Page 10 of Wedding Bet

“Landry was a huge help,” he said. “I owe him one. Although the only thing I’m any good at is cooking up a perfect breakfast, so I’m not sure I can repay the favor properly.”

“Well, you could teach me to cook, then,” I said.

“You can’t cook?”

I leaned back in my chair. “I can cook a frozen pizza, by removing it from a box and sticking it in an oven.”

Jamie was suppressing a smile, his boyish face lighting up at my joke. “I could certainly teach you how to cook more thanthat.”

“I’m a terrible cook. God awful.”

“I can attest to that,” Emmett said, jumping in on the conversation. “I’ve had Landry’s cooking before, and it was only a step above bad school cafeteria food.”

“Ignore my best friend,” I told Jamie. “Emmett spends too much time with me.”

“Lucky’s not just my best friend, he’s my business partner, too,” Emmett clarified. “Jamie, we met last year when you visited in fall, didn’t we?”

Jamie nodded. “You were so nice to me,” he said.

“I had no idea,” I told them.

So Jamie had been in town last year, and I hadn’t even met him.

“Anyway,” Emmett added. “Landry’s right. Don’t trust his cooking. What did you try to make, last year at the lodge?”

“It was supposed to be a beef stew,” I admitted. “But I got the wrong cut of beef, and it ended up so tough you could barely bite into it. I accidentally added so much table salt after the broth had reduced, and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. I swear, you could give me two eggs to scramble and I’d find a way to burn them.”

“Oh, I will teach you how to cook ameanbreakfast,” Jamie said. “Easy peasy.”

“Sometime I’ll have to drive down to Stellara Beach and learn,” I said.

He waved a hand through the air. “You don’t have to do that.”

It was the second time today that Jamie had said that to me. He seemed to think that I wouldn’t want to spend time with him, and I couldn’t quite figure out why.

“I’d like to, though,” I said simply. “Hey, I’m going to go grab my phone from up in my room. If the waiter comes, can you grab a beer for me? Whatever kind looks good to you.”

Jamie nodded. I went up to my room quickly, grabbing my phone and heading back down. A quick glance at it showed me that I had an email invitation to a fancy potluck party with investors in Los Angeles next week. Emmett and I had started up our own marketing firm, Waycott Marketing, last year, and I’d used my connections to score us a good number of clients in Los Angeles this year, as well as here in Colorado. I scrolled past another email from my financial advisor letting me know that one of my portfolios had gone up by ten percent in the past month.

Sheesh.

If only my love life could be as effortless as my financial life.

As I walked back over to the table, I overheard Jamie and Chase talking.

“--think he’s taking pity on me or something,” Jamie was telling Chase. “I feel bad.”

I stopped behind a waiter carrying a mountain of plates on a tray, inadvertently overhearing more before I reached the table.

“I guarantee Landry is not taking pity on you,” Chase was telling him. “That man doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do. I promise. He likes you, Jamie. And he probably wants to drag you to his bed, honestly.”

Jamie snorted a laugh, then took a sip of his drink. “A guy like him?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He’s drop-dead gorgeous, rich as hell, athletic, and I don’t think he wants more than a one-night thing, if you catch my drift. I’d probably spontaneously combust if he touched me.”

“Landry’s been through his fair share of shit,” Emmett chimed in. “He’s sworn off relationships, but there’s more than meets the eye.”

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