Tempting the Best Man - By J. Lynn Page 0,8
it, but Mrs. Grant responded before she could say a word. “A crush on who?”
“Chase.” Her mother nodded sagely toward the front of the room. “She followed Mitch and him around like a—”
“Mom,” Madison groaned, wanting to hide under the table. “I did not follow them around like a puppy.”
Her mother just smiled.
“That is so sweet,” Mrs. Grant said, her gaze traveling up to where Chase and the rest of the men stood. “And he seems like a lovely young man. Mitch was telling us how he owns several nightclubs in the city.”
Mom launched into a detailed account of Chase’s successes, which were quite impressive. Within the last seven years, he’d started several profitable upscale bars, easily placing him as one of the most eligible bachelors in the District.
But her mother had glossed over Chase’s well-known playboy social life. Madison hadn’t been to any of his clubs since she was twenty-one, since that disastrous night when alcohol and several years of crushing on a guy came to an utterly humiliating head.
After taking a sip of water, she excused herself to check on her room reservation and strolled between the tables and out into the wide foyer on her way to the reservation desk. Once outside the breakfast area though, she realized she had company.
Chase fell into step beside her, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. He was a good head and then some taller than her, and she always felt like a dwarf standing next to him.
She arched a brow at him, totally trying to play it cool even though her heart was pounding walking this close to him. “Following me?”
“Thought I’d change up the pattern.”
“Ha. Ha.”
He flashed a grin. “Actually, I was going to pick up my cabin key.”
“So am I.” Belle Vineyards had several cabins nestled across their estate, and they had reserved most of them for those attending the wedding scheduled for Saturday. She bit her lip, realizing she hadn’t thanked him yet. “Thank you for coming and getting me. You didn’t have to.”
Chase shrugged but said nothing. They wound their way through the elegantly designed hallways with exposed log walls and eventually arrived at the front desk.
An older man behind the counter with a nametag reading Bob smiled at them. “How can I help you?”
Chase leaned against the desk. “We’re here to pick up our room keys.”
“Oh, for the wedding?” His hands paused over the keyboard, ready to fly. “Congratulations.”
Madison choked back a laugh. “We aren’t. I mean, there’s no need for congratulations. He and I aren’t like that. We aren’t—”
“What she’s trying to say is that we’re not the bride and groom,” Chase replied evenly, smirking. God forbid anyone thought that. Geez. “We’re with the bridal party.”
Chase gave their names while Madison mentally kicked herself for sputtering like an inept teenager, but standing this close to him was more than distracting. His presence, his spicy scent that was part cologne and part male, had her senses firing left and right.
He always had to stand close. Like right now, there was barely an inch between their bodies. She could feel the natural heat that rolled off him and if she closed her eyes, she was pretty sure she could remember what it felt like to have his arm around her, cradling her to his hard chest as his hand skated under the hem of the dress she’d worn just for him, sliding up…
Madison pulled herself from the memory. So not going there.
“I’m sorry,” the clerk said, drawing her attention back to what was important. “There’s been an unfortunate mix-up.”
Suddenly, she remembered her father’s message. “Has something happened?”
The clerk’s cheeks turned ruddy. “We had another wedding party that ends on Friday, and, well, to put this bluntly, one of the part-time workers overbooked the cabins, which pushed out the last two reservations made.”
Which, of course, would’ve been Chase’s and Madison’s reservations, because if they had anything in common, they always did things last minute.
Chase frowned as he leaned a lot farther in. “Well, there’s got to be a fix.”
Swallowing visibly, he glanced at the computer. “I was under the impression that a Mrs. Daniels had already addressed this issue.”
Madison had a really bad feeling.
“We explained the problem upon her arrival. We only have one cabin available, the old honeymoon suite about to be remodeled.”
“Honeymoon suite?” Chase repeated slowly, as if those two words made no sense.
Her stomach dropped.
The clerk looked visibly uncomfortable. “Two people can definitely room there. Mrs. Daniels said it wouldn’t be a