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My phone rings as I sit in a golf cart, and I slide my phone out of my pocket to see it’s Gabby calling.

I can’t exactly answer it during her father’s backswing, so I have to just let it ring.

I text her when I get a covert second to send it through.

Me: Can’t talk. Everything okay?

She doesn’t text back, and it’s got me worried.

“What about you, Noah?”

I glance up at James McKinney, bassist for the band Vail and one of the co-owners of Coax. He’s in the golf cart right behind me as we wait for Troy to finish teeing off, and clearly he’s asking me a question but I have no idea what it was since I was texting my best friend’s daughter on the sly.

“What about me?” I ask.

“You dating anyone?” he asks. “A few of my wife’s friends were discussing what a snack you are the other day, so if you’re looking to meet someone, I know a few single ladies who are interested.”

I laugh. “A snack ?”

“Their word, not mine.” He shrugs.

“Is it supposed to be a compliment?” I wonder aloud.

“It means good enough to eat,” Victor Bancroft, the famous actor and the third co-owner of Coax, pipes in. He wiggles his eyebrows up and down to make sure his meaning is clear—a snack is something sexually appealing, apparently.

And that’s the foursome with the groom to be today. Three sex club owners plus a third baseman. It sounds like the start of some raunchy joke, but it’s just my Saturday morning on a golf course.

James and Victor are Troy’s closest friends outside of ball, and they’re here to support him on his wedding day. He didn’t ask either of them to stand up in the wedding, but he did ask them to be there tonight on the very small guest list.

Troy walks back toward the golf cart we’re sharing, shaking his head at the way his ball sliced right, and I start driving to the next tee as soon as he gets in.

“Did you ever answer the question?” he asks.

“What question?”

“The one James just asked you. For as close as we are, you never talk about your personal life,” he presses.

I sigh. I can’t exactly do this without Gabby by my side. “It’s complicated,” I offer instead.

“With Stacy?”

I shake my head, my brows dipping as my head swings over in his direction for a beat before I turn back to the road as I take the curve around toward the next tee possibly a bit too fast. “What makes you say that?”

“She showed up out of nowhere a few months ago, and you went radio silent right around the same time. I figured one had to do with the other and you didn’t want to admit you were fucking your nutty ex.”

I turn to narrow my eyes on him. “Question.”

He raises his brows as if to tell me to ask away.

“What if I was fucking my nutty ex? Do you really think I’d take kindly to you calling her nutty ?”

He chuckles. “I figured I’d either get a rise out of you or you’d let it go, but either way I’d get the answer. So I take it it’s a no?”

“It’s a hardcore no. I want nothing to do with my ex-girlfriend and I made that very, very clear to her.”

“Then who’s been yanking your crank? You’re in a perpetual good mood, so you must be getting it somewhere.”

Jesus, this is uncomfortable. I’m trying to come up with some answer when I pull up to the next tee.

“Hey Bodine, is your daughter seeing anybody?” Victor asks when we pull up to the next tee, thankfully saving me from having to answer more of Troy’s questions…but also throwing a brand-new wrench into the thick of things since I could essentially kill two birds with one stone if I answered Victor’s question.

“Not that I know of,” he answers, and I force myself not to freeze, to feign total disinterest…to act like I have no horse in this race even though I essentially own all the horses. “Why?”

Thank God he asked so I don’t have to.

“Jade’s younger brother is moving to town. He’s in his early twenties, and I thought he might like a friend close to his age,” Vic says.

He . He is in his early twenties.

Victor is trying to hook Gabby up with some woman from the club’s younger brother, and my hackles rise all the way the fuck up to the sky.

I’m about to get involved when I realize I can’t. It’s supposedly not my place even though it most definitely is my place. Still, Gabby should be here for that particular conversation.

So I zip my lip and head up to tee off, tuning them out. My ball goes right into the fucking bunker because now I’m thinking about Gabby and Jade’s brother and how none of this is okay.

“Look, Jade is lovely, but I just don’t want Gabby involved in any way with the club,” Troy says to Victor when I return to the cart and slide my club into my bag.

“She wouldn’t be unless Jade invites her brother for a preview night, which I highly doubt,” Victor points out.

Troy presses his lips together. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t know this kid. Do you?”

“You’ve got to let her go at some point, Troy,” Victor says softly.

I’m so torn on whether or not to insert my own opinion here. Yes, he should let her go. But he should let her go to me . No one else.

“Maybe that’s true. Or maybe I can spend a little more time protecting her since I missed out on the first eighteen years of her life.” He shrugs, and then he grabs his driver. Before he walks up to the course, he turns back to us. “Nobody’s ever going to be good enough for her, of course. But she’s only twenty-one. I’ve got a few more years before I need to worry about any of this shit.”

I fail to remind him that he was her age when she was born. It’s irrelevant.

The point is…he’s never going to be okay with anybody dating his daughter, but least of all a thirty-three-year-old baseball player he calls friend .