“You ready for a taste test?” Jamie asked as the band went back to its set list, covering “Talk Dirty to Me” in the background. She could think of someone she wanted to talk dirty to her. That was for sure.
Focus, Brynn, she told herself. Not in front of your best girlfriend’s little brother.
“Hell yeah!” she said. It was nearing noon, and she was ready to get her brew on.
Despite her better judgment, she took in a deep breath through her nose.
“You just cut an orange,” she said, the scent of citrus permeating the air around her and drowning out the less satisfactory odor of her shirt and jeans.
“Ooh, she’s good,” Jeremy said. “But is she good enough?”
Brynn huffed out a breath. “What kind of conspiracy are you two planning?”
Jamie grabbed her hands, kissed each palm, then placed them around a cold plastic cup.
“Think you can name it in one sip?” he asked.
Her teeth grazed her bottom lip as she smiled.
“You have taught the young Padawan well,” Jeremy said. “It is time to see if she is a Jedi.”
Brynn snorted.
“That’s my girl,” Jamie said.
She regained composure and brought the cup to her lips, recalling the last time she did this and how Jamie must have felt watching her. So she decided on an encore performance and closed her eyes, dipping her tongue into the creamy foam at the top of the cup.
“For fuck’s sake.” This came from Jeremy. “I can handle the flirting, but come on, guys.”
“You really are going to be the end of me, aren’t you, Brynn Chandler?”
She could hear Jamie’s smile.
“I sure hope so,” she said, and then she sipped.
She couldn’t see him clearly, but her eyes widened just the same.
“It’s a Belgian white,” she said, but her voice cracked as she started to make sense of this so-called conspiracy. “Jamie, I need my glasses.”
And in a perfect instant replay, he gave her one soft, slow kiss. Then he gave her back her sight.
He handed her the empty display bottle, one Jeremy must have had hidden when they arrived. She read the label and choked back a laugh. Or maybe it was a sob. Either way it was a giddy, ridiculous kind of happy.
Chandler’s Witbier read the label, and the logo was a starry sky with a full moon.
Her breath hitched. She looked at him, then the bottle. Then him again. “You lassoed the moon for me,” she said.
“Hey.” He cupped her cheek in his hand, his thumb swiping at a tear she didn’t realize was there. “It took a while to get it right, and I didn’t want to tell you until I did.” He laughed then. “In Amarillo, Dora said… I thought she knew.”
“It’s my name…on the bottle. Jamie, I don’t even know what to say.”
“How about…lucky freaking bouquet?”
She ignored his earlier direction and joined him behind the bar just as Jeremy decided to go and check on something, though he couldn’t say what that something was. She fisted her hands in Jamie’s wet shirt and tugged him to her.
“I almost let you get away,” she said, realizing that they almost didn’t make it here together.
“Nah,” he said, pulling the bill of his hat over her eyes. “I would have chased you down eventually. Maybe in another ten years.”
She stepped back in a flurry of movement, her hands splayed against his chest, and Jamie winced.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, opening one eye to peek at her, then the other. “Just bracing myself for a stabbing or some other random act of violence.”
She wanted to argue with him, but he was right, just one step ahead of her this time.
“You really would have waited that long?” she asked.
“I guess we’ll never know,” he said. “Doesn’t matter now, because I’m not letting you go.”
That satisfied her enough to let him pull her into a kiss, and it felt like another first. In high school their kiss was a revelation, awakening feelings she never admitted were there. In Amarillo, it was a confirmation that what they’d both kept at bay for so long had been real. But this—this kiss was a promise, one that told her she wouldn’t have to travel across the country to find happiness again. It was always there, right next to her, waiting to be discovered.
Jamie held her tight, pulling her closer with each sweep of his tongue, each brush of his lips against hers. And when she closed her eyes, she finally saw what she’d been blind to for years.
“Fireworks,” she told him as she kissed him back.
“Yeah,” Jamie said. “I know what you mean.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Brynn’s breath hitched, and she bit her bottom lip as she watched him.
Jamie was so intent on getting out of his now stiffening shirt and jeans, he wasn’t prepared for his dick to stand at attention at the sight of her reaction to him. Scratch that. Apparently his dick worked independently of his brain because he was ready to salute, and she wasn’t even undressed yet.
Her teeth still tugged on that lip, and she pulled her shirt over her head. It was Jamie’s turn to gasp as his eyes fell on her breasts, nipples taut and hard behind the fabric of her bra. He reached for the clasp, and she shook her head.