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Even though he did everything he could to downplay what happened, I was embarrassed. So I tucked the pencil back behind my ear, pushed my glasses up and fled. Which I was as good at doing as math.
4
MAVERICK
* * *
Friday 11:35 am
* * *
I couldn’t get the woman out of my head.
Bridge. The quietly beautiful, ridiculously smart, nerdy little thing from the coffee shop. Who’d spilled cold fucking coffee all over me and tried to dry me off with a handful of napkins. She was skittish and wary, sassy and shy. And fucking young. She also eyed me behind those thick glasses like I was a piece of candy and she wanted to get a lick.
Then she’d run out. Bolted like a horse out of the gate at the Kentucky Derby.
She wasn’t like any woman I knew, and I’d been all over the world. Why did a tiny thing like her, who kept a pencil tucked behind her ear, distract me?
Like now, talking to Silas.
“Did you hear me?” he asked.
I blinked, getting visions of freckles and green eyes out of my head and on my brother’s scruffy face. “No, what?”
“I asked you what the hell are you wearing.”
I had him on video chat as I leaned against my car. I was at the site, getting my first glimpse of the resort since ground breaking two months earlier. His face, so similar to mine, filled my cell’s screen. There were four of us James brothers–with me being the oldest–but only Silas ran the family business with me. Theo and Dex never had any interest. Theo decided to save the world by being a doctor and Dex got all the athletic genes and played pro hockey.
I frowned, glanced down, then grinned.
“Coffee shop t-shirt,” I told him, remembering how I got it. How Bridge’s little hands patting me down was the closest contact I’ve had to a woman in far too long.
“It’s pink.”
“Sure is.”
“Going local already? You’ve been there… three hours.”
“Someone ran into me with a cup of coffee.”
A wince crossed his face. “You look way too happy for having your nipples burned off.”
I rolled my eyes. “Iced coffee, thankfully.”
“So what gives then?”
“A pretty woman did it.” My mind drifted to those full lips and wide hips.
He laughed. “What about Farrah?”
My smile dropped. “What about her?”
“Word on the street is you’re together.”
“You know we’re not. At all.”
Farrah and I had grown up together and our parents had playfully suggested we should marry. That never went away. These days, we ran interference for each other, being each other’s date as needed to social events.
