“You saw Carly naked?” Hutch asks, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline.
Swallowing, I nod. “Yep,” I say, letting the “p” pop.
“Shit,” Kasen says, crossing his arms and making his biceps bulge. He looks like he could rip the heads off elephants with his bare hands. I’ve never met anyone with larger biceps than Kasen and Hutch. I’m fit and certainly work out, but I got nothing on those two. I guess it’s good to have friends like that, you never know when you might need them.
“Yeah. It was…” I pause as I try to find the right words, but none come to mind. “Anyhow, we are just friends,” I reiterate.
Gray laughs.
“What?” I mutter as I glare at him again.
“You keep telling yourself that,” he says.
A part of me hates that he knows the truth behind my lie. But another part of me believes the lie. We are just friends. We don’t have a romantic relationship; we don’t have sex; and we don’t share a life beyond being neighbors and friends.
Gray crosses his arms so that he and Kasen both are sitting there looking more like bouncers at an exclusive club rather than my friends at a book club. “We could cut the sexual tension between you two with a chainsaw,” he states, giving me a pointed look.
“Oh, fuck off, that’s not true. Just because I’m friends with a woman doesn’t mean I want to sleep with her,” I huff angrily. Maybe I’m mad because I don’t like being called out or maybe I’m mad because I don’t want people questioning my relationship with Carly, either way, I’m mad.
Kasen lets out a low chuckle, and my gaze darts to his.
“Your body language says differently, mate,” he teases.
I feel like a trapped animal. How do I get out of this conversation? I normally never hope for a call from work, but right now, I’m begging the universe for one.
As if on cue, Roxy walks back into her bookstore with coffee from Cam’s Cafe.
“Your raccoon is sitting on the bench,” she says to Hutch as she starts passing out our coffees.
“What’d I miss?” she asks as a hush falls over us.
I give my friends a shut the hell up look. “Oh, nothing. Hutch was just going to tell us how his hunt to find the flower person is going.” I glance at Hutch, who is silently laughing, fucker.
“I don’t know, guys, I think I might just call it quits and stop trying to figure it out,” he says.
This time, the room does fall silent until Roxy clears her throat.
“But you’ve come this far,” she says as she moves her copy of our book club book off her chair and sits down.
He shrugs and sips his coffee before speaking. “Having Jocelyn in my life and spending time with my family again has me viewing things differently. I don’t need a distraction.”
“But…who else will find out for us?” Roxy protests. “I mean, we’re all invested in this.”
Hutch chuckles. “Maybe you should take up the investigation.”
She shakes her head.
Hutch looks at Kasen and Kasen practically growls. “Hell no. I have better things to do with my time. Whoever leaves the flowers is a lovely person and that’s all we need to know. It’s like fairies in Scotland. You don’t mess with that shit.”
Roxy claps her hands. “OMG! I just got in the hottest fae book ever. You guys want to read it for the next book club?”
She gets up and walks over to her desk, moving things aside until she finds what she’s looking for and holds it up. It is a dark blue book with an illustration of a giant man with enough abs to mimic Kasen or Hutch and pointed ears.
“He’s so hot, right?” Roxy says, swooning over the fictional man.
“If pointed ears gets you off, baby, then sign me up,” Gray says with a laugh. The guys all chuckle.
Roxy rolls her eyes. “You guys are hopeless. Fine, I’m picking this book. I’ll send links to your emails.”
