Crazy in Love (Blue Lake #3)(19)

He handed her a stick and set his own on the table.

Okay, so Cole was used to keeping things private. Made sense. If Rachael had her personal business spread over the cover of every gossip magazine, she might’ve been inclined to keep everyone out, too. But he’d taken her out of her comfort zone the last two days; it was his turn.

“Want to play Sink It or Spill It?”

His eyebrows shot to his hairline. “What the hell is that?”

A game she used to play with friends in college after a few drinks. Truth or Dare with a pool table twist.

He slid the rack over the balls, releasing them from their triangle prison, and then bent over the opposite side of the table and lined up his first shot.

“You sink a ball or have to tell me something nobody knows about you,” she said.

“Peachy.” He eyed the cue ball, hesitating. “Same goes for you, right?”

“Yup.”

Nodding, Cole let the stick fly over his fingers. It hit the cue ball with a deafening crack. Two striped balls dropped into the pockets.

He shrugged. “You’re not the only one who can play.”

Damn. If she wanted to win—and get anything out of him in the process—she’d have to distract him.

As Cole moved around, lining up his next shot, Rachael stood at the end of the long table. She held the stick upright and rested her hands near the top. Ever so slowly, she slid her hands down, one after another, stroking the wooden shaft.

At first, he didn’t notice. He studied the chaos on the table, analyzing possible angles. But then, as he bent and aimed, she slid her hands lower and rolled her fingers over the wood. She looked away and sighed, pretending not to know what she was doing. But he saw.

He focused on a striped ball in the corner, shot, and missed.

“Now…how’d you get started in music?” she asked again.

Swiping his hand across his jaw, Cole backed away from the table. “I wasn’t what you’d call a good student,” he said. “I ditched school, smoked, and partied too hard. One day my junior year, my music teacher gave me a guitar. My first one. He taught me how to play. After that, I was hooked.”

“That’s not what I was expecting,” she said. “I would’ve thought you were born with a guitar on your hip.”

She lined up her shot and sank the yellow ball into the side pocket. She aimed at another and dropped that one too, banking it off the side. She missed her third shot, and huffed, backing away from the table.


“On a scale of one-to-ten,” he said, smirking, “how disappointed were you that Joey couldn’t make it tonight?”

If she were being honest with herself, she’d say she wasn’t disappointed at all. Not once she stepped out of Angie’s and bumped into Cole.

“Five,” she said finally. “It was a last minute date, so I didn’t have time to get all worked up about it. That nervous, anticipation feeling was missing.”

“Hmph.” He lined up another shot. “Interesting.”

“What’s so interesting about that?”

He paused, sliding the stick through his fingers. “Is that your question if I miss?”

“No!” She’d have to be careful. “Don’t try any of your trickery with me, Cole Turner. I’m on to you.”

“Wish you’d be on me, instead.” As his gaze caught hers, he winked. “We’ll have to work on that.”

Heat flooded her cheeks. She rubbed the blush away, but the delicious warmth remained in lower places.