Page 76 of The Reborn

“What?”

Finally, she leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “Did you sleep with him, Liv?”

My eyes got big as heat flooded my face. “No!”

“But you wanted to!” She cackled and sat back. “Oh my God. How could you not? Holy hell, that man is smokin’ hot. Honestly, I’m not sure how you kept your hands to yourself, having him under the same roof.” She gave me the side-eye. “Did you at least see him naked? Anything?”

The image of him barely covered in my bath towel came to mind, but I refused to share that with her. “No. Nothing like that. He insisted we keep things professional.”

“Wait...” She finished chewing the cherry in her mouth before focusing on me. “He insisted? That means there was some kind of talk of being unprofessional?” When I took my turn to take a big drink, she grabbed my arm. “Oh. My. God. Olivia Creed. It is fully against best friend code to hold out information like this. Speak, now.”

I nearly choked on my drink with a laugh, wondering why I’d held back. I guess I’d been holding so much back from everyone until this whole thing was over. “Fine. Yes. There were... a couple of times where things could have been unprofessional—” She squealed, but I held up a hand to stop her. “But nothing more than a kiss happened. It was crossing too many lines for him, so he moved out to focus on his job.”

There. I’d said it.

She rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you seen the movie The Bodyguard? That’s pure bullshit.”

“Yeah, well... I think that bodyguard had some feelings,” I murmured.

“Hold the damn phones.” She grabbed both my shoulders and spun me to face her. “You like him, don’t you?” She looked deep into my eyes like she was trying to see something in there. “Holy shit. You’re falling for him.”

“I am not.” Though that was eerily close to what my mom had said.

She laughed. “Like a cement block off a skyscraper, sister. Wow. Never thought I’d see the day. How does it feel?”

“Shitty.”

“Why?”

I took another drink of liquid courage. Might as well spill it now. “Because it doesn’t matter how I feel. He’s as hard to crack as a boulder, and he has no interest in me outside of work. Plus... hello... he barely talks to me.” I spun my glass on the bar. “My mom thinks he’ll figure out what he’s missing eventually.”

Her kohl-lined eyes flitted over my shoulder, then back quickly. “Yeah, I’m sure he will,” she said with a cryptic smirk.

We ordered another round of drinks, and as we waited for them to be poured, I glanced up into the giant mirror behind the bar and caught the eye of a young guy in the crowd behind me. He had a thick mop of dark curls and mysterious eyes. He smiled as he slid in next to me, lifting his hand to catch the bartender’s attention, then ordering a draft beer.

“Hey,” he said, loud enough to be heard over the music.

“Hello.”

He offered a hand, the strobe lights of the dance floor glinting purple off his skin. “My name is Al,” he said with the hint of an accent. Hispanic maybe. It was hard to tell in that lighting, but I thought he may be dark complected.

“Olivia.” I tilted my head to my right. “This is Whitney.”

“Hello there.” She reached across me to shake Al’s hand, her cleavage on full display as she eyed him up and down, clearly not caring if he was a college student since he didn’t look too young. “Do you go to school at Sam?”

He accepted his beer and shook his head with a wry half smile. “Nah. I’m not really the school type. Just passing through town.”

“Ah...” Whitney wiggled her brows at me when he wasn’t looking, then mouthed to me: Ask him to dance.

I shook my head. No way was I about to be that bold.

We sipped our drinks and listened to the music for a bit. After a while, Al took the reins and turned to me. “Dance?”

Whitney about tossed me into his arms.

“Uh, sure.” I took one last long slug of my drink, then set it down before following him to the dance floor, where we were crowded close together just by the sheer number of people out there.

The song was slower with a sexier beat than the one before, so Al’s hand came to rest on my hip as we moved to the rhythm. I could feel his body heat against my chest and smell the beer on his breath as he stared down into my face.

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