“Is there a reason you keep looking up to that window,” Grant asks as he lifts his beer toward the offices of Modern Family.
“No reason.” I shrug off the comment with a long tug on my beer.
The air is thick with the scents of hay and cotton candy and fried food. Main Street is so crowded you can barely move, and thank fuck Grady found the three of us a table to sit at while the women took the kids to the carnival end for a bit.
“Then where’d you disappear to?” Grady asks with a smirk that tells me he damn well knows. Considering he was the one standing next to me when Rissa told me Sidney was still up there working, I would have thought it was obvious anyway.
“To the john.”
“I have a feeling you were whipping your dick out, all right, but it wasn’t to take a piss,” Grady continues.
“Do you ever shut the fuck up?” I ask. His shit-eating grin is enough for me to want to punch him just to knock it off his lips.
“Not a chance in hell. Oh look,” he says and lifts his chin to two ladies standing on the outskirts of the seating area, “another set of ladies trolling by to see if you’re going to take their bait.” I roll my eyes at him. “When I was at the bar buying your beer, Uley said they’re getting, like, fifty calls a day at dispatch from women looking for you.”
“Pussy for days,” Grant says, trying not to laugh but unable to quite hold it back.
“You should thank us,” Grady says. “We did that for you.”
“Jesus.” I shake my head and take another sip of my beer.
“I don’t think he cares about the bait, Grady. Not here. Not there. Not anywhere,” he mocks, prompting me to hold up my middle finger. “I think he has his eye on someone else.”
Images of Sidney in that tight black shirt she had on with a silky little camisole fill my mind. High heels and long legs. Hitched breaths and hard nipples.
I shift in my seat. “I care, all right,” I murmur.
I should have kissed her. There’s no doubt about that. The problem is that there would have been no stopping me once I started. Luke was waiting, and she said no, and fuck if the timing wasn’t right, so I didn’t.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to.
“Seems to me like someone isn’t bitching about being in the contest anymore . . . Now, why would that be?” I eye Grant across the table and know where he’s going with this and refuse to give him the ammunition to prove his point.
“And?” I draw the word out.
“And nothing, just glad to see you not worrying about . . . everything.”
“I’m not thrilled with the attention,” I say with a shrug.
“C’mon . . . you don’t like the life-size poster of you over in the Chamber of Commerce booth or the flyers all over the tables saying #TeamMalone?” Grady chuckles as he holds one up before tossing it over his shoulder.
“No. I don’t.”
“Hey, Grant? How many of these women do you think are going to take these pictures home and have some fun while staring at it later tonight?”
“Dude . . . I seriously think Mom dropped you on your head when you were little. There’s something wrong with you.” I push Grady’s shoulder, and he swipes my beer and downs the rest of it.
“You want another?” Grady asks as he stands, and Grant and I both nod. I shove some money into his hand since it’s my round to buy and then lean back in my chair.
“Luke told Mom that Sidney came over to your house the other day,” Grant says, getting to the topic he really wants to talk about.
Leave it to Luke to spill the beans. All Luke has done is talk nonstop about Sidney since she came over, which isn’t a good thing, so I knew it was only a matter of time before Mom started nosing around. I can see in Luke’s eyes how much he hopes she and I are dating. That this woman who paid particular attention to him is more than just a random friend.
That maybe I’ll like her vagina and we’ll get married.
I snort a laugh, and Grant looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. The fact that any of this runs through my head is proof of it.
“So, was she?”
“Christ. Just what I need is Mom on my back about marriage when she knows that will never happen again.”
“Famous last words,” he says, and I crumple up a flyer with my face on it and throw it at him.
“Fine. She came over to apologize to Luke about the picture in the paper, which was the reason he got into his fight, which . . . who the fuck knows.” I scrub a hand through my hair and then close my eyes and lean back against the chair I’m sitting in.
“Which led to her coming over, playing nice with Luke, and then landing in your bed and you not sealing the deal?” Grant makes the comment with humor in his voice, but it’s his eyes that tell me he wants to know the truth. That he’s worried about me.
