Page 13 of Quit Playing Games with My Heart

I read it again.

Maybe I could find some sort of wiggle room in there that would help me to feel okay about asking Brian out and seeing if there could be more between us than games nights and friendship by association.

I’d never been so caught up on anyone the way I was on Brian. Maybe pursuing him would be a risk, but it might just be a risk that would change my life for the better if I was brave enough to take it.

CHAPTER 5

Sam

“Checkmate!” The excited teenager whose mom had brought him to Common Grounds’ second games night, the first one of my tournaments, leaned back in his chair and threw his arms wide in victory.

Across the table from him, the elderly man wrapped in a cardigan who had probably assumed he was doing the kid a favor by playing against him pinched his wrinkled face into a frown. “That was a clever move, young man,” he said, struggling to be gracious.

I had a feeling Larry wasn’t used to losing. “It was a noble effort,” I said, squeezing the man’s shoulder and trying not to grin too much. Larry was one of our regulars, after all, and the point was to bring more new people into the café, not to alienate the ones who were already loyal to us.

“Who do I play next?” the kid asked, all brightness and confidence.

I would have loved a little of that confidence.

As the kid’s mom said, “We’ll have to check the roster,” I turned to the side of the room where the roster in question and the leaderboard were attached to the corkboard where we usually hung posters for upcoming shows and events. Brian stood to one side of the table that held a few extra chessboards and timers, chatting with another of the old guys from the retirement village up the street.

Brian seemed to sense I was watching him. He glanced up in the middle of explaining something to the old guy with enthusiastic gestures. As soon as our eyes met, he burst into a smile that had my heart hitching in my chest.

How had I gotten so lucky to have a sweet, hot guy like Brian in my life?

How had I gotten so unlucky to have him as an employee?

The guy Brian was talking to needed his attention again, and I had to turn to answer a question from another wannabe chess master who had just finished her game. It was probably for the best. I couldn’t spend all my time gazing across a crowded room at Brian and eating my heart out over some perceived reason the two of us couldn’t be together.

The good news was that the room was crowded. Chess tournament night had gotten a great response despite me having barely any time to pull it together. That probably had something to do with the fact that there wasn’t a whole lot else going on in town on a Thursday night and Gilbert had given the go-ahead to hand out vouchers for free coffee with the purchase of a pastry during our regular business hours.

Everyone was chipping in to do what they could to keep Common Grounds afloat during the construction.

“Okay, I’ll admit it,” Brian teased me half an hour later, as the last of the chess matches started to wrap up and people gathered their things to go home. “This tournament-style games night isn’t such a bad idea after all.”

“Damn right, it’s not,” I teased him right back. “People like structure as much as they like chaos.”

“Open games night was not chaos,” he insisted, eyes shining as he stood by my side, arms crossed in imitation of me as we looked around the room at the remaining games. “It was fun and unstructured. People like that sort of thing.”

“People like structure and format as well,” I pointed out, glancing sideways at him, my heart refusing to calm down.

“Sure they do, Mr. Boss Man,” Brian drawled.

He was so unbelievably cute, especially when he joked with me. So much so that I only felt a slight jolt over the way he called me Boss Man. Things were easy between us, and I liked that.

I more than liked that.

I also let the moment of me staring at him, heart fluttering, go on a bit too long. Brian’s jovial smile morphed slowly into something more, something that probably wasn’t appropriate for a public games room that still held half a dozen people finishing up their games.

And my brothers. We couldn’t forget that. Diccon and Gilbert had stuck around the café to help out and, in Gilbert’s case, to get a little of the extra work done that he swore he couldn’t concentrate on during the day with all the construction noise. I was very much aware of my brothers sending covert glances my and Brian’s way as they pretended not to be interested.

“We should start cleaning up what we can so we don’t have to be here too late,” I said, surprised that my voice came out a little hoarse.

Brian, who had leaned slightly toward me, flinched and stood straighter. “Yeah, we should,” he said, then cleared his throat and took a step over to the table.

Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. I was a grown-ass man. I should have been able to navigate my way around a guy who I liked. This wasn’t high school where we had to be careful about who would perceive us and potentially beat us up behind the gym after school. We were allowed to be attracted to each other and show it.

“You planning to do something about that soon?” Diccon asked a few minutes later, once the last of the chess players had finished their games and the two of us swooped in to clean up their table.