She handed him the pan and the plastic scrubber before moving a step over. The extra space didn’t seem to make a difference in her awareness of him, though. It just gave her a better vantage point to admire the bright reds, blues, and greens of the boiling-flask tattoo on his arm, the liquid inside realistic enough that it seemed to swish from side to side as the muscles on his forearm moved. Above it, designed to fit into the smoke coming up from the flask, was a chemical formula. It disappeared under his sleeve before she could get enough information to figure out what it was a formula for.
“Are you using the dishes as an excuse to hide out from your family?” Kinsey asked, needing to start the conversation again before she got lost in the high-end artwork on his body.
Griff shrugged and put the pan in the dishwasher before shutting the door and starting it.
Wringing out the water from a fresh dishcloth that she’d grabbed off the stack on a shelf above the sink, she started wiping down the counters. Griff echoed her move and went to work on the tomato-sauce-splattered stovetop. It was mesmerizing to watch. He kept his entire attention on the task at hand, each move deliberate and precise. God, what would it be like to be the center of all that focused attention? The idea had her biting the inside of her cheek as she pocketed that thought for later.
“So that bet,” she said, pulling back from the edge of completely inappropriate thoughts. “It sure is something.”
He let out a low, growly sound of acknowledgment.
“So what’s the bio say exactly?” Sure, it wasn’t her business, but she was nothing if not completely and utterly curious.
He stopped and turned away from the stovetop to face her, his expression grim. “It’s awful.”
That reaction she’d been expecting. What she hadn’t was Griff fishing his phone out of his front pocket and pulling up his Bramble bio so she could read it.
Talk for hours? Reforming Neanderthal? Oh, good gracious. Were they trying to kill him?
Deep dive into feelings and emotions? That one even made her feel icky.
Settle back and do nothing? The man couldn’t even do nothing long enough to get through this dinner party.
She took a deep breath, suddenly having flashbacks to her first year in college when she was a braces-wearing fifteen-year-old and had tried to rush a sorority in an ill-figured attempt to better fit in at college. It had gone about as well as could be expected. There was no way she could let another human being go through that level of awkwardness if she could help. But what was the best way? The answer came as quickly as they usually did and, after grabbing her phone from her pocketbook sitting on the counter, it took all of forty-five seconds to download the Bramble app.
“Now to fill out my profile.”
His eyes went wide, and he leaned in close, looking over her shoulder at her screen. “What are you doing?”
She typed out a quick bio. “Helping you.”
“This is probably breaking the rules.”
That gave her pause, and she hesitated, her thumb hovering over the Submit Profile button. The last thing she wanted was to make him lose the bet. “Okay, when you set up the bet, what was the rule about who you had to go out on a date with?”
He shook his head. “Just that it had to be the first person to respond.”
“So nothing about it being a person you already knew or who knew about the bet?”
He made a grunt that her brain translated to no.
“Well, we don’t have any time to waste, then.” She hit Submit on her profile and then narrowed her search for matches to a ten-block radius. Griff’s profile was third in her rotation. She hit Like and sent a message with a waving emoji, then grinned up at him. “Looks like you have a date.”
His face was only inches from hers. Her mouth went dry, and her heart went into overdrive as the air thickened with promise.
Oh God. What in the hell had she done?
Chapter Thirteen
Griff
Griff was many things—stubborn, surly, and stuck in his ways—but he was not the type of guy to kiss someone in any kind of relationship, let alone someone who was engaged. He wasn’t that type of asshole, but at the moment, he sure as hell wished he was.
Kinsey was so close. Literally, all he’d have to do was dip his head down and—
Yeah, shut the fuck up, brain, because it’s not happening.
Shoving his fingers through his hair, he grumbled who the fuck knows what as he took a step back and then another and another until he was in the living room. As if they’d all been waiting for him, the Becketts—and soon-to-be-Beckett Fiona—turned as one and looked at him. He sucked in a breath, prepping for whatever the hell was about to happen next, and ripped off the Band-Aid.
“Kinsey responded to my ad,” he said, already bracing for the onslaught that was sure to follow. “She’s my date.”
There was three seconds of shocked silence, and then the living room erupted with almost everyone talking at once.
“She’s engaged,” Bristol said, her eyes wide.
Morgan followed up a heartbeat later with, “You know her!”
“You set the whole thing up, you devious ass.” Dixon chuckled. “I gotta admire it.”
Before he could even open his mouth, Kinsey squeezed past him through the doorway and walked right into the eye of the hurricane.
“One, it was my idea,” she said, her chin tilted upward just enough to let everyone know what to expect if they doubted her. “Two, there’s nothing in the rules as I understand them that requires the date to be a stranger; please correct me if I’m wrong. Three, I am pre-engaged, and there’s nothing in the rules about that, either. In the future, I’d suggest you take a more thorough consideration of what is and is not acceptable prior to the start of your bet’s time frame.”
It was like the gym all over again. Everyone just stood there with their jaws scraping the floor because Kinsey had wrapped the whole thing up with a few choice words in less time than it had taken for most everyone else to process the news.
“She’s not wrong,” Griff said, unable to stop himself from grinning at the unique situation of being the one Beckett not at a loss for words.
Fine. It wasn’t nice to rub his cousin’s face in it, but she had them both by the short hairs, and he was here for it.
“There are the rules and then there is the spirit of the rules,” Dixon grumbled.
“Like Kinsey said,” Griff added with a shrug, enjoying the moment way more than he probably had a right to. “You should have thought of that beforehand.”
Fiona turned to her fiancé, her hands on her hips. “And are you really going to be poking your nose in it, Dixon Beckett, when you’ve already lost the bet?”