They missed their reservation.
“Maybe they’ll still be open,” Sassy said, feeling optimistic as she and Nick speedwalked through downtown Dark Canyon.
Nick, hair wet from his shower, checked his watch. “They closed ten minutes ago.”
She could see the display windows of the Sauce Spot ahead and ignored the fact that they had already gone dark. “Tony knows we have a standing wing appointment.” Breaking into a run, she prayed the Sauce Spot’s owner, Tony Vasquez, a classmate of theirs from high school, would hold out. She booked every one of Nick’s birthday dinners at the Sauce Spot twelve months in advance. Every February, she tracked Tony down to make sure the reservation was still on the books.
Nick groaned. “I’m so hungry at this point, I’d eat a squirrel.”
Unbidden, the image of two raccoons wrestling over a rotten, half-finished can of Spam flashed before her eyes. “Question.”
“Go ahead,” Nick said, not taking his eyes off the Sauce Spot’s windows. The neon Hot Wings sign was off.
“Did you change the security notifications for the gallery to an alarm?” she asked.
That got his attention. That signature half smile of his tugged at one corner of his mouth. His light brown eyes flashed mischievously. “Maybe.”
She’d had her suspicions. He and Ryan had installed the security system in the first place. Nick had access to her phone and knew the numerical passcode to unlock it. She was notoriously forgetful and often forgot important dates, meetings, appointments… He’d been setting reminders and alarms for her for years.
“Thanks,” she offered with a sardonic lilt.
He smirked, which tugged the other half of his mouth up. The full-toothed gleam of his grin and the humor dancing in his eyes were nothing short of disarming. “Don’t mention it.”
Sassy was aware that her best friend was attractive. She also knew there was a running rumor around town that the two of them were more than just friends. Because how could two single twenty-seven-year-olds spend all the time they did together and not bump uglies on occasion? Especially when the two of them were notorious for discarding members of the opposite sex after only a handful of dates.
Sassy was aware her and Nick’s individual dating histories featured a long list of seemingly compatible contenders who for some reason hadn’t made the final cut. The people of Dark Canyon assumed just because they knew each other like peanut butter and jelly that intimacy…the kind that made clothes hit the floor…was inevitable between them. They thought she and Nick were incapable of remaining friends.
What happens when he gets married?she’d been asked on several occasions.How are you going to feel watching him build a life with someone else?
Do you really think his wife will wantyouaround? Or that she won’t feel threatened by you? That you won’t have regrets?
She hadn’t known how to answer those questions. She still didn’t. Probably because she was a one-day-at-a-time kind of girl. She lived in the present, embracing every moment.
Just because Nick spent a lot of those moments with her didn’t mean their futures were tied up in marriage, kids and joint tax returns.
She loved Nick. He was a great guy. He was equal parts brawn and brain. He cared deeply for others, and he was more loyal than anyone she’d ever met. He could climb mountains and white-water kayak. He’d jumped out of planes with nothing more than a Hail Mary and a parachute strapped to his back. Even his bad jokes, combined with his killer smile, could summon women in hordes.
She’d once accidentally overheard that he was excellent in bed.Playful…attentive…could last for dayshad been the exact words exchanged in front of a ladies’ room mirror by two unidentified women while Sassy had been trapped awkwardly inside a bathroom stall. For some undefined reason, those words had bored into her skull and made a home there.
But Sassy loved her messy single life. And shewasmessy, while Nick was… Well, a neat freak. Organized to a fault. He’d organized his own life to such a degree that he’d started organizing hers. The notations in her phone. The reminders. The texts when he was too busy to drop in and he knew she was swamped at the gallery.Did you remember to grab lunch?orIt’s Soledad’s birthday todayorDon’t forget: Rogue needs cat food.
She should’ve found it annoying. His type-A tendencies should have driven her type-B personality up the wall a long time ago.
The funny thing was, she loved them. She loved the dynamic they’d built. There was no way in hell she was going to ruin that by throwing herself at him when she was horny.
She had any number of other single male friends’ numbers she could dial when she reached the point of no return.
She and Nick had never spoken of the rumors about them. They’d been mutually shrugging or laughing off comments made to them in public for the last decade. TheSo, how is she? Wink, wink, or theWe know you’ve tapped that.
Once…only once when Nick had had a few too many drinks at a party had he responded to crude comments made about them with his fists. But they’d been sixteen at the time and he’d still been dealing with his father’s absence.
The growling of his stomach made her eye the taut line of his abs beneath his shirt. “If you pass out from hunger…”
“You’ll catch me. Right?”
“Right.” Movement beyond the windows made her snatch Nick’s hand up in hers. “Did you see that?”
“Someone’s inside,” he hissed.
