Instead of admitting that, I miraculously held the truth back and gave him a flirty smile. “Do you mean, like right now?” I walked past him and let my hand settle on his shoulder. Brushing over his shoulder blades and down his spine, I felt brave and bold and like the Old Fashioned I’d downed had seriously kicked in.
“Just kidding,” I murmured near his ear.
He spun around as I continued walking. “Hey, now, what about that drink?”
I twisted around on my toes, letting my heels use the momentum of the slick wood floor to propel me like a ballerina. “I thought I’d give you the chance to save me again.”
His mouth split in a surprised smile and he tipped his head back and laughed. “One time, Baptiste. Just this one time you’ve outsmarted me. Don’t expect it to happen again.”
“We’ll see,” I called before hurrying back to the table. If I had to be stuck with Vann all night because the other couples were lovesick puppies, at least we’d started getting along. There were some definite friendship vibes sparking back and forth between us.
Maybe even more than friendship.
Or I don’t know, maybe it was just irritation mixed with a few drinks.
Regardless, the whole mysterious broody thing was equal parts sexy and frustrating.
True, I liked to believe I could do most things on my own without a man stopping by to change my tire or replace my lightbulbs. But there was something about the way he delivered his help that turned me to warm happy goo instead of fire and brimstone.
The way he looked at me didn’t hurt either. Vann was shockingly open and honest. He said what he thought. And not everything he said was nice. But somehow, his blunt honesty was growing on me.
Ten
Three hours later, we’d made it to dessert stop numero uno. I was happy I’d worn my stretchiest pair of leggings—thank you Costco!— and flowyest tunic because I needed them.
Tonight, had been like Thanksgiving, plus the entire holiday season, plus the day after Valentine’s day when all the candy goes on super sale—combined. These friends of mine could eat.
And drink, to be honest.
I was already planning a double session of yoga classes in the morning, or I was going to look like the Kool-Aid Man for Vera’s wedding in two days.
Realizing the weekend had only started and that I had to get through a decadent bridal brunch, the rehearsal dinner, plus the actual wedding reception, I couldn’t help but groan.
“What’s wrong?” Kaya asked from across the table, where she sat nestled against Wyatt, his tattooed arm wrapped securely around her.
“I’m going to gain three hundred pounds this weekend.”
Molly raised her eyebrows. “I was thinking the same thing. I’m going to have to recommit to those damn spin classes or I’m never going to fit into my wedding dress.”
“Spin class?” That sounded interesting. I had been thinking about joining the same gym as Molly and Vera for months, after my gym had gone bankrupt and closed their doors. I’d been dedicated to my favorite yoga studio since, but I knew I needed to mix in some cardio. My limbs were all stretch and flexibility, but there was more to life than being able to stand on your head for twenty minutes.
I loved the idea of having friends at my gym. Not that I could get Vera and Molly to work out with me often. But maybe after the baby I would be able to coax Vera into some low-stress Zumba or biking or something.
A cycle class was an entirely different side of Molly that I didn’t even know existed.
She rolled her eyes. “Vera tricked me into going a while back. I quit after she got pregnant because… because basically it was the worst. But now that I’ve eaten my weight in salsa and fried food tonight, I have no choice.”
“It’s not that bad,” Vann countered, pointing a stern finger at her. “You just like to complain.”
She leaned forward, dropping her voice to a secretive tone. “Every time I get off that cursed bike,” she explained, “I think it should buy me dinner. It gets way too familiar for a forty-five-minute class.”
I couldn’t help but snicker at her expense. She bugged her eyes out, letting me know she was serious.
“It is a tough class,” Vera agreed. “But dang, it worked. I’d still be dragging Molly’s lazy bones there every morning if pregnancy wasn’t currently kicking my ass.”
“Don’t say that,” Molly groaned. “I don’t even need to go. I’m perfectly fine adding all five thousand calories from tonight to my body. I got a man.” Ezra smiled at her adoringly, squeezing her hand in his. Until she finished by saying, “I can officially let myself go.”
