Page 3 of Coming for Her Brother’s Best Friend (Coming For Christmas #4)

HAYES

I couldn’t fall asleep. It was too damn quiet. The fire had burned down to embers in the stone hearth across the room, casting a faint orange glow against the ceiling beams. Outside, the wind had gone still, leaving the world buried under a muffled blanket of snow.

I stared up at the rafters, my eyes gritty and my body restless. I’d spent a decade falling asleep to noise—rotors and engines, boots on gravel, distant gunfire, men breathing steady in the bunks around me. Out here, the silence was deafening. It filled my ears with static.

After ten years of not knowing where I’d be from one minute to the next, I’d wanted peace and quiet. But now that I had it, I didn’t know how to live inside it.

I checked my phone. 1:47 a.m.

Sleep wasn’t happening.

I swung my legs off the side of the bed and shoved my feet into my boots. A walk to the lodge lobby for stale coffee and the hum of a few security cameras sounded better than lying here waiting for memories to claw their way in.

The path to the lodge was iced over, the snow glittering hard as glass under the moon.

My breath came out in white bursts as I made my way up the slope, my collar pulled up high against the cold.

The other cabins were dark and still, their rooflines sharp against the sky.

The lake beyond them was as black and flat as obsidian.

Inside, the lobby was dim except for the glow from the tree in the corner. The fire still crackled in the massive hearth, though the room was empty. No piano music. No clinking glassware. Just silence. It was a quiet that made me feel like I might be the only person left alive.

And then I heard voices. Low and frantic, they were coming from the front desk.

I turned the corner and stopped. A night manager in a blazer stood behind the check-in counter, his cheeks flustered and his face pale. A young bellhop hovered at his elbow, holding a giant towel. And in front of them…

“Sidney?”

She turned at the sound of my voice.

Her dark brown hair hung down her back in wet strands.

She had on a pair of flannel pajama pants tucked into snow boots and a puffy jacket pulled around her shoulders.

Water streaked down the front of her clothes.

For a second, I almost didn’t recognize her.

She looked too small. Too breakable. Not the controlled, polished woman who’d been holding this whole wedding together like she could bend time to her will.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Her teeth chattered so hard it took her a second to answer. “Pipe. Burst. In the ceiling.”

I glanced at the bellhop. He nodded. “It’s bad, sir. Flooded the whole room. We’re trying to?—”

“The hotel is at full capacity,” the manager cut in, his voice strained. “We’re relocating the guest in the adjoining suite and moving Ms. Kincaid’s belongings into storage for the night. I’m trying to find her alternate accommodations but… ah… at this hour?—”

“I’m fine,” Sidney interrupted. “Really. Just… give me the key to a linen closet, and I’ll curl up on some blankets.”

“Absolutely not,” the manager said. “Ms. Kincaid, you are a valued partner and the wedding planner of record. We will not be placing you in a closet.”

I didn’t let myself think about it before the words flew out of my mouth. “She can stay in my suite.”

Her head snapped toward me, her green eyes flashing. “What? No, that’s—no.”

“You’re soaked,” I said. “And unless you want to freeze to death right here in the lobby, you’re out of options.”

“I can sleep in my truck.”

There was no way in hell I’d let her do that. “You’re not sleeping in your truck.”

“Well, I’m not sharing a room with you.”

If she didn’t look so horrified, I might have laughed. “You won’t be. You’ll have the bed. I’ll take the couch.”

The bellhop’s eyes went wide like he’d just witnessed a live grenade roll across the desk.

The manager seized on my offer like a drowning man grabbing onto a piece of driftwood.

“Mr. Granger, that’s an extraordinarily generous offer.

Ms. Kincaid, if you would be so kind as to accept, we can retrieve your belongings from your room and bring them right over. ”

Sidney’s eyes went wide, her gaze skittering between me and the manager, like she was being cornered. “I don’t need?—”

“You do,” I said, my tone calm and quiet.

Something in my voice must have cut through her panic, because she stopped mid-word, her lips pressed into a flat line. Her shoulders sagged in defeat. “Fine.”

We left the lobby in silence, our boots crunching on the crusted snow.

The wind had picked up again and whipped strands of her wet hair across her face.

She hugged her arms tight to her chest as we walked.

Her jacket was zipped all the way up, but she still shivered with each breath.

She hated needing help. I could tell by how tightly she held herself together, like she’d rather splinter herself in half than lean on someone else. I knew the feeling well.

“You know this is wildly inappropriate,” she muttered.

“So is hypothermia.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“People will talk.”

I huffed out a breath that steamed in the cold. “People always talk.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve already proved yourself.”

The words hit harder than she probably meant.

Sure, I’d proved myself once — overseas, in a uniform.

Out here? I wasn’t sure who the hell I was anymore.

I slowed my stride just enough so she could keep up without rushing.

“You think sleeping under the same roof for one night’s going to ruin your reputation? ”

“I think it could,” she said, her voice strained. “Because I don’t have one yet. I’m still building it.”

