Midnight Kiss (Virgin River #12)(62)

She wouldn’t stare at his hands. She wouldn’t. Lusting after his hands had gotten her into trouble that first time. His fingers were long, but not slender and pretty. They ended in blunt lines and square nails, and his hands were so wide. Something about the sight of them made her weak and stupid.

She dug a fingernail beneath the label on her bottle, determined to distract herself. “You know, that was my first takeover.”

“I remember. It must have been an awful way to start. That one was hard even on the veterans.”

Lately, she’d been thinking a lot about Madison, and it wasn’t only because she’d worked closely with Noah on that trip. The Madison job had been close to Christmas, too, and the weather had been brutally cold. But there the similarities ended. The Madison bank had been too far gone. There hadn’t been one interested buyer. And Elise and Noah and the rest of the team had been in charge of laying off ninety-three people only two weeks before Christmas. Some of the employees had been angry, but most of them had been terrified.

One of Elise’s most vivid memories was locking herself in the bathroom stall to cry. The other one involved Noah James and his hands. And that straight, unyielding mouth of his. It was softer than it looked. That knowledge only added to the general feelings of sorrow that still clung to her thoughts of Madison.

She sighed hard. “Do you remember the senior teller? She’d just bought her first house. She kept whispering ‘What am I going to tell my kids?’”

“It was bad,” Noah said softly. “But this trip…this trip is better.”

“I’ll drink to that,” she answered, clinking her bottle softly against his and averting her eyes from his fingers curved around the glass. They both finished off their beers just as their dinner arrived.

“Two more beers?” the waitress asked with a wink.

Noah nodded, but Elise shook her head. “A margarita on the rocks for me. And…” The tension still shrieked in her shoulders. “Two shots of Patrón?”

Noah raised his eyebrows in a challenging look, but he didn’t say no. She hadn’t planned on anything more than a tension-breaker, but she was now wondering what Noah James would be like after a few drinks. She couldn’t quite imagine it. A picture of him loose and happy flashed through her mind, and Elise couldn’t stop her snort of laughter.

He’d just opened his mouth to take a bite of his bacon cheeseburger, but he lowered his food. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Frowning, he muttered something like “Nothing, my ass,” and Elise had to stifle another snort.

Then the drinks came. And the shots.

Half an hour later, Elise was laughing so hard that tears leaked from her eyes. “Shut up,” she gasped.

“And the last ones out of the hotel were Tex and some woman twice his age—”

“No!”

He put a hand over his heart. “I swear to God, he stood in the parking lot wearing nothing but his boots and a pair of boxers, completely unselfconscious. As soon as the fire alarm stopped blaring, he started introducing everyone to his ‘friend’ Jeannie, who, by the way, was wearing a bathrobe and a wedding band and not much else.”

“Who was she?”

“I have no idea, but she raced back in with Tex as soon as the fire department gave the all-clear. And that was our trip to Lubbock. Those Texans really know how to run a bank into the ground.”

Still smiling, Elise sipped the last dregs of her margarita and resisted the urge to order another. The shot had been too much. The second round of tequila had been way over the line. She needed some sleep. She needed to regroup. What she did not need was to get sloppy drunk with Noah James.

But she had found out what Noah was like under the influence…he was exactly the same: controlled, quiet and handsome as hell, though he did smile a little more.

Those occasional smiles were killing her.

She remembered now what had led her to kiss him in the first place. Watching his hands. A few drinks. A few of those rare smiles and she’d been melting all over. Just like she was now.

But at least now she knew better. A few smiles did not mean that Noah James wanted to be jumped. What a shame. It was the least he could offer for being so stubborn on every single job.

The last time they’d worked on the same team, he’d publicly defied her orders that he discipline one of his team members. They’d fought that out in her office and reached a tentative truce, but…

Elise frowned. “Hey, did you tell Michael Valdez he could fly home tomorrow?”

“Yes. The bulk of his duties are over and his mom is having surgery.”

“Don’t you think you should’ve at least run it by me?”

“I meant to. I got distracted by the embezzlement.”

“The embezzlement.” She rolled her eyes. “Why are you always such a pain in the ass?”

“Why do you think I’d make up missing funds?”

“That’s not what I meant. It’s just…everything. I feel like you’re always fighting me, and I don’t know why.”

“The flight was canceled, Elise. I had nothing to do with that. What should I have—”

“You stole my promotion,” she bit out. Silence followed her words. Even the quiet music playing in the background seemed to pause. Elise held her breath as Noah leaned back and picked up his empty beer bottle.