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Fortunately, Jack puts me out of my misery by breezing past my bout of insanity without further comment. “Right. So Abbey and I aren’t mice. Glad that’s sorted.”
His eyes are impossibly, mesmerizingly blue. So cosmic and glittery that I only realize I’m staring when he grins knowingly and winks, telling me I’ve been caught out.
Nice, Abbey. Subtle.
“I’m only worried for the poor girl.” Lee stands on the other side of the bar and starts picking at his breakfast but mostly daring Jamie to look at him. “Do you suppose she’s lost?”
“There isn’t any girl.” A stubborn Jamie salts his eggs, growing more indignant.
Jack has the wingspan of a 747. As he eats, his elbows bumpmine, though he doesn’t seem to notice. “You suppose she crawled out of his wardrobe?”
Jamie leans in to speak softly at my ear. “Be a doll and change the subject, yeah?”
“Abbey…” Lee warns, his voice grave. “Remember who made you bacon.”
I am a sucker for the desperate and downtrodden, so I toss Jamie a lifeline. “So catch me up. How long have you all lived together?”
Lee rolls his eyes. “Typical.”
Jamie leans in and smacks a kiss on my cheek. “You’re a rose, Abbs.”
“We moved in here last fall,” Jack supplies as he chews.
“How’d you all meet? You’ve been friends a long time?” I ask.
He glances at the other two. “It was that holiday do, wasn’t it? At the Spanish place with the fucked-up heads on the wall.”
I lift a brow. “Heads?”
“There weren’t any heads,” Jamie tells him. “And it was before spring term. That girl Cara’s flat in Chelsea. You remember the one.”
Jack piles eggs and sausage on a piece of toast, folds it, and shoves the whole thing in his mouth. He gulps it down, then says, “I remember you nicked a shipment of crisps off a lorry.”
“I left him forty pounds.”
“How much do you think a bag of crisps costs?”
“You’re both wrong,” an exasperated Lee interjects. “The place with the masks on the wall was where Nate had his gig the night Jack showed up with that rugby bloke. The one who was put off when his girlfriend walked out of the loo with her lipstick smeared all over Jamie’s face.”
“That’s right.” Jack smacks his hand on the counter and points at Jamie. “You got your arse kicked.” He laughs, and the deep sound makes my heart beat a little faster.
“Oh, fuck off, Campbell,” Jamie says.
“Oh no.” I try to contain my nervous laughter at the idea of Jamiegetting into a bar brawl with a friend of Jack’s. Because I assume all Thor-sized men travel in packs. “You didn’t really fight him.”
“Ha!” Lee chuckles, nibbling on a piece of toast.
“No.” Jamie balks. “I aptly sized up the situation and determined self-preservation was the more prudent course.”
I smother a grin. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning he paid Jack’s mate fifty quid not to damage his pretty face,” Lee answers. “Which essentially means he paid the bloke fifty quid to snog his girlfriend.”
The three of them go at it for a bit, arguing over the particulars of Jamie’s financial diplomacy, which is how Lee comes to explain that Jamie is “quite well-to-do.” As in connected to the British aristocracy. Back home, that would mean some kind of celebrity or maybe an heir to a corporate fortune. Here it comes with fancy titles and castles and whatnot.
As we spend the rest of breakfast breaking the ice and engaging in all that get-to-know-you stuff, they inevitably desire to know something about the American in their midst. And thus we arrive at the tricky part.
“Well, I’m majoring in European history. So that’s why I’m here—obviously. I’m originally from Los Angeles, but now I live outside Nashville. That’s in Tennessee.”
