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“No, I’m impressed. I am.” Fine, not so much about the sports. But in other ways.
“You’re killing me, Harlow.” He pushes off the door and walks through to my room with a weary laugh. “I want you to know, this isn’t what I was going for. I asked her to back off. Tried to benice. Told her I had a girlfriend.”
At my shocked cough, he shakes his head. “What? For the purposes of this week,I do. And so we’re clear, I would never disrespect the woman I was with by flirting up or encouraging this kind of crazy shit.” He holds up his arm, examining the torn fabric, and mutters a curse.
Then he’s shouldering out of his shirt, and I’m trying not to notice the muscles across his chest flexing and shifting as he frees one powerful arm and then the other.
“I really appreciate that.” I do. “But, um…”
His head comes up. “Yeah.”
I can barely say it out loud. “I put… twenty dollars in Officer Johnson’s man thong thing.”
Wade blinks. Shakes his head and blinks again before barking out a laugh so loud I’m afraid he’ll wake the whole hotel.
“I feel bad,” I gasp, laughing too. Okay, not that bad. “You were such a good fake boyfriend while I’m this, thistart.”
When he finally catches his breath, he sits back on the desk across from the bed. “Hey, how’d it go with the bachelorette party anyway? You girls have fun?”
I start to answer but, with the way his arms are braced at his sides with those massive legs stretched out in front of him, I’m getting lost in the deep-cut ridges of his abdominal muscles.
So many.
He asked me about the party. Right.
It takes me a second to get my eyes up past his neck, and when I do, I find Wade watching me with one raised brow and a smile that says I’m so busted.
I sigh, holding up my hands. “Okay, I’m impressed. For real.”
He grins.“Finally.”
Taking a last look at the shirt, he tosses the wrecked garment in the bin beneath him. “The party, Harlow.”
Yes. Right.
“It was so much fun. Thank you for the nudge, by the way. I would have been fine with a night here in the room, though. So if anything comes up that you need to do on your own, don’t worry about me. I mean that. But tonight was a really good time, and I’m glad I got to go.”
“Just tell me Janie’s stripper didn’t get as handsy as ours did. If my brother’s taking a swing at me tomorrow, I want to be prepared for it.”
“He didn’t.” I laugh and, peering up at him, get caught in that smile. “No offense to Walt, because he seems like a really nice guy. But I’m having trouble imagininghimcoming afteryou.”
Wade has several inches on his brother and a couple dozen pounds of muscle, at least. The bulk of which I’m still getting an eyeful of.
“If you’d seen us growing up, you wouldn’t doubt it. That little fucker fought dirty.”
And now I’m imagining the two boys Grace showed me picture after smiling, innocent picture of going after each other. When I finally stop laughing, Wade’s eyes are still on me.
And I like it. I like the way he smiles at me and the way he laughs with me and the way he looks at me like helikesme.
Tracing a square in the pattern of the bedspread, I put my thoughts back on track. “Okay, so dirty fighter aside. What reason would Walt have to come after you?”
“I might have helped Janie’s mom out with the entertainment.”
My jaw drops. “Youhired Officer Dwayne DeLong-Johnson? That is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. But it definitely makes more sense than Mrs. Hamilton scouring the exotic dancer listings on her own. FYI, she couldn’t stop giggling the entire time he was there. Her face was tomato red, but she wasdelighted.”
Pushing off the desk, that hooked grin in place, he heads for the bathroom. “Nice. I’m glad Janie had a good time.”
He leaves the door open and turns on the sink, so I follow him back and prop a shoulder in the doorway. “Janie did too, but I was talking about her mom.And yours.”