Something twisted low in my gut. She was terrified of losing what she hadn’t even built yet, and I couldn’t blame her. But I hated that she thought being near me might be the thing that broke it.

The path wound through the pines, the moonlight silvering the snow-laden branches. Our shadows stretched long and dark over the drifts.

“Have you always worked this hard?” I asked.

Her brows drew together. “What?”

“Out at Iron Spur. You were always around, but… quiet. Organized. Like you were running the place from the background.”

“I had to be.” She kept her eyes straight ahead. “Stetson was gone, Slade was running the cattle side with Dad. Somebody had to keep the books and make sure we didn’t lose the ranch.”

Steel laced through her voice. More than I remembered. It hit me then that the girl on the porch had grown into this—someone who didn’t wait for permission, who carried her entire future in her two bare hands and dared the world to take it from her.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said.

She glanced at me, quick and sharp. “Surprised about what?”

“That you turned out to be a general in heels.”

A faint, unwilling laugh broke from her before she caught it. “I’m not wearing heels.”

“Yet.”

She shook her head and kept walking, but her shoulders weren’t quite as tight.

My suite was warm and still when we stepped inside.

The fire had died down to a low glow, and the air was tinged with wood smoke and pine.

Sidney stopped just inside the door. Water dripped from her hair onto the entryway rug.

Her gaze swept across the space and took it all in…

the wide-plank floors, the leather chairs, the glass wall overlooking the frozen lake like black marble under the moon.

“Of course this is your room,” she muttered.

“I splurged,” I said as I set her duffle on the armchair and crouched in front of the hearth to stir the embers back to life. Flames licked up slow and lazy, painting the room in gold. “The bed’s all yours.”

“No,” she said, her tone final.

“Yes.”

She crossed her arms. “I’m not kicking you out of your own bed.”

“You’re not kicking me out. I insist.”

“Hayes.”

“Sidney.”

We stared each other down across the rug, heat prickling through the silence.

Water dripped from her hair onto the floor.

I sighed. “Fine. We can arm-wrestle for it if it’ll make you feel better.”

The corners of her mouth twitched before she killed the possibility of a smile. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“Maybe. But I’m still sleeping on the couch.” Damn, she was stubborn. Like nothing could bend her. Like nothing had tried—except I knew better. I’d seen the world take pieces out of people for less than what she was carrying on her shoulders.

She hesitated, then kicked off her wet boots and crossed to the bed. The movement was slow, like each step cost her something. She perched on the edge, her shoulders slumping.

“Don’t get used to me doing what you tell me to,” she murmured.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

While she disappeared into the bathroom, I pulled a spare pillow and blanket from the closet and stretched out on the couch. The cushions were too short for my legs, but I’d deal with it.

Through the bathroom door, I heard the quiet hiss of the faucet.

Then nothing. A minute later, she came out, barefoot, hair damp but no longer dripping.

She’d stolen one of my flannel shirts from my open duffel.

The hem brushed across her thighs. My cock twitched at the sight of my lucky flannel wrapped around her soft curves.

The military had taught me a lot of things, but at that moment I was mostly grateful for having mastered restraint.

“I hope it’s okay I borrowed a shirt,” she said. “I didn’t have anything dry to put on.”

“It looks a hell of a lot better on you.” The words were honest and raw, the closest I’d get to admitting the thoughts that had been running through my head all day.

Her eyes flicked to mine, startled.

I looked away first. I’d forgotten how fast she could rattle me. One look and the ground shifted. She switched off the bathroom light and padded to the bed. The fire popped softly and made shadows slide up the log walls.

“Do you always have to be the one in control?” I asked. The question came out of nowhere, but I was curious.

She froze mid-step, then said without looking back, “Yes.”

Then she climbed under the covers. Within minutes her breathing slowed, tension bleeding out of her like air from a blow-up mattress.

I lay on my back staring at the ceiling, listening to the fire crackle and the faint sound of her breaths, even and steady now.

We had a lot more in common than I remembered.

Both of us had known loss—the kind that rips out your heart and turns you into a different person than you were before.

And both of us thought we could hold pain at bay by keeping a tight grip on control.

For me, it was losing my parents and growing up in the foster care system.

I’d been a lost soul until Mama Mae took me in and made me believe family could include more than the one I was born into.

For Sidney, it was losing her mom and trying to keep a handle on making sure her family didn’t lose the Iron Spur.

We were two of a kind. And she was too close. Too dangerous. And it was too damn easy to remember the way she’d looked that night on the porch three years ago, snow caught in her lashes like she was made of light and winter and everything I wasn’t allowed to want.

The embers in the hearth pulsed softly, fading to red. Her shape was barely visible under the blankets—shoulder rising, falling, a shadow against the pale sheets.

I should have let the manager find her a different room. Should’ve walked away the second I saw her dripping in the lobby.

But I hadn’t.

And I knew damn well I wasn’t going to now.

I closed my eyes and told myself to sleep.

It didn’t work.