Page 68 of The Arrogant One

“I’m that obvious?”

She snorted. “Come on. It’s me. And it’s him. Obvious is an understatement.”

I put my phone back inside my purse and shivered as I brought the old-fashioned up to my mouth. “That man makes me tingle in all the places.” I took a drink, holding in the whiskey, letting it burn my tongue. “He doesn’t just say the right words, he does all the right things too. The way he looks at me, the way he touches me—I’ve never had that before.” The candle flickering on the side of our table wasn’t setting the mood; Lockhart was doing that inside my head. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way.”

“You haven’t. I’d know.” She reached across the plate and put her hand on my wrist. “I need to meet this man. Like, immediately. Seeing him at the restaurant that night wasn’t enough. I didn’t even get a chance to talk to him.”

“It’s going to happen very soon.” I laughed. “Which is the same thing he said to me about his siblings.”

“Ooh, you’re going to meet the family?”

When she released me, I grabbed a wonton and spooned some tuna on top. “He didn’t say anything about his parents, just his brothers and sister, but that’s still family.”

She wiped her mouth with a napkin. “And he still hasn’t been to your place?”

I shook my head, my cheeks puffing out as Ifilled them with air. “He hasn’t asked or pushed it in any way. Maybe I’ll just ride this for as long as I can, and then when the timing feels right—I don’t know—I’ll lay my alter ego on him.”

“It’s going to be fine.”

I groaned out a long breath. “My least favorite word in the entire universe, Bryn. Fine is never fine.”

She lifted her wine. “Babe, I promise.”

FIFTEEN

Hart

Sadie

Stop … you’re going to make me think I’ve found my future husband.

If I wasn’t with Eden and Beck, having drinks at the bar at Charred, I’d ask Sadie where she was so I could show up to the restaurant and make her come in the ladies’ room, returning her to her dinner with Bryn like I hadn’t just put my mouth all over her pussy.

But when I made plans with my siblings, I didn’t cancel them.

Still, I couldn’t fucking help myself; I needed her to know how much I ached for her.

Me

I wantyou.

I set the phone on the bar and looked at Eden, who was mid-conversation with us, discussing Walker’s reaction when we’d pitched him the Horned buyout.

“He’s stressed,” she said, dipping the straw into her vodka soda. “I called him a few hours after our meeting to check on him, and you know what he was doing?”

“I’m afraid to ask,” I replied.

“He was in the kitchen—at his house, not at the restaurant, which is something he never does in the morning, banging around, pans crashing, the fire alarm going off. I could barely hear anything he was saying.”

“Jesus,” Beck groaned. “He was really going through it.”

“He was two drinks deep, and it wasn’t even ten,” she added. “He didn’t end up going into Charred that night.”

“That’s not like him at all,” I said.

Sadie

You know you make me wet every time you say that to me.