Page 71 of Wildly Inappropriate

I lean across the console and hug my big brother. “You’re the best. And you have good taste in friends. Don’t forget that.”

I climb out but lean my head back in before heading into the office. “And you’d better go apologize to him for being a child this morning.”

Chapter thirty-three

Lila

“Vegas, baby!” I yell,grabbing my suitcase from the tarmac as JT does the same with his bag and clubs.

“Vegas!” Bryn echoes as she and Jameson both load their suitcases into the car Sam arranged to pick us up.

The four of us flew to Vegas together, and I spent the majority of the flight trying to distract myself from how handsome JT looked by reading my current small-town romance. Ten out of ten do not recommend reading spicy scenes while on a flight with your sexy boyfriend and…your brother.

“I vote we ditch the girls and make them fly commercial on the way home if they do that again,” Jameson gripes to JT.

“Vegas!” I repeat just to piss off my brother. I’m very excited about going back to the place where this all started for JT and me, but the yelling is mostly to get a rise out of Jameo.

“JT, did you remember to bring your girlfriend’s booster seat?” my brother asks. “I’m not sure she’s tall enough to ride in the car without one.”

I stick my tongue out at him. “We’ll be lucky if there’s enough room in the SUV for all of us with how big your ego is.”

“I knew I should’ve flown commercial.” Bryn sighs. “At least then I had a chance of someone trying to airdrop me a dick pic.”

“B!” Jameson pretends to tackle Bryn from behind, scooping her up and throwing her over his shoulder like he’s a firefighter.

I look over at JT. “Don’t get any funny ideas, Pretty Boy.”

“About the dick pic or about carrying you like a caveman on steroids?”

“The caveman one, obviously,” I joke as I slide into the black SUV and buckle in next to JT in middle row. “I wouldn’t want you to throw your old man back out after only two tournaments. I’d happily receive the other.”

Jameson pretends to vomit from his seat in the back with Bryn, and I smile. This is going to be much better than I expected.

It’s the height of the golf season, so JT and Jameson had another tournament last week. Unfortunately, Bryn and I both had to stay home rather than travel with them—it’s great that Bryn’s job lets her travel to his tournaments as much as she does, but I’m not sure what that will look like for JT and me. Kelsey and the company overall are super flexible, but she also hired me specifically to have someone in town with her, so I don’t want it to look like I’m trying to get special treatment. Plus, I don’t want to put the cart before the horse—we’ve only been dating for like ten days at this point.

Both JT and Jameson did very well last weekend, coming in fifth and second. While they were out of town, Bryn insisted on a girls’ night, and we ended up at Kelsey’s place to eat pizza and drink beer. Bryn forced us to regale her with every single piece of gossip she’d missed while she was gone and had taken a surprising amount of credit for JT and I getting together, claiming she knew there was something between us. She supposedly was also the one who suggested Jameo not tell us that the other would be staying there. The woman cackled when she said it.Cackled.

Luckily, the time away for golf also gave JT and Jameson the space to reconcile. According to JT, they made up on the flight they shared to the tournament with a simple “hurt her and I hurt you” speech from my brother. I know it was a shock when Jameo found us in bed together, but my brother is genuinely a good guy, and I know how highly he thinks of JT, despite whatever might’ve come out of his mouth that first morning.

Even though JT has only had two golf events since we started hooking up, we are falling into a routine I wouldn’t trade for the world. We text all day and then video call each other at night to catch up. I feel like I’ve been able to learn so much about him during those calls—about his parents, what it was like for him growing up, his dreams. We’ve also moved our reading virtual, recommending e-books back and forth with our included notes.

We even spent a night last weekend role-playing a couple of the spicy scenes out of the book he’s reading. Luckily, hockey romances are so popular right now, and they contain a lot of phone sex scenes, since hockey players travel almost as much as pro golfers do. I’m glad Bryn decided to stay in town at her sister’s house that night, because I most certainly wasn’t quiet.

When the men made it back into town, Bryn and I picked them up from the airport with takeout already in the car. We came back to Jameson’s house and sat around the firepit, drinking whiskeys and eating slices of jalapeno and bacon pizza. It was one of my best nights ever, just relaxing and enjoying the company of some of my favorite people on the planet. JT and I went to bed together that night, silently touching each other in all the ways we’d dreamed up while we were apart. It was amazing, but nothing we did felt quite as good as the feeling of falling asleep in his arms again after missing him viscerally for four nights.

Now, we’re headed out to Vegas with enough time for the golfers to make it to their practice rounds this afternoon before the tournament kicks off tomorrow. I know this is their job, and I do want them to do well, but I’m kinda hoping both men play so poorly they don’t make the cut so we can fully enjoy the Ferguson event Saturday night. If not, they’ll have to leave early to make sure they’re ready to go on Sunday morning for the final round. JT and I have a date night planned tomorrow night—a homage to our first night together. JT is so excited about his elaborate plans that I didn’t want to burst his bubble by telling him our night in Vegas has pretty mixed memories for me. I know I need to ask him about what happened the morning after we hooked up, but I just can’t bring myself to. It feels like, even if it has changed now, it’s going to hurt for him to tell me how little I meant to him that next day.

Chapter thirty-four

JT

“Here we are!” Isay, pulling Lila to a stop directly in front of the two bar stools we sat on last October. I’m excited about our date tonight. I don’t think I’ve ever planned an actual date, and I spent way too much time trying to make this one perfect. Sam was a big help. He took his role seriously in coordinating it all, but I don’t think he appreciated how many times I texted him confirming various portions of the night.

“It’s drinks and dinner—not a choreographed flash mob with a carriage arriving at the end.” His words, not mine.

I’m just trying to embrace my main-character-in-a-romance-novel energy. They always go all-out for the first date.

I knew I wanted to recreate our last time in Vegas, but it turns out that night holds a disproportionate amount of space in my head for the time that we spent together. So, at Sam’s recommendation, I added in dinner at the steakhouse that’s next door to our bar. Yes, our bar.

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