Gabi shook her head. “I don’t give a crap about winning the game. Well, not as much as Summer, anyway. But Mason vouched for the guy, and you’d be safer sharing that long drive with someone, and...”
“And the best way to get over one guy is to get under another one,” Summer reiterated. “Then along comes Nick Roman and those hands. The man is so fucking hot, my panties are literally on fire as we speak.”
“Not literally,” Gabi corrected, then stopped speaking when Summer and I both glanced at her.
“That’s exactly why I can’t take him with me.” I returned to whisper-yelling at Summer. “I don’t need to add morning-after regrets to heartache and a cratering career for a holiday trifecta of misery.”
Both my friends sat back in their chairs and stared at me with wide eyes.
“We’re sorry,” Gabi said, “but you said yourself you’re happier without Riley. And you’ll get your career back on track soon. You just need to get out of your post-break-up funk.”
“Forget all that,” Summer said. A slow smile spread across her face. “You want to bang Nick! You’re already thinking about the morning after. I think he’s the type who would make breakfast and serve it to you in bed.”
“That is not what I thought about Nick.” My face flushed hot and made a liar out of me. And now I had an image of Nick wearing only a towel wrapped around his hips, carrying a silver tray piled high with French toast and bacon. “Damn it, Summer,” I muttered.
“Time’s up!” the man in question said into the microphone. “Okay, teams, it all comes down to this. Ladies first. Team Power Puff, the question was: What is one difference between a SIG Sauer P226 and a Beretta 92FS?”
The three of us exchanged a look, then Summer blurted out, “One’s a handgun and one’s a pistol.”
“I’m sorry,” Nick said. “They’re both pistols. Your answer is incorrect.”
“Aren’t handguns and pistols the same thing?” I asked Summer. I realized I’d spoken more loudly than I’d intended when Nick looked straight into my eyes, sending an electric jolt through my veins and into my core.
“That is also incorrect,” he said, then turned his attention to the other team.
“Did he say that just to embarrass me?” I whispered to my friends. “I mean, it was totally unnecessary, right?”
“Pretty much,” Gabi said.
A few tables away, Team WickedPedia was sharing their answer. “The 92FS uses a striker-fired system and the P226 uses a hammer-fired one.”
“That’s correct!” Nick called out jovially. “Team WickedPedia are the eighties’-trivia-night champions!”
A round of applause went up around us and patrons lifted their glasses to toast the week’s winners.
“I’m not sure which loss makes me sadder,” Summer said, “the trivia game or the hope that you two would do the nasty. I was ready to hear all the naughty details on New Year’s Eve.”
I dropped my head into my hands. As much as I’d dreaded getting myself to the bar, it had been proving to be a happy distraction from my breakup with Riley and not selling my art piece and having to crawl home, alone and barely making ends meet, to my family. But in the past hour, it had gone down in a blaze of… Well, a blaze of Nick Roman.
That was the bad news. The good news was I no longer felt any concern that I would submit to his seductive charms while on a road-trip with him, because once you scratched the very, very pretty surface, the man didn’t have any seductive charms. But he did have a mean streak.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
Summer perked up. “Bang him?”
“Of course not.” I took Summer’s Manhattan out of her hand and slammed back the rest of it. “You’ve had enough of these. I’m going to accept his offer to split the driving and costs for a cross-country road trip.”
Summer opened her mouth to say something, but Gabi came to my rescue and pressed her fingers over Summer’s lips.
Icaught up with Nick at the bar. “Hi again.”
“Hi.” He frowned. “Sorry about your loss.”
“Really? Because you seemed pretty happy when you gunsplained to me in front of the crowd.”
He grinned, then laughed. It was a pleasant sound. Hell, it was a great one. Riley never laughed like that, with his head thrown back, giving in to wild abandon. “Shit, I’m sorry,” Nick said when he’d caught his breath. “I didn’t mean to be an asshole.” He nodded his head toward Lyle, who was mixing a cocktail. “And I’ve already requested a round of apology drinks for the table.”
Now I smiled. “So that’s your MO, a round of drinks for the table. A way to be less of an asshole and let the womenfolk down easy.”
