Her head was snuggled onto my shoulder and every couple of seconds she pressed a kiss against my neck. I wished I was a guy who could just soak up her attention and not be racked with guilt. I would have really loved that right, but my mama raised me to know right from wrong. And as right as this felt, it was so wrong.

“Why did we wait all these years to do this?” Her voice was a warm whisper against my skin and she rubbed her body against mine. For a minute, the guilt didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Sophie, in my arms, her scent on me, her mouth tasting, teasing, nibbling my skin.

When her hand edged down my chest to my stomach, I couldn’t let her go further without telling her the truth. Once was sleazy enough. “Soph, we have to talk.” I scooted closer to the side of the bed and she came with me, holding her body to mine with arms that were impressively strong.

“I’m busy right now.” She lifted her head long enough to give me a wink then kissed me. It was one of those mind-altering kisses that robbed me of the ability to think until she pulled back. As she trailed her lips down my throat and across my chest, I knew I had to stop her, but…not yet.

No. This was not right. I took her shoulders in my hands and gave her one gentle push, but she was persistent. “Please.” I couldn’t manage more than that, and all I could do was hope she took it the way I meant it. Whichever way that was.

She slithered up until we were almost nose-to-nose. I wanted another minute of holding her before I started the fight of our lifetime—and I knew it would be exactly that. Sophie didn’t suffer fools with grace. She destroyed them with anger, with words that sliced and shredded. “You have two minutes.”

My arms tightened around her. I needed one more second of perfection. “Soph, I love you. I need you to know that. I think I have since we were kids. And I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you.” I would have added or lie to you but that wouldn’t have been true. I went into this knowing every minute from the flight to this moment was going to be a lie. Her wide-eyed gaze was accompanied by a smile that had the power to stop my heart. I couldn’t bear to hear her reply so I shushed her with a finger over her lips. “Don’t say anything.” When she nodded and put her head on my shoulder again, I kissed her upturned nose. I was stalling, stealing every minute I had left with her happily beside me.

This conversation could have gone two ways—she would either immediately forgive me, knowing in her heart I did what I thought was best to stop her from making a horrible mistake; or she would crucify me with her anger. I’d gambled enough for one lifetime. I wasn’t putting any money on this outcome.

“Tick tock.” Her fingers dipped below the blanket, and I caught them just as they crossed over into the danger zone.

Neither of us spoke further as a knock at the door ruined my train of thought and she sat up as if she had a pretty fair inkling of who might have been on the other side. “Did you order room service?” Oh, God, please let her have ordered room service.

The flush in her cheeks was answer enough. I flipped back the blanket and pulled on my jeans. With my luck, this could have only been one of two things—the angel of death had come knocking or Andrew had made his way from home to our hotel room. I opened the door just enough to rule out the angel of death. “Hey,” Andrew said as his eyebrows formed one straight line on his face. “I thought this was Sophia’s room.”

I should have swung the door open, but behind me, Sophie was scrambling for clothes. “Um, yeah. She’s in the bathroom.”

He pushed past me as if my holding the door mostly closed was irrelevant to an invitation inside. “Interesting shirt.” He walked closer to the bed, flipped open my suitcase to find mostly wrinkled T-shirts. He bent to pick up Sophie’s panties from the floor then turned to me. “You slept with her?”

I was an FBI agent, trained by some of the baddest ass feds in all the land, and when he came at me, I stepped to the side. His blow—which would have only grazed me anyway—smashed against the doorframe. He wasn’t a small guy—an easy 6’, 200 pound mass of asshole—and the force he put into the punch would have likely hurt if he had any kind of aim.

Sophie popped her head out of the bathroom and rushed to Andrew’s side. He was on the floor cradling what was likely only a broken finger, if that. She flipped a gaze up at me. “What did you do?” Her eyes, her voice, the glower on her face all accused me of injuring prince charming.

This was not how this was supposed to go, and it could only get worse. “I moved out of the way.”

She held his hand, turning it one way then the other until Andrew snatched it back and hugged it with his other arm. “You’re a lawyer not a doctor. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” There was enough fury in his tone that I went on alert.

Sophie sat back, unbent her legs, and stood. “I don’t know. I think I was trying to help.”

“Well, you didn’t.”

