Page 8 of Dream Girl Drama

She blinked. “You do?”

“Yes, in order to bill the appropriate parties.”

“Aren’t drinks part of the membership?” Chloe asked.

The man was already nodding. “Most of them are complimentary, Ms. Clifford. But this time you happened to grab a special edition Möet Impérial.” He paused. “That’s a two-thousand-dollar bottle of champagne.”

Chloe’s mouth fell open as she turned back to face Sig. “And you didn’t even like it.”

When Sig’s eyes flooded with amusement, Chloe decided she’d kiss him really good.

Tonight.

As soon as possible.

“Your signature, Ms. Clifford,” prompted the bartender.

“What happens if I don’t sign it?”

“Well... I don’t know, really. I’ll probably just ask you to sign it tomorrow.”

“Right. Because I’m always here. I’m never not here.” She banished intrusive thoughts of endless routines. Cycles without cease. “Stalling sounds good. It’ll give me time to figuresomething out.” She chewed her lip. “My mother is not going to be happy about this,” she whispered to Sig, panic beginning to trickle into her bloodstream. “Alcohol makes a woman’s face look as bloated as a waterlogged corpse—she said that to me just this morning.When she’s not happy with me, life becomes very difficult. Even more restrictive than it already is.And you heard him, he said ‘this time, you happened to grab a special edition,’ meaning they know about all the other times I stole.”

“Of course, they know. Do you thinkyougo anywhere unnoticed?”

She batted her eyelashes at him. “Are you saying I’m pretty?”

“No, I’m saying you’re fucking beautiful.”

Her pulse scattered. “If I ran out the door right now, would you run with me?” she whispered.

“Set the pace, Chlo. I can keep up.”

Big kisses were in his future. Big.

“On the count of three.” She reached out and curled her fist around the neck of the champagne bottle, noticing the way Sig eyeballed his charging phone, as if judging the distance. “One, two... three.”

They lunged in different directions—Chloe toward the glass patio door that led to the golf course, Sig for his phone and her charger, ripping it out of the wall without missing a beat. Even though Sig took a detour, he still managed to reach the door at the same time as she did, which was her first lesson about hockey players. They’re fast as hell. Also, apparently, they were down to make some trouble. And that’s what they did, sprinting across the golf course holding their possessions and laughing loud enough to wake the dead.

Was this a date?

Sure, she hadn’t exactly been onhundredsof them, but this? It was making her puny, prior experience feel like child’s play. Orperhaps a foreword. A note left and forgotten once the real story starts to unfold.

“Where are we running to?” he asked, keeping pace beside her. Although she had a feeling he could probably run twice as fast.

“I’ve never been to the Carolinas,” Chloe shouted. “Let’s head there.”

His laugh echoed across the dark, empty golf course and she couldn’t wait any longer to kiss him. Maybe because he’d not only put up with her shenanigans but seemed to be enjoying them. Maybe because he laughed at her jokes. Or maybe just because she felt unexplainably drawn to him in a way that made her chest feel odd and tight. She’d always been one to follow a whim, but this wasn’t one of those times. This was a time unlike any other.

She slowed to a jog behind the clubhouse and took a long sip of champagne for courage, before turning around and finding Sig outlined by a purple sky, rugged and intense and knowing. That’s what it was about him—he seemed to know this was the moment, because they both took a giant step toward each other and collided, his head dipping down, slanting and elevating her expectations to a degree that would never be met again.

Maybe not by anyone but him.

Chloe had been kissed before, mostly by guys that she’d known since elementary school and not so subtly nudged into dating later in life by her mother, because they “came from good stock.” Well, apparently, they’d never come from a family of good kissers.

Sig did.

Lord God Almighty, he did.

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