He paused, his questing fingers, his flexing body, his sexy whispers all going still.
“Did your brothers…”
“They didn’t mention that, no.”
“Mmm.”
His hand settled at the back of her neck like a collar. “So this might be our only chance to be alone together before—”
“Hello?”
At the sound of her mother’s voice, Monica scrambled off Josh’s lap. “Sorry, oh God, sorry…”
“Your toque is lopsided,” Josh said under his breath.
“It’s your toque,” she whispered back, fixing it before she sprinted to the office door.
Her mother was standing in the middle of the waiting area, with Trent lounging against the pillar beside her.
“Darling, we’re going to the brewery for a beer tasting. Do you want to come?”
The only place she wanted to come was on top of Josh. “Uh…”
Josh stepped out of the office and slung his arm casually around her waist. “Beer tasting? I’m in.”
“You don’t have…work?”
He shrugged. “Do we look busy?”
Bianca clapped her hands. “Great. I was worried when this one…” She playfully poked Trent. “When this one absconded with me that we weren’t going to get to spend any time together, Josh, before I rescue my daughter and get her back to New York so she can pack.”
Monica squirmed at the wordrescueand winced at the reminder they needed to go to New York.
Maybe she could just order new clothes to meet her in Italy. Although they’d have to stop and re-fuel anyway, and New York made as much sense as the east coast of Canada.
But it was another task now on her mental to-do list, bumping up the timeline for when she would have to leave.
For now.
Maybe she could come back after the wedding.
Or…
She turned her attention to Josh, who was pulling on his coat. She bit her lip. Would he want to come with her?
25
It turned out,Bianca had used the beer tasting as a ruse to get some one-on-one time with her daughter. The Trent distraction only worked for a limited time when a mother was intent on helicoptering.
As soon as they arrived at the brewery, she brightly said she needed to powder her nose, and dragged Monica to the ladies’ room.
So now Josh was at the tasting bar with Trent…waiting. He paced across to the full-length windows that looked out over the new gravel parking lot to the back of his own garage.
When he was in here for the pancake breakfast, he’d mostly be focused on keeping Charlie’s sticky syrup fingers off the windows, and he hadn’t actuallylookedat the garage. Or more specifically, the lack of any identifying detail there.
“What’s on your mind?” Trent asked.
Josh almost turned around and said his idea out loud. But the thing that stopped him was a strong desire—no, an intense need—to tell Monica first. “Just a half-formed thought,” he mused. “How’s the construction going on the other half of the building?”
