“Well, why would you be?” Logan said. “Apparently, you only think I have good taste if it matches up with yours.”

“Obviously,” Rose said.

“I’m not sure that you’d make it as a matchmaker,” Logan said.

“Why not? I think I have a pretty good sense for people.”

“Have you ever even been on a date?” he pressed.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

All things considered, the conversation was a little bit overly ridiculous.

“You need to be with a woman who will lighten you up a little bit,” Rose said. “Ryder needs a woman who will do things for him, so he doesn’t have to be such a ridiculous martyr all the time.”

He stiffened. Because it was the second time in twenty-four hours that someone had called him that. And he was beginning to wonder if it was true.

If Sammy was right.

If he’d gone straight for the thing that he said he didn’t want because he was an eternal martyr climbing up on a wooden stake asking for life to go ahead and set them on fire.

But then Iris walked in, followed by Sammy, whose eyes met his, and then she jerked away like she’d been scalded.

And he knew that he wasn’t as much of a martyr as his sister or Sammy seemed to think.

Because martyring himself would’ve been sitting back and watching her sleep with another man. Get pregnant with another man’s baby.

Martyring himself would have been stepping back and letting her do what she wanted while he suffered.

And now that he had tasted her he knew that for sure. That what he wanted more than anything was her, whether or not he had tricked himself all these years into believing he was standing by holding sentry while engaging in some kind of courtly love.

There was nothing pure about what he felt.

Nothing like love about it, either.

Was he that basic that all this time he had never really been able to squash the lust that he felt for his best friend?

That in the end, it was stronger than wanting her to have the kind of happiness that she was after?

He feared that it was.

And if he were a martyr, he would have taken a step back right then. Let himself be consumed by his desire rather than seeking to satisfy it. But he didn’t. Because everybody might think that he was like that, but he knew that he wasn’t. Not in this. Not now.

So there. A victory, even if it was a hollow one. He would take what he can get.

Her blue eyes met his, and there was a strange glint in them that he couldn’t read. Sammy was often enigmatic; it was part of her charm. And he knew it was somewhat intentional. He had to wonder if she was being intentional in it this evening.

“And how was your day?” she asked.

He felt like she was deliberately lobbing that question into the center of the room and not at him specifically. And the test was whether or not he would respond. But he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to.