The Bluff (Graham Brothers, #2)(20)

Safe. That’s such an interesting take. Winnie doesn’t seem like the kind of woman to choose anything safe. Then again, Dale didn’t seem to fit her, at all. If Winnie was going for a low-risk relationship, why?

“Did you tell Winnie your thoughts on Dale?”

Chevy laughs. “You think telling my sister anything would make the right kind of difference? If I so much as said a word about Dale, she’d have been stubborn enough to dig in her heels and stay with him even longer. If I thought it was going anywhere serious, I’d have chased him off. I figured it would sort itself out in time, and it did. Which brings me back to you and Winnie.”

“There is no me and Winnie. Outside of the job.”

Chevy studies me for a long moment, and it reminds me of the scary way my dad could stare any of us into confessing whatever it was we were trying to hide from him. Sometimes Tank would do it even if he didn’t know we were hiding something, and we’d confess things we’d have gotten away with otherwise.

It is very important I keep my face blank and my mouth shut. I’m not about to tell Chevy I don’t like his sister, while I also would like to press her up against any available surface and kiss the smart words right off her lips.

Which is … a thought that never fully formed until just this very second, at the most inopportune of times, when her brother is still giving me that look.

If I speak this aloud, I’m pretty sure I’d end up in jail or driven out of town by a mob of Sheeters with pitchforks. I try not to squirm under Chevy’s scrutinizing gaze.

After several long moments, his expression slides into amusement. “You and Winnie are cut from the same cloth. I don’t know which of you is more stubborn, to be honest. But if you’re sure, I guess we won’t have a problem.”

“I’m sure.”

I’m almost ready to agree and then bolt when Chevy’s expression goes serious again. “If at some point, you realize you feel differently, you’ll talk to me, right?”

I manage to swallow, wondering why this question seems even harder to answer than the other he asked. “I won’t need to, but yeah.”

“Good.” Chevy stands, stretches, and then claps a hand over my shoulder in a painful grip. “Glad we understand each other.”

After he leaves me alone at the table, I find myself finishing off my coffee, frustrated that the conversation ruined the rest of a perfectly delicious piece of pie.





CHAPTER SEVEN





Winnie



“Don’t tell me the indomitable Winchester Boyd got stood up?”

I glance up from my wobbly table as Wolf Waters sidles over to me. He tosses a bar towel across his shoulder and leans on the wall with his signature bad-boy grin, looking like he owns the place. Because he does.

“Indomitable, hm? That’s an awfully big word for someone who lives in a bunker.”

Backwoods Bar is less bar and more a glorified metal shed where Wolf slings beer out of coolers. The whole thing is rumored to be above his underground bunker. No one I know has ever seen it, and my theory is that the man lives out of his pickup.

“I learned it from Jurassic World,” Wolf says.

“Of course you did.”

His smile widens, his teeth gleaming through his trim, dark beard like the big bad fairytale creature of the same name. Wolf is a handsome man, but he’s a Waters. He may have made a solid choice by burning bridges with his snobby and insufferable family, but he went a little too far in the opposite direction with the whole doomsday prepper lifestyle. Are bad-boy doomsday preppers a thing?

Personally, I prefer bad-boy bosses.

“So, who’s the lucky man?” Wolf asks, and I jolt.

Surely my thoughts aren’t being broadcast directly on my forehead. “What?”

Wolf gives me a look. “Whoever’s running late. You keep looking at the door.”

“Right.” I give my head a little shake. “I’m meeting Chevy.”

“Ah. Sibling hangout. What can I get you while you wait?”

“Soda water and lime if you’ve got it,” I tell him. When he makes a face, I hold up both hands. “I’m driving, so I’m boring tonight.”

“Winnie-girl, you couldn’t be boring if you tried. Be right back.”

I check my phone again. No texts, and it’s now eight fifteen. My brother is many things—cheerfully good-natured, a neat freak to the nth degree, and smarter than he lets on. He is also punctual to a fault. I am really, really hoping this doesn’t mean he hit it off with some awful woman and forgot about our plans. He hasn’t brought anyone home since I’ve moved in with him, but there’s a first time for every disaster.

I’m not concerned—YET. But I have been bored, which has given me entirely too much time to stew over the day’s events. And one particular person who starred in them.

Stewing is the last thing I want to be doing when it comes to James. The man already takes up too much space in my head. Especially after our very last exchange, the one ending with him grabbing my hand. If I couldn’t still feel the ghost of his thumb skating up my wrist, I might think I imagined it. His touch was so light, so tender, so UN-James-like that I almost keeled over right there in the warehouse.

It sent a thrill through me. Not simply a visceral reaction in every living cell in my body, but his touch woke something up in my mind too, the kind of curiosity I have a hard time turning off. I haven’t been able to stop questioning how James really feels about me or wondering what else besides a surprising gentleness he’s hiding under the surface.