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  One Night With The Best Man

  Copyright © 2015 by Sara Daniel

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-840-7

  Cover art by Mina Carter

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

  Look for us online at:

  www.decadentpublishing.com

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  Also by Sara Daniel

  More Than a Fantasy

  One Night with the Bride

  Captivating the CEO

  One Night with the Bridesmaid

  One Night with the Groom

  Once Upon a Marriage

  A Model Hero

  Dedication

  In memory of John and Naomi—proud farmers, loving grandparents, extraordinary role models.

  One Night with the Best Man

  A 1Night Stand Story

  By

  Sara Daniel

  Chapter One

  Hell yeah, Alex Cortez wanted to be the best man at his sister’s destination wedding. A party in Jamaica or maybe Bora Bora. Bring it on, baby.

  Then Luciana had hit him with the real destination: the dilapidated farm in Iowa where they’d grown up.

  Hell. No.

  Except he couldn’t decline, not after she’d waited a full year while he completed his last tour with the Marines so he could attend.

  Maneuvering his sports car onto the rutted gravel road, he pulled to the side before the farm came into view over the hill. When the sale had gone through the previous year, he’d considered it the best day of his life, despite a round of enemy fire and a dinner of MREs.

  Why Luciana wanted to have her big day at the place that had stolen their father’s life and mother’s health then tried to kill her soul, he had no freaking idea. The filtered, air-conditioned air did nothing to disguise the scent of manure, livestock, and fresh-cut hay from outside. He sneezed twice and cursed several more times.

  One more mile. He’d survived the deserts of the Middle East and warring factions in Africa. He could suck up his abhorrence of the farm for two days.

  Keeping his gaze glued to the road, Alex gritted his teeth as gravel dust and rocks slapped the paint job of the car that, up until a few months ago, he’d only been able to fantasize about buying. But the investment in his buddy Luke’s identity theft app had paid off so big, paying cash for his sweet ride hadn’t dented his bank account.

  But, all the money in the world couldn’t help him avoid the upcoming weekend. He steered into the driveway, lifting his gaze just enough to take in the parking situation, but not enough to check out the sad state of the house or the barn. Adding his car to the row designated for the rehearsal guests, he inhaled and exhaled several times before exiting.

  An excellent landscaping service, giant white tent, and flowered archway had transformed the normally overgrown grass lot into a manicured lawn ready to host a classy, outdoor wedding. By focusing on the nuptials, he’d ignore the real setting and maybe come through the weekend unscathed.

  “Alejandro, you arrived.” Luciana waved and beamed at him, her smile too relieved for him not to feel guilty for giving her reason to worry he might not show.

  He joined his sister in the open-sided tent, hugging her. Family members and friends milled around, doing a fabulous job of pretending they preferred the manure-scented air over the ocean breeze of a tropical island.

  “You look gorgeous.” Not carrying the weight of a two-hundred-acre dairy farm on her shoulders had done wonders for her. Beyond radiating happiness, she managed to project an image of utter relaxation, on the eve of the biggest day of her life, no less.

  “I can’t tell you how excited I am to have my two favorite men in the same room together.” Her smile carried an extra-special sparkle as she faced her fiancé, Blake Remington.

  Alex offered his hand to the other man. “I’m in your debt.” Literally.

  Blake had solved the family’s insurmountable money troubles when Alex hadn’t had a cent to contribute and then Blake had refused his every effort to repay him from his newly-flush bank account.

  “There is no debt,” Blake assured him, his handshake solid and sincere. “If anything, I’m in yours.”

  Because he’d set his sister up on a one-night stand that had led the two of them to reunite after fifteen years apart—an act of selfish desperation so Alex wouldn’t be forced to return to farm work.

  “If you wanted to repay me, you could have found a nicer location for this event.”

  “Dr. Gundersen was very generous in allowing us to take over the yard,” Luciana said.

  “She probably needed the money. Or maybe she hoped we’d all take over the milking for a couple days.” Alex would pity the woman, except the gorgeous agricultural professor had bought the place despite a host of more palatable options.

  “I’d hoped no responsibility and a boatload of money would make you less cynical,” Luciana chided.

  He wasn’t a cynic—except when it came to the farm.

  “How long do you intend to ignore your mother, Alejandro?” a woman in a folding chair nearby demanded in rapid-fire Spanish.

  He embraced her. “Sorry. I didn’t see you. I would never ignore you, Mamá.”

  “Did you bring a girl with you?”

  To the farm? Not a chance. “I haven’t been out of the Marines long enough to find a place to call home, let alone meet someone.”