“Wait, what?” Ezra asked, causing us all to laugh harder.
When the laughter died down, Vann leaned closer to me, so his shoulder bumped against mine. “You don’t eat like this all the time?”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged, and when his arm settled it was touching mine more fully. “You guys are chefs. Good chefs. I would think this would be every day fare for you all.”
“It’s actually the opposite,” I told him. “We’re usually so busy cooking for other people, we’re too tired to cook for ourselves.”
“Or I am so sick of the food I’m cooking over and over that I can’t even stomach the idea of eating it,” Kaya added from across the table.
“True story,” I agreed. “When you’ve looked at something approximately three hundred times in one night, it’s significantly less appealing.”
“Interesting,” Vann said.
“Nights like these totally make up for it though,” I told him. “You know, when you go out with your friends that have good taste and they want to literally eat everything and you’re like, ‘oh, I guess I do too.’ I’m going to have a food hangover in the morning.”
He smiled at me, but it was slightly peculiar—as if he was surprised he thought I was funny.
The waiter stopped by again and Killian ordered a round of limoncello for the table. We were at this kitschy little Italian place with a tiramisu that I was confident would be served in heaven. We’d been sipping Prosecco and negronis and now we were apparently moving on to dessert beverages.
Killian nuzzled his bearded face against Vera’s neck, causing her to giggle. “Dance with me?” he asked. I couldn’t actually hear him from where I sat at the other end of the table, but I read his lips and watched her cheeks flush.
They stood up a minute later, escaping to the small dance floor in the corner where three older couples swayed and two-stepped to big band music and the best of a Frank Sinatra cover band.
“That looks fun,” Molly told Ezra. He took her hand and led her away.
I gave Kaya a look that said, “Don’t leave me alone here with Vann!”
She raised her eyebrows and tilted her chin toward the dance floor. I shook my head no. Her eyebrows rose higher. I glared lasers at her. She kicked my shin under the table.
Then stupid Wyatt got involved. Taking Kaya’s hand, he said, “If you’re done having your stroke, would you like to dance?”
She smiled serenely at me. “I would love to.”
I slumped against the booth side of the table while the two of them pranced off to the dance floor. “Traitor,” I mumbled beneath my breath.
“That’s kind of cliché,” Vann murmured, sounding as irritated as I’d felt. “Don’t you think?”
I turned to face him. “The dancing?”
“Sinatra, the couples, all of it. I find it repulsive.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. He never said what I expected him to say. “Agreed. They might as well be an advertisement for happily ever after.”
“Or erectile dysfunction,” Vann added.
On that note, I nearly choked on my spit. “What?”
“Haven’t you ever noticed those commercials? They’re all about selling an image like this. Couple goes to dinner with friends. Couple dances romantically. Couple falls into bed only to be interrupted by something unexpected. Don�
��t worry, this blue pill works whenever you want it to work. Unless it works for longer than four hours. Then you should be concerned.”
I snorted—that’s how hard he’d made me laugh. I’d resorted to snorting. “What concerns me the most, is how much you know about them.”
He hid his sheepish smile behind a sip of the cocktail I knew he didn’t really enjoy. He’d been nursing it for the last thirty minutes and every time he took a sip, his nose wrinkled. “They’re on all the time.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Have you ever watched a football game? Or the news? Seriously, you can’t not know about ED. It’s everywhere.”
“Apparently.”
I had a thing for the look of complete outrage on his face. He didn’t like to be misunderstood. And I knew that sometimes that came off as arrogant, but it was also kind of cute.
“I’m good down there,” he insisted. “Everything works great.” He made the okay symbol and clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I’m good to go.”
Widening my eyes and looking completely shocked, I asked, “Is that a proposition?”
