Page 1 of Betting on her Best Friend
Chapter One
If Alyssa Matthews closed her eyes, she could almost imagine herself fulfilling her dream of dining alfresco at an upscale café in Paris. Cobblestone streets, soft music mixing with soft conversations, and the magnificence of the Eiffel Tower lit up like a giant Christmas tree against the night sky.
A handsome stranger, who looked suspiciously like her best friend Dylan Aleksander, would approach her as she sat alone. She’d lower her book and raise her eyes. His mouth would promise her wickedly sexy adventures with only a lopsided quirk of his lips. Holding out his hand, he’d say, “Bonsoir, mademoi—buzzzzzzzzzzzzz…”
The egg timer jolted Alyssa from one of her frequent daydreams of France and plunked her squarely back in Longmont, Colorado. More specifically, the kitchen of her tidy townhouse where she was busy making an incredible dinner of coq au vin for her and Dylan, a.k.a. the guy she fantasized about more times than she blinked in a day. Or so it felt, anyway.
She’d met Dylan when she was six years old and he was eight. He was the only kid in class who’d talked to her after she was pulled out of first grade halfway through the year and placed with the third graders. They’d been a pair ever since, but it wasn’t until after she’d returned from college a couple of years ago and rented out the other half of his townhouse that she’d started longing to be more than best friends.
Lord knew she’d dropped enough hints to leave him permanently concussed, but if he’d ever noticed, he never let on. Instead, she’d had to watch him rotate through an arsenal of women to rival the Playboy mansion. His half of the townhouse would do better with a revolving door. Then she wouldn’t have to hear the obnoxious bang of the current door every time one of his “dates” left in the middle of the night. Thankfully, he considered his bedroom a private sanctuary and never invited them any farther than the living room. Their bedrooms shared a wall and the lastthing she wanted was to hear his nocturnal activities on top of knowing about them.
Her glasses sat on her nose slightly askew from her abrupt return to reality. She readjusted them with a nudge of her finger, then retrieved the Dutch oven from her American oven. As soon as she lifted the lid, the aromatic steam made her mouth water. The chicken pieces glistened a golden brown, complemented by the ring of bright carrots and translucent onions. Success.
With a smile of satisfaction, Alyssa took a sip of her Beaujolais Cru, letting the fruity notes of the wine swirl around her tongue before swallowing.
She loved cooking. The process relaxed her and gave her brain a much-needed break after a long day of pouring over statistics and market research. And if she cooked for herself, there wasn’t any reason not to make enough for Dylan, since he lived next door and didn’t share her joy for cooking. She’d seen what he ate when left to his own devices, and it wasn’t pretty. Sometimes they ate together, and other times she simply walked next door and left his dinner on the counter for when he got home.
Normally, she didn’t cook anything quite so fancy, but tonight was the eve of her long-awaited weekend trip and she was in the mood to celebrate. Besides, they said the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. She figured if kickass food had that much influence over the heart, then she should have no problems targeting his sense of adventure.
Tomorrow she would finally arrive at the Masquerade Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas for the eighteenth annual Romance Lovers Convention. Three whole days of planned spontaneity and throwing caution to the wind in a moderately controlled environment. And with any luck, she’d convince Dylan to come along, and then they could extend the trip through next week. The longer she had with him there, the better her chances of getting out of the damn friend zone and returning to Colorado as his girlfriend.
Or maybe even…wife? She gnawed on her lower lip and started slicing mushrooms as that crazy thought took root in the back of her brain.
Was it all that crazy? When she truly thought about it, they were practically married already, sex being the only thing missing, much to her dismay. And it was Vegas, Land of the Spontaneous Weddings, so it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility…was it? Alyssa pressed a hand to her belly, which suddenly felt like an industrial leaf blower was stirring things into a frenzied cyclone and making one hell of a mess in there.
Stop overthinking, Alyssa, and stick to the plan.
The plan was simple: ply him with an amazing dinner and his favorite dessert, then play upon his sympathy, convincing him she was too nervous to go to Vegas unless he went with her. And if that didn’t work, she wasn’t above manipulating him with a healthy dose of passive-aggressive guilt. No sweat.
