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“I won’t.What I mean is, I could distract him from doing the glowering thing.”
Her face lit up.“Really?Oh, I’d love you forever.”
“Okay, then.Enjoy.He seems nice.”
“He is,” she whispered.“His name is Charlie.”
I gave her a thumbs up and turned away to make for the pool table.When I glanced back, Charlie had already moved into my seat.
It was time to ask Rick Callahan to teach me how to play pool.
ChapterEight
Eddie was leaning on the bar, laughing with Molly when I approached the pool table, which meant Rick was alone.He was coating the end of his cue in chalk, his gaze down, and I took a moment to appreciate his long lashes against his cheekbones.Why did men have such amazing lashes?It was deeply unfair.Meanwhile, I would probably be buying false lashes for another fifty years in an attempt to make my stubby ones even stand out on my face.
His gaze flicked up as I neared him, and he smirked.“Well, well.Back to test out your pool skills?Or come to distract me from that guy my sister’s talkin’ to?”
I laughed.“They’re just talking.”
“For now,” he groused.
“How about you stand on the other side of the pool table, where you can face her, but where it isn’tcompletelyobvious that you’re supervising?”I suggested, raising my brows cheekily at his big brother behaviour.
Holding his attention like this, being in his orbit, was intoxicating.I felt his nearness keenly.
“Fine.”He shook his head, but his mouth curved.He rounded the table, picked up a cue, and passed it to me.“How long since you played?”
“Years.Last time was university, about ten years ago.”I hefted the cue in my hands and felt the weight.“This is a long one.”
Rick raised his brows, mirth sketched across his face.“It’s not the size, Maddie, it what’cha do with it.So I’ve been told, anyway.”
“So you’ve beentold?I’d have thought you’d know from personal experience,” I teased.
He leaned over the table, practice-thrusting the cue through two braced fingers.“A gentlemanneverkisses’n tells, darlin’.”
The endearment, although he’d mentioned everyone was called such here, still made a thrill race through me.
I mirrored him on the other side of the table, bending and positioning my cue just-so.
The scent of chalk floated up into the air.
“And are you a gentleman, Rick Callahan?”
“I’m offended that you even have to ask,” Rick scoffed, but the twitch at the corner of his mouth gave his amusement away.“Aren’t we in the South?”
“You can’t tell me all Southern men are gentlemen,” I countered.
He snorted, clearly entertained.“Oh, on that, I have to agree with you.”He straightened, leaned on the cue thoughtfully.“You wanna be stripes or solids?”
“Whichever one is rigged.”
He laughed out loud.“I wouldn’t do that to you.And more to the point, neither would Molly.She’s as straight a shooter as you’ll ever get.”
He plucked a coin from the front pocket of his jeans and fed it to the machine.I heard clunk after clunk as the balls were released, and Rick set the triangle shaper on the forest-green table.I watched his hands as he settled the coloured spheres into place.
I could look at Rick Callahan forever.At the gleam of his golden-brown hair under the soft bar lights.At the broad line of his shoulders.At the one dimple that winked on the left side of his mouth when he smiled.
Even my bestselling miso-caramel brownies could learn temptation lessons from this guy and they took some beating.
