How to Rope a Real Man by Melissa Cutler Page A

each other’s shit for a whole three months before bailing. I’m not that guy, you know? Husband material.”
    Matt wouldn’t touch that comment with a ten-foot pole. “How’d you end up making this drive? I bet it was a grind.”
    He rubbed his eyes and lounged back. “I missed my flight and this was the best I could come up with.”
    “No offense, but you don’t look so good,” Jenna said.
    Jake sniggered. “Yeah, I bet. Haven’t slept in a few days.”
    “Kellan said you had a work emergency.”
    “Worse than that, but it was all I could think to say.” He took another noisy hit of water. “Nick, my partner, is in the hospital. Dropped right in the middle of an operation. A thirty-five-year-old man in prime shape and he had a fucking stroke right there next to me in a crapper of an alley while we were closing in on a suspect.”
    Matt looked in the backseat through the rearview mirror. Jake stared at the water bottle in his folded hands, looking frustrated and tired.
    Jenna twisted and set a hand on his knee. “Is he going to be okay?”
    “I don’t know. He survived surgery, but he’s still in a coma. All his family lives in Wyoming so I stayed with him until his folks got there.”
    Matt swallowed hard, feeling like a douche bag for being so critical of Jake before knowing the real score. Amazing how easy it was to get on a high horse and forget that other people had their own stuff going on. “I’m really sorry about all that. I have an older brother who’s a cop, and we’re always worried about him being safe around all the scumbags and criminals, but to get taken down by a stroke? That’s the worst kind of irony.”
    “You should’ve seen the look on his mother’s face when she first walked into the hospital room. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I’ve seen some heartbreaking shit on the job. I almost cancelled coming to the wedding. Nick and I have been partners for five years, you know? How could I leave him and his family and take off for a party? Didn’t seem right.”
    Into the stretching silence, Jenna asked what Matt had been afraid to. “What changed your mind?”
    “Complicated.”
    In other words, mind your own business. Matt was all for that, but Jenna had other ideas.
    “We can do complicated,” she said. “We’ve got two hours to kill before we get to the civic center.”
    Matt gauged Jake’s reaction through the mirror, prepared to step in the middle of the conversation if he got snappy or rude to Jenna. Jake squirmed in his seat and scratched the thick stubble on his neck, but the seething look he’d had when they’d picked him up didn’t return. “All right. Fine. I didn’t invite Kellan to my wedding. I wanted to give him a big screw-you for all the bad blood we’d worked up through the years, but, uh . . . I’d do it differently if I had to do it again. I think being at his wedding makes up for that, at least a little.”
    “It makes up a lot,” Jenna said gently. “When Kellan called asking us to give you a lift, he was choked up that you’d made an all-night drive to be with him.”
    The plastic bottle crinkled as Jake drained it of water. After a few silent beats, he released a heavy sigh, thick with burden. “I’ve never been a best man before.”
    The vulnerability implicit in his admission hit Matt in the gut. Whatever conclusions he’d jumped to about Jake, he’d been dead wrong. Here was a guy much like him, dealing with personal demons and doing the best he could to be a good man.
    Matt cleared his throat and tried to sound casual and optimistic. “Being a best man is easy. I was a best man at my college roommate’s wedding and one of my brothers’. The only tricky part is the speech. I tried to recite it from memory the first time and that didn’t go so hot. There’s no shame in using your notes.”
    Jake cursed. Matt’s eyes flew to the mirror. Jake was gripping the door handle like he was considering ripping it open and