Maverick sent a cry laugh face emoji and followed it up with a challenge:Make me.
Emmitt chuckled:I won’t have to make you. I’m pretty sure I’ve got this chick wrapped around my finger.Sure, he was mostly flexing for his younger brother, but he’d noticed the way Sloane responded to him during the flight. Her cheeks turning pink when he said he’d like to take her to the inn’s party as his date.
Yep, his old tricks were working just like they always did.
“That’s how it’s done, lads,” a booming sounding voice hollered from the lower level of the restaurant. “This lassie made ye all look like a bunch of arses, she did!” The same man’s boisterous laugh followed.
Emmitt wasn’t one to eavesdrop, but this guy was too loud to ignore. He tipped his head to glance down the stairwell and saw that the ruckus came from the axe-throwing section.
He spotted the bearded man as he asked his next question. “What’s yer name, lassie?”
Emmitt took a step closer, further leaning his head to see who he spoke to. Yet just as he spotted the woman in question, her name rang out over the small crowd.
“Sloane,” she cheered while lifting an arm over her head.
“Well, ye have earned a good toke off me cigar, ye have. Here, go on and give her a good taste.” The man was, in fact, holding a lit cigar. A quick glance at the no-smoking sign at the entrance had Emmitt wondering when someone would blow the whistle. No one allowed smoking indoors.
He expected Sloane to wave off the man and tell him thanks anyway, but as he stepped down one stair, and then another, his eyes pasted on the action, Sloane took hold of the big, brown cigar, a wide grin on those red lips.
A rod of warm shock sank into his chest as she brought the thing to her O-shaped mouth and took a pull. The ashy tip glowed red. A waft of smoke rose in a ribbon over her face, and then she was exhaling a bellowing puff from her pursed lips.
The crowd broke out in applause.
“Can I take you home, honey?” one man hollered from the crowd.
“Ye’ll have to get in line, lads,” the burly man said, his eyes wide and his grin even wider.
“Actually,” Sloane said, her gaze darting right to Emmitt as if she’d seen him long ago. “You willallhave to get in line, because here is my handsome date.”
A collective groan broke out over the group. One man cursed under his breath, calling Emmitt a lucky SOB.
“Goodbye, gentlemen,” Sloane said as she strutted toward the stairs. “It has been a pleasure.” She gave them the same backward wave she’d given Emmitt when they parted ways on the grounds of the inn.
Had Emmitt seriously just told Maverick that he had Sloane wrapped around his finger? Boy, had he been wrong about that. It was clear she was capable of twisting any man around any one of her ten fingers and possibly all ten of her toes as well.
Amusement washed through him as he replayed the scene in full, glorious detail. He needed to step up his game. At the mere thought, tight knots of intimidation built in his chest. But why? He was Emmitt freaking Duran. He could do this. He did this every weekend without a second thought.
Game, Emmitt. Turn on your game.
He zoned in on the beauty as she met him in the stairwell.
“Hi there,” he said. “I’m Emmitt. And you are…” He drifted off there and offered his hand to shake.
She took the offered hand with a knowing grin. “Sloane, silly.”
“Sloane the axe-throwing, cigar-smoking–”
“Brute,” she filled in with a laugh. “Don’t be so surprised. There is a lot you do not know about me.” She looped her hand through the crook in his arm and nodded toward the upper level.
“That’s an understatement,” Emmitt said. “What Iknowabout you is very little at this point. If you were a pie chart right now, instead of a curvy blonde, I’d say I know about five percent of that pie chart.”
“So just a sliver,” she said, playing along.
Emmitt nodded as they reached the top step. “A sliver might even be a generous term. What’s smaller than a sliver?”
“A, how you say,fractionof a sliver.”
He pointed at her. “Now we’re talking.”
