But the shot came with a chaser of confusion and betrayal. Was she really this easy? One wild kiss and she was literally weak in his arms? One kiss and she forgot everything that had happened between them?
Thea wrenched her mouth away. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You asked why,” Gavin panted, his eyes dark. “That’s why.”
CHAPTER THREE
“You did what?”
Gavin slumped in the passenger seat of Del’s truck, the smell of the pizza, chicken wings, and other snacks in the back seat threatening to break the cease-fire in his stomach. It had been several hours since he last threw up, but the spicy odor of buffalo sauce warned that could easily change. “I kissed her.”
Del swore. “I specifically told you not to go see her!”
“I know.”
“And I definitely did not give you permission to kiss her.”
“I didn’t know I needed it.”
“You do. But more importantly, you need hers. Shit.” Del banged his hand on the steering wheel. “You might have set yourself back weeks with that stunt.”
Gavin didn’t argue because he had the sinking feeling Del was right. If Thea could’ve gotten her hands on a frying pan, she might’ve bashed him over the head with it. After pushing him away, she’d told him he had no right to kiss her like that and ordered him to leave.
But there’d also been a moment when she leaned into him, opened for him, let her tongue tangle with his, and breathed a little sigh. A real sigh. It was brief, but in that moment his wife had kissed him back. So maybe he hadn’t completely struck out.
Del hung a right and merged onto the freeway. The inside of the car glowed yellow from the lights of oncoming cars heading into downtown Nashville for a night of honky-tonks. They drove for nearly fifteen minutes until Del exited near Brentwood, a subdivision outside the city where many athletes and country stars lived.
Gavin preferred Franklin. A lot of celebrities lived there too, but the historic, tree-lined streets gave it a small-town feel. They lived in a normal neighborhood, not a stuffy mansion-filled subdivision. Their house was within walking distance of a little downtown where the girls could get a library book and an ice-cream cone, and where they had become regulars at the local diner with its cracked vinyl booths. The only tourists they ever got there were Civil War buffs who wanted to tour the local battlefield.
Gavin was skeptical at first when Thea suggested they live there. His salary could afford something more lavish. But when he saw the way her eyes lit up when she pulled up the listing for the 1930s brick Craftsman on her phone, there was no way he was going to push for anything else. And now he wouldn’t give up their small-town lifestyle for anything.
Except he almost had.
Five minutes later, Gavin balanced five boxes of pizza and four cartons of wings up a manicured sidewalk. “Whose house is this?”
By the ostentatious display of sports cars in the garage, Gavin feared they were at Asshole-Ate-His-Apple’s house.
He was right. The door swung open, and Mack greeted them with a snort. “Hey, look who’s finally sober.”
Gavin shoved the pizzas and wings at him. “Hey, look who’s still a dick.”
“You two need to knock that shit off,” Del growled, walking in.
Mack swung the door shut with his foot. “All in good fun, right, man?”
“No. I kind of hate you,” Gavin said.
Del turned around. “Everyone here?”
“Yeah,” Mack said. “In the basement. Is he ready for his initiation? I have to get that sheep back to the farm by midnight.”
Gavin scowled at that, but he trailed behind them through the soaring entryway and past a wide, curved staircase. Beyond that, they entered a kitchen twice the size of his and Thea’s. The sound of voices grew louder as they approached a door that led to the basement.
Gavin waited for Mack and Del to go first.
“Food’s here,” Mack announced, turning a corner at the bottom of the stairs. A round of voices harrumphed manly approval followed by several about times.
“Are we late?” Gavin asked Del’s back.
“Nah. They just got here early to finalize the plan.”
Gavin grabbed the back of Del’s shirt. “Hold up. What plan?”
“The plan to get Thea to take your stupid ass back,” Del said, turning the same corner that Mack had disappeared around. “A plan you made a helluva lot harder today.”
Gavin sucked in and let out a breath, hovering on the last stair. Finally, mustering his courage with a reminder that this was about saving his marriage, he followed Del.
Ten of Nashville’s movers and shakers—professional athletes, business owners, and city officials—stood around an elaborate bar, shoving one another aside as they dove into the pizza and wings. Del dumped the paper bag of other snacks. Several bags of chips fell out. A single green apple rolled onto the floor.
Mack shook his head as he picked it up. “You are one petty bastard.”
