Brian
“Stop twitching.”Dare’s tree-trunk legs clamped around mine beneath the little painted table atFanaille, Cal and Ash’s bakery.
“Nottwitching,” I said sullenly, toying with the muffin on my plate. “Do we really have to do this?”
Less than forty-eight hours after our kiss—I meanhike—Dare had kidnapped me from my apartment at midafternoon, dumped me in the passenger’s seat of his truck, and forced me to sit with him in a prominent spot in the bakery’s front window to have a snack and “look casual.”
In my opinion, we lookedsuspiciouslycasual, like sexy-as-fuck mountain man matchmaker and his poor, innocent kidnap victim. Which was fitting, really, since that’s what we were.
“Do we have to do what?” Dare asked, sipping his coffee innocently. “Sit in the bakery eating muffins and drinking coffee? What’s wrong with that?”
I lifted an eyebrow at him.
“You like coffee. You like muffins,” he insisted.
I tilted my head to the side in challenge.
He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Cal and Ash’s wedding istomorrow. You refused to call Mark—”
“Because Ash only gave you his number so you could coordinate delivering wedding stuff to the church the other night,” I hissed, leaning over the table. “Not because he expected you to give it tomeso I could call him like astalker.”
“Irrelevant.” Dare waved a hand. “I suggested you call, you refused. So I came up with an alternative.”
“Lying in wait for him toprobablycome into the bakery is not a viable alternative, Dare. I really don’t know—” I broke off with a loud sigh and concentrated on breaking my muffin into halves. And halves of halves. And so on.
I had no idea what the fuck I was doing there, honestly. I hadn’t spent a single moment thinking about Mark since Wednesday’s kiss—I meanthike,dammit!—with Dare, and I had almost no desire to see Mark again, let alone invite him to Cal and Ash’s wedding. But Dare seemed convinced this was because I lacked confidence or something. He was doing that thing he’d done even back when we were kids, this Dare-Turner-hyper-focus thing, where he was so hell-bent on achieving a goal, he lost all sight of why he was doing it.
He was being stubborn, when he was hardlyeverstubborn with me, and he wasn’t listening to me either, even though healwayslistened. I couldn’t remember ever feeling sooffwith Dare before, and it made me feel stretched-thin and oversensitive, like my skin was too tight for my body.
I was also seriously exhausted from waking up at three in the morning two nights in a row to stew over this. I wanted to call my best friend and ask for some relationship advice… but the guy I needed the advice aboutwasmy best friend, and we didn’thavea relationship. Not a romantic one, anyway.
Dare laid his hand over mine, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. My gaze flew to his face, and his serious, brown eyes locked on mine. “Brian—” he began.
I swallowed hard, my heart thumping. “Y-yes?”
“What has that muffin done to you?”
“Huh?”
He nodded at the plate beneath my hand and the muffin I’d managed to turn into muffin dust.
Damn.
Dare rubbed his thumb over the back of my knuckles in a way that should have been soothing but instead made my stomach flip-flop. “Babe, it’s gonna befine, okay? Markwilllike you. Who wouldn’t?”
Uh. Every other guy I’ve ever dated?I smiled wanly. “Right. Sure. It’ll be fine.”
He patted my hand and went to move his hand away, but without conscious thought, I grabbed for him, missing the feeling of his hand against mine.
Which was ridiculous.
“Um.” I pulled my hand away again, confused. “So, this weekend’s the first Sunday of the month. Mom’s got fresh strawberries to go with the waffles at brunch, and she’s trying some Grand Marnier syrup thing. She told me toaskif you were coming.” I snorted. “I reminded her you’ve missed brunch, like, three times in five years. I know how you feel about those waffles.”
“Yeah, you do.” Dare grinned, then his smile changed into something sharper and not at all Dare-like. “But, ah, let’s see how things go. You might be busy Sunday morning.”
“Me? Busy with what?” I frowned. “I don’t work Sundays.”
“Busy withMark. Remember? The whole point of this endeavor?” He waved a hand around, indicatingus,and the tiny shop, and maybe even the whole damn town. “The morning after the wedding, you’ll be all loved up with him—”
