“Looking for something?” he asked. The rest of the party’s attention had gone back to the bride and groom who were getting ready to cut their cake, and Jamie and Brynn had a rare moment of privacy at a table full of strangers.
“My…” But then she saw his hand, palm up on the table, her lime wedge resting in it. He raised his arm and changed his grip so he was pinching the fruit between his thumb and forefinger, and he reached it toward her mouth.
Her teeth pierced the lime’s flesh, and then she sucked. Jamie’s finger rested on the corner of her mouth, and on the other side, his thumb. She could almost taste his skin if not for the sweet bitterness of the lime. Before he lingered at her lips too long—and really any amount of time was too long—she gripped his wrist and pushed it away as she released his offering from her lips.
“Foggy,” she said, and Jamie’s brow furrowed. “S’foggy in my head,” she explained and hoped he’d be able to translate whatever she was thinking into something that made sense. “You gonna drink that?” she asked, and reached for the full shot sitting on the table in front of him.
With blinding speed he downed the shot himself—completely ignoring the lime.
“You, Sleepy B, have had enough.”
“Jean,” she said.
“Who’s Jean?”
She shook her head. “I’m not Sleepy B, silly.”
Jamie chuckled. “I’m sleepy,” he said, his voice soft and warm, like Brynn could snuggle into it.
“Mmmm…” she said. “I wanna snuggle with your voice.”
Wait. What?
“You’re hammered,” he said, laughing again.
“You’re screwed,” Brynn countered, and then she laughed so hard she snorted. “Do you get it? Hammered and screwed? Now someone just needs to get nailed.”
More snorting ensued as Jamie’s eyes widened. She was hammered. Plastered. Screwed. Nailed. All of it—three sheets to the wind plus a pillowcase and maybe a duvet. She knew because even with her glasses on, Jamie was fuzzy around the edges. She knew because she didn’t normally say things about snuggling with his voice, and she certainly didn’t have a habit of sucking fruit from between his fingers and wanting to devour him in the process.
So this was how it was going to be from here on out? Alcohol working as some sort of truth serum? Well, she was going to do something about that, and by something she apparently meant vomiting out more truth.
“James?” she asked, doing her best to fake composure. Because this was important.
“Sleepy Jean.”
He nodded, seeming proud of his ability to overcome his own tipsiness to call her by the correct nickname.
“I think you should know that, mostly against my will, there were a couple of times in the past two days when I maybe, kind of, probably thought you were sexy.”
Good Lord. She was Mr. freaking Darcy.
“Wait,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Jamie leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. Oh crap. While Brynn apparently couldn’t fake composed to save her life, Jamie had just done his best version of measured calm with a tiny dash of smug. He was eating this up.
His eyes raked over her, and his grin stretched wide. But he didn’t say anything, not for several seconds.
“You,” he finally replied as he leaned across the table, his voice deep yet noticeably unsettled, “are the sexiest woman I know.”
She stared at him. Speechless. This was the part where she was supposed to ask how he could say that to her when he was dating someone else. But the tequila wasn’t making her wish for that kind of honesty. Instead she smiled and tried to ignore how shallow her breathing seemed to be. But with each inhale, the oxygen in the restaurant grew thinner.
She grabbed her bouquet and stood up.
“I need some air.”
Brynn’s pushing away from the table did not go unnoticed.
“Y’all leaving us already?” This came from Angie, the bride, who proved to be as sweet as her boobs were huge.
“I think so,” Jamie said, answering for Brynn as he joined her in standing. “But thank you for everything.”
Brynn nodded in agreement with Jamie’s sentiments, and after a flurry of hugs and thank-yous and pats on the back, they were out the door.
The only difference between being in the Coyote Bluff Café and outside of it was that now Brynn was drunk in broad daylight.
“Maybe we should stay here tonight?” Her statement came out as a question, the three shots of tequila—and whatever else came before that—giving her the liquid courage she had hoped for. Because finding Jamie sexy wasn’t the only thought she needed to get off her chest. She had to tell Jamie about her Cadillac Ranch epiphany.
But even in her state she couldn’t help thinking how shitty it would be to tell a guy who was in a good relationship, one that seemed to make him happy, that you might be in love with him.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Was she in love with him? That was the epiphany—her feelings. Now wasn’t the time to figure out what she felt. Not when she ran the risk of saying it out loud.