He moved next to her and used his good hand to pull her in for a kiss. In her defense, she didn’t touch him, but neither did she pull away. I told myself I didn’t care, but seeing her with her mouth on his grated on me, and my fists clenched. When they broke apart, she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. Yeah. It was the lip I was nibbling on ten minutes ago. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought you might need some help cheering up your bestie.” What kind of grown ass man used teenager slang? “But it looks like you have that under control.” There was no way he gave one fat shit about me. And I didn’t care for his tone. I cocked my head, waiting. Instead of defending herself, Sophie lowered her gaze to stare at her toes.

“This isn’t what it looks like, Andrew.”

“Good to hear because it looks like you were just screwing Harley.”

I’d never heard him say my name before, and I didn’t like the way it sounded from him.

Sophie’s mouth twitched from one side to the other, and her fingers drifted to her throat to clutch the locket I gave her for her birthday last year. “Okay. So, it is kind of what it looks like. But I can explain.”

And it was at that exact moment, he snatched her hand from her side and pulled it close to his face. “What the actual fuck is that?”

“A ring.” Her voice was the kind of small that belonged to a shamed child. I’d known her for more than three-fourths of my life, and I’d never seen her shrink into herself like she was right then. She was a force of energy, her own little whirlwind of action and fearlessness. What the hell did this asshat do to her to inspire this reaction? Regret was one thing. Shame was even probably okay in this situation, but she was all but shriveled into a box to protect herself.

I stepped between them, putting her on the other side of me. “On a pretty significant finger.” I was nothing if not helpful. The grin might have been overkill since I was a liar of epic proportions, but I couldn’t resist.

“I can see that.”

“Harley.” Her voice was soft, and I turned to her. “Can we have a minute?”

She was kicking me out? What the hell? But when she blinked up at me, silently asking me to give in, I couldn’t deny her. I did, however, take my time pulling on a shirt and sliding my feet into my shoes. I would have leaned in to kiss her, but she turned her head toward the wall. I could take a hint. At least, I thought it was a hint. I walked out without a word. My choices for waiting this out were a coffee shop or a casino. The coffee shop would have been the smarter move since I didn’t want to test fate, but I followed the noise of slots and roulette wheels.

It was more than an hour and six hundred dollars later before she found me. Andrew was five paces behind her lounged against a poker machine, and she had her suitcase in her hand. She set it down and slipped both hands in her pockets. Without meeting my gaze, she held out one arm, palm up. The diamond I gave her sparkled under the blinking lights in the room. I couldn’t look at it. When I didn’t take it, she set it on the table in front of me.

“Harley…”

I didn’t suppose there was much call to come clean since she’d made her choice, but I had to tell her so this whole thing didn’t get worse. “We’re not really married.”

“What?”

“We never got a license, just had a ceremony.” The one I’d shown her wasn’t an official document, just a souvenir from the chapel. While I was ruining our friendship, I decided to tell her all of it. She’d made her choice, and it wasn’t me, so what difference did it make? “And we didn’t sleep together until today.”

“But last night…and then this morning we woke up…” She closed her eyes and her voice came as a whisper. “You lied to me?” I couldn’t tell whether she was hurt or quietly angry. But neither one made me feel better, and I swallowed back a ball of regret. I didn’t know what I expected. Somehow, stupidly, I’d hoped she would just laugh it off, be happy that I deceived and manipulated her into sleeping with me. Oh, God. What have I done?

No. I did this for the right reasons. Andrew was the wrong guy for her. “I can’t stand the thought of you marrying someone like Andrew. He’s not what you think.”

She swiped at a tear that escaped the watery pool in her eyes. “Turns out, neither are you.”

Even if she hated me, if she never heard another thing I said, I needed her to hear a couple things. “He’s cheating on you, and he’s never gonna stop. And I lied to you, and I’m so sorry. I didn’t think it through, but it doesn’t change the fact that I love you.” Please. I needed her to hear that.

“When were you going to tell me about our fake wedding? How much after you tricked me into cheating on him? A couple days? Years maybe?”

I really hadn’t thought this through. “I tried to tell you. I was getting ready to when Andrew got here.”

She shook her head, hair falling in her face, shielding her from me. “I have to go.”

“Please, Sophie.” I would have begged. I would have gotten down on my knees right there and plead with her to let me explain, to love me, or even just to say she would forgive me someday.

She shook off the hand I put on her arm. “Goodbye, Harley.”