“Everyone hurry up,” Del said. “We gotta get started. Dipshit here kissed his wife today.”
The room exploded. Heads swiveled. Chairs toppled. A hockey player in the corner swore in Russian.
“What the fuck, man?” Mack barked. “We told you not to go see her!”
A dude he recognized as Malcolm James, running back for the Nashville NFL team, choked on his beer. “Did you at least ask permission first, or was it a sneak-attack kiss?”
“Sneak attack, I guess?”
Yan smacked the back of his head. “That’s grand-gesture shit, man! You can’t do that yet.”
“Grand gesture what?”
The guys gave him varying degrees of dirty looks as they gathered their plates and headed for a massive game table on the other side of the basement.
The Russian grumbled over the remains of the food, finally settling on a bag of pretzels. He tucked it under his arm as if someone might steal it. “Too much pizza,” he said, glaring as he walked by Gavin. “Cheese. It shoot straight out my ass.”
That was a visual he didn’t need.
“Gavin, come on. Time to get started.”
Swiping his apple off the counter, he dragged his feet toward the one remaining chair.
Del cleared his throat and stood. “Everyone ready?”
The guys nodded, mouths full.
“Good. First rule of book club?”
They finished in unison. “You don’t talk about book club.”
What. The. Fuck.
Gavin looked around for a hidden camera. This had to be a prank.
“A book club? That’s your grand plan for saving my marriage?”
Del nodded at Mack, who rose on one hip and pulled a book from his back pocket. He tossed it at Gavin. It nailed him in the face.
“Nice reflexes. Hope you’re better at shortstop.”
Gavin bared his teeth. “I play second base, asshole.”
Mack shrugged. “Isn’t that basically the same thing?”
Gavin ignored him and retrieved the book from the table where it fell. He blinked at the cover. A woman from, like, the 1800s or some shit was leaning on a couch with a dude in one of those old-timey suits standing behind her. His shirt was open.
“Courting the Countess,” Gavin read slowly. He ground his molars and looked up. “Is this a joke?”
“No,” Del said.
“This is a romance novel.”
“Yes.”
Gavin shot to his feet. “I can’t believe you assholes. My life is falling apart, and you’re making fun of me.”
“I thought the same thing when Malcolm brought me in,” Del said. “But it’s not a joke. Sit down and listen.”
Gavin pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead and shut his eyes. When he opened them again, everyone was still staring at him. Not a weird dream, then. “Wh-wh-what the hell is going on here?”
“If you’d shut up for a second, we’ll explain it to you, douchebag,” Mack said.
Gavin returned to his chair. “You guys read romance novels?”
“We call them manuals,” the Russian said.
“And it’s a lot more than just reading,” Malcolm said.
Gavin went cold. “If you’re about to drag me into some kind of kinky swinger shit, I’m out.”
Del leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I’m going to tell you something I never told you before.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Two years ago, Nessa filed for divorce.”
The ground shifted beneath Gavin’s chair. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“One, I barely knew you then. And two, probably for the same reason you’re reluctant to tell anyone what happened between you and Thea. It’s emotional, personal.”
“But you and Nessa are perfect.”
“Things are always different behind closed doors, aren’t they?”
Yeah, but in Gavin’s case, part of the problem was that he was too stupid to know he totally sucked in bed or that his wife had apparently started to hate his guts. The way she’d looked at him today . . . He shuddered. He seriously doubted Del could relate.
“Nearly every man at this table has been on the verge of losing his wife, girlfriend, or fiancée at some point,” Del continued, and Gavin recalled the cryptic thing he said last night. We’ve all been where he is. “And every one of us not only got our girls back but repaired our relationships better than ever.”
Gavin scanned the faces at the table. They greeted him with nods, smiles, and—from Mack—the finger. Gavin returned the gesture and then shook his head. “I don’t understand what any of this means or has to do with me.”
“Look, man,” Malcolm said, his Hulk-sized hands stroking a beard thick enough to qualify for federal forest protection. “Men are idiots. We complain that women are so mysterious and shit, and we never know what they want. We fuck up our relationships because we convince ourselves that it’s too hard to figure them out. But the real problem is with us. We think we’re not supposed to feel things and cry and express ourselves. We expect women to do all the emotional labor in a relationship and then act confused when they give up on us.”