Page 60 of Truly, Madly, Deeply

“She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to,” Caitlin rushed to her defense. “That being said, if the spirit moves you to share...”

Colin’s beer bottle hit the table with a thud. “If the spirit moves you?” He laughed, slumping back in his chair, shoulders loose, so much more relaxed than he’d been minutes before. “That’s a new one.”

Caitlin’s curtain bangs parted with the ferocity of her sigh. “I was trying not to be overeager and scare her away.”

“Sure.” He smiled, knee bumping Truly’s beneath the table. “If Truly’s scared, she doesn’t have to share.”

A flush of disbelief tangled up with delight raced through her veins. “Was that a dare?”

Colin leaned back in his seat, legs sliding farther beneath the table so that it wasn’t just his knee pressed against hers, it was his whole damn thigh. The denim of his jeans rasped against her bare skin, and yeah, those were definite goose bumps rising along the backs of her arms.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Was it?”

“I’d be more than happy to rise to the occasion”—yeah, she absolutely let her eyes dip to where his lap was hidden behind the table—“but embarrassment implies shame and me?” She shrugged. “I don’t really do shame.”

His brows rose as if to say oh, really? “I didn’t peg you as a coward, St. James.”

“I don’t remember you pegging me at all, McCrory,” she fired back, mouth moving faster than her brain.

She bit down on the straw of her drink, heartbeat quickening to an outright sprint as the implication of her words caught up with her.

Colin went delightfully pink, and her relief mingled with the bone-deep satisfaction of making him blush.

“You two do realize I’m still here, right?” Caitlin asked, voice dry.

Truly forced a laugh. “Truth is, Colin’s had a courtside seat to enough of my humiliating moments. He doesn’t need to know more.”

Caitlin held up a hand. “Hold the phone. What are these humiliating moments and how does my brother know about them?”

She looked at Colin in alarm. That was a can of worms Truly did not want touched. “Um—”

“Caitlin shit her pants on a date once and called me crying, trapped inside the bathroom of the Cheesecake Factory. I had to bring her a change of clothes.”

Caitlin pelted him with a beet, leaving a scarlet streak across his cheek. “You pinky promised you’d take what happened that night to your grave.”

“That was before you blabbed about the Bluetooth.” He reached for his napkin and met Truly’s eye across the table, eyes twinkling in the dim amber-hued light of the bar. “All bets are off now.”

“You know what? The next round is on you, dickwad.” Caitlin manhandled Colin out of his chair.

“Caitie, do not stick your—”

Caitlin shoved her hand into Colin’s back pocket and gave a crow of delight as she managed to slip his wallet free. “Ha!”

“I said one round. One.”

“All bets are off, remember?”

Truly laughed. “She’s got you there.”

“Another?” Caitlin asked, nodding to the nearly empty highball glass in front of her.

She shouldn’t. There were a dozen reasons to say no, right on the tip of her tongue ready to be rattled off one after the other, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay and have another drink and revel in Colin’s thigh pressed with intention against hers, a solid line of heat spanning from her knee to her hip.

Truly only felt a passing pang of guilt for wishing she and Colin were alone, a pang she quickly shoved down. She couldn’t help how she felt any more than she could help what she wanted.

And right now, she wanted that drink.

“Yes, please.”

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