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“I’m sorry,” she said. “With all the wedding stuff and photos—”

“You look beautiful.”

She blinked up at him. “Thank you.” She ran a finger along the lapel of his very nice suit. “So do you.” And he did. Oh, he did.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. “You okay after the other day?”

“Can we not talk about the other day? I’m fine. I’m just embarrassed it happened and that you had to witness it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Because vets are notoriously squeamish about medical emergencies like that.”

“It was hardly an emergency. I just… needed a moment. Apparently. And food.”

He bowed graciously. “Then, consider the whole incident forgotten.”

“Thank you, kind sir. Now. Are you going to ask me to dance or am I going to have to drag you out onto that dance floor myself?”

“The first option, obviously. Wanna dance?”

She offered him her hand. “Yes, please.” She felt suddenly nervous beside him as he pulled her out onto the floor.

He excited her. There was a huge part of her that wanted to just throw herself at him, and throw caution to the wind, but another part that knew she was just asking to get burned by the flame igniting between them.

Luke had rejoined the band on the stage and was singing a cover of a George Strait Christmas song.

“But did you know that Luke would be singing with this band?” he asked as they moved to the floor.

“He didn’t tell you he was singing?”

“He did not.”

Curious.“According to Izzy, the band we had already hired for the wedding happened to be at the Wolf’s Den a few weeks ago where they were having an open mic night and a couple of those guys in the band were there looking for a new lead singer. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell me? He’s been kind of secretive lately.” Gus pulled her into his arms.

She resisted the urge to lay her head on his shoulder. And damn, he smelled too delicious for his own good, as well.

“You’d have to ask him that,” she said. “Maybe he just wanted to surprise you.”

“Well, he did that. He’s… Luke’s talented. But I’ve always thought so. I’ve told him so.”

“You’re his big brother. He’ll always look up to you. And want to impress you.”

He stared up at Luke with a smile of admission. “I guess that’s true for the other way around, too.”

Gus wasn’t exactly wrong about his dancing skills, but as they warmed up, so did he. There were happily no squished toes and when he pulled her closer, they fell into a nice rhythm together.

“I thought you said you didn’t dance,” she said.

“I said Icouldn’tdance. There’s a difference.”

“There’s really nothing to it and there are no judges out there scoring us. Although, I think we’d be a solid eight at least.”

“I think you’re being generous.” His hand curled around her hip and tugged her closer.

“And I think you overestimate everybody else’s dancing skills.”

“I think we’d need more practice,” he said.