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‘Sure you do.’ Mattie laughed. ‘Pretend you’re that bushveld lizard you told me about. The one that pretends it’s a boogie-oogie beetle, or something like that, to frighten away prey.’
‘Oogpister beetle,’ Bea corrected automatically, but she still laughed back just as she guessed her friend had intended her to do. ‘I don’t know what I’m more impressed with—your analogy or the fact you even remembered my story.’
‘Both.’ Mattie grinned. ‘But either way my brother will be there for any advice and support. Don’t be afraid to use him.’
It certainly wasn’t what Mattie had intended, but suddenly a thousand X-rated images of exactly what it might be like to use Hayden Brigham flooded Bridget’s head.
And her body.
She flushed deeply and tried to shake her brain clear.
‘Well, thanks.’ The images were still there. In gloriously vivid colour. ‘Anyway, enough about me, can I get you a drink to say congratulations?’
‘Actually, it’s traditional for me to buy you guys the drink since it’s my promotion.’ Mattie laughed, standing up and leaning over the table to address the members of the group who were left. ‘Same again?’
And then she headed off, leaving Bridget to talk to the group and wish that she wasn’t so very aware of where Hayden was, or what he was doing.
Or wondering whether maybe, just for once in her life, she might not do the sensible thing...but instead do the last thing in the world she should do.
And let her very first time with a man be with someone who would know exactly how to make her body come alive.
‘Who’s the guy? And why are you glaring daggers at him?’
He’d been avoiding her for the last couple of hours, but Bridget’s voice cut unexpectedly across his thoughts. Hayden, moments from making his escape—having congratulated himself on thinking with his head and not other, less cerebral parts of his anatomy—turned quickly, arching his eyebrows at her.
He may have been avoiding her but that didn’t mean he hadn’t found himself sliding into group conversations when she was talking to others. Getting to know her whilst pretending he was keeping his distance.
He kept expecting this inconvenient and unexpected attraction to fizzle as he learned more about her. Telling himself that it was just the fact that she was a stranger—and a rather enigmatic one at that—that was causing him to react in such an uncharacteristic way.
Yet far from losing interest as the night had worn on, the more Hayden had seen and heard, the more attracted to her he’d become. Until in the end he’d had to tear himself away, telling himself it was time to head home.
But he hadn’t gone, had he? He’d lingered around the booth where she’d come to join him, to talk to him. The music was louder now, and she was so damned close, and even though he knew it was the only way they could hear each other, he revelled in it all the same.
‘So, do you know who he is?’ Bridget reiterated, once it became clear that he’d forgotten to answer her.
Hayden tried to refocus his brain.
‘His name is Kane. And I wasn’t glaring daggers at him, as you so eloquently put it.’
‘Well, I overheard you talking earlier. Mattie asked if you thought it was a bad idea for her to talk to this Kane guy, and you asked her if she needed you to tell her that,’ Bridget observed softly. ‘And now you don’t look happy that your sister is still talking to him.’
He had to concede her point.
‘Kane and Mattie knew each other a long time ago, when they were kids. They got together when she was sixteen, maybe seventeen,’ he calculated. ‘He hurt her.’
‘That must have been about fourteen years ago.’ Bridget whipped her head around to look at them. ‘They look so...involved now.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Hayden grunted. ‘Like the intervening years barely happened, and they’re as close as they were back then.’
‘Are they?’
‘Are they what?’ he asked through gritted teeth. ‘Involved? I don’t know but if they are then it’s Mattie’s life. Her choice.’
‘But you don’t like it?’
‘Honestly... I don’t know. She was devastated when Kane left her, and she’s my kid sister. Part of me stills feel like I should look out for her. But she’s also a grown woman, an army officer and doctor. She doesn’t need me pulling big-brother rank on her.’
Bridget nodded, eyeing the pair of them again.
