Page 9 of Nice to Meet Boo
Cyrus’s mouth softens half an inch. And he moves on.
Why do I get the feeling something big just passed between the two of them? Men!
I tug Grant toward a sliver of space near the sound booth.
“Okay, thirty seconds.” I take a deep breath. “We need a beginning, a middle, and an end. Options: cute banter that turns into a kiss; a wordless magnetism thing; or a fake-fight that ends in laughter and a kiss. I’m not married to kisses, I just… we are not winning on a handshake.”
His mouth tilts, amused. “Noted.”
“Also, I should warn you—when I get nervous, I talk.”
“I noticed,” he says, no judgment in it.
“You’re also going to need to touch me.” I say it matter-of-factly, then hear it out loud and flush to my hairline. “For authenticity,” I add, which doesn’t help.
“I think we can manage,” he says, deadpan.
I shove my hands into the wing straps like I meant to. “We’ll go with banter to kiss. We’ve already got the setup—saint and sinner. You’ll pretend to tempt me; I’ll pretend to resist.”
He leans closer, voice low. “Pretend, huh?”
“Don’t do that,” I whisper, because the way my stomach drops isn’t pretend at all.
The emcee calls the other two teams—Pirate Power Couple and The Count & Countess—to go first. They do a sword fight that ends in a dramatic dip, then a cape twirl and a nibble on the neck. The crowd eats both up. We’re up next.
Grant looks down at our linked hands. At some point during trivia we started doing that without comment. He flips my palm over, drags a fingertip along the faint ink stamp the emcee used two rounds ago. It’s nothing. It’s everything.
“Hey,” he says softly. “If you want to stop?—”
“I don’t,” I say, surprising myself with the speed of the answer.
He nods once. “Then look at me.”
I do. The crowd blurs. The sound dips like a tide. There’s a nick on his knuckle that says he missed the nail once and didn’t make the same mistake twice. There’s a speck of sawdust near his collar.
His horns are small and wicked and make me want to laugh and bite at the same time.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Always,” I lie, and he must find that charming because his mouth ticks up.
“Sinners in the Hands—hit it!” the emcee calls.
We step into the warm light, and I forget the steps we didn’t plan because my body already knows them. Grant sets his hands at my waist—steady, respectful, not a fraction higher or lower than I want—and I tip my chin like I’m annoyed by how much I like it.
“Evening, Angel,” he says, slow enough for the front tables to hear.
“Keep walking, Devil,” I say, louder. “I’m on a mission from above.”
“Funny,” he murmurs for me alone. “I’m from Down Under.”
Laughter bubbles at the edge of the crowd from people close enough to catch it. Heat crawls up my throat.
“Temptation is easy,” I say. “You’ll have to do better.”
“Okay,” he says, and lifts one hand to my jaw like he’s testing the weight of it, thumb just at the hinge, callus grazing skin. The room tilts.
He holds there—doesn’t push, doesn’t pull—letting the suggestion of touch do the work. My breath catches. Somewhere, a glass clinks.
