The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil #1)(50)

“Thus me being happy with just one.”

His eyes dropped to my mouth and his voice became a growl. “Fuck, I wanna kiss you.”

Some sanity returned and I started to pull away, but his hand came from under his head so he could round me with his arm and keep me where I was.

“Johnny,” I breathed.

“We need to talk,” he decreed.

“I’m not sure—”

“Which is why we need to talk. It’ll give me time to make you sure.”

Oh man!

“Johnny—”

“After your sister leaves.”

“Jo—”

I cut myself off that time because he’d mentioned Addie.

“But I’d like to meet her while she’s here,” he went on.

I wasn’t listening.

My head drifted around and I saw that the festival had grown a great deal during my nap. I also absently noticed I—and now Johnny and I—still had a lot of attention.

What I didn’t notice was my sister anywhere.

I shot up to sitting on my hip as panic bolted through me.

Johnny came up with me, holding Brooks tight to his chest.

“Iz?”

“Addie,” I whispered.

“Izzy,” he growled, obviously feeling my change in mood, and my eyes cut to him.

“How long was I asleep?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

“How long have you been here?”

“Watched you maybe five minutes. Been with you and Brooks fifteen, maybe twenty.”

“Was I asleep when you first saw me?”

“Yeah.”

“The souvlaki guy isn’t that far away.”

“Say again?”

I leaned into him, lifting a hand to press it tight to his chest, the tips of my fingers at the base of his throat, and said, “Addie. She went to get souvlaki. She said she’d be right back. It might take fifteen minutes to get souvlaki but it doesn’t take longer.”

“Maybe she’s having a wander,” Johnny suggested.

“She was in a bad mood when she took off. Not mad, just . . . whatever is happening I think was getting to her.”

“Call her,” Johnny ordered.

That was a good idea.

I turned to the picnic basket, which also held my phone, this move necessitating me untangling my legs from Johnny’s. I dug it out. I looked to Johnny and he held my nephew and my eyes as I called my sister.

She didn’t answer.

“Where are you?” I said into her voicemail. “Call me.”

Then I hung up, broke eye contact to bend my head to the phone and text.

“No answer?” Johnny asked.

I shook my head and texted.

When I looked to him, he said, “Pull up a picture of her, give me your phone. I’ll give you this little guy and you look after him while I go look for her.”

“You’d do that?” I asked.

“Fuck yeah,” he answered.

“Okay, I’ll . . . okay,” I mumbled, head bent to my phone again to find a photo of Addie. I turned the picture I found to him and said, “That’s her.”

“Almost as pretty as you,” he muttered, reaching out to the phone and taking it at the same time shifting like he was going to hand Brooks to me, but I didn’t go for Brooks.

I was so relieved Johnny was there and I could stay at the blanket and wait for Addie should she return but he was going to go out to look for her that I didn’t think.

I just did.

And what I did was lean in and press my lips hard to his.

I did it grabbing tight to the side of his neck, and when I was done, I left my hand there.

“Thank you,” I said with feeling, giving his neck a squeeze.

“Welp, Mayberry seems to have a good effect on my sister. I go to get some souvlaki and goody two-shoes here scores herself a hottie.”

I jerked my head back, my hand on Johnny staying where it was, and I saw my sister with a little cardboard tray in one hand, a huge soft drink cup with straw in the other, standing at the edge of the blanket.

“Where have you been?” I asked, finally letting my hand fall away from Johnny.

I might have done that but his free arm moved when I did to curl around my hips.

Addie didn’t miss his movement.

She also ignored my question, shifted her attention to her son and back to me. “He go down okay?”

“Where have you been?” I repeated, my panic gliding away and my focus returning.

And what I was focusing on was that her hair was in a haphazard pony when she’d left, but now it was in a significantly more haphazard pony that, knowing her as I did, stated a variety of things, all of which, again knowing her as I did, I knew to be true.

She didn’t have a taste for souvlaki.

Harking back, she’d eyed up the man in the Greek tent and he’d eyed her up in return.

She had a taste for the Greek guy in the souvlaki tent.

She’d been a wild one but she was true to Perry. I knew it. She loved him, adored him, against all my advice married him. And she told me everything (eventually). If she ever strayed (which she wouldn’t do and not simply because now she didn’t have the time), she would have told me.