Page 25 of Sharkbait
“So.” James drums his fingers on the countertop. “Where will you be having this striptacular surprise birthday party?”
“That’s an excellent question,” Calliope says while emailing. “Pretty sure we’ll need a place with a private room.”
“How about having a whole place to yourselves?” he suggests as he shakes up a fresh batch of margaritas.
“I mean, yeah, we’d love that.” She presses send. “Not sure something like that is in the budget, though.”
“How about free? Is free in the budget?” James asks. “Because I know a guy with a place.”
Calliope gasps. “You’re offering us your place?”
“Sure.”
I shake my head. “Uh-uh. No way.”
“Why not?” Calliope asks.
“Because it was only supposed to be one night!”
My voice echoes through the still mostly unfurnished apartment.
The margarita shaking stops.
Well, that certainly shut everyone up.
Shit.
“What was only supposed to be one night?” Calliope says with a smile.
Mabel just stands there, shifting her gaze back and forth between James and me like she’s watching a tennis match.
James gestures to me, giving me the floor to explain myself.
He thinks I’m just going to spill the beans on what happened between us?
No way.
I clear my throat. “Sorry for yelling just now.” I pause. “Um. Thank you for your generous offer, James, but no thank you. We need somewhere closer to Philly. Your bar is in Doylestown. That’s quite a hike from Ralph and Callie’s new place in the city. It’ll be way easier to surprise Ralph if we stay local.”
“So we’ll have it at my other location,” he says as he pours the drinks into a pitcher.
I stare at him. “You own two bars now?”
“I do. One in Doylestown. One in Manyunk. I’m also working on creating an excursion tour company focused on mountain climbing and deep-sea diving.”
“How old are you?” I marvel at him.
“Thirty-two.”
“Wow. You’ve accomplished so much for being so—I mean, that’s really…” I don’t have the words for how impressive that is, so I settle on another breathy, “Wow.”
“Glad you’re impressed.”
“Didn’t say I was impressed,” I retort, full-voiced this time.
“Didn’t have to.” He smiles.
Ugh. This guy.
