She looked away, pressed her lips together as she started sorting through options, because the other single attendant—the groom’s brother—was bringing a date, and they’d already decided their dates would join them for the bridal party dance. If Sierra didn’t find someone, she’d either look like a dumb ass out there by herself or be conspicuously absent for that song. She disliked both options.

“It’s Saturday night?” he asked, looking pensive.

“Five thirty. I have”—she picked up her phone and pushed the button to check the time—“forty-seven and a half hours to find someone. I’m not going alone.”

She unlocked her phone, opened her contacts, and was about to tap on her brother’s name, hoping he’d know someone he could set her up with, as pathetic as that was, when Cole said, “I can stand in for your date.”

With her thumb hovering over her brother’s name, she froze and met his gaze, surprised and more than a little afraid he was joking. When she saw only sincerity in his eyes, she said, “Really?”

“If you need me to,” he said.

“You’d be my fake date?”

“No fancy dance steps I have to learn?”

“No fancy dance steps.”

He broke eye contact and picked up his bag. “Text me when and where and I’ll be there.”

Sierra let out a breath of relief and resisted the urge to throw her arms around him. Because on some level, she hadn’t lost sight of the fact that he worked for her and there were lines they couldn’t cross. But he was offering her a solution, and she’d be stupid not to jump on it.

“Thank you, Cole. I’ll make sure you don’t regret it.”

Chapter Two

It took Cole approximately thirty seconds—long enough to walk out of his meeting with Sierra and get into his truck—to regret his offer.

Fifteen minutes later, after belittling himself for the entire drive home, he hit the brakes harder than necessary as he whipped his truck up along the curb near his apartment. Leaving his tool belt and his work bag on the floor, he burst out of the vehicle into the cool October evening and slammed the door.

The drive hadn’t calmed him down. He was still just as pissed at himself as he’d been when he’d walked out of the office.

After thirty-two years on this planet, he had one good thing in his life, one thing he valued—his job. So naturally he’d just gone and endangered the shit out of that.

At the nondescript wooden door that led to the stairs to his second-story apartment, he stopped with his hand on the knob and eyed the next door over—the dark-tinted glass door of Sunshine’s, the hole-in-the-wall bar below his place. He chose the dingy, stale-smelling tavern over the comforts of home and headed inside.