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Besides, throwing the word agent around was intense enough, but dealing with foreign rights? That was some serious upper levels in the art world. “Please tell me your sister knows.”
“Nope. Nobody but you.”
I jerked to my feet and grabbed the second pastry she’d eaten half of—pretty sure it was Christian’s—and stuffed it back in the bag. “We’re going to the bookstore. I’m going to buy every single copy of everything you’ve done I can find. I have empty bookshelves in the spare room just waiting for them.”
She struggled to grab her tablet and her coffee and the pastry bag while simultaneously trying to fight me off and laughing. “You’ve lost it, dude. Didn’t know monsters got you so excited.”
“You don’t just do monsters. You have so much other stuff on your website. Those paintings of what looks like England in the 1800s—”
“Oh, those are what got me my current job. Romantic suspense hardcover with a stepback.”
“What does that mean? Eh, never mind, I don’t care. Show me when we get there.” I kissed her again, conveniently forgetting we had an audience until applause broke out around us.
She shook her head as she smiled at me. “Maybe being your girlfriend wouldn’t be so bad.”
FIFTEEN
By some miracle,the wedding shower went off without a hitch, even if it got moved a few days later. We held it at a familiar location—my sister’s bakery, Sugar Rush. Honey, Mickey and I, along with help from Tab’s other employees, Lea and Tiffany, managed to close the place down for a couple of hours on a weekday evening.
It wasn’t hard for us to fill the place with all of the people who loved my sister—Luna, Ivy, Kinleigh, who owned a vintage clothing and furniture shop in town, Bess from their building, and even Macy and Vee, among others. Some of her other friends couldn’t get the night off, so they’d just sent presents.
Presents were the most important part, anyway.
I supposed most of these people loved Brady too. But c’mon, these shindigs were mostly for the chicks, whether or not they’d had some fancy weedwhacker thing on the registry.
As far as I was concerned, hire lawn care. Who had time to bother with tools to whack the lawn into submission? Not I. Of course I was of the mindset to chop everything down that needed maintenance. Appreciating wild tundra was awesome, as long as it wasn’t on my property.
I helped my sister open the many presents, and Brady stacked them in awe-inspiring manly piles while laughing heartily and chatting with the other men who were equally stoked to be at what Christian called a hen party. I was pretty sure he got the name wrong—that was the bachelorette— but I was trying to keep the peace today. He was only there for about a half hour before his shift began, and then Mav would get off duty when Christian went on.
He cleared his throat behind me and I worked hard on ignoring him as I refilled the punch bowl.
“Van, can I have a minute?”
“Did you have me towed? Tickets must get so boring after a while.”
“No. You actually put some effort into parking this time. I think this is the first time you are actually within the lines.”
It was truly sick that his scant praise warmed me inside. “I tried real hard.”
“I’m sure.” His lips twitched, barely visible under his thick scruff. “Look, we’re off on the wrong foot, obviously. We need a cooling off period.”
“Oh, do we? Is that what we need?” I tapped my chin. “Let me guess. You saw my Op/Ed in the paper about wasting town resources on nonsense tickets when there are more important concerns to be addressed?”
“Definitely missed that. I don’t often get to peruse the paper since writing nonsense tickets keeps me so busy.” He crossed his big, burly arms, straining his starched shirt at the shoulders.
He was truly tall and massive, even bigger than Mav, who was no slouch in that department. Yet I didn’t shiver at his height the way I did with Mav’s.
Probably good since Mav was the one I was sleeping with every night.
And every morning before work.
And some afternoons, if we had coinciding lunch breaks. That initial box of condoms we’d purchased had long ago been replaced.
Christian wasn’t done yet. “But if you’re dating Maverick, we probably should forge a truce so it doesn’t get awkward.”
I still wasn’t good with that whole dating label, but even I had run out of names for what we were doing other than dating. If friends had this many benefits under ordinary circumstances, they’d be way past friends and coming around the other side.
“Why? It’s been awkward all through Brady’s engagement, and you never made an effort not to watch me like a damn hawk.”
