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I nod. "I might go get another drink," I say out loud.
"Oh good," Zane says, breaking off his conversation with Clint. "Get us another round?"
"No, I think I might drink it at the bar, and then head home. I'm feeling just a little too much like a fifth wheel, no offense."
"None taken," Gabi says.
I nod and go over to the bar. It's not that late, but people are starting to clear out. I park my ass on the same barstool I was riding earlier, and Sage comes right over. "You want another one like that?" she asks, pointing a ring-clad forefinger at my glass.
"Nope. Make it a lemonade."
She gives me a Mona Lisa smile, and pulls out the pitcher to fill a tall glass.
"You had yours yet?" I say.
"Not yet. Think I'll have it now," she says, and grabs another glass.
I wait until she sips from hers to taste mine. It's excellent. I say so. She smiles. I look at her lips and think, she tastes like lemonade right now.
I could beat around the bush with her. I could hint. But I'm a blunt guy. And you could say that I've been waiting for her for a very long time. "Would you like to go to dinner with me sometime?"
She freezes, arm in midair as she's holding her lemonade glass to her mouth. Then she puts it down. "Let me get this straight. Holt Woods is asking me out?"
I nod. Spin my glass in a tight single circle on the polished wood of the bar. Look back up at her.
"When?"
"Any time you want." She takes her time responding, so I add, "Look, I'm not going to make you feel uncomfortable. If it's a no, it's a no. I won't keep bugging you."
"It's a yes," she says, and spins her own glass. "I just wondered...why now? Why not, say, eight years ago when I came of legal age?"
Startled, I stare at her. Guess Sammi was right, and Sage has had a thing for me as long as I've had a thing for her. I try to formulate an answer. "Well. I don't know exactly. Except that eight years ago, you were barely legal. Only eighteen, right?"
"Just a baby," she agrees dryly. "Except that I'd already lost my cherry by then, so it wouldn't have been cradle-snatching."
The thought of Sage Landon's virgin cherry getting popped by somebody else, somebody who probably had no idea of the worth of this girl, has me feeling both annoyed and painfully aroused.
"You have a vein throbbing in your forehead," Sage says conversationally. "What did I say to piss you off?"
"Stop talking about your cherry and tell me whether you'll say yes to dinner, Sage," I growl.
"You're Holt Woods," she says. "I'm probably gonna say yes to everything."
Again:holy shit.
CHAPTER FOUR
SAGE
"Holy shit," Holt says under his breath, looking away.
"I would have sworn you didn't like me," I say. I'm not usually this blunt, but he's blunt, and I can tell that he's the kind of guy who doesn't really go for wordy flirting. "You had plenty of time to stare at my tits, that time the gang and I went skinny-dipping. And you've had plenty of time to ask me out since I turned eighteen." I can barely keep the annoyance out of my voice, because I've wondered and wondered about his reaction, that careful blank face he gives me every time I've talked to him since.
He sighs almost imperceptibly. Raises one eyebrow at me, which has me even more turned on because I wish I could do that. "You were a kid back then. I wasn't. Moreover, I was doing my job. It would have been unprofessional of me to wait until you were eighteen and then jump on fresh meat the minute it became available."
"Freshmeat?"
He laughs a little, looking down and running one of his thick fingers through the condensation left by his lemonade glass. "It would have felt like I was trying to use you."
