Ripped (Real, #5)(70)

They turn and Brooke squeaks, “Pan!”

Remington approaches Mackenna with a dimpled smile. “I’ll be damned.”

“I’ll be next,” Mackenna says right back, and they strike handshakes, pumping hard and smiling while Brooke and I hug.

“How are you?”

“No, how are you? Touring with Crack Bikini!”

“Yeah, this is Mackenna,” I say, stepping back, gesturing. “Brooke, Mackenna. Mackenna, Brooke.”

“It’s so nice to meet you, Mackenna,” Brooke says sweetly, but even as she shakes Mackenna’s outstretched hand, she slips her free hand into Remington’s, as if reassuring him that he’s the one for her.

Remington looks down at her hand in his and smiles a secret smile. He doesn’t strike me as a man who needs constant reassurance, but the way he squeezes her hand in some silent communication makes me feel warm inside.

We head into the steakhouse, and the restaurant is oddly vacant as we walk inside. “Remington’s PA thought we’d have a better time if we rented out the place,” Brooke explains.

“Hell, I’m already having a blast,” Mackenna says, taking my hand in his.

It gives me tingles, and those tingles make me want to draw my hand away, but instead I find myself both scowling and laughing.

“I told you, this isn’t a date,” I whisper in his ear so only he can hear.

He turns his head and plants a quick, surprising kiss on my lips. One second his lips are on mine, shooting a gust of pleasure through my limbs, and the next they’re gone. “And I heard you the first time,” he says, smiling down at me.

He’s observing me with that rather adorable wolfish curiosity he always watches me with, and since it unsettles me so, I decide to concentrate on Brooke and Remington instead.

A waiter leads us to a table at the back of the restaurant, and I notice all those protective gestures they have. He steers her by the neck, while she uses the hand closest to him to hook her index finger into the waistband of his jeans. He pulls the chair out for her to sit, whispering something in her ear that makes her grin. When she laughs, he bends over. I watch as he rubs his nose all along the shell of her ear and she smiles privately at herself and closes her eyes. Shutting off the world so she can focus on what her husband is doing.

He sits down, and Mackenna, apparently immune to the fact that these two people are quietly making love to each other, begins by asking, “So how’d you get into these Underground fights?”

I’m amazed at how courteous Remington is, because he seems genuinely interested in Mackenna’s questions, his thick arm outstretched, one hand firmly on the back of Brooke’s chair. Her hand is under the table, and I think it’s on his thigh. I’m getting all sorts of hot feelings inside me, and an even more noticeable one that I always seem to feel when they are near. Longing. Because I ruined my chance at this.

That’s when, as Remington briefly explains to Mackenna that he’d fight wherever as long as he got to fight, I realize where Mackenna’s arm is. He’s in exactly the same position as Remington—his arm stretched across the back of my chair, his hand resting just behind my neck, as if he owns me.

Or, at least, thinks he does.

A tingle grows in my stomach, and I try unsuccessfully to quell it. I’ve always loved those little gestures I see between Brooke and her guy, but me? Oh, no. This is not for me. And definitely not for me and Kenna.

Okay, maybe a little part of me wants something like this, but not the rest of me.

I squirm, feeling uncomfortable. Then I slide my chair back a tad, just to see if he drops his hand.

He doesn’t.

In fact, he doesn’t even turn to look at me.

I hear Remington ask Mackenna, “How’d you get your start with the band?”

“Racer is so big,” I tell Brooke at last, switching the conversation to talk about her son while desperately trying to ignore Mackenna’s arm close to my nape.

Brooke grins and starts telling me Racer’s exact eating schedule, and how he’s restless because he’s just about ready to walk but can still barely stand up for a couple of seconds.

When the waiter approaches, Brooke doesn’t even pause, and I hear Remington order for her. She’s still talking to me when I hear Mackenna order, and just as I flip open my menu to decide what I’m having, I realize he’s also ordering for me. “She’ll have the mandarin salad and the seared scallops.”

Abruptly I leave Brooke midsentence and turn, rapping the side of his hard head. “Knock, knock?”

“Who’s there?” he teases me.

“You just ordered for me without even asking me what I wanted.”

He leans back with a smirk. “All right, Pandora. What was it you wanted?” He lifts one eyebrow, and god, the things I want to do to that smirk. Kiss it. Lick it. Bite it. All of it.

“The mandarin salad and the seared scallops,” I finally admit, hating that he’s making me smile back at him.

“And what did I order?”

That.

Smirk.

God!

All of a sudden I’m hungry, and it’s just for that damn smirk of his. I’ve loved mandarins and sea scallops my whole life—since the days we used to steal away to the docks. And deep inside my brain, I keep hearing a silly little voice saying, “He remembers.”