That it’s none of his damn business.
“She played with Luke’s Creepers.” I’m not sure why I say that, but it really was the last thing I expected her to do, so it’s stuck in my mind.
Well, that and her kiss.
“Wait a minute,” he says. “You mean Uptown Sidney came over and played Minecraft stuff with Luke?” The confusion on his face mirrors exactly how I felt when I saw her at the table with Luke.
“Yep.” I nod.
“Shit, that isn’t the Uptown Sidney I remember,” he says. “Doesn’t watching her do that with Luke make you want Uptown Sidney to go downtown on Grayson?”
“Very funny.”
Grady better come back soon because I need another beer STAT.
“You like her.” His simple statement is the first thing in this whole conversation that I don’t have a quick comeback to. Because I do. I don’t want to, because liking her scares the shit out of me, but fuck . . . I do. I just meet his eyes and don’t utter a single word. “So I take it you’re over the whole Sidney is like Claire thing?” he presses.
“No.” It’s the truth. But it’s a truth on shaky legs, considering that she’s up there instead of down here having a good time. Claire never would have given up her party time for the sake of everyone else. She never would have given up any part of herself, because her needs and wants came first. Always.
And Sidney is up there right now, proving that hers don’t.
“But I’m working on it.”
“Good.” He gives a measured nod as he finishes the last of his beer, and I glance again at the light on in the second story window. “She scares you because she’s different from your usual, but that also excites you. She showed up at your house, slid into a seat at your table, and entertained Luke. She reminded you of a reality you want but don’t want to admit to.”
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. He’s too damn right when all I want him to be is wrong.
“You gotta admire the woman for beating you at your own game.”
“How’s that?” I ask but already know.
“The hero bullshit in the newspaper. Getting the townspeople to back the contest so you can’t say no. Charming Luke when you thought she’d be petrified of him. From where I’m sitting, it looks like the ball’s in your court. You want her? You don’t want her? I don’t fucking care. You need to quit being a pussy and decide one way or another.” I look at Grant across from me, one arm resting across the back of the chair next to him, the other holding his beer while his eyes issue the challenge his words just gave. “If she owns your mind—and your moods—like she has, don’t you think she just might be worth the risk?”
“Mercy-Life pilot Grayson Malone is a hero.” I turn instantly at the sound of Grady’s voice, my conversation with Grant on instant hold but still owning my mind. Grady has three bottles held against his chest with one arm while holding up the flyer with his other to read. “Whether it’s risking his life to save others trapped in the High Sierras’ snow, or on a daily basis transporting trauma patients to save their lives, he knows how to put others first.”
“Stop,” I say, hating that he’s reading it loudly enough to draw looks from those around us.
That fucking bio.
The one I refused to give her because I swore I was going to bail from the contest. The bio I forgot to finish because every time I started it, I got sidetracked thinking about her.
Fuck.
“Grayson’s biggest role as a hero, though, is to his eight-year-old son, who thinks he hung not only the moon but also all the stars in the sky around it. Sexy and single, Grayson has a charming smile, a quick wit, and biceps any woman would want to be hugged by.” He gives a long, low whistle. “You write that bio yourself, Gray?”
“Will you shut the fuck up?” I growl under my breath as he takes a seat, and my cheeks burn bright from the attention.
“’Cause if you didn’t write that, then that means Sidney did, and hell, it sounds like she just might more than like you.” Grant’s shit-eating grin is in full effect to taunt me. “You need to get a better picture, because, dude, chicks love abs. They love uniforms. They eat that shit up.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Grady says and sets my beer in front of me with a chuckle.
“Hey, I’m the nice one,” I argue. “The one who keeps everything fair. There is no ganging up on me.”
The two of them look at each other and burst out laughing. “Like hell there isn’t. You’re fair game, little brother,” Grant says as he tilts the top of his beer toward the window above and shrugs. “Just think about what I said. It’s your call, Gray.”
Is she worth the risk? His words loop through my head on repeat.
“If the answer’s yes, then you know what to do.”