Page 29 of Hang the Moon
“Right up there with double-dog dares.”
She snickered and dropped her hand, leaning her head against Darcy’s door. The way she arched her back caused her cropped shirt to rise even higher, revealing a strip of smooth, golden skin. “I look forward to you following through.”
She’d played into his hands perfectly.
“I always keep my promises. How’s tomorrow work for you?”
Annie shot him a puzzled frown.
“Darcy’s not back until Monday,” he said.
“Right. I keep forgetting it’s a holiday weekend. Tomorrow, then. As long as I’m not interfering with any plans you have.”
He didn’t have plans, but even if he had, Annie was only in town for two and a half weeks. The clock was ticking, the time to both prove his point and explore the sparks between them—to see if there was something more than simple attraction at play—limited.
He refused to waste a single moment.
***
ANNIE (7:17 P.M.):You should’ve warned me your brother is even hotter in person.
Predictably, her phone rang two minutes later.
“You’re disgusting,” Darcy greeted her.
Annie threw herself down on Darcy’s couch and laughed. “Hello to you, too. How’s Vancouver?”
“Wonderful.” She paused, muffled sounds filtering through the speaker. “Elle says hi. Now, don’t change the subject.”
“You’re too easy. You realize that, right?” Darcy’s mod, chrome-colored floor lamp cast shadows across the ceiling. Annie stretched her legs out, holding them up, tracing the shadows with her toes.
“Are you telling me youdon’tfind my brother”—she gagged—“hotter in person?”
“No, no. I do. It’s just, I bet if I’d have texted you,Hey, what’s up, it would’ve taken you an hour to respond.”
“We’ll never know the answer to that now, will we?” Darcy sounded smug. “Besides, I called you earlier and you sent me to voicemail.”
This was true. “I was a little preoccupied.”
“It’s fine. How was your first day in Seattle? See anything interesting?”
The way Brendon had looked at her had certainly beeninteresting, her own reactions even more so. But she wasn’t about to confess that to Darcy. “As a matter of fact, I did. Your brother played tour guide.”
A long pause followed. “He did, did he?”
“He did.”
Darcyhmmed quietly under her breath.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’thmmme. He took me to the Gum Wall and up on the Great Wheel. It was fun.”
“Huh.”
“What did I just say?”
“That was ahuh,not ahmm. Phonetically worlds apart.”
“Are you really going to condescend to me, of all people, about linguistic variants? Seriously?”