She just needed to get him out of their element, away from their everyday routine, to a place they could stretch the boundaries of their relationship. And what better place to do that than the best city on earth known for people taking chances and risks they wouldn’t normally consider?
She’d thought everything through, even taking the day off work to shop for a sexier wardrobe. Everything she owned before today fell under one of three C’s. Conservative, Casual, or Comfortable. But if she had to dress Nightclub Barbie for a few days to get Dylan to see her as a woman and not some asexual being, then that was what she’d do. Anything to ensure success for Operation: Damn, Aly’s Hot and I Totally Want to Do Her.
Her hand clapped over her mouth, and she barely prevented the fermented grapes from shooting out her nose. That name needed some work. Something to think about later.
Smoothing her sleek ponytail with one hand, she drank some more wine and reveled in the warmth as it slid down her throat. She’d already decided to forego her usual one-glass rule tonight. It’s not like she had to go to work the next day. Plus, she needed the liquid courage to play this whole thing off as an impulsive idea and not her long-ago-hatched plan to date her best friend of eighteen years.
Dylan’s Dodge Ram rumbled as he drove up their street. His aftermarket exhaust reliably alerted her of his arrival a good three blocks before he pulled in. Not for the first time, she ran to check her appearance in the mirror on the foyer wall.
Dylan worked as a foreman at his father’s Longmont construction company. After wrapping things up and his commute home from the city, he arrived at their adjoined townhouses around the same time every day. And if he ever ran late or changed his plans for the evening, she could count on receiving a text. His reliability was one of her favorite things about him. The fact that it stemmed from an understanding of her need for such things made him even more endearing.
Over the course of their lifelong friendship, he’d witnessed her deal with more than her fair share of instability. Her grandmother called it the Matthews Curse. Alyssa was the fourth generation of Matthews women who were highly intelligent, only children of single mothers whose lovers never stuck around to love and cherish, much less raise their daughters.
Alyssa’s dad had been around the most out of the bunch, but it was sporadic at best and extremely damaging to her mother’s psyche at worst. Alyssa had watched the strong woman become a shell of her former self. And all because she loved a man who couldn’t or wouldn’t love her back.
Alyssa refused to end up like her mom. Dylan and she were perfect together and they’d already been in each other’s lives for almost two decades. She would be the first Matthews to have a loving, caring man, and tonight she’d drive the first nail in that curse’s coffin.
The sound of his truck door banging shut made her heart leap. A second car door slamming and a woman’s high-pitched voice had Alyssa peeking through her curtains. Dylan faced the dark-haired beauty he’d been seeing off and on over the last couple of months as she stalked over to the side of his truck. She was not happy about something.
Alyssa’s stomach twisted, and she wrapped her arms around her waist for comfort at the sight of Dylan with another woman he’d been intimate with. Earlier in the week, he’d told Alyssa this woman had found someone else she was more interested in, implying she’d been the one to walk away and not him. But watching the two of them now, the brunette reaching out to him and Dylan holding her at arm’s length with a hand on her shoulder as he talked to her, it was obvious that he’d been the one to cut and run.
Just like always.
Eventually, he walked her over to her car and helped her into the driver’s seat. She swiped at her face, stared at him for a moment, and then drove off. He watched her car disappear before he turned and strode up to their porch. Alyssa jumped back from the curtains before he noticed she’d seen the entire episode and dashed into the kitchen.
Her hand shook as she picked up her knife and made even slices through an onion. With moisture pricking the backs of her eyes, she told herself it was the result of the potent onion and nothing more. Even if, hypothetically speaking, she was upset, she certainly wouldn’t have any reason to be. After all, him being single could only help her cause. But something was nagging at her about the situation…
Alyssa shook her head and took a deep breath. It was probably just because he’d obviously bent the truth about how the relationship had ended. She wasn’t used to him being dishonest with her about anything so until she found out why, she knew it would bother her.
