Page 6 of All Bets Are Off

“Connor,” I gasp, manically blinking at him in disbelief. “I didn’t think you were coming . . . Liam told me you weren’t able to get leave?”

“I worked some magic,” Connor says with a gentle smile, and his low, deep voice triggers a sickening wave of nostalgia within me. He moves a foot forward, as though he wishes to greet me physically, but very quickly stops himself and instead simply says, “It’s really good to see you, Addy.”

Liam loudly clasps his hands together, making me flinch. “How about we go get checked in to our rooms and then we’ll join you all back here once we get rid of these bags?”

“Good luck. It took us forever,” Melissa warns them.

With another quick kiss on my cheek, Liam leads the guys off to the registration lobby, and I sink back down into my seat with legs like Jell-O. My heart beats a little too hard in my chest.

It’s been a long time since I was last in the same room as Connor. Years, possibly. He enlisted in the Marine Corps straight out of high school, so he’s moved around a lot over the past eight years. He was in the Carolinas for a while, followed by several stints in Japan. We don’t keep in touch, but the last I heard through Liam was that Connor is currently on base somewhere in California, and that there was no way he’d get leave to meet us all here in Vegas this weekend, given he’s already been granted leave for the wedding in six weeks’ time.

“The best man’s cute,” Melissa muses, and it seems I’m not the only one whose thoughts are centered around Connor right now. She teasingly throws a cocktail napkin at Hailey. “You’re single, aren’t you? Maybe the best man is too, and we can set you guys up. That’s traditional, isn’t it? The best man and maid of honor. You’ll be paired together on the wedding day, so maybe you should start the bonding process now.” She sensually rolls her hips in her chair, gaining validation from the snort of laughter that leaves Evie’s mouth.

Hailey chokes on a sip of her drink in mortification, the tips of her ears turning red. “No way. We all went to school together, so I’ve known him forever. And even if I hadn’t, he’d be off limits anyway.”

Melissa arches an eyebrow at me in curiosity. “Off limits?”

“Addy dated Connor in high school,” Evie blurts out, and I glare at her because my little sister cannot keep my secrets if her life depended on it.

“You once dated your fiancé’s best man?” Melissa gasps.

“Don’t make it sound so scandalous! We were just kids. We dated in senior year, but we broke up because he enlisted in the Marines and the relationship wasn’t going to work long-distance,” I explain with the most nonchalant shrug I can pull off right now. Why is there so much adrenaline running through me? “It was actually Connor leaving that brought Liam and I closer, because we were both heartbroken when he left.”

Melissa seems fascinated by this information. We’re college friends, Melissa and I, so she skipped the first eighteen chapters of the Adelaide Sinclair history book. “And it’s . . . not awkward?” she asks. “Your high school boyfriend being the best man at your wedding?”

“I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Connor in the past eight years,” I say. “And as I said: we were kids. It was never anything real.” It was definitely real. It was just . . . another life. And it’s gone now.

“He is kinda hot though,” Evie chimes in, fanning her face. “He’s looking rather spicy with the tattoos and all. It’s giving bad boy.”

“Maybe it won’t be so bad having the men around this weekend . . .” Melissa says cautiously, like she fears backlash from Hailey and Evie for daring to change her stance on the whole dual-parties thing. “We’re kind of lacking on numbers. Not that I don’t think we’ll have fun just the four of us, but maybe we’ll have more fun as a larger group.”

“I hate to be an oversharer,” Hailey says, rising to her feet and smoothing out the creases in her black dress, “but there’s something in this drink that is not agreeing with my stomach, so I’m going to run back up to the room real quick, okay?”

“We’re off to a great start,” Evie remarks. “Only three cocktails in and Hailey Clark’s already shitting herself.”

“Evie,” I scold, yet the stern tone of my voice is contradicted by the laughter I struggle to hold back with a firm bite of my lip. I give Hailey a go-ahead nod, and she awkwardly teeters off in her heels.

“Well, if she doesn’t like that drink . . .” Melissa says, stealing Hailey’s leftover cocktail for herself.

I laugh, but I also glance repeatedly out of the corner of my eye, quite literally sitting on the edge of my seat as I await Liam’s return, mindlessly twisting my engagement ring around my finger. Thousands of thoughts are racing through my mind, because there are so many bases I need to cover over the course of the weekend to ensure not one single seed of doubt is planted in anyone’s minds. If Hailey throws me a concerned glance, if Evie raises a suspicious brow, if Melissa asks, “Are you okay?” then it’s all over for me.

Because I can’t possibly let anyone figure out I’m not sure if I still love the man I’m marrying six weeks from now.

5

Hailey

If pretending I have somehow developed IBS this weekend is what it takes to work on my manuscript and chase my dream, then I guess I’ve developed IBS.

I run back to my room as fast as I can in these stupid damn shoes, pluck my laptop out of my carry-on, and set myself up at the desk. It’s not my ideal writing set-up—squeezed into a mini dress and wearing mascara that’s irritating my eyes in a Las Vegas hotel room on a Friday night—but I have no other choice right now. I pull up my Word document, read over Samantha’s email for the hundredth time, and then erase the final two chapters of the novel I’ve spent the past two years working on.

Killing off a main character was always going to be a bold move as a debut author, and especially a debut romance author. The romance genre thrives on its traditional happily ever afters, so reworking my ending was always something I was prepared to do if push came to shove, and I’d save the more controversial endings for projects later in my career . . . But first, I need to actually launch that career, so I open up my favorite Spotify playlist and get to work.

When I’m pushing the half-hour mark of being gone, I worry the girls will show up at the room out of concern for my bowels, so I call it quits on this writing session and pack away the laptop. I spritz some more perfume and apply a fresh layer of lipstick, then begin the long walk to the elevators and back down to the Chandelier.

Addy, Evie and Melissa are exactly where I left them, only now the men have joined them, pulling over more chairs and crowding out our once-comfortable seating area. I really should check with Liam what their plans for the weekend are, if any, or if they’re simply going to piggyback off of all of my hard work.

“She’s back!” Melissa cheers as I approach the group, and I settle into the remaining empty chair.