“I love to read.” The left of top of his cheek twitching with the lie.
“No, you don’t.”
“Do too.”
“Do not.”
“I do!”
Now we sound like the couple across the table that are currently bickering about whose fault it is that they’re losing.
“What’s your favorite book then?” I ask to catch him red handed.
I watch as his lips open and close like a fish out of water.
“Huckleberry Finn?”
“Huckleberry Finn,” I repeat. “Don’t you mean the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?”
“Yeah, that one.” His cheeks are starting to turn this rosy red, a look that I’m enjoying entirely too much.
“What’s your favorite part?”
“Alright fine. I don’t like to read," he begrudgingly admits and it’s the best thing ever to watch him squirm about being caught.
“That’s okay. You can’t be handsome and smart. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“So you do think I’m handsome.”
Dang it.I mentally slap my palm on my forehead.Why do I keep bringing that up?“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have a ball to throw in a cup.” I lean over the table, almost provocatively, well as provocatively as I can manage with no experience in pushing my ass up in the air in order to distract a guy.
It seems my mission is fruitless when I hear him whisper just over my shoulder, “Don’t think you’re getting off that easy, Daredevil. We’ll discuss this in private.”
I shiver at how husky his voice sounds when he says the word private. My toes curl and my core heats with all the implications that one word implies. I pull my arm back and try to mimic my other shots but this time the ball falls short and fails to land in a cup. Lennon jumps up and down in glee before lining up for her own shot.
I blame Rowan and his stupid husky voice and his too handsome for his own good face for distracting me. “You know that was your fault.”
He laughs good-naturedly. “My fault? How do you figure?”
“You distracted me,” I sass as I turn around and put my hands on my hips, staring him down.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He throws my own words back at me with a knowing smirk and a wink of his eye before pointing towards the table. I turn around, my eyes trained on my opponent as I try to mentally block out the towering six-foot one, hunk of a man behind me.
We have two cups left on the table, to their one. If I can block this shot and we make the next shot, we’ve won.
“Don’t let her get past you,” he says in encouragement before I feel a gentle slap on my rear end and my brain officially short circuits.Did he just slap my ass?
I barely deflect Lennon’s shot, helping us keep our narrow lead by some miracle because all I can think about is how good his hand felt on my ass.
He chuckles softly, probably at how dumbfounded I look. It's now my turn to look like a fish out of water, as he comes up next to me and takes the ball from my hand. My skin prickles at his touch. “Ready to finish them off?”
I simply nod, rendered utterly speechless by the handsome and sexy Rowan Pierce. I watch as he takes his shot, bouncing the ball once on the table before it dunks effortlessly into their remaining cup.
Before I know what’s happening, Rowan has swooped me up into his arms and is spinning me around in celebration, the crowd whooping and hollering right along with him. My smile feels so big and wide that it feels like it might crack my cheeks from its sheer size. His returning smile has my heart beating out of my chest.
I have the urge to lean down and kiss him. His eyes are alight with excitement, his face so close and so freaking pretty. Just as I start to lean in, Rowan drops me to my feet, the sudden change zaps me out of whatever fairytale ending I was trying to conjure in my mind, leaving me slightly dazed but definitely thankful.
What the hell was I thinking? Trying to kiss him in front of all of his friends? What do you have, a death wish, Millie? You want to die a slow and painfully embarrassing death?
