My face softens. “He’s okay,” I assure her. “Your brother won’t be tearing apart furniture or self again anytime soon.” True, if only because I won’t be making any life-altering decisions one way or the other anytime soon. If I do eventually reject his offer of lifelong devotion, it might be handy to hide his desk away somewhere, though.
“That brother, anyway,” she replies. “Wolfe was being pretty down on himself.”
I keep my opinions on that subject to myself. For all of five seconds.
After what onemightconsider a tirade on my part, Almond and Emerson share a look, which sends Almond’s skin careening past pink and straight into red territory.
“Fox is going to be just fine,” he tells her, eyes alight on her blush. “Wolfe, maybe not.”
Her bottom lip disappears between her teeth in a vain attempt to hold back a giggle.
“Wolfe will be fine, if only because of Amia,” I grumble. “But he better apologize to Fox. Today.”
Almond’s lips press together, doing a much better job of hiding her mirth this time.
“My haircuts have never come with a show before,” Emerson mutters. “This is way better than when I go to Josh’s.” His attention, barely having left her, shifts back to Almond. “For a lot of reasons.”
She blinks, blushes, and squeaks, the adorable little lover girl. “Oh my gosh,” she whispers. “I haven’t even cut your hair yet!”
My phone blares from my pocket, announcing the time for me to go to work—an hour after Emerson’s appointment started. Going the way of Almond, I bite my cheeks to suppress a laugh.
“I don’t mind,” he says as I stand and grab my purse off a hook by the door. “I don’t have anywhere more important to be.”
She whimpers, first at his words, then at my approach for a goodbye hug.
“Don’t leave,” she hisses in my ear. “If you leave, I’m giving you an uneven, choppy, swamp-green bob the next time you sit in my chair.”
I pull away beaming. “Ilovegreen.”
She grips the ragged hem of my shirt desperately, and I wink at Emerson as I forcibly pull it from her grasp. “Enjoy the haircut!” I bid, rushing to the door. “Come by the bar later to show it off, and I’ll buy you a drink!”
“Poem,” Almond whines.
“I’ll see you there,” Emerson promises.
I blow them each a kiss, wiggle my fingers, then slam the door behind me, leaving my bestie in the dastardly clutches of the man of her dreams as I head toward the man of my… something.
?
Something, it turns out, is quite a few things. Fantasies, nightmares, daydreams, and wonders, to start, hitting me one by one all evening.
“I like the way your hair shimmers in the light from the liquor shelves,” Fox mutters into my ear as he passes behind me on his way to the ice well.
“Do all of your skirts have these slits in them?” he asks later, caressing the fingertip bruises on my thigh when I lift my leg to retie my boot during a lull in orders. “Will I always get to see the marks you let me leave on you?” Gruffer, he continues, “Will everyone else?”
And even later, after he follows me off the bar floor when I leave to restock an item I’d forgotten to stock in the first place. “I love it when you flutter your pretty princess lashes over your pretty princess eyes, faking like you’re nothing but an innocent dove,” he growls, backing me into a shelf of inventory when I pretend I do not, in fact, know a single thing about why we ran out of little napkins to set people’s drinks on out front. “My brain empties of all but you—your cuteness and your brattiness—and I wonder why I’d ever waste my time thinking about anything else.”
My skin tingles at his nearness, and my pretty princess eyes drop to his mouth, so close to mine. “You expect me to believe there are actual thoughts floating around up there?” I ask. “Complete ones? Intelligent ones? Ones you made up all by yourself? I saw how hard it was for you to form one before. And now you claim to have so many?”
He sighs, tucking his face into my neck to kiss the delicate skin where my jaw starts.
I shiver, and the butterflies that reside in my stomach rejoice. “You weren’t kidding about following your whims, huh?” I ask.“There’s still a level of professionalism you’re supposed to follow as my boss, you know.”
“Then stop me,” he suggests, inhaling as his nose runs down my throat. “Untangle your hand from my hair, take your nails out of my back, and push me away.”
Unfortunately for the both of us, I have no intention of doing any such thing. Professional who? Professional where? Fox isn’t the only one whose head empties in the face of utter attraction.
“I think,” I mumble as his lips coast my shoulder. “That Samantha is going to bankrupt the bar if we stay back here much longer. Last time she was in charge, she gave away three bottles of whiskey and every single garnish we had.”
