Page 3 of Nice to Meet Boo (Seasons of Sizzle #4)

THREE

STACEY

So here’s a fun discovery: the devil has laugh lines.

They crease at the corners of his eyes when he smiles—rare sightings, sure, but I’ve seen two already.

I’m collecting them like pressed leaves in one of my beloved notebooks.

As we wedge back into the bar for Couples Trivia, and it’s chaos in a festive way—pirates arguing with cats, a vampire couple in a slap-fight about favorite pizza toppings.

Grant stands close enough that my halo shadow touches his cheek. I tell myself it’s strategic—teams should be close—but I don’t move away.

“What’s your partner’s favorite drink?” the emcee calls.

“Black coffee,” I whisper, and Grant says it into the mic.

“I should have said whiskey to teach you not to cheat,” he whispers back at me.

I just shrug. “We’re here to win.”

“Favorite guilty-pleasure movie?” the emcee asks.

I lean up. “Anything with kissing in the rain.”

Grant grumbles under his breath before saying, “She’s right. I love The Notebook.”

I choke on a laugh.

We go on and on, doing pretty well for strangers.

Maybe we’re just good at guessing each other’s answers. Or maybe talking through a scavenger hunt on Main Street counts as speed-dating.

Either way, we once again land in the top three. I throw my arms up and—whap—wing to the face.

Again.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

I cradle his cheek like the wing could bruise, and he catches the bent feather, thumb sliding slow to smooth it back into line.

“I should get a permit to operate these things,” I say.

“Occupational hazard,” he says, eyes on mine.

My hand is still on his chest. His heartbeat is a steady knock under my palm, and the muscle there is… well, listen, if you build things for a living, you’re going to have a certain upper-body situation. Science.

“Next round in five,” the emcee blares.

I drop my hand, breathless and ridiculous. “Okay.” Focus, Stacey.

“Right,” I say too quickly, nerves ricocheting around my ribcage. I’ve done hot before. I’ve done flirty, and risky, and impulsive. What I haven’t done in a while is feel safe while I do it. With him? Weirdly… yes.

Cyrus materializes with two waters like some grumpy fairy godfather. “Hydrate.”

“Bossy,” I murmur, but I drink.

He eyes Grant over the rim of his glass with the look he saves for misbehaving keg lines and men he’s not sure about yet. Grant doesn’t flinch.

He just says, “Thanks” with a nod.

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.

I set my hand over his on my waist, not to remove it but to anchor it.

“You have thirty seconds,” I breathe. “Make them count.”

“Oh, I intend to,” he says, and something dark and amused flickers in his eyes.

He lowers his forehead to mine in the softest touch possible—a hover, a kiss that isn’t yet—and the crowd hushes like a church before an amen.

“Ten seconds,” the emcee stage-whispers, and Grant huffs a sound that might be a laugh.

“Now?” he asks, like I have a say. Like consent is choreography.

“Yes,” I say, and it’s not for the crowd.

He kisses me.

It knocks the breath out of me, like I’ve just run three miles.

But then, it builds slowly at first, then deeper, a press that sets something low in my stomach to sparking. I moan into his mouth.

His hand tightens on my waist in surprise, as if he wasn’t expecting this, and I’m gone, hands fisting in his shirt to pull him closer. The room goes bright. The crowd goes loud. Someone wolf-whistles. I don’t care.

He breaks first, just a breath, forehead still against mine. We’re both laughing—caught, a little stunned.

“And that,” I say, breathless into the mic we forgot was there, “is how a saint meets a sinner.”

The place erupts. I think I hear Cyrus actually whoop out loud.

We step back into the half-dark offstage and lean on each other like the floor changed elevations. The emcee launches into voting and I blink back to reality, cheeks hot, mouth tingling, heart completely unreasonable.

“Hey,” Grant says, voice rough.

“Hey,” I echo.

“You okay?”

No. Not even a little. “Yeah.”

He studies me like he’s measuring a cut. “We should probably talk strategy for the prize if we win.”

“Fifty-fifty,” I say, brain grateful for math. “Unless you want sixty-forty for the swagger. It did half the work.”

He finally gives me one of those real smiles—creases at the eyes, soft at the mouth—and I catalog it greedily. “Fifty-fifty,” he says. “But if we lose, I get your confession.”

“Which one?” I ask, reckless.

“Any you want to give,” he says, and the way he says it makes it sound like there’s time to collect them. Not tonight. Not only.

The emcee shouts, “And your winners by obnoxiously loud applause… Sinners in the Hands!”

The bar goes wild. I don’t move. Grant doesn’t either. For the second time tonight, we’re not pretending.

“Hot,” I say faintly.

He nods once, eyes on my mouth. “Hot.”

And this time, when I lean in, he doesn’t wait for a countdown.