Finn’s resulting noise of triumph was loud enough that Esteban looked over from the bar. Apparently, the guy switched bars like guests switched dining locations.
“HE’S COVERING IT!” Finn announced to the dining room at large. “Esteban! He’s covering his neck! It’s true! It’s all true!”
“I knew it!” Esteban called back, abandoning his post entirely. “Brenda! BRENDA, it happened!”
And that was the exact moment I realized the full scope of what I’d walked into.
Brenda materialized from somewhere near the dessert station with the speed of a woman who hadbeen waiting all day for exactly this news, trailed by the two honeymooners from Toronto. Within the span of about ten seconds, my quiet dinner for two had become a town hall.
“Oh, honey bear,” Brenda said, sliding into the chair beside me uninvited and patting my forearm with both hands. “Look at your face. You’re glowing. Isn’t he glowing?”
“He’s absolutely glowing,” confirmed the taller of the Toronto men, dragging over a chair.
“I said he’d glow,” said the shorter one. “Dale, didn’t I say that? I said by Friday he’d glow like a lightning bug.”
“You said Thursday,” Dale corrected.
“I said by Thursday, which includes Friday, so I win the pool.”
“There was a pool?” I choked out, still trying to process being compared to an insect with a blinking ass.
“Yes, dear, there was a pool,” Brenda said, not the least bit ashamed. “Esteban held the money. I picked Friday afternoon. I’d like to say I’m a good enough person not to profit off your happiness, but I’m seventy-one, and I’ve stopped pretending. Mama needs a new sarong.”
“You bet on—” I looked around the table at the assembled faces, every one of them lit with theparticular joy of people watching someone else’s love life unfold like a soap opera they’d personally been cast in. “You all bet on whether I would—”
“Not whether,” Finn said gently, as if correcting a small but important error. “When. Whether was never in question. We’re not animals.”
“The whether was settled day one. I already collected a twenty for that one.” Dale grinned. “You should’ve seen yourself in that lobby mooning at the photographer over your three suitcases.”
“I wasnotmooning.”
“You mooned, baby doll,” said Brenda. “You mooned magnificently.”
“It was the mooning of a lifetime,” Finn said, dabbing at an imaginary tear. “The only people mooning louder were on the beach enjoying the optional end of the brochure. I’ve never been prouder.”
Esteban arrived with a tray of drinks nobody had ordered, distributed them around the table with the efficiency of a man who’d clearly anticipated this gathering, and pulled up his own chair, the bar abandoned to fate.
“So,” he said, settling in, propping his chin on his hand. “Is he a good kisser, this Wes?”
“I’m not—”
“Because I have eyes,” Esteban went on, “and that man has a very good mouth. I’ve thought so all week.Professional observation only, of course.”
I blinked rapidly, unable to form words.
“He’s got the mouth of a man who knows things,” Brenda agreed solemnly.
“I’m . . . I’m not discussing his mouth,” I stammered, “with a table of people at dinner, while a woman who just won money off my—”
“Sixty dollars,” Brenda said serenely. “American. The pot grew with stakes, lucky for me.”
“—off my private life sits here asking me about his mouth.”
There was a pause.
The whole table stared at me.
And then Finn, very quietly, with the timing of a man who had spent years learning exactly where my edges were—and exactly how to walk right up to them—said, “So it is a good mouth, then.”
