“AND OF COURSE THERE WILL BE PEACOCKS.”

Clothed in heels and a slinky, crimson-red bridesmaid dress, I stared at my brother’s fiancé. “Peacocks?”

“Yes.”

“Today? There will be peacocks today? At the wedding?” I couldn’t control the higher pitch my voice took on. Ben’s soon-to-be-wife was a glam queen and always aiming for show, but this was a little nuts.

I was only in the wedding party as a favor I hadn’t asked for, but as Ben’s sister, I assumed the role the way you assumed the mantle of power: warily.

Amber shot me a look. “Of course not at the wedding.”

I relaxed a little. “Oh good.”

“At the reception.”

I stiffened again. Amber pointed to the huge, chandelier-laden banquet hall that would host the gala reception. Over two hundred wealthy guests would be mingling there later, after the garden ceremony that was due to commence in T-minus a hundred and eighty minutes—I’d taken to referring to the whole thing in military terms—and she wanted everything to be perfect.

Which is why she got…peacocks?

“We got special permission for the birds,” she explained.

She meant her father had got special permission. As one of the richest men on the eastern seaboard, he got all sorts of special permissions.

“They’ll be brought in the back door, and I was hoping you could…”

Her voice faded into the background as we stared into the darkened hall, festooned with about nine thousand metric tons of evergreen garland and tiny white twinkle lights and deep crimson bows. I knew each and every one of those bows and bulbs, and had made the acquaintance of lot of the evergreen needles too. I’d been up until one in the morning putting them up after the wedding planner’s assistant came down hard with the flu and I’d volunteered my services. They were extremely pokey and extremely gorgeous.

I, on the other hand, was a little bloody.

On the plus side, I was scented with cedar.

“You want me to wrangle peacocks?” I said doubtfully.

“You’ll be good at it.”

I don’t know how she knew that. I’d never wrangled peacocks in my life.

She met my eye. “You could think of it as a gift.”

I pictured the crystal ‘toasting flutes’ I’d wrapped in decorous silver-grey paper, sitting in the gift room behind us, at a hundred dollars a pop.

She smiled her winning smile—Amber was vice-president in her father’s investment firm, and she was excellent at schmoozing. “You’re good at managing chaos,” she told me. “Really good. Nothing gets you flustered. You’re low-key and easy-going and…”

Forgettable. She meant I was forgettable. Which was true. I was background music.

Except in my own, funky little coffee shop, where I ruled like a benevolent dictator, ordering the best beans, hiring the best baristas, and booking local musicians for live music. My coffee shop was awesome. People came from miles away.

Or had come.

Because even five dollar lattes made with Kona peaberry beans hadn’t been enough to save it when they raised the rent last month and priced me out of the market.

I lifted my eyebrows at Amber. “You think the peacocks are going to feel my easy-going vibe?”

She nodded. “Everyone does. People turn to you. That’s why my father offered you a job.”

Oy. I didn’t want to talk about the job offer.

“Animals probably will too.”

I was skeptical. “People don’t turn to me…”

A man ran up to us and put his hand on my arm. “Have you seen a puppy?” he asked, his voice frantic.

Amber raised her eyebrows. I frowned and turned to the guy, who was dressed in a snazzy hotel jacket. “What kind of puppy?”

“A furry kind,” he said very unhelpfully. “The humane society had him here along with the others for the holiday adoption push. He got out of his cage and now he’s on the loose.”

I totally understood wanting to get out of your cage.

“Well, he’s got to be around here somewhere,” I said, turning to scan the lobby, which sat down the hall from the banquet hall doors.

A huge Christmas tree dominated the huge, open space, which was dotted with large expensive couches and little expensive tables. Beside the tree was a row of cages atop tables, filled with purring kittens and tumbling puppies. Hotel guests sat on the couches and knelt before the cages, while others hurried past, heading for the bank of elevators or the front door. Christmas music drifted over the scene of holiday cheer and chatter.

“The humane society is packing up early because of the storm,” the desk guy explained, pointing to the snow falling outside. “And if I don’t find him, that puppy’s going to be here in the hotel all night.”

“Without food,” I understood grimly.

“Peeing everywhere,” he said, more grimly yet.

“At my reception!” Amber cried, flat out furious.

The employee swung to her. “I swear to you, Ms. Rothsman, no puppy will disrupt your wedding.”

A valiant vow.

“He better not,” Amber warned.

“I’ll keep my eye out,” I promised.

The guy tossed me a look of thanks mingled with fear and trotted off, eyeing up corners and whistling softly.

I wrapped my hands around my upper arms as a chill raced through the wide corridor—the lobby was just down the hall, and its electronic doors were silent, so the only sign someone had come in was the swift cold draft.

The move drew Amber’s eyes to my arms. They slid up. “Is that a tattoo? On your shoulder?”

I blinked. “Um, yes?”

She squinted at it. It was a Celtic design, nothing outrageous. Yes, it had been done in a fit of recklessness many years ago, but still, it was beautiful. Swirling and colorful.

Amber should consider herself lucky it wasn’t something even more nuts. Like the stabbed eye of my ex-boyfriend that I’d planned to get inked on my arm that night thirteen years ago.

“You’ll have to keep it covered,” Amber said doubtfully and swung back to the banquet hall. “As far as the peacocks, you just need to keep them away from the guests.”

“Right. Keep the birds away from V.I.P.s,” I said dubiously, and turned my gaze to the huge, many-pillared lobby again, searching for the puppy.

That’s when I saw him.

Trey Dante.

Bad boy best friend of my older brother, and man of my dreams.

Literally, dreams. That’s all I’d done was dream about him—he’d been my brother’s best friend back in school, and as Ben’s little sister, he’d barely looked at me, whereas I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, all his danger and black boots and scruffed jaw, the dark, slightly dangerous heart to my brother’s amiable, blond-haired, high ambitions.

Trey had been the Pied Piper, leading my brother and half the high school into all sorts of trouble, but then, Ben had gone willingly. So had everyone else. Everyone went willingly with Trey Dante.

I would have too, if anyone had invited me.

Trey and Ben had been a crazy, mismatched, perfect pair until Ben went off to college and Trey went off to war.

But the years they’d been like brothers had been really good for me and my late-night, wide awake dreams, when no one could see what Ben’s quiet little sister really wanted was a walk on the wild side.

Bad idea.

But wow… Trey still looked good. Standing in the huge, gleaming white marble lobby of the Hotel de Grace, he looked like the cowboy who rides up in an old western. Trouble rolling into town. An alpha male storm about to break.

He was still wearing jeans, but his legs were harder, you could tell, even through the denim. He was still wearing boots, low cuffed ones. He still had a scruffed jaw, and he was still all male sex appeal. Women in the lobby, dressed in thousand dollar dresses, turned to look at him.

He carried a small duffle bag in one fisted hand, and it swung slightly as his gaze swept the space. The sway stilled when his eyes reached me.

Real slow, he smiled. “Little Cass.” I saw his mouth move, but couldn’t hear the words.

I pushed my clipboard into Amber’s hands and started toward him.

Behind me, Amber called out, “Cassidy, the peacocks!”