It Happened One Wedding by Julie James Read Free Book Online

woman. But in one fell swoop, Brody had managed to make her doubt all of that.
    With that in mind, she looked her friend in the eyes. “This list is the closest thing I’ve got to a guarantee, Trish. I have to believe that. Because I’m sure as hell not going through another Brody experience again.”
    She closed the iPad cover—as if to say the discussion was over—and then smiled. Over the last six months, she’d learned that the best way to handle any conversation that was getting a little too personal was to simply move on. “So. Is Jonah getting any teeth yet?”
     • • • 
    ENJOYING THE WARM, early June weather, Sidney and Trish decided to walk back to their respective offices instead of taking cabs. As they strolled along one of the bridges that crossed the Chicago River, Sidney remembered something.
    “Oh my gosh, with the conversation about Isabelle’s wedding and everything else, I completely forgot to tell you about Vaughn.”
    “Who’s Vaughn?” Trish asked.
    “Simon’s brother. And you are not going to believe this.” She filled Trish in on all the details about her and Vaughn’s Meet So-Not-Cute at the coffee shop and their awkward reunion at dinner with Isabelle and Simon.
    “An FBI agent, huh?” Trish’s expression turned sly. “Is he foxy?”
    “That whole story, about the strange coincidence, and my glorious Speech of Many Insults, and the fact that I’m going to be stuck running into this dude forever, and that’s your first question? ‘Is he foxy?’” Sidney shook her head. “Trishelle . . . on behalf of womankind, I was expecting a more enlightened discourse.”
    Trish simply waited.
    “Totally foxy,” Sidney said. Hell, Trish was going to see him at the wedding, there wasn’t much sense in denying it. “When he walked up to my table, my first thought was
Criminy
. Unfortunately, then he spoke.”
    Trish threw her arm around Sidney. “Somewhere out there, waiting for you, is the total package. A
Criminy
guy who’s just looking for his Ms. Right to settle down with.”
    Sidney smiled at that, not wanting to ruin the mood. But the pragmatist in her said not to pin her dreams on that. Actually, the pragmatist in her said not to pin her dreams on any man,
Criminy
or otherwise.
    Such a skeptical bitch these days, her inner pragmatist. But not a fool.
    Never again a fool.

Four
    ACROSS TOWN AT the Chicago FBI building, Vaughn rode the elevator up to the twelfth floor with his partner, Special Agent Seth Huxley. They’d just returned from lunch and were on their way to meet their boss, the special agent in charge—or “SAC” as he was referred to around the office—about a new investigation.
    “Who’s it going to be this time? The mayor?” Huxley asked, being wry.
    “Hope not. I like the guy,” Vaughn said. Although in his line of work, he’d learned to never trust any politician’s public persona.
    In the past year, he and Huxley had developed something of a specialty in undercover sting operations involving dirty government officials—part of the U.S. Attorney’s fight against corruption in the city of Chicago. Over the course of the last twelve months, they’d taken down a state senator, a state representative, and three aldermen, all for bribery. On top of that, they’d recently arrested an Illinois state prison guard who’d been selling assault rifles to ex-felons.
    In his eight years with the FBI, Vaughn had worked on several different squads before being transferred to white-collar crime. Nick McCall, Vaughn’s boss, had been the most senior undercover agent on the squad before being promoted to special agent in charge two years ago, and the office had needed to fill Nick’s former spot with an agent, like Vaughn, who had similar undercover experience.
    All FBI special agents were qualified to handle brief “walk-on” roles—undercover jobs in which the agent had only a couple of interactions with the suspects. But as the only agent on the