Page 57 of Wildest Dreams

He frowns. “I’m waiting for you.”

I blink. “You’re waiting for me to what?”

“To get in the car.”

A laugh bubbles out of my throat as I give him ayou’re obviously kiddingarch of my eyebrows. “Yeah right, big shot. Why do you think I’m wearing my walking jeans?”

Tanner glances down at the blue denim on my thighs, jaw hardening as his gaze wanders down the line of my zipper.

“You’re ridin’ with me,” he says, just as the groan of one of the cabin doors behind me creaks open.

“Oh, Tanner,” I sigh, “it’s so cute that you think you can tell me what to do. I’m walking with Connell,” I correct him, turning to look over my shoulder at which of the guys are making their way over here.

I’m startled by a sudden warm press against my front and when my head whips back around Tanner is staring unyieldingly down at me – and his big chest muscles are pushing firmly against my breasts.

“In those shoes you’d be lucky if you could crawl your way to the bar. Get in the damn car.”

“Tanner, I wouldrathercrawl than get in your ‘damn car’.”

He lets out a low humourless laugh and drawls, “Baby, that can be arranged. But if you don’t wanna cause a scene in front of your brother, walk that pretty ass over to my car and get the hell inside.”

In the next second I feel my feet lift straight off the ground as Connell scoops me up from behind, giving me a big brotherly bear hug. His football friends, along with Tristan, Hughes, and Shaw, continue their loud sports-related shooting-the-shit bro talk around him.

When he puts me back down I give Tanner a smug smile and then I turn to Connell with my cutest little sister expression.

“I’m walking with you guys,” I tell him, a happy blush spreading up my cheeks when his friends start to cheer.

Connell snickers, shoves one of his friends in a headlock, and then, with a two-hundred-pound teammate tucked under his bicep, he turns back to look down at me with an already-tipsy smile on his mouth.

“Ash, Tanner’s driving you.”

My smile instantly drops, eyes widening in shock.

“What?No. I want to walk with you.”

Connell smirks as his friend wrestles free, and then he throws an arm over my shoulder, giving me that intense twin-to-twin eye-contact.

“Ash,” he whispers, dropping his voice so that his friends can’t hear us, “we did a couple shots while you were over at the lake house getting ready. I don’t want to have to fight anyone while we’re walking because they can’t keep their eyes off of you, okay? Tanner already told me that he’s DDing and” – Connell shrugs – “I don’t know, I just think he’s fuckin’ solid. No nonsense. And he’s like – what? – six foot four? You’re in safe hands, Ash. I trust him to get you there.”

I frown up at my brother, a little hurt. I understand his rationale – he doesn’t want to be responsible for the one girl in a group that’s made up of almost his entire Carter U football team – but it’s very freaking unfortunate that instead I’m going to be at the mercy of the one guy who I love to hate.

“Fake brother,” I mutter, giving him a shove in his middle.

“Hey, now,” he laughs, squeezing me around my shoulders. “I’ll see you in there, Ash, and the guys are gonna wanna hang out with you all night, you know that.” Then he laughs a little deeper as he says, “And, come on, you don’t want to scuff those pretty shoes, right?”

I stab the heel of my stiletto nice and hard into his dirt-road boot.

“Jesus!” he howls, but he’s still laughing good-naturedly as I pull away and face him again. He drags me into another hug and says, quieter this time, “I didn’t realise that you and Tanner didn’t get along, okay? And I’m sorry, Ash, I swear. Next time I’ll check with you before I start drinkin’.”

I nod against his shoulder because I know that he means it. Connell has always been my biggest supporter ever since we were in school together. He DD’d for me countless times whenwe were at Carter U, and I know he would have done the same now if he’d realised that I didn’t want to ride with Tanner.

When he pulls back, signalling to his friends to give him one minute, he looks down at me with a tipsy smile, a curious head tilt to the side.

“You know, I actually, uh…” He lifts an arm so that he can scratch at the back of his neck and then looks over my head, jerking his chin at someone in the near distance. “I actually kind of thought that… that maybe Tanner would be, uh…”

My eyebrows rise slowly to my hairline. “Where the hell are you going with that sentence, Connell?”

He drops his gaze and shrugs his shoulders.

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