Page 8 of Jonesing for a Spy

“Nice to meet you officially, Strider. I’ll uh… see you around.” I turn toward the garage.

“Would you prefer dinner or breakfast?” he calls as I retreat.

My eyes close. He’s so, so tempting. And I can’t afford to be tempted. Not by the charming, funny man who ticks every one of my boxes.

“Dinner.” I don’t turn back as I walk.

Breakfast implies the night before. If I don’t watch myself, it would be way too easy for him to tick that box too.

4

dance of our bodies

Mirren

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Davie replies. “They’ll be here in the next half an hour.”

I wanted peaceful. I wanted an escape. I wanted a safe space. What I got instead is Davie inviting Charlie and Jamie over and all the shots we can sling back.

Which is to say all the shots they can take, because I learned my lesson. Or lessons. I also value my sleep and my intestines in their current condition. I got that whole too-drunk thing out of my system a while ago. Tipsy is fun. Sloshed is not.

“Well then, have the kitchen fire us up something decent to eat, because those two will need it or we’re stuck driving them home.”

“You’re stuck driving them home.” He points to himself. “I live here and am going to enjoy my own product.”

My brothers are indispensable, wonderful, and complete pains in my ass. Thank God my parents stopped when they had me. I’d say they reached perfection after enough tries, but I think they were exhausted and figured one girl pregnancy scare was the equivalent of the scares of all their sons combined.

Maybe that wasn’t their answer, but I can’t imagine the sex conversations and condom stock with five rowdy boys. I don’t want to imagine it. Ever. There’s not enough brain bleach to even consider those discussions. My own was—a shiver racks my spine from hairline to tailbone—mortifying.

“Then have the kitchen make something with breading to soak up their liquor and something with veggies for me. No guarantees I’m staying after this sabotage.”

“Sabotage?” Davie thumps his chest dramatically. “You wound me. Here I was rallying the troops, and you throw it in my face?” The theatrics mount higher and higher.

I offer one curt nod. “Yup. And you missed your calling. You should’ve been a soap opera star.”

“Arcade-slash-bar owner suits me just fine.”

It so does. “Games by day, games by night, and all the quarters you can handle.”

“Quarters,” he mutters, making himself busy, shuffling bottles behind the small wooden bar in the private room. “It’s digital, sis. Like a credit card. You must’ve missed that part.”

I didn’t, but he doesn’t need to know that. The whirling, swirling music and the dinging and ringing of the games is more muted behind closed doors, but still, I wonder if his ears echo these sounds in his sleep.

I toy with the cocktail pick holding the stuffed olives and swirl it in my drink. No one would take me for a martini girl. Definitely not the frilly, pink French ones, or the lemon ones. Because I’m not a sweet-drink girl, but a dirty one with olive brine in it, better yet with stuffed olives… yeah, absolutely my weakness.

As if reading my mind, my brother passes a small plate with more speared olives my way, and I slide a stack of three into my mouth, using my teeth to scrape them past my lips, just as the door pushes open.

“No, really. I can’t believe it’s been this long. Two years? Three?”

“Yeah. At least that long.”

That voice. No, no, no, no. No.

I suck in a breath, and the green fruit I love lodges in my throat, throwing me into a coughing fit. Waving my hands near my neck, as if the wind will dislodge it, I hack until tears form in my eyes and fall over my bottom lashes.

“Scooter?” A large hand whacks me between the shoulder blades, and the contents of my mouth become projectiles. Nothing like a great third impression.