Delta: Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page B

stayed home or hadn’t had those lofty save-the-world goals? Nope. A cheater would cheat, regardless; it stank that it took her wedding day to realize it.
    Time for cake and a drink. She ducked into a dark and quiet study, a refuge where she could down the cake. She swished to the desk and plopped behind it. The good thing about a mermaid skirt was her butt fit in the chair, but pushing the bottom of the skirt under the desk? Eh, not so much.
    Oh well. Sophia unrolled her silverware and stabbed the fork into the cake. Ah… heaven.
    Drunk giggles warned her before the door bounced open. One of her brother’s teammates, Ryder, and Sophia’s friend, Stacy, were lip-locked and completely oblivious to her.
    Shit. “Hey. I’ll just get going.”
    The startled hookup froze.
    “Oh! Sophia. I’m, um, sorry.” Stacy’s scarlet cheeks could almost match her dress.
    They both looked unsure of what to do. God, it was awkward. “I’m heading out. You two just… stay.”
    “No, really. Are you—” She smoothed her dress. “Are you okay?”
    “I really am. You guys should continue…” Sophia bit her lip. “Talking, or whatever. I was just leaving.”
    She gathered her cake speared with a fork and the bottle of champagne, nabbing a pair of scissors off the desk in a last-minute dress strategy, using her elbow and hands to hold everything, and headed for a bedroom where she could change, eat cake, and drink responsibly—which meant alone in her pajamas.
    “Scissors?” Stacy asked, a twinge of concern trilling her question.
    “I need to fix a snag.” Or rather, she was sewn into the corset top, and the seam ripper had been packed into her overnight bag. Lord knew where that was. The ribbon that ran along her spine would be a goner as soon as she could figure out how to pull off such a flexible feat. “Bye, guys.”
    Sophia hustled as fast as her dress would allow. Conversations like this were hell. She went up a back staircase to the second floor, south wing, holding her cake and bottle of bubbly. A row of guest rooms that were likely unused—because while Mom loved a party, she wanted folks to leave at the end—were up ahead. Sophia doubted even her parents would spend the night in this house. Surely there was some fancy diplomatic event they had to scoot off to somewhere in the world.
    Pushing through a door, she forked a huge bite of cake into her mouth and walked with her eyes shut, mouth full, and was the closest she’d been to content in about a day. “Peace at last.”
    “Sorry.”
    A low masculine accent that struck her as amazing raked from across the room.
    “Oh,” she mumbled, eyes now open, pulling the fork from her mouth. She slapped a hand over her mouth, clattered the plate and champagne onto the dresser, and dropped the scissors. Oh. My. God. Holy crap.
    “Just leaving.”
    “Sorry,” she said, desperately trying to swallow the cake without looking like an oaf dressed like an elegant marshmallow. “Didn’t know anyone was in here.”
    Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, focusing on another one of Colin’s teammates from Titan Group. Javier. Javier. Okay. Not a big deal. It didn’t matter. He was the most attractive man at the wedding even if she counted her ex-groom. Not that she’d noticed before. Well, she hadn’t not noticed. But it was more like inventory. Colin’s teammates were, as a general rule, hot. Javier, in her opinion, was at the top of that list.
    There was just something about a Delta boy. Physically, they were as good as men came. But add the whole warrior, protector, save-the-world attitude. Yeah, it worked for her.
    She had met Javier in passing a couple times and knew that he had a bit of a wild reputation. But that was not the guy in front of her, sitting on the edge of the bed, hanging his head and holding the phone as if he’d just received bad news.
    “Are you okay?” She wiped the corner of her mouth, sure there were icing smudges. He looked broken and alone,