An hour later, Gray was drinking a lukewarm beer and watching his client hit on his sister, and his brother hit on his assistant.
He wasn’t sure what bothered him more: the way Alistair was staring at Jenna’s chest as she ran verbal circles around him, or the way Jack’s and Sophie’s heads were tilted together as they laughed over their beers.
“I had no idea that Seattle was a bowling town,” Peter said as he sipped his whiskey.
“I don’t know that it is,” Gray admitted. “But tourist options are limited on rainy days, and Sophie insists that this is a Seattle classic.”
Sophie’s head snapped around and she gave him a defensive glare. “What was I supposed to do, drag them through a soggy Pike Place Market? Maybe show them how much they can’t see in the fog from the top of the Space Needle?”
“Calm down,” Gray muttered. “Nobody’s attacking your bowling idea.”
“Are you having fun?” she asked him in a warning tone.
Fun? He should have been having fun. Everyone else was. But instead of joining in with the laughter and the flirtation, Gray had somehow ended up pairing off with the elderly Peter instead of chatting with his brother and sister. Instead of flirting with Sophie.
He felt like a decrepit old man watching the kids run around and have a good time.
“Yes, Ms. Dalton,” he replied. “I’m having fun. In fact, it was just this morning that I was thinking I haven’t been bowling in so long. Thanks for the opportunity.”
She narrowed her eyes, but Peter seemed to take Gray’s comment at face value, because he nodded agreeably.
“You’re up, champ,” Jack said, grabbing Sophie’s knee to get her attention.
Fantastic, they had nicknames now. Jack must have felt Gray’s gaze burning a hole in the back of his hand, because he removed it quickly from Sophie’s leg with a questioning eyebrow as if to say Yours?
Gray avoided his brother’s silent inquiry by staring at the scoreboard, where he was placing…fifth. Out of six. Even Alistair was beating him. Peter at least was a good deal behind him, but the man had arthritis, for God’s sake. Nobody expected Peter to do anything other than gently push the ball down the lane with two hands.
Surely Gray could do better than this. It wasn’t like he’d never bowled before. He could remember a couple of birthday parties as a kid. So it had only been, oh, about twenty years since his last game.
Meanwhile, the blonde demon in his life had just thrown yet another strike, which had her tied in first place with Jack. The two of them were now doing some sort of victory dance that involved lots of touching.
This was just great. At this rate, Gray’s next bowling experience would probably be at the birthday party of his nieces and nephews as they squealed about how this was the place where their parents first met.
The thought of mini-Sophies and -Jacks put him in an even worse mood, so instead he studied the other flirtatious couple. Alistair had abandoned Sophie almost immediately after discovering that she was the better bowler. Pudgy losers like Alistair didn’t like to be beat in anything, even something as ridiculous as bowling. Jenna was barely better than Gray, which made her fair game for the younger Blackwell’s attention.
As Gray watched Jenna lay a hand on Alistair’s arm, he wondered why she wasn’t ripping her lame suitor to shreds. His sister wasn’t exactly approachable, even to eligible men. There was no way she’d waste her time with this overweight lecher boy currently trying to correct her bowling form. And yet her usual venom wasn’t seeping from her pores. Interesting.
He took another swallow of beer and made a concentrated effort not to scowl at the whole lot of them. Peter excused himself to the restroom, and Sophie fluttered into the vacated seat, filling his senses with…cinnamon?
She smelled like a freaking bakery. He’d noticed the sweet and oddly alluring smell the other night when he’d cornered her in his dark office like a creepy predator.
“You’re scowling, boss.”
“You think?”
She sighed as though dealing with a difficult child. “Really, this is the best thing. Peter is smiling, and Alistair…well…Jenna knows what she’s doing, right? I mean her humoring him will work in your favor, but she can’t possibly be attracted, can she?”
“Jenna knows how to handle herself.” He hoped.
“I’m guessing that’s your Mr. Darcy way of implying that I can’t handle myself?”
“Who’s Mr. Darcy?” he asked, his frown deepening. “And why does he get to go by his last name, while you’ve been calling me Gray since the moment you met me?”