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“Any person who isn’t scared of spiders needs their head tested.”
“Just how drunk are you?”
“I’m not drunk,” he protests. “I’m… relaxed.”
“So relaxed you’ll be under the table in five minutes.”
Victoria rolls her eyes. “That’s my cue to retire for the night. See you guys tomorrow. Great party, Hux.”
“Yeah, thanks for all your hard work.”
“No worries. Goodnight.” She nods at me, then heads out of the door.
Huxley hooks his foot around the chair she’s vacated and pulls it toward us, and we both stretch out our legs and rest our feet on it. I glance across at him, unable to hide a smile. I’ve known this guy for ten years, and he never fails to make my heart skip a beat. He’s tall, and the fact that he took up the unusual sport of archery at school and has practiced it ever since is reflected in his well-muscled shoulders. He has brown hair that’s short up the back and longer on the top, and a tiny mole on his left cheekbone that always makes me want to kiss it. He’s gorgeous and irresistible, and he knows it, which makes it so much harder for me to keep him at arm’s length.
He catches the eye of Ian behind the bar, and holds up two fingers.
“Not for me,” I protest. “I should be heading off soon, too.”
“If you do that, I’ll be drinking alone, and that’s just sad.”
“What happened to Ms. Gold-lamé? I thought you’d have been balls-deep by now.”
He gives me an amused look. “She wasn’t my type.”
“She was breathing, wasn’t she?”
“Haha. She was a very sweet girl. But it’s Valentine’s Day. Why would I want to spend that with anyone else but you?”
I give him a wry smile. “Technically, it’s the fifteenth now.”
“Even so.” He grins at Ian as he brings two whiskies over. “Cheers.”
I sigh and take one of the glasses. “You’re trying to destroy my liver,” I grumble.
“I like you drunk,” Huxley says. “It files off your sharp edges.”
“What sharp edges? I don’t have any.”
He laughs. “Yeah, of course you don’t.” He holds up his glass, and I tap mine to it. “I always drink to world peace,” he says. It’s a quote fromGroundhog Day.
“To world peace.”
We both have a mouthful of the amber liquid and sigh.
“Did you like your flowers?” he asks.
Today, he had three dozen pink roses delivered to my office at MediTech.
“They were absolutely gorgeous, and thank you very much. But you’ve got to stop doing that,” I scold.
“Buying my best friend presents?”
“Asking me out.”
“I told you ten years ago that I’d ask you out every month until you said yes.”
“You did,” I murmur, remembering the moment well. Unfortunately, he’d already broken my heart by then, which I’m sure he knows, although we’ve never openly discussed it. “I thought you’d get bored after the first four or five times I turned you down.”