“Oh, my god, no!” He dropped his head into his hands. “There’s something about you I have never liked. This might be it.”
I smiled as I took another drink of the cocktail that I found delicious. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The waiter returned and dropped off the limoncellos. I settled them around the table and then drained my negroni.
Vann eyed his small fluted glass and nearly neon-yellow liqueur with great suspicion. “What is this?”
“It’s lemon liqueur,” I told him. “It’s delicious. You’ll love it.”
“It doesn’t look like anything I’d love. I’m more of a beer guy.”
“Oh? I’m sure they have something on tap.”
He shook his head again and it felt like a final decision had been made. “I already looked. They don’t have anything I like.”
“That high maintenance, huh?”
He let out an impatient sigh and then explained his stance on beer—which was extensive. He was into the small breweries that were popping up around Durham and inside Charlotte. He loved IPAs the best. New England style which apparently looked like orange juice. And he was majorly disappointed at the beer selection in all the places we’d been to tonight. Except for Craft. That was the only stop tonight that had won his approval.
He shrugged. “I’m not high maintenance, I just know what I like.”
“I know what I like too and I’m going to be honest, this time you’re wrong.”
“About booze?”
I gave him a look and said, “Yes, about booze.”
“Nope. Sorry. I’m right.” He eyed the dainty glass of limoncello. “That looks sour, bitter, and persnickety.”
My lips lifted in an amused smile. “Sounds like you’re scared to date her.” I nudged the glass toward him. “Good thing it’s just a drink. Much less commitment this way.”
He shook his head. “You’re set on making me drink this.”
I bounced up, tucking one knee beneath me and turning Vann’s first encounter with limoncello into a spectator sport. “Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with persnickety.” I batted my lashes innocently for dramatic effect.
His gaze drifted over me, starting at my face, drinking in every detail, line and contour. Then it dipped lower, scanning over my bare shoulders, pausing at the dip of exposed cleavage that my favorite subtly scandalous lacy black tunic showed off, dropping lower and lower until even my ankles felt sexy. My stomach fluttered with surprised butterflies.
I found myself transfixed as his focus moved back to the liqueur. I held my breath as his long fingers wrapped around the delicate stem and in one fell swoop he tossed it back like a shot.
My lips parted in shock. “You’re supposed to sip it!” I cried too late.
His face scrunched and twisted, his lips puckering in disgust. “Goddamn,” he gasped on the other side of the glass.
I couldn’t help it, I nearly collapsed on him from laughing too hard. I’d wanted to introduce him to a fun, new drink. Of course, it was going to taste awful if he glugged it in one big gulp.
“This was a prank?” he asked, eyeing me as I draped myself over him and tried to breathe through the laughter. “Are you pranking me?”
“I didn’t know you’d drink it like that!” I insisted. “I meant for you to sip it.” I sat up, my head buzzing from the booze and from the nearness of this man. I’d propped my elbow on his shoulder and felt the deliciously warm heat of his skin beneath the smooth material of his crisp button-up. “You did it wrong.”
From this vantage, I was sitting just slightly taller than him, with my feet tucked beneath my butt, my heels discarded on the floor. He looked up at me, his gray eyes a brewing thunderstorm of unspoken thoughts. “You should have warned me.”
I leaned closer, desperate for more of his heat, more of the way he was making me feel. “You didn’t give me the chance!”
He watched me for a few moments. My skin tingled as his intense eyes simply took me in, studied me, tried to figure me out. “I was right.”
“About what?”
“Sour. Bitter. Extremely persnickety.”
Leaning away from him, I grabbed my drink and brought it back to his lips. “Try it again.” He gave me an adorably stubborn look, pressing his lips together in refusal. “Sip it this time.” When he still didn’t move, I pulled out the big guns. Don’t be a chicken was sitting on the tip of my tongue, but at the last second, I heard myself say, “Please?”
