The Bluff (Graham Brothers, #2)(56)

Winnie studies me, her eyes tracing a path I can almost feel over my cheeks on down my shoulders, pausing around my collarbones. “Are you sure?” she asks. “And before you argue, this doesn’t count as a question. It’s a clarification.” Her voice breaks a little, and it kills me. “Because you really looked like you regretted it.”

I shake my head. For once, I envy Pat for his way with words. Or, at least, his ability to just let them fly so easily from his mouth, even when they’re dumb. He’d know what to say right now. And it might be stupid, but his mind wouldn’t be blank, his tongue wouldn’t be stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“I don’t regret it. I just … don’t know what to do about it.”

Winnie doesn’t smile, but something seems to loosen in her countenance. “I don’t regret it either. Though I probably should.”

Hope springs up inside me, just a sliver of it, but enough. “Good.”

“Good.”

Steam fills the air between us, and it shouldn’t make me think about pressing Winnie’s back up against the door and kissing her again, but it does.

Before I have time to think about acting on what would surely be another impulsive decision, Winnie sniffs, her nose wrinkling. “You should shower. You smell like a truck stop.”

The door slams, and she’s gone.





CHAPTER TWENTY





Winnie



“Nope,” I say a little too forcefully to Kyoko. “Hard pass.” A guy about to sit down in the empty seat next to me gives me a startled look and backs up. I wince. “Sorry. I didn’t mean you …”

But he’s already walking away. Next to me Kyoko covers her mouth as she laughs.

“Way to scare away the nice boy,” she says, then waves a hand. “Anyway, back to James. I’m not saying give me intimate details about the kiss, but I need something to get me through this session. I mean, tracking distribution and inventory?” Kyoko closes her eyes and makes loud snoring sounds.

I’m actually excited about the session, even though I’m distracted by thoughts of James. But at the moment, I’m too derailed by the first part of what Kyoko said.

“Who says I kissed him?” I demand, perhaps a little too forcefully, based on Kyoko’s smug grin.

“I think you just did.”

I try to press my lips closed. Instead, I blurt, “What happens in the elevator stays in the elevator.”

Kyoko’s eyes go wide and she grabs my hand with bone-crushing strength. “You kissed him on the elevator!”

“Shhh!”

Way too many heads are turning. I open my notebook, then use it to hide my face.

“Oh, no. You don’t get to retreat like that. Even if you did just make a cringeworthy and cliched reference to Vegas. Which I'm never going to let you live down, by the way.”

Despite the hard time she’s currently giving me, I love that Kyoko casually said never, like we’ve got a long future friendship ahead of us. Which I honestly hope is true. Nothing forms the foundation of friendship quite like being the two people with boobs in a room filled with beards.

The emcee steps up to the front and starts introducing the speaker, saving me. Kyoko leans close and whispers, “Later. I’ll drag it out of you.”

Not gonna happen.

I won’t talk about it. Instead, I just replay the moment over and over again.

It was the kind of kiss that starts wars or ends them. The sort that sonnets are written about. Country songs too—the happy ones that you line dance to, not the sad ones or the vengeful ones. (Though I do love some vengeful Miranda Lambert.) As much as the thought should terrify me, it’s the kind of kiss that becomes your last first kiss. Because I can’t imagine any other kiss will ever come close.

So, yeah—I’m not admitting that.

Kyoko makes a valiant effort to drag more out of me though, paying for a rideshare and treating me to lunch at a Mexican place with queso so good it’s almost drinkable. I don’t crack, even with the drugging effects of melted cheese and perfectly seasoned fajitas. Every time she asks about James, I counter with a question about operations at the brewery where she works. And because she’s nice and I’m stubborn, she keeps answering even when I don’t.

“You’re really not going to give me anything?” Kyoko pouts as we finish off a post-meal basket of chips. Because if you’re not eating chips as the bookend to your meal, you’re doing it wrong.

“No.”

“What if I ask a series of yes-or-no questions?”

This makes me smile, thinking of James and our questions. I catch myself smiling when Kyoko grins wickedly at me. I clear my throat and my expression.

“Nope.”

“I’ve got it!” Kyoko waves a chip for emphasis. “I’ll ask questions that aren’t about James. And if you happen to read into them and spill some vague but juicy details, who will be the wiser?”

I bite into another chip while I consider. Normally, I’d talk to Lindy and Val about James. I did consider calling them last night after James ghosted me, but I didn’t really feel like talking. More like yelling or breaking things.

Plus, Lindy is somewhere in Europe, and phone calls are supposed to be for emergency purposes only if something happens with Jo. It’s also a little weird since she’s married to James’s brother. I don’t know how she wouldn’t be biased in favor of the Grahams. I mean, being Lindy’s sister-in-law? Come on! That’s maybe the best argument in favor of James.