Page 60 of Parker

“Me, too,” I tell him. “Everything was perfect.”

“You still up for tonight?”

“Dinner and a movie in my suite? Yeah,” I say. “You?”

“I’ll be there,” he says, turning to walk away.

Suddenly, he spins around, leans over my table, clasps my cheeks in his hands and kisses me soundly. I’m caught off-guard, leaning over the table to meet him halfway, one foot off the ground, reaching for his shoulders to keep me steady. When he breaks off the kiss a moment later, he’s trying not to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I ask him, pretending to scowl.

“You,” he says. “Never thought I’d see the day when I’d kiss Parker Stewart, and she’d be left wishing for more. I wish I could tell my twelve-year-old self not to give up hope.”

“Cheeky,” I say, boxing his ears gently. “Twelve-year-old you was a menace.”

“Tell me I’m right,” he says, biting his lower lip, his eyes shining with happiness. “Tell me you want more.”

“You’re right. I want more,” I whisper. Leaning away from him, I make shoo-ing motions with my hands. “Now git! I’m working.”

He winks at me as he strolls away, andoh, my heart, but I can feel myself falling. I’ve seen his charm offered to a hundred different women throughout my life, and I’ve always rolled my eyes when he turned it on. Maybe because I wished it wasdirected at me? I don’t know. But now that it’s mine?Sigh. It’s lovely.

“So!” I look up to find Rick standing at my table, his shiner a real pretty shade of plum. “You and Morgan, huh?”

“Fuck you very much, Rick Jones,” I say in the sweetest, most polite voice imaginable, offering him a genuine smile as I run my eyes over his face. “Looks like you got punched in the eye and good. How big was the other guy?”

“Fuck you back, Parker Stewart,” says Rick in the same nasty, sing-song voice that Skylar used earlier. “You hated him, now you like him. He was a menace, now it looks like you’re fucking him. That makes you a low-rent whore.”

My smile disappears as I flinch, fisting my fingers by my sides. “You’re gonna want to take that back. Now.”

Rick places his palms on my table, leaning toward me, smirking like the asshole he is. “Or what?”

“Or she’ll hit you again,” says Quinn from behind him, his fury barely contained. “And I’ll hold you down if she asks me to.”

Rick straightens up to his full height, which is still a lot shorter than Quinn, and turns to face him. “You fighting her battles now?”

“Hell, yeah,” growls Quinn, his nostrils flaring and eyes dark as spruce in December. “Anytime she needs me. And sometimes when she doesn’t.”

Rick looks at me, then at Quinn, then back at me again. His voice oozes annoyance when he mumbles, “Sorry.”

“Just go,” I tell him. “And don’t come back.”

Rick gives me a look of pure hatred, then sidles around Quinn to walk back to his table.

“You okay?” asks Quinn. “I saw him head over here and wanted to be sure—”

“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I had it under control!”

“You did…but I care about you, Park. I told you. I’ve got your back.” He tilts his head to the side. “Also, I learned something interesting just now.”

“Oh, yeah? What?”

“I’ve sparred with you a million minutes in my life. Verbally, I mean. And oh, man, I know what you look like when you go head-to-head with me. You’re all bright eyes and brilliant, egging me on while we go back and forth. It’s like a game. Like a game we both love to play. But just now? With Rick? You took no pleasure in it. None. All you wanted was for him to go away.”

He’s right,but part of me doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that, so I roll my eyes.“So what?”

“So youlikedsparring with me.”

“So what if I did?”

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