count. If I was a betting woman, I’d lay odds on Megan taking home the prize tonight.
Once the band started playing, however, Wyatt peeled himself off his two sidekicks and came around the table to claim my hand. “Your first dance is mine,” he declared and pulled me toward the quickly filling dance floor.
My body went into autopilot mode as I fit myself into Wyatt’s arms, my right hand in his, and my left hand resting on his shoulder. We inserted ourselves into the growing whirl of dancers as we’d done so many times before, his thigh brushing against mine as he glided me around the floor with an offhand grace.
My parents used to bring me and my brother here almost every weekend of our adolescent years, and Wyatt was always around in those days. He and I had learned to two-step, waltz, and swing dance in each other’s arms.
My stomach squeezed at the memory. Back then I’d still had dreams of turning Wyatt’s head, and every dance had left me flying high with hope.
I knew better now. A dance was just a dance. A chance for Wyatt to show off his moves without committing himself in any particular direction. I had accepted that I’d never turn his head, because he was too busy trying to turn every other head in the room. The only reason he wanted me in his arms was to help him do it.
We moved in unison as he spun me, just starting to get warmed up. “I didn’t expect to see you here tonight,” I said once we were face-to-face again. “I was starting to think you’d found something better to do with your Saturday nights.”
His gaze remained fixed somewhere over my shoulder as he grinned. “Never.”
“It feels like I haven’t seen much of you in a while.” Almost three weeks, by my reckoning, which was unusual. If we weren’t bumping into each other at our usual haunts, he was turning up at my aunt Birdie’s house for a home-cooked dinner, or showing up at my place with my brother. Wyatt was always around, a permanent fixture in my life. It was odd that I hadn’t laid eyes on him in weeks. “It’s almost like something’s been keeping you busy.”