Cade shook his head. Enough already with the praises. “She’s just a girl, Vaughn.”

“I take it that means you don’t care if I ask her out on Sunday?”

Immediately, a pair of gorgeous light green eyes popped into Cade’s head.

Because in response to your tough-guy speech, I, in turn, would’ve had to give you my tough-girl speech, about where, exactly, federal prosecutors who come to my office looking for assistance can stick their obstruction of justice threats.

All right, fine. So she’d almost made him smile with that one, too.

“If you want to ask her out when this is over, be my guest,” Cade said.

“You hesitated,” Vaughn noted in a sly tone.

“Not at all.”

Huxley glanced over from the driver’s seat. “Actually, you did. There was a definite pause there.”

Cade sat back in his seat, shaking his head as he stared at the road in front of him.

Of course, now they decided to agree on something.

Five

LATER THAT EVENING, Brooke dropped by Ford’s loft apartment. When he slid open the heavy steel door, she held out three tickets for Sterling’s skybox at Wrigley Field.

“Cubs/Sox. Figured I’d see if you, Charlie, and Tucker want to go,” she said, already knowing the answer to that. There wasn’t a person in Chicago who would turn down free skybox tickets to the Crosstown Classic between the city’s two baseball teams.

Ford grabbed the tickets without hesitation. “Skybox? Hell, yes. I love it when they bring in that dessert cart.”

“One of my strongest selling points as a girlfriend, apparently,” Brooke muttered as she stepped inside.

With its open floor plan, exposed brick walls, and raised ceilings, Ford’s condo was nearly double the square footage of Brooke’s high-rise apartment in the Gold Coast. Whenever Ford gloated about that fact, Brooke went into her usual spiel—the same one she’d given her parents when she’d bought her place—about how she wanted to be able to walk to work, wanted to be close to the lake, and felt safer, as a single woman, living in a high-rise building with a doorman.

Really, though, she just liked being near the fast-paced action of Michigan Avenue.

“I thought you were taking the Hot OB to the game,” Ford said as he followed her into the kitchen. “Is he on call that day?”

“The Hot OB and I broke up earlier today.”

Ford’s arms fell to his side. “What? That’s the third guy in eighteen months.”

Brooke glared. “Thank you, I’m aware of that.”

Right then, Tucker and Charlie stepped through the sliding glass door, coming in from the deck. They were Ford’s former college roommates, and around a lot, seemingly never having any work to do—or anything else to do, really—and somewhere along the way Brooke had just sort of adopted them as friends, too.

“Hey, Brooke. Ford didn’t say you were coming over.” Charlie helped himself to a beer from the fridge and handed another one to Tucker. “Are you coming with us to Firelight?” he asked, referring to a popular upscale nightclub in the city’s Gold Coast neighborhood.

She shook her head. “I just stopped by for a short visit. I have to get up early for work tomorrow.”

“On a Saturday?” Charlie made a face to show his strong distaste for that notion, then pointed with his beer. “Hey, how are things going with the Hot OB?”

“He broke up with me this afternoon.”

“Oh. Sucks.” He paused for a moment, as if trying to come up with more, then threw Tucker a look for help.

“Don’t look at me,” Tucker said. “I’m still trying to figure out why she and Ford haven’t hooked up.”

“Never gonna happen,” Brooke and Ford said simultaneously, probably for the five-hundredth time since they’d become friends over twenty years ago.

Ford reached into the refrigerator and pulled out two Amstel Light bottles. He held one out to Brooke. “Should we go to the Spot and talk?”

She took the beer from Ford, smiling despite everything that had happened that day at the reference to their childhood hangout, a shady bank next to a tiny creek that they’d nicknamed “the Spot.” Not the most creative of names, but then again, they’d only been ten years old at the time. “Sure. Although I’ll give you the CliffsNotes version: it’s pretty much the same story as the last two guys.” She followed Ford outside and took a seat in one of the outdoor couches on his deck.

“So what happened?” Ford led in, sitting in a chair across from her.

A warm breeze blew Brooke’s hair into her eyes, so she undid her ponytail and readjusted it. She’d changed into jeans and flip-flops before coming over—a far cry from her customary high heels and pencil skirts, but it was Ford. She hadn’t worried about what she looked like in front of him since . . . well, ever. “He said I’m not a ‘big-picture’ kind of girl.”

Ford glared. “That’s a dick thing to say.”

Brooke appreciated the loyalty. But she’d done some thinking ever since she’d left work and she’d begun to think there was a lesson to be learned here. “No kidding. But that doesn’t change the fact that something isn’t working with these guys. I keep investing four months of my time into these relationships, only to end up right back where I started. And you know what? It’s not all that much fun to keep coming back here.”