Page 66 of Rhodes

"We ran into each other." Ford's ears go red. "At the library. It's nothing."

"It's nothing," Sully repeats, delighted. "Look at his face. That's a whole lot of nothing."

Jo spots Ford and lights up too, cutting a path straight for our table, and the whole thing is so obvious it's painful. The guys howl. Ford tells them all to go to hell and stands to pull out a chair for Jo like a man who's been practicing.

I laugh with them. I mean it. It's the easiest thing in the room: two people who like each other and just haven't said it out loud yet.

Then Tallulah walks in, and my brain quits.

She's not the woman from my kitchen table. That woman is barefoot and hunched and chewing a pen cap, hair shoved back with one hand. This one has done something to her eyes, dark and sharp, and she's wearing a top that leaves the whole line of her shoulders bare, shoulders I've spent two weeks not looking at.

"Your break," I tell Nash.

"Tilly." Deuce waves her over. "You still owe me a rematch."

"I owe you nothing." She drops into the seat across from me without a glance my way, sipping on a clear plastic cup with something clear and carbonated with a lime on top. I know better than to side-eye it.

"You lost fair and square."

"Now you're lying. You can't have poker and pool."

"If I beat you, I can."

She's easy about it, laughing, leaning into Jo, giving Deuce hell. She doesn't look at me, and I keep needing to look at her, at the bare skin above the neckline and the way she tips her head back when she laughs.

"So which one of these idiots is holding down the Quarter while you're gone?" Sully drops into the chair beside me and points his beer down the table. "You're skipping town for spring break, right?"

"He's not skipping town." Nash chalks his cue. "He's going to Italy. Fancy."

"Italy,” Deuce says it like a curse. "You're leaving New Orleans during spring break, which is high-chick time, for a wedding?”

"It's a celebration. They already got married. Courthouse thing. This is the party."

"I'm jealous. I asked Tilly to sneak me in her suitcase. Where is it, again?" Jo leans forward, elbows on the table, Ford practically melting beside her.

"Ravello,” Tallulah answers before I can. "Remember, the Amalfi Coast."

"Cain's your brother?" Nash asks me.

"One of them." I catch Tallulah's eye across the table by accident, and she gives me the look she gives right before she says something with teeth.

"His new wife's very patient," she says. "She married into the entire circus."

Deuce laughs. "How big's this circus?"

"Both families." Tallulah ticks it off on her fingers. "All the Stone brothers, which is an entire basketball team plus one, then my dad, my grandfather, my sister, and then Cooper just found out he's flying in from Spain."

"Coop's going?" Sully perks up.

"He wouldn't miss it." I keep my voice level. "None of them would. Our dads built half their friendship on trips like this. Now it's us."

"So you two are going to Italy together." Deuce points between Tallulah and me, grinning wide.

"We're going to the same event," Tallulah says.

"Feels like more overlap than that." Deuce won't let it go.

"That's because you can't count." She sips her sparkling water, and half the table laughs.