was sure you were going to hate me after Denise saw your initials on your luggage and started calling you Scooter.”
“Stupid fucking name,” he replied with a grin.
“It’s been your nickname for sixteen years. You know you love it,” Tom teased.
His best friend wasn’t wrong.
He did love the silly moniker. He might not be an Abbott, but when Tom’s sister anointed him Scooter, a twisted childhood logic took over. In his heart, this naming, this connection bound them together. It made him a part of them. Tom’s entire family called him Scooter. They used the nickname with such love, in his darkest moments, all he’d have to do was whisper the word, and instantly, he was home.
Soren Christopher Traeger Rudolph was a calculating businessman who regularly stripped companies of their livelihood. He dismantled and demolished.
His life as Scooter was the only redeeming part of him.
“Why the rush to get married, Tommy?” he asked, changing tack. “We’re thirty. We’re young. We’ve still got places to go and people to meet. Beautiful women in need of having their brains screwed out. This is the time in our lives to indulge.”
“We’ve been indulging for over a decade. Aren’t you ready for more? And I’ve got to tell you, I have quite a bit of more on the horizon with her,” Tom said, back to sounding like a whipped schoolboy.
“More on the horizon?” he repeated. She did have him watching chick flicks.
Soren undid the top button on his dress shirt, but it didn’t alleviate the tightness in his throat.
“Scooter, I love Lori. It was love at first sight, and it’s only gotten stronger. I wish you could understand what it’s like when you lock eyes with someone, and you know that your life will never be the same.”
“What the hell, man! Does she have you watching The Notebook on repeat?” he shot back, but Tom only chuckled.
“It’s not a half-bad movie, Scooter.”
Soren shook his head. His friend wasn’t ready. This was simply a passing fancy. He’d met Tom’s fiancée briefly at lunch before he’d rendezvoused with their waitress for a quick and dirty fuck in the restaurant’s alley. It wasn’t one of his classiest of moments. But when he saw the way Tom looked at Lori, he had to get out of there and blow off a little steam. The screw was mediocre and mindless. He’d wanted to get the image of Tom and Lori out of his head. But it didn’t work. Nor did it quell the unease inside of him.
Lori was attractive and smart. Who wouldn’t like her?
But to marry her—after only a few months of dating?
Hell no!
Tom was caught up in her. That’s all. They worked together. They saw each other every day. It’s no surprise he’d want to take her to bed.
But marriage? Actual marriage?
He knew his best friend. The man might have thought he was ready to pull the matrimonial trigger. But he wasn’t.
A knock on his office door caught his attention as his assistant waved to him from the other side of the glass door.
“Tom, I have to go. Janine needs something. I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Thanks, man. Remember, I need you on best, best man behavior. No funny business and tell Janine that the Abbotts wish her a Merry Christmas.”
Soren ended the call, not agreeing to anything, as he waved the woman in.
“Were you talking to Tom Abbott?” she asked, eyeing him closely.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes,” he answered, playing coy.
A smug grin bloomed across the woman’s lips. “I know that face, Soren.”
“What face?” he parroted back.
“Your real happy face.”
“I don’t have a real happy face. I have a face, Janine,” he answered, careful to keep his features neutral. But he should know better, especially with this one. At almost seventy, the woman only kept getting sharper.
And she wasn’t only his assistant.
Years ago, she’d worked as a nanny and happened to be the one person who, before he’d met the Abbotts, had bestowed genuine kindness upon him. She wasn’t with him long. His mother had hired her a few days before his tenth birthday, then, out of nowhere, fired the woman a week before his eleventh. There was never any rhyme or reason to his parents’ behavior, but he’d never forgotten Janine’s compassion. When he needed an assistant years later, he’d found her, offered her triple what she was making as a secretary in a dentist’s office in Queens, and that was that.
“I took care of finding the exotic entertainers you