It worked. However, he took the glass from me so he could do it himself. After he had taken the most careful sip of all time, he handed the glass back to me. I took a sip myself, making sure this wasn’t a terrible brand in general. The taste hit my tongue with the force of ten lemons, opening up my palate and making me pucker my lips in the best way.
“Hmm?” I asked, bugging him for an answer.
“It’s definitely better in small doses,” he admitted.
“Like our friendship,” I teased.
He looked up at me and his eyes were crystal clear. Gray sea glass. The ocean at dawn. “Is that what we are? Friends?”
Nuzzling closer, I slid back to my butt, finding that I was now nearly tucked into his side. “I figure three life-saving events bridged the gap between strangers and friends.”
He chuckled, the sound rumbling through his body. I had the strangest urge to mess up his hair. It seemed too tightly maintained, too perfectly quaffed. He wasn’t this clean cut, preppy guy he pretended to be. He was dominant, in charge, fierce. He wasn’t docile and restrained. He wasn’t only sharp angles and pressed pants. He was in your face with his opinion and bossy and… hiding a serious sense of humor.
“No wonder I have so little friends. I haven’t saved nearly enough lives.”
I found myself laughing again. Had I ever laughed this much with a guy before? “I think you could just hang out at coffee shops and interrupt bad dates if you’re in the market for more friends.”
He nodded seriously. “Especially if that last douche of yours is involved. Did you hear from him again?”
“He texted to tell me how rude I was to leave him there. I tried to explain that I had a kitchen emergency, but he saw through me. Our mutual friend, Benny, texted later to scold me on my bad manners.”
Vann snorted. “Did you tell Benny his friend was a total asshole?”
“I did, actually. In those exact words.”
He smiled at me and I nearly lost my breath. It surprised me, full and wide and nothing I had ever seen before. This man that usually scowled and glowered and pondered and considered, but rarely ever smiled at anything. At least not in the short time I’d known him.
I found myself staring at his lips, taking in the happy expression as I tried to wrestle my pounding heart into neutral attraction.
He was a good-looking guy. Naturally, I would be ent
iced by his smile. He had these perfectly masculine features and tanned skin, topped off with pearly whites that only appeared when his full lips lifted in this sigh-inducing expression.
It was the logistics of being female that had me feeling like all the alcohol tonight had very suddenly caught up to me. My anatomy couldn’t help but be totally smitten with his anatomy.
Plus, there were all those times he’d saved me stacking up in favor that this guy was hot.
But he was also Vera’s brother. He was also a mostly, total stranger. He was also not right for me.
Okay, Dillon, my inner future-cat-lady asked impatiently, if he’s not right for you, who is?
Someone who worked similar hours to me, I told the desperation. Someone who didn’t think I was a total moron. Someone who…
Oh, who was I kidding? Fear curled around my lungs, tightening, choking, suffocating. Memories from six years ago threatened the happiness of the night. I didn’t want a relationship.
I didn’t even want male attention. Not really. Kind of, but not really.
The freshness of those early wounds had faded. The sharpness of the hurt and pain and fear had dulled. The fogginess of that night had never lifted. But still. Still…. Still…
Still. That damn smile.
It made me want to try again. It made me not want to give up on the male species as a whole.
It faltered when I had stared at his face for so long I’d made it awkward between us. He leaned forward, apparently a prisoner to the same pull that I was.
“Good,” he murmured, but I’d forgotten what we were talking about. “You should be careful meeting up with assholes like that. I can’t be at every bad date to rescue you.”
I had to slightly shake my head to get back in the conversation game. “It’s not a bad idea though,” I told him, hardly recognizing the sultry tone to my voice. “Usually, I have to fake texts from my mom.”
His smile returned. “What do you say?”
“That she was rushed to the emergency room,” I admitted. “I’m a terrible person.”
That sexy as hell smile reappeared. “At least you don’t have to stick it out because you’re the one paying for the meal.”
The Something about Her: Opposites Attract book four Page 12