  “No, no. You meet someone first. Then you make your home together,” Mamá said. “Another wedding in a couple of months would be perfect.”

  He didn’t want to be tied to anything he couldn’t fit in his car, let alone a woman who would expect something from him. For the first time in his life, he was free, and he intended to savor it—for years, possibly decades. He needed to find someone to hang out with who wouldn’t aid his mother’s quest to marry him off.

  Dr. Susan Gundersen a
pproached the tent. Well, well. Talk about perfect timing. Not even his mother would consider tying him to the person who’d taken over their old home. And dang, the woman was even more gorgeous than he remembered. Maybe the weekend wouldn’t be so awful, after all.

  “Excuse me, Mamá. Our hostess needs some assistance.” He patted her hand and escaped.

  Being a red-blooded male, he checked the professor out as he sauntered toward her. She had the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, dark-red hair, and the svelte, poised figure of a model. Alex had always had an irrational weakness for blue eyes.

  Luckily, hair color and body type didn’t hold any special power over him, but he still recognized a hot woman when he saw one. If all college professors looked like her, he ought to continue his schooling. “You might not remember me, but I’m—”

  “Alejandro,” she finished. “I remember.”

  “Alex,” he corrected. Sure, he could speak Spanish and loved his mother’s to-die-for enchiladas, but he also lived and breathed baseball and had given Uncle Sam over a decade of his life. His mother and sister hung on to their Hispanic heritage, but he was 100 percent American.

  “How’s your gallbladder, Professor?”

  The one time they’d come face-to-face, she’d been sharing a sterile room with his mother and had the misfortune of wearing a tacky hospital gown. That chance encounter, combined with her career in agricultural studies specializing in organic dairy farming, had convinced his mother to sell her the farm.

  “No idea. I haven’t had any contact with it in a year.” Her lips quirked.

  “It never calls? You two used to be so close.”

  As her smile widened, his own faded. He needed to shut up. Despite the thrill of flirting with a woman who had more letters behind her name than he’d ever had in his, her excitement about fields of cow pies and dilapidated buildings meant she could only be a distraction from his mother’s matchmaking, not a woman he could consider hooking up with.

  He didn’t want to witness the farm stripping her of her sparkle. He’d put his life on the line—and watched his fellow Marines die—to ensure people in this country had better options than just trying to survive. But she’d used her freedom to choose the hard, soul-sucking life.

  “So, are you joining the rehearsal as an honorary member of our family?” he asked.

  Her smile disappeared, the corners of her sexy mouth tightening. “I’m not trying to crash your party. I came out here because, in addition to all the stuff you never cleaned out of your room, I found some of your family’s things in my attic. I hoped you or someone else would have a few minutes to sort through the items and tell me what you want saved and what I can toss.”

  He didn’t have to worry about creeping into flirtation mode anymore. “You’ll have to ask Luciana. If you leave it up to me, I’ll pitch everything without glancing at it.”

  “You have a lot of childhood memories left that you’ll regret throwing out.”

  As if she had any idea what kind of regrets he carried. “I keep my memories in here.” He tapped his forehead.

  She opened her mouth, no doubt to convince him he needed all that stuff he’d tried so hard to leave behind. So he said the first thing he could think of to shut her up.

  “Want to guess my favorite memory of you, Professor? The open-air view of your ass as you toddled around in a hospital gown.”

  Chapter Two

  Susan sighed. How pathetic the one time someone found her ass memorable was when it had been hanging out of a hospital gown. Unfortunately, Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Oh-So-Dangerous didn’t intend to improve the sad state of her sex life. He just wanted to humiliate her.

  She’d long ago accepted her PhD and passion for organic dairy research would never make her a hot-guy magnet. Her one gift with men was boring them into a coma. Stepping around Alex without stooping to demand why he’d resorted to checking out backsides, hers in particular, she strode across the tent to Luciana, with whom she had a good rapport, and once again explained about their possessions still in her house.

  “I am so sorry. It completely slipped my mind.” Alex’s sister gripped her forearm, the gesture full of sincerity. “I’ll do it right now.” She shifted her attention to her fiancé. “I promised I’d finish cleaning all our stuff out of the house by this weekend. If we can move the rehearsal back an hour, I should be able to finish it today.”

  “You’ll lose the time you were hoping to visit with your aunts, uncles, and cousins. You’ve been looking forward to seeing them for months,” Blake said. “As soon as Marcia returns from fixing the flower snafu, I can have her box everything and mail it to us.”

  “She won’t have time. She’s already running behind schedule.”

