Knocked Out By Love (Love to the Extreme) Read Free Page A

to hear it. It’s as simple as that.” She shrugged. “So, as far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out on whether Brody is guilty of being in the know.”
    “My jury isn’t. He used to hang around our place at least four days a week. I considered him my friend, too, not just my husband’s. But a little over a year ago, he stopped coming over. Ryan still hangs with him a few times a week, but I’m never invited.”
    She’d been surprised at how much it had hurt to have Brody cut her off like he had. She’d looked forward to his visits, and there had been plenty of times Brody had swooped in to take her to dinner or a movie when Ryan had been unavailable or just plain unwilling to go. At least now she knew the reason for his retreat—he had been protecting his bro.
    “Maybe Brody was a cover so Ryan could see his girlfriend.”
    She ran her fingers through her hair. “The timeline is there. Ryan starts seeing a woman on the side, his best friend stops hanging around the house. Can’t be any clearer than that.”
    Delaney scrunched her nose. “Yeah. It does seem pretty clear. So what are you going to do?”
    All she was looking for was a little male attention to stroke her ego. She needed it. So did Delaney. Both of them had decided to use this trip to learn to flirt again and slide back into single life. Neither one of them was looking for a hookup, but Brody didn’t need to know that.
    “Screw Brody. He’s not going to ruin my good time.” She strode across the room and opened the door, then glanced over her shoulder. “Project ‘Watch Me’ is officially underway.”
    …
    “Damn it,” Brody muttered between clenched teeth, and fisted his hand around his cell phone as he paced the palm-lined walkway. The calming sound of the ocean waves crashing in the background had no effect on his disgust at himself.
    For the last hour, he’d been struggling to do his duty to his best friend. What a shitty friend that made him out to be. Had the shoe been on the other foot, he would be furious with Ryan if he hadn’t informed him that his hypothetical wife was waltzing around without her wedding band on, flirting with men—much less insinuating her intention of finding a man to get into her .
    So why the hell was he hesitating?
    He sighed. Because there had to be more to the story. There were women out there, married and single, who were born flirters, who could captivate any man they came across without even trying. Scarlett wasn’t one of those women.
    Unless she was in front of her students, she was very introverted. She also exuded an inaccessibility that kept most men from approaching her. The ones who attempted to engage her in conversation would receive a bored, “go waste someone else’s time” stare. The Scarlett he’d just seen was completely out of character, which meant something had to be motivating her.
    What could have happened? Had she and Ryan fought? He shook off that possibility. A fight wouldn’t cause this drastic of a personality change.
    He gritted his teeth and shoved his phone back in his pocket. The best course of action was to keep watch over her and not bring Ryan into it until he knew exactly what the fuck was going on with her.
    “Where in the hell did you go, man?” Brody turned to find Blake walking up the path toward him. “I turned around to watch the show for a second, then when I glanced back, you were just gone,” his cousin continued.
    “Sorry about that. I saw someone I knew.”
    “Who?”
    “You wouldn’t know her. She’s Ryan’s wife.”
    “So, he’s here?” his cousin asked, his lips pressing together tightly.
    “What do you have against him?” Brody had never understood Blake’s obvious distaste for Ryan.
    “Let’s just say Ryan and I have never meshed well, and leave it at that.”
    Considering the only time they’d spent any real time together had been when they were teens, Brody blew off his dislike as some juvenile rivalry.
    “It doesn’t