Page 101 of A Little Moore Action
A good-looking man with blond hair and blue eyes, flashes me a dimple. I think he was sitting next to Mike earlier. He’s just as young. “Would you like to dance?”
Trying to hide my disappointment, I shake my head. But the tears I’d been so successful at fighting back rear their ugly heads.
He looks mildly panicked. More so when the first one falls. “You okay, ma’am?”
“She just really hates being called ma’am.”
Jerking my blurred gaze to the right, I can just make out the fine-ass form of Chase Moore. I blink a few times, shedding the fully formed tears from my eyes so I can focus.
He’s wearing a tight gray Henley tucked into fitted jeans, with gorgeous calfskin Tecovas on his feet and a brown Stetson cowboy hat complete with braided band, just like Elvis wore inCharro!
Strapped to his chest in a baby carrier is Mike Hunt.
In a teddy bear costume.
THIRTY
Chase
“He just wantsto be your teddy bear.”
Bell finally lifts her eyes from an extremely disgruntled Mike and looks at me. “Are you serious right now?”
I can’t get a read on her expression. She doesn’t look happy. But she doesn’t look pissed either. “Uh, yes?” Personally, I thought Mike’s costume was a stroke of brilliance.
“I’m just gonna go…” Neither of us looks at the guy who called me ma’am as he slinks away.
“Why are you here?” Her eyes narrow in a way that makes me nervous. Mike too, if the smell emanating from the baby carrier is any indication. Turns out Mike is a nervous farter. Something he proved on the flight here from New York.
People in first class have no sense of humor, by the way.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry?” I have no idea why I couched that as a question. Mike paws at me, and I think even he knows I’ve already fucked this grand gesture/apology up.
Bell’s eyes narrow further.
Damn it. I should’ve done more research. Alice tried to give me a bunch of books for examples of swoon-worthy (her words, not mine) grand gesture examples written by someone named Audrey Cole, but I’d been too busy wanting to get here before some asshole cowboy tried to get in her pants.
Thomas may not have had any relationship advice to give, but he did tell me that Alice and Bell still talk. Then he’d muttered something about inappropriate use of work time and picture taking.
Whatever that meant.
And Alice had come through for me, telling meexactlywhere Bell would be. Then she mentioned that in all the romance books she’s ever read, the guy always does somethingbig. Something to sweep the woman off her feet in a moment of love-induced insanity (again—her words, not mine).
“Has Thomas gotten Stan to sign over control yet?”
Her change in direction has me confused. Is she not going to acknowledge the fact that Mike Hunt is in a freaking teddy bear costume? “Teddy Bear”fades into “Don’t Be Cruel.” Except for a slight eyebrow twitch, Bell’s face remains impassive.
I really should have read those books.
“Um, no. But I told him to leverage my shares. Tell Stan I’d give up my shares as long as he wasn’t in the picture.”
“Wait, what? That’s not smart. He may want it in writing when he signs over control.”
I shrug. “Yeah. Probably.”
“But… you love Moore’s.”
“No. I love what it represented. And what I thought it could give me. Family. But it turns out I already had that. I just needed to pick up a phone every once in a while.”
