For a guy who’d always compared falling in love to losing out on life, it was obvious that Dixon had never been so glad as when he’d lost the bet and it showed in his face when he looked down at Fiona. “And thank God I did.”
“Good recovery.” She pushed herself up on her tiptoes and gave Dixon a quick kiss. “Really, if anyone has the right to be annoyed, though, it’s Nash.”
But Nash was just standing there in the corner, not saying a word while watching the rest of the room with a shit-eating grin on his face.
It only took a matter of seconds for Griff to realize Nash was up to something and whatever it was, Nash wasn’t the least bit pissed off about the guarantee that he was about to lose the bet for Grandma Betty’s last present. The only way that was possible was if something else was at play. For the entirety of their lives, the Beckett cousins had competed against one another. No matter if it was being king of the island at their grandma’s house, racing her attack goose, or even getting the first choice of desserts, half of the joy of winning was beating out the other two. It wasn’t that they didn’t like one another, it was just the way they were.
But Nash didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass that there was no way Griff could lose now—which meant only one thing. Nash was up to something, and Griff and Dixon were just pawns. The question was, what was really going on?
The only other person in the room who was quiet was Morgan. Instead of hollering with the rest of the crowd, she simply topped off her glass of wine as she watched everyone else in the room freak out. Gut swirling, Griff watched as his sister’s gaze slid over to Nash, and she raised her glass. Nash returned the toast.
Those two were without a doubt up to something, and the only thing he was certain of at this moment was that it was definitely going to fuck up his life.
Chapter Fourteen
Kinsey
The next morning, Kinsey was holding it together by the power of caffeine—thanks to Morgan’s fancy coffee machine that made a double espresso from dark beans that smelled like heaven with the push of a button—and the adrenaline rush that came with her first day on the job.
God knew, she wasn’t benefitting from the kind of refreshment that came from eight hours of uninterrupted snoozing. Nope. Her brain had been going as fast as Uncle Herbert that time the police had found him at his moonshine still—at least according to family legend—and every thought had centered around Griff Beckett. Okay, a few of them had been her wondering what in the hell she’d done by agreeing to date him, but really, wasn’t that about him, too? If so, then yes, every one of her two-in-the-morning, panic-dosed-with-giddy-excitement thoughts had been about the hot guy living on the other side of her bedroom wall.
She’d wondered what he wore—if anything—to bed. Her money was on slouchy and soft sleep pants. The kind that were covered in constellations or other cosmic scenes. No socks, though. No one with that amount of body muscle got cold feet in the middle of the night.
She’d thought about how he slept. On top of the covers? With the comforter pulled up to his chin? Two hands pressed together in prayer position under his cheek? Around one a.m., she’d settled on spread-eagle with his arms and legs flung wide in total starfish mode.
And in the morning? He’d eat half a dozen eggs—scrambled—whole-grain toast, four slices of turkey bacon, and a raspberry smoothie the size of her head that he made with Greek yogurt and a dollop of honey for extra sweetness.
Yep, that was the ultra-productive way she’d spent the night before her first day at a new job—her dream job—in the research lab at Archambeau Cosmetics. So when she rushed down the hall to the elevator, she might look completely put together in what she assumed was chic city wear—hair pulled back in a low ponytail, black shirt buttoned up to the neck, tailored black slacks, and cute black kitten heels—but her insides were a jumble of ill-fitting, clashing neon clown clothes topped off with a bleached brassy mullet.
As she waited for the elevator doors to close, she glanced down at the street map on her phone, double-checking that she’d memorized the order of the rights and lefts correctly. She was reconfirming for the eight millionth time that yes, she had it right—did that uncertain, first-day-of-school feeling ever go away?—when he walked in.
The elevator definitely wasn’t big enough for the two of them. Well, okay, fine, the physical dimensions were sufficient, but the mental ones after the night she’d had were teeny-tiny-size. So what did she do to combat that? She put on her brightest, I’m-totally-comfortable-and-everything-is-perfect smile (it was the one she had learned early on to cover her nerves) and turned to face him as the doors closed.
“Good morning!” she said, her voice booming in the small space.
Aaaaand that was a billion on the a-little-much scale, what with the fact that her volume was way too loud and the amount of sunshine in her tone diabetic-coma-inducing. What was wrong with her? She was never like this. She was the calm one. The boring one. The stands-in-the-corner-and-silently-corrects-people’s-grammar one. No, it wasn’t a nice thing, but she’d learned to live with herself about it, and she kept her thoughts on “your” and “you’re” to herself because Meemaw had raised her better than to embarrass people or hurt their feelings on purpose.
Credit to Griff, he didn’t wince at her loudness—resting grump face for the win. “You’re a morning person.”
“And an afternoon person and evening person and a night person,” she blathered on, unable to shut up for some reason. “Basically, until my head hits the pillow and I crash, I’m your person.” Heat beat her cheeks the moment the words were out of her mouth and her brain caught up. “Well, not yours, but you know what I mean.”
One side of his mouth almost curled upward. “Got it.”
She clamped her lips closed before she could say anything else. Really, this was just not acceptable. Sure, she was Southern—which meant she was friendly and hospitable and okay, fine, chatty—but she didn’t usually do this verbal-vomit thing. The truth was, she usually couldn’t because at the first “y’all” people had already started to judge—something that was going to happen anyway, but why add to it? She’d learned that lesson the hard way. There was nothing like going to college before being old enough to get a driver’s license to bring that lesson home. They all went out to frat parties, road-tripped to concerts, and drunk-dined at the local diners before crawling back to their beds. She’d stayed in the attic room of her meemaw’s best friend, who’d given her a ten p.m. curfew and had activated the three-sixty-five tracking app on Kinsey’s phone. Miss Eunice was nice and she made a mean potato salad, but it wasn’t the college experience Kinsey had dreamed about as a naive and overly optimistic fifteen-year-old.
The elevator continued downward along with her hope that her experience at Archambeau would be different from college or grad school or getting her doctorate. It stopped every few floors to let folks on until she and Griff were tucked in tight together in the corner. He glanced down at her phone, which still had the street map on it, her walking path denoted by a bright-blue line.