Chapter 28
Surliness didn’t suit Brody Miller. Neither did the constant irritation and low-edge of pissed off anger that had ridden him like a nagging toothache ever since the invitation arrived.
The plane was more than halfway to The Island, where he would join the rest of the wedding party. Swallowing the last of his drink, Brody stood and swayed with the jolt of the plane. At least, he was pretty sure it was turbulence. He walked to the galley, motioning for the steward to stay seated as he did so, and located the bottle there. With wealth came fine privileges to be taken advantage of, he thought, watching the slow pour of liquid into the tumbler. One of those was some of the choicest whiskeys a man could lay his hands on. The Pappy Van Winkle, at twenty-five hundred dollars a bottle, splashed neat over a single ice cube, and for a moment, the liquid caught the sunlight pouring in the window and flashed to red-gold.
Cassie. Hair like flame on fire.
Brody closed his eyes and leaned on the counter as the memory of her walking hand in hand with him, laughing in the sunlight, shot through him.
“That’s your fourth one since we took off, you know?” came a low drawl close to him.
Brody turned, winced, and hissed as the move caught his side, still tender from the fight he had picked with his brother Simon.
Jake was the one who had commented. Three brothers, and every single one of them a bit annoyed at him.
Brody raised the bottle in a twisted salute and made it a double. “It’s five o’ clock somewhere. Takes a lot to get me drunk.” He was a big guy after all, so it was manageable.
“I’d say you’re already well there. It’s bad form to show up drunk for your best friend’s wedding.”
That pithy evaluation came from Cooper, who was currently sprawled with legs stretched across the cabin floor, attempting to nap with his hat tipped down, looking like some version of Indiana Jones. He matched Brody in height, if they weren’t almost exactly alike in looks. Or they would, if Brody could get rid of extra muscle and beard he had put on for his current film in progress.
“The wedding’s still a week away. Saturday,” he clarified for all of them, which included his three brothers and parents. Everyone except his dad was awake to witness the conversation.
Simon didn’t even glance up from the investment magazine he had open. “Still bad form. You’re being a moron. Need us to kick your ass again? Plenty of time before we land, although it’s a really nice plane. Hate to see you have to pay for damages, Mr. Hollywood.” The most stylish and corporate-looking of the lot of them, Simon hardly ever had a strand of hair out of place, but hell if he couldn’t hit hard. The ache in Brody’s side proved it.
Brody chose to maintain a sullen silence rather than comment.
It was bad form.
Even worse was knowing the woman he still loved would be there and he no idea how to talk to her.
Two months later hadn’t left him with any answers except that he wanted Cassie back. Period. Knowing that she probably still hated him only increased his continuous bad mood and irritability. One bad enough that no one had held back on informing him of what an ass he’d been over the holidays. True to brotherly form, the three of them had jumped him one night, and they had all gone down in a mess of limbs until his mom had waded in and smacked heads.
The tiny dynamo who was his mom sat, quietly watching, and patted the seat next to her. Brody walked toward her, tripped over Cooper’s legs, caught himself, and gave an internal round of applause for not spilling a single drop of Paddy’s before sitting down heavily next to her.
“You need to stop this, Brody. It’s not who you are,” Jean said, grabbing his hand. “I miss my happy, smiling, teasing boy. It’s time to talk to this girl and figure things out.”
He knew she was still reserving judgment on Cassie and had a hard time saying anything nice about the person who had broken her oldest son’s heart. Brody took another sip. It might have been a big one, since his mom’s eyes narrowed as he did.
He laid his head back, enjoying the burn that went all the way from his tongue to low inside, spreading warmth as it went. “Don’t even know if she would talk to me, Momma. We didn’t leave things good between us.”
Jake sat down next to him. The shadow of a bruise across his left temple where Brody had caught him was finally beginning to fade. “Won’t get any better till you do. Fate’s putting you two together again. You’ve got plenty of time before the big day. Figure it out. We’ve known Chase since all of us were kids, and he asked you to stand at his side as his best man. You owe him better than this shit, brother.”
Of all of them, Jake got the closest to understanding what Brody had gone through, but even he had his limits. After all, Cassie was still living, Jake had bluntly pointed out as they cleaned out manure one morning. In Jake’s opinion, all Brody needed to do was go the hell after her and get her back and he was a jackass if he didn’t.
Brody took one more large swallow before they confiscated his drink and replaced it with coffee, straight and black, in a vain attempt to try to sober him up before landing.