“He’ll find her,” Austin reassured me. “And if he doesn’t, I’ll find her myself.”
“I think my boss is sick,” I finally said, taking a long sip of my glass of beer. “A neighbor said he has cancer and went to the hospital. That’s why the bills haven’t been paid on the store. I didn’t know it was that bad.”
He sighed, rubbing his clean-shaven jaw. The talisman around his neck was tucked inside his white shirt and he had styled his hair handsomely. He still looked like he could drag anyone in the parking lot and kick their ass, but I didn’t see that side of him when I looked into his eyes. I just saw Austin.
I still wanted to mess up his hair with my fingers.
“Don’t worry about the store. I sent the twins over to clean up.”
“You what?”
“You shouldn’t be doing all that work yourself.” Austin glanced at his watch. “They’ll be there until one o’clock and then head back to the house. I keep a tight watch on my pack.” He turned his fork between his fingers and set it down. “Don’t look at me that way, Lexi. Just accept my help.”
And I did. I accepted it because at this point, my only support system was a bra. “Thanks. I hope April knows what’s going on; she might have a problem with two strange men showing up to clean.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, eying my plate. “They took Ivy with them. Women are more trusting when another woman is around.”
“Lovely. You sent Ivy into a sweatshop environment to scrub a dirty floor? She’s really going to want to stay with you now,” I said sarcastically.
The coleslaw was just as good as I remembered and I must have cleaned it off my plate in five scoops.
“Never did know where you put it all,” he murmured, setting down his fork.
“Well, you can probably tell now. I’ve put on a few since you last saw me.”
He snorted and stuffed a roll in his mouth. “In all the right places.”
There was that tingle again.
I wrapped my lips around the prongs of my fork and looked up. Austin wasn’t just watching me, his eyes were glued to my mouth, and I became self-conscious when a piece of cabbage stuck to my bottom lip. My hand flew up to cover my mouth and the awkward moment passed. The music changed over to a song by Pink (“Try,” I think it was), and a paper wrapper from a straw sailed by us and landed on the floor.
Austin smiled nostalgically and rapped his knuckles on the table to the beat of the song, lost in his thoughts. “This is nice,” he finally said.
“Yeah.”
I think I knew what he meant. We were always linked by Wes, and it was getting easier to be together without his ghost hovering between us.
We talked about old times and I asked stupid things like if he still had his old leather jacket and why didn’t he join a rock band with Jericho. Austin could carry a tune, but he said it wasn’t his thing. Now that he was a Packmaster, his responsibility was maintaining stability within his family and the Shifter community. They would get jobs and help bring in money as well as assisting other packs as needed, but Austin had acquired a lot of money from his jobs over the years. Evidently, his work paid well. Money wouldn’t last forever, so he encouraged them to find something they enjoyed doing. Jericho sang, Denver worked as a bartender four nights a week, and Reno… well, Austin didn’t mention what exactly Reno did. Ben and Wheeler were out of work and looking.
After another tall glass of beer and a few sips of Austin’s root-beer float, I decided it was time for us to head home.
“Big girl’s room,” I declared with an impish grin.
Austin chuckled and stretched his arm across the seat, watching me get up. He might have been sly about stealing glances, but I noticed his eyes sliding down to my ass. As I walked by him, I bent over and squinted. My face was numb, one of the telltale signs I’d had too much to drink.
“You have something… right here,” I said, tapping my chin with a lazy smile on my face.
A sexy smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Then lick it off,” he teased.
Never one to turn down a dare, I bent forward and sucked on his chin. In my defense, I was drunk. I would never have done anything like that in a sober state of mind, but the tingly feeling of beer slid through my body and made me lose those inhibitions. It also shocked the hell out of Austin because I felt his entire body tense up, which I noticed because my hands were resting on his hard biceps.
I moved my mouth slowly, swirling my tongue over the dab of sauce, and suddenly there was a moment, even if only a brief second, where something fired up between us. His bristly chin had the first hint of stubble, the tang of barbecue sauce awakened my taste buds, and his shallow breath heated my cheek.