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He grinned before turning back to the sink and washing his hands again. “Go finish your payroll, Firecracker. It’s going to take me three minutes to finish capping these bad boys, and then your ass is mine. Literally.”
“Mpfh,” I grumbled, walking out of the Meadery toward my office without looking back. JT Wellbridge was dangerously good-looking, and I knew if I caught another peek of him, I’d pop wood right there in the bar.
I didn’t know how, after a lifetime of knowing the man, I could still be surprised by the overpowering want I felt whenever he was near me, but there I was. He made me stupidly horny just by existing.
When I sat at my desk, I had a hard time concentrating on the payroll for reasons that had nothing to do with the sexy frog in my meadery. Two servers came in to ask various questions about the schedule or notify me of swapping shifts, and Kendall needed to make a last-minute change to the weekend menu due to some supplier shortages. By the time I actually submitted my files for processing, it was after six, and JT had brought two plates of burgers and fries into the office.
As we ate, JT told me about the highs of his week—signing a new craft brew label out of Rhode Island and pitching a new winery in Oregon—and the lows—helping the marketing team prepare for Brew Fest.
“I thought you’d like that part,” I said, dragging a fry through some of Kendall’s spicy ketchup. “Meeting the potential new clients, chatting them up, figuring out what they want and what it’ll take to make them sign on the dotted line.”
He swiped at some burger sauce on his chin and scowled. “You make me sound like a used car dealer.”
“Do I?” I asked, startled. “I don’t mean to at all. But you said you liked the challenge of it. Figuring out what people want and how you can connect them to it. And you’re good at it, Rainmaker.”
“Yeah, not so much recently.” He threw his napkin on my desk. “The Operations team is taking forever to approve this contract I want to offer. And I had to help a coworker attempt to save a deal that went south because Jeff Namath is a greedy fucker who made the whole company look bad.”
I had no idea who he was talking about, but the disgust in his voice was palpable. I winced. “Did it work?”
He made a seesaw motion with his hand. “The offer is better now. More equitable. Itmighthave improved Harrison Yang’s opinion of our company…” He shook his head. “But I don’t know if the deal is right for him anymore, which sucks.” He ran both hands into his perfect hair—which wasn’t so perfect anymore since he hadn’t made time to visit his fancy New York salon in a few weeks—and scrubbed hard, disordering the strands. “Sorry. I don’t mean to take it out on you. It’s just… a lot of work. I have two smaller clients who’ll be at the festival, and I’ll need to spend a lot of time at their booths. But Conrad—my boss—he wants me spending the bulk of my time with Phillip’s Cider, making sure they’re happy, but also walking around prospecting and closing new deals. Alice is trying to organize a schedule for me, but it’s proving difficult.”
“Is he going to be there? Conrad, I mean.” I wondered whether I’d get to meet him.
JT made a huffing sound and shook his head. “No. That’s not his job. His job is to throw up as many roadblocks as possible and make it impossible to do mine.”
“Whoa.” I’d never heard JT talk about his dream job that way before.
As he spoke, I began to notice traces of sleep deprivation on JT’s handsome face. He’d begun to lose the golden tan he’d gotten earlier in the summer since he’d started commuting back to the city last week, and his eyes had smudges of darkness underneath them. He looked like I felt.
I stood up and stacked our plates before grabbing his hand. “Come on.” I led him into the kitchen, where I thanked Kendall and deposited our dirty dishes. As soon as we left through the back door, I noticed the lights in my tiny house were on.
“I put my bag in the house already,” JT explained. “Hope that’s okay.”
“How did you know what the code was to the door?”
His laughter rang out in the evening air, making me feel a warm, buzzy feeling in my chest. “I didn’t. But I guessed and got lucky.”
My face flooded with heat. “Asshole,” I muttered.
“3-7-6-4,” he recited in a sing-song voice. “Know what those numbers spell out on a phone keypad?”
“Shut it,” I warned.
“F-R-O-G!” He skipped ahead of me and turned back, shaking his hips and wagging his finger.
“That’s a coincidence,” I lied.
“No, it’s not. It’s because you’re obsessed with me. Admit it! You think about me all the time.”
“If I do, they’re terrible, hateful thoughts,” I muttered. “Because you’re annoying as fuck. And where the hell did you get enough energy to do the Dance of Smugness when a minute ago you were asleep on your—oof!Hey!”
JT grabbed my hand and twirled me in a circle before reeling me back in so our chests were pressed together. “I’m not sure,” he whispered, keeping my arm pinned behind me. “But I think it’s you.”
“What?” Staring up at his eyes made me feel drunk.
“Being with you,” he explained. “When you’re near me, I feel… alive. I keep wondering if it always felt this way and I just never noticed. Weird, right?”
Since I’d just had a similar thought about him, I shook my head fiercely. “Not weird.”
