Liam placed a hand on her elbow to have her walk in front of him through the door.

Her skin was cold to the touch.

Outside he let go and she rubbed her bare arms.

“You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. Long day.” She stopped at the bottom of the steps. “So what do you think?”

“I need to crunch some numbers before I give you a realistic bottom line.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“We can go over them Friday after krav.”

She looked away. “Actually, I need to skip Friday for the next two weeks.”

The air swished out of his sails.

“My best friend is getting married. We have a bachelorette party this weekend and the wedding next.”

“Do you have time on Thursday?”

“I’ll be here all day.”

“After work, then. I’ll call you.” He didn’t give her an opportunity to say no. He opened the door to his truck and stood beside it.

“Thanks again for doing this.”

“You’re welcome.”

The heat outside seemed to transform her fake smile into something he could believe in. “Have you thought about that plus-one?”

The teasing grin was even better.

“No, I haven’t.” She blushed.

“You’re not a good liar.”

“I’m busy.”

“We all are.” He thought about her excuse for missing their sparring match. “Weddings are perfect plus-one events.”

Her eyes narrowed. “No. I already told Trina that wasn’t going to happen. I’m the maid of honor. I have duties.”

“Who’s Trina?”

She looked at him as if he were missing a few cards in his deck. “The bride.”

It was his turn to find a shit-eating grin and use it. “You told your best friend about my plus-one date suggestion?”

“No!” She shuffled her feet. “Yes.”

It was entertaining to watch a woman get caught in her own lies. “Trina suggested her wedding?”

“Not going to happen, Liam. I don’t know you well enough. It’s Trina’s day. Nope, nope, and nope.”

He put one foot in his truck. “Whatever you say, Princess. You figure it out and I’ll be there.”

She tossed her hands in the air and turned back toward the stairs.

“Avery?” He called her attention back as he climbed into his truck.

“What?” She was flustered.

He liked her that way.

“You’re beautiful.”

She opened her mouth like a guppy gasping for air, twice, and then jogged up to the house.

Chapter Thirteen

“I’m not bringing him!” Avery exclaimed.

“I don’t see what the big deal is. Any man in your life is going to have to meet us eventually.” Trina sat in the back of the limousine, wearing a white cowgirl hat, white boots, white skirt . . . white everything. They were starting their night with a decent meal, and then on to the strip club, the dance hall, and whatever bad decisions they could find before the night was over.

“He isn’t the man in my life. We’ve already gone over this.”

“You were on the phone with him before we left the ranch,” Lori pointed out.

“I was talking about work. He’s helping me with a project.” Thursday didn’t pan out, so she had to call him.

Lori, Shannon, and Trina all exchanged glances.

“You guys are hopeless,” Avery told them.

“I think Trina’s wedding is the perfect place to flesh out a new man,” Shannon told her. “Think about it. Men and weddings . . . they are either into the idea or completely turned off by them. By the end of the weekend you’ll know if he is even marriage material.”

“I don’t want to get married,” Avery reminded them. Not that her friends were listening.

“Not to mention that your status in life is going to be an issue,” Lori offered.

“My status?”

“Your wealth. The lifestyle you like to live. I don’t have to tell any of you how a woman having her own money emasculates many egotistical, chauvinistic men.”

Shannon nodded. “Even if the guy isn’t a chauvinist, they still have a hard time dealing.”

Avery thought about their one meal out and how Liam refused to let her pay for her half of the meal. It was strangely satisfying to have him take the check. Outside of getting men to buy her drinks in bars, where she looked like just another girl in a miniskirt instead of a woman who drove up in a quarter-of-a-million-dollar car and returned to her two-million-dollar condo, Avery always found herself pulling out her wallet.

“The decision is up to you,” Trina told her. “But I think it would cut a lot of BS if he could handle a weekend wedding with all of us around. You’ll know if you’re wasting your time.”

“Thank you for your endorsement and parental guidance, now can we get on with the party?” Avery leaned over and turned on the stereo, filling the limo with music that had them singing along. Lori opened the champagne, and by the time they reached their first stop, they were laughing and out of breath.

“Hey, Michelle?” Liam captured his sister’s attention from the textbook she currently studied.

“Hey, what?”

“Have you ever been to a bachelorette party?”

“A couple. Why?”

He shrugged. How bad could they be? He thought of the hired strippers and the clubs he’d gone to in his years of playing partygoer when his friends bit the marital bullet. “Nothing.”

She lifted her gaze.

“Nothing, huh?”

“They can’t be as crazy as a bachelor party.”

Michelle smirked. “You go ahead and believe that if you want.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Does this have anything to do with Miss Avery?”

Cassandra had let the Avery cat out of the bag the morning after Liam had had his niece record the message.

“No.” He shook his head and then slowly started to nod.

“I think the party intensity has a direct coordination to the closeness of the friends that are going.”

“Explain, please.”

Michelle leaned back in her chair. “Well, if the bride has a handful of really close friends and, let’s say, a strip club is involved . . . well, those parties are often forever remembered and only talked about by those that were there.”

“What happens in Vegas?”

“Right. Now, if there is a large party, a dozen or more, things tend to be a little more politically correct. No one wants rumors to get started right before a wedding. Truth is the bride almost never does anything crazy . . . but the single girls, or those that have been married forever, those women tend to go nuts. Like a bachelorette party is a permission slip for impropriety. I bet the women have a better time than the guys do. Men get drunk and watch a woman dancing on a pole. Women get tipsy and pay for lap dances for their friends.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Sounds fun. I haven’t been out on a night like that in years.” Michelle drifted off in her own thoughts.

The images pixelating in Liam’s head started to come into focus. He could see Avery being the life of the party. He also envisioned her putting a guy in his place if he went too far.

Unless she wanted him to go far . . .

He had no hold on her. So why was he thinking about what she was doing and whom she was doing it with?

“Do you know where the party is?”

He shook his head. “Somewhere in Texas.”

“Texas?”

“Yeah, her friend lives in Texas.”

Michelle scooted her textbook closer. “I can’t help you with Texas. I would imagine there’ll be men dressed in boots and hats and little else.” She sighed. “I like that idea.”

Liam moaned.

Michelle kept her eyes on the pages in front of her while she spoke. “You know the best way to make sure a woman isn’t surfing for a date other than you?”

“What’s that?”

“Text her, call her . . . tell her to have a good time and that you’re thinking about her.”

“Sounds too easy.”

“If she’s at all thinking about you as much as you’re obviously thinking of her, and you reach out . . . chances are she’ll avoid the private lap dances.”

“Private?”

“Yeah, the kind where they ask if you want to go to a private room.”

Liam stopped smiling. “They do that?”

Michelle looked up long enough to roll her eyes. “Where have you been?”

Liam reached for the phone in his back pocket and stepped out into the backyard.

Currently onstage, the Cowboy Connection was living up to his name. Avery had to appreciate a man wearing chaps with a thong underneath.

“That man can move,” Andrea, one of Trina’s aunts-in-law from her first marriage, was well on her way to being sloshed. She and her sister, Diane, were screaming the loudest and tipping the most. It was hysterical to watch. For once Avery wasn’t kicking back drink after drink. While she wouldn’t currently get behind the wheel of a car, she wasn’t drunk. Even Shannon seemed to be a few more ahead of her than normal.