The Bluff (Graham Brothers, #2)(40)

For a few minutes, the car is silent, the air filled with an unspoken argument, as though if either of us did speak, we’d be shouting.

I switch on the radio. “Do you like country?”

Winnie shrugs, and it drives me nuts that I can’t tell if it’s a shrug that means she does like it, she doesn’t like it, or she hates country music and also my guts.

Probably option number three. And as Luke Bryan croons about women and whiskey and Winnie sits stiffly beside me, we make our way toward Austin, every mile seeming like a bigger and bigger mistake.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN





Winnie



Why is it that when James acts like he doesn’t need my help, it only fuels my desire to show him EXACTLY how much he does?

At some point, I need to cut my losses and give up. But this is not that point. Right now, standing in the lobby of the hotel and conference center, I’m doubling down on making him see how much help I can be.

I got mad in the truck, or maybe hurt is more like it. I’m sure some of my delicate emotional state was due to Chevy bringing Dad up just before we left. I hate talking about Dad or thinking about Dad or being forced to hear someone else talk about Dad. I’d like to enact a permanent Dad-ban on my life. Especially when I then have to sit in the cab of a truck and listen to James Graham dismiss me like I’m nothing.

This morning kind of sucks. The excitement I had about this trip has deflated like a discarded party balloon. I’m trying to recover, trying to focus on my new goal of becoming indispensable to the man who seems like he wishes he’d left me by the side of the road. Or maybe back in Sheet Cake. I’m honestly not even sure at this point why he brought me along.

The stuff with my Dad is always going to linger. It’s fine. I can shove it into a dark corner where it belongs. As for James, I don’t need to take anything personally. He is frequently short and snappish with people, and I don’t always think it means he’s mad or thinks they’re dumb. He’s just … like this. So, I’m not going to be offended or put off by what he said on the drive. I’ll simply prove my worth.

Val, who is obsessed with the enneagram, would say this is because I’m an eight—the challenger. That’s her unofficial assessment of my number, anyway, since I won’t take the test. (Which she says also affirms my eightness.) Whatever the reason, I’m determined to learn everything I can at the conference, make a connection with as many essential vendors as possible, and walk out of this weekend with a whole arsenal of things to make Dark Horse succeed.

Not just because I love a challenge. I actually found myself excited about the sessions and the conference as a whole. I thought of this job as something to keep me afloat until I find something else or sell Neighborly, but I’m honestly more interested than I have been about anything in a long time.

The hotel in downtown Austin is teeming with people, not unlike the ant farm I tried and failed to keep alive when I was a kid. Apparently, in addition to the Craft Beer Conference, there’s some kind of multilevel-marketing convention peddling leggings—at least, that’s my guess based on the sea of blinding colors and dizzying patterns on legs of all shapes and sizes.

Then there’s the Junior Clowning Coalition. If you thought adult clowns were creepy, you just haven’t seen a child in full sad-clown makeup miming being trapped in a box. Or a teenager with white makeup pancaked over acne.

If the creepy kid clowns are known by their face paint and the MLM boss women by their leggings, I’m guessing the craft brewers are the big group sporting flannel and beards. There are a few fancy mustaches mixed in, the kind where the ends are delicately curled, probably with some high-priced product called Stache Wax. But so far, James is the only man I’ve seen with stubble-free cheeks.

“What’s the holdup?” I ask James, as he’s turning a snarling face away from the reception desk.

“Room mix-up,” he grumbles.

With a teasing smile on my lips, I lean close—ONLY so he can hear me, NOT because I love the way he smells. “Worried we’ll be stuck in a room with one bed?”

James jerks back like I’ve just pressed a cattle prod to his skin. “What?”

I realize my mistake the instant he moves away. James Graham doesn’t read romance novels. He probably can’t even spell romance. For sure, the man doesn’t know why the only-one-bed thing is, well … a THING. By the shocked and somewhat horrified look on his face, he gets the gist of what I meant, and he does not like the idea. At all. I remember his texts insisting we weren’t sharing a room, and it’s hard not to laugh.

Clearly punctuating every word, he says, “We are not sharing a room. Or a bed.”

The word ever isn’t spoken, but I hear it as clearly as though James shouted it. I want the bowels of the earth to open like a giant mouth and swallow me whole. Does he have to be SO horrified?

James turns his snarly face back to the woman behind the desk, and I shrink away, letting myself get distracted by pint-sized clowns juggling white plastic eggs. One of them drops an egg, which splatters all over the modern hotel carpeting.

Okay, so NOT plastic eggs, then. They shrug, step back away from the yolk, and continue juggling, leaving the mess for someone else to handle.

“Let’s go.” James brushes past me, key cards in hand.