A Very Merry Bromance (Bromance Book Club #5) (24)

“I’m taking you to the riverfront, darlin’.”

Her head once again fell back against her seat. “Please, God. No.”

“You’re going to love it.”

She rolled her head in his direction again and narrowed her eyes. She was probably aiming for annoyed but instead achieved adorable. He damn near swerved into oncoming traffic.

They drove the next several minutes in silence—his content, hers contemptuous. The closer they got to the riverfront, the slower traffic became until people with strollers were passing them. The streets were clogged, the sidewalks nearly impassable. Gretchen pulled her face from the window. “This is even worse than I imagined.”

“You got something against crowds?”

“Don’t you?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t last long in my business.”

“You must get swarmed, though.”

“Sometimes. Tonight, I’ll just give them my not right now face if someone comes toward us.”

“What’s that look like?”

He took his eyes off the road and gave her a tight-lipped smile followed by a crisp, no-nonsense, barely there head shake.

She flinched. “Wow. Even I want to avoid you.”

“That’s not a very high bar.”

She turned her head to hide her grin.

“Ha,” he said, peeling one hand off the wheel to point at her. “I saw that. That was a gen-u-ine smile right there.”

“It’s indigestion.”

He eased around the long line of cars waiting to get into the public lot. He’d prepaid for valet parking in a VIP section.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” she said. “I’ve spent my entire life in Nashville and have never once been forced to endure Christmas on the Cumberland.”

“You’re shitting me. You’ve never been?”

“Nope. Not once.”

“But even as a kid? Your parents didn’t bring you here?”

“This isn’t exactly my parents’ kind of scene.”

“Why?”

“If you knew my parents, you’d understand.” Her words carried a sour note of bitterness, but it was the hint of sadness that rang loudest in his ears. He burned with the temptation to press for more information, but he let it drop as he pulled up to the valet stand.

“Hey,” he said gently because it seemed appropriate after what she’d just said and not said. “Can you grab the baseball hat and glasses case in the glove box?”

She opened the door once again and pulled out both. “Is this your disguise?”

“Yep.”

She laughed for the first time all night. “I was being sarcastic.”

“You want to avoid the crowd, right?”

“You could wear a ski mask and people in this town would still recognize you, Colton.”

“You’d be surprised.” He pulled the cap over his hair and donned the fake, black-rimmed glasses. He checked the rearview mirror and then grinned at her. “How do I look?”

“Ridiculous.” She was smiling when she said it, though, and his heart took off on a wild gallop. Gretchen could move mountains with that smile if she wanted to, and he was suddenly jealous of any other man who’d ever seen its brilliance.

He left the car running and got out as an attendant opened Gretchen’s door. Colton showed a screenshot of his receipt and waited as the valet scanned the barcode. “You’re all set, Mr. Wheeler.”

Gretchen draped the strap of her purse over her head to carry it crossbody. A slight shiver shook her arms as she waited for him to join her on the sidewalk.

“Cold?”

“Freezing,” she grumped, pulling a white wool hat from her bag.

“Let me.” He reached for it, and in what could only be a Christmas miracle, she didn’t argue. Colton tugged the hat over her hair and halfway down her forehead. She shivered again, but if the flash of heat in her eyes could be believed, it had nothing to do with the chill in the air and everything to do with the fact that just being near each other produced a hot blast of memory she couldn’t ignore any more than he could.

He held her gaze. “Better?”

She stepped back with a hard swallow. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Don’t sound so glum. This is going to be fun.”

“We have different definitions of fun.”

“And mine are starting to include aggravating you.”

She shot him a sardonic look. “Then you are going to have an absolute blast tonight.”

Damn. She could fire a comeback with the aim of a sharpshooter. She was right, though. Tonight was shaping up to be the most fun he’d had in a long time.

He let her lead the way, keeping a steady pace with her quick steps. She walked with the same determined gait as when she’d found him in the bar last night—rankled but resigned, as if she’d just been dared to go through a haunted house and would rather die than let her friends see how nervous she was. The rhythm of her stride reminded him of a drum corps leading the band onto the field. If he stopped walking, he doubted she would even notice.

“We aiming for a six-minute mile here, or what?”

“You have trouble keeping up?” She sounded winded.