Free Tempting the Best Man (A Gamble Brothers Novel) (Entangled Brazen) by J. Lynn

brothers. If Madison wanted to play with them, she got to play and set the rules.
    Too bad it didn’t work that way now.
    “You found me,” she said, closing her eyes.
    “I did.”
    “How?” she asked. It was the one thing she’d never figured out.
    Chase was quiet for so long, she thought he might not remember. “We searched everywhere—my brothers and your family. They’d been in the tree house, but I don’t know why I checked it again. I saw that damn chest we used to sit on and looked in that hole. I saw your red jumper and about had a heart attack. I called your name and you didn’t answer.” A heartbeat passed. “I thought you were dead in there. I had to use that busted old hammer to pry the lock open.” He took a deep breath. “You scared the hell out of me.”
    She bit her lip as she remembered him picking her up and carrying her back to the house. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you guys.”
    “I know. You were just a kid.”
    There was a pause and then she said, “Sorry about last night.”
    He shrugged it off.
    “No. Really. I was pretty blitzed, and I vaguely remember hitting myself in the face.”
    The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he chuckled. “You did do that.”
    “So embarrassing,” she muttered. “Anyway, I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
    “Don’t be. It was fun.”
    “Fun?”
    He nodded. “You were pretty keen on the moon and teaching Mitch and Lissa’s kids about volunteering and stuff —lots of stuff .”
    Madison grinned.
    There was a drawn-in breath and then, “So, you sleep naked?”
    Aw, man…
    “All the time?” Curiosity marked his tone.
    She sighed. “All the time.”
    “Nice.”
    Peeking over her shoulder at him, she raised her brows. He winked. And then he said nothing else. In the silence that followed, she searched for something to say. “How’re the clubs going?”
    “Good.” He folded muscular arms over his chest. “I’m thinking about opening a fourth in Virginia.”
    “Really? Wow. That’s a lot to handle.”
    “I don’t know. Nothing is in stone yet, but it’s looking good. There’s Father’s clubs, but they seem to be doing well under their own ownership. Never thought to step in and buy them out from the management he had in place. I rather prefer having my own. It means more that way, like it wasn’t handed to me…” His gaze dropped to where she was rubbing her calves, and she stopped, flushing.
    Chase cleared his throat. “Mitch was telling me that you petitioned for more funding for the volunteer department and succeeded.”
    At the beginning of the year, like every place in the world, the Smithsonian was facing budget cuts, and volunteer services was one of the first departments to take a hit. It had taken months to petition, blood and quite a bit of frustrated tears, to finally be awarded a grant that allowed them to continue operating.
    Madison nodded.
    His eyes warmed with pride, and she felt all kinds of warm and fuzzy from seeing that. “That’s really good.”
    Never comfortable with compliments, she flushed and looked away. “It took a lot of work, but I enjoyed it.”
    “It’s good…seeing you doing something you enjoy.”
    Her chin jerked toward him as she tried to decipher why he had said that, but then realized he probably meant it exactly how it sounded. “Same for you.”
    Chase nodded and then took a deep breath. Madison steeled herself. She knew that sound, knew he was going to say something she probably wouldn’t like.
    “About what happened…yesterday afternoon…?” A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “I shouldn’t have left like that.”
    Surprised, she stared for several moments and then found her voice. “No, you shouldn’t have.”
    He took that in stride. “It did happen, and I shouldn’t have told you it didn’t.”
    She wondered if there was an apocalypse going on outside. Comets falling from the sky. Poles shifting. Icebergs melting. Her parents would be thrilled.
    The