  Susan winced. She hated putting Luciana in the uncomfortable position, but with the contractor scheduled to arrive on Monday to remodel Alex’s old room into an office, Susan didn’t have much choice. She’d been more than generous in letting them store items in her house for the past year.

  “Alejandro will do it,” Mrs. Cortez decreed, looking like a queen on her folding-chair throne, her gaze sharp and assessing. But the woman had been too far away to overhear Susan’s conversation with him earlier.

  Susan stepped toward the family matriarch. “Perhaps I could bring boxes out here for you to look through.”

  “No,” she replied. “Today is about family and watching my daughter reach the next milestone in her life. Alejandro can box everything to deliver to my condo.”

  The back of Susan’s neck prickled, and she glanced over her shoulder. Alex stood a couple of paces behind her. He dropped his gaze to her butt. She couldn’t stop him from being a jerk—or her body from tingling—but she refused to let him see he’d rattled her.

  She focused on his mother again. “You’re right. Today should be about your family’s celebration. I’ll box everything and ship it to you.”

  “You don’t want to box everything. The shipping will cost an arm and a leg. Besides, if we’ve lived without whatever’s still in the house for a year, we’re not going to suddenly miss it,” Alex said. “Everything needs to be tossed.”

  “You two go through it right now,” Mrs. Cortez said. “If you do it together, Alejandro will be done in the time for the rehearsal and, Susan, you can stop him from throwing out his adorable baby pictures, which I would most definitely miss.”

  Bracing herself for an insult or an expression meant to offend her, she peeked at him again, but the hard, sexy man who had once been an adorable baby looked surprisingly vulnerable. Uncomfortable warmth stirred in her chest.

  “Let’s get it over with.” He strode away, leaving her to jog to catch up.

  At least she’d gotten the result she wanted, even if it lacked graciousness. She fell into step with him. “I’ve changed a lot of things inside. If you were attached to anything in particular, you might be disappointed.”

  “I’m the guy who wanted to toss everything, remember? I don’t do attachments. Makes it too hard to pick up and leave whenever I want.”

  “If that’s your motto, please don’t have kids. You might be able to leave them behind, but I guarantee they won’t appreciate it.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “You have kids?”

  “No, but I’ll be sure I’m ready for the commitment when I do.” If she had kids, she could guarantee them the same home and her steady presence. Stability. Deep roots. Everything she’d never had.

  “Be careful of what you get into. This place will bury you, and bringing kids into the picture will weigh you down more.”

  Considering the state of her sex life, any discussion about kids was a ridiculous hypothetical. Having said discussion with a man who’d never shown any interest beyond ogling her ass was downright bizarre. She brushed her fingers over his elbow. Electricity sizzled up her arm, proving her starvation for any kind of contact.

  “What happened to you as a kid? Were you neglected or something?”

  Instead of spilling a dark conf
ession, he laughed and shook his head. “Nope. I was a poster child for the American dream. Baseball star. Homecoming king. Two parents who loved me and worked like hell to give me everything I needed.”

  How could he not appreciate the rarity and wonder of the strong roots he’d grown up with? Well, she’d appreciate it for both of them. Susan tugged him toward the house, but the closer they got, the more his arm tensed beneath her hand.

  “I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who are bitter about having a perfect life,” she said.

  He pulled free. “I never said anything about perfection. My parents worked so hard, but the farm owned them, not the other way around. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, give it another year or two and it will.”

  All right. She’d offer him the benefit of the doubt since he’d never struck her as the spoiled type before. But regardless of his assertions, she remained convinced his family was perfect. Pulling the back door open, she led the way through the mudroom and into the kitchen.

  Alex’s mouth opened, but for a moment he didn’t speak. Then, “Holy crap. You gutted it.”

  “I tried to warn you.” Her shoulders sagged. Of course, he hated it. She’d taken his cozy memories of meals around a simple wooden table and made the place unrecognizable. She would hate anyone who tampered with her family roots…if she’d had any.

  Stepping past her, he ran his hand over the marble cooking island in the center of the room. “I feel like I’m in a stranger’s house—one with an incredible kitchen.”

  “I did splurge in here because I like to cook, but don’t worry, your bedroom’s the same. Everything from your family is stored in there.”

  “I like the improvements,” he stressed. “But I thought when you bought the place, you were only interested in the farm, not the house.”

  “That’s what I thought, too, which is why I told your mom and sister they could leave their stuff here until they were settled in their new homes. But after dividing all my time between here and the university, I gave up my city apartment and decided to turn this house into a home.” She caught herself before babbling on. As if he cared about the details of how she’d ended up remodeling the kitchen. “Are you ready to go to the bedroom?”