“Must have slipped his mind,” I reply.
“No other reason? Not because the two of you don’t like each other?”
“Did he tell you we didn’t?” I ask.
“No.”
“Perhaps he meant to keep you to himself at first,” I say.
She blinks, and her stammer is astoundingly wonderful to see.
“What does that mean?” she asks.
I smile and sink my elbows onto the bar, leaning in. “My brother and I learned early on that working together always came with a muchsweeteroutcome than the alternative.”
The drink she’s filling is dangerously close to the top.
“So… he isn’t keeping me from you now?”
I slowly shake my head, and I can feel my devious smirk reach my eyes. She’s floundering for questions that skirt around the one she really wants to ask.
“Unless you’d like for this to be our second secret,” I suggest.
Water spills over the edge of the glass and hits her hand. She jumps and quickly backs up. The spray nozzle falls onto the closed ice bin, clanking loudly.
“Shit!” she exclaims, reaching for a towel. “God, you… Both of you. I should ban you both from the bar for being such distractions,” she says as she starts wiping up the water.
I chuckle and stand, gesturing for her to give me the towel. “Here?—”
“I can get it. I do it all the time,” she argues.
“Juniper.”
Juniper pauses at my tone, and while she eyes me apprehensively, she hands off a clean towel nonetheless. I slowlydrag it through the water that’s traveled across the bar top, and she takes the opportunity to wipe off her hands and dress where the sprayer clicked on when it hit the ice.
“If I ever meet your mother, I’d like to thank her for teaching the both of you at least a few manners,” she says after a minute.
The sentence burns, and I feel my playfulness die entirely.
Juniper catches it.
“Oh,” she says, brows lifting. “That’s… not a fun subject, I see.”
“Not entirely, no. It’s worse for B—Nick,” I manage, nearly slipping up. “He would never admit it, though.”
“No, he doesn’t seem like the type. You, however…” She crooks a smile my way, and I chuckle under my breath.
“Caught my scheme already, have you?” I ask.
“I did, but I’d still like to hear it,” she says.
I slide the wet towel across the bar and take a seat. “I think I’d rather find out how much you and that towel have in common first.”
Her eyes widen. She looks like she’s going to burst into laughter at any moment.
It’s painful how attracted I am to her.
“Wow, you have no shame,” she says.
