Page 53 of The Wrong Game

Gemma just shrugged, taking the first sip and letting her eyes focus on the television above me. I watched her for a long moment, ignoring Doc’s snap telling me he needed me to take more orders down at that end.

I didn’t know what it was that was bothering her, what was on her mind, but I had one mission: get the girl out of her head.

“You know, I think you’re bullshitting,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on her. “About me being a pest.”

“Do you now?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh. After all, you came here. Tomybar.” I pushed back from the bar, throwing her a cocky smirk. “You wouldn’t be here if I bothered you.”

She gave me a pointed look. “Youaskedme to come here.”

“And you came,” I reminded her. “Just admit it — you like me. You wanted to see me, too.”

Gemma smiled, but she rolled her eyes, taking another sip of her tequila as her gaze fixed on the screen again. “I came here to watch the game — at a bar I came to plenty of times before I knew you worked here, by the way.”

I pointed at her. “That’s a lie.”

“Is not.”

“Um, it absolutely is. Because I’ve worked here for almost twelve years now and I would bet money on the fact that you never set foot inside this bar before the night we met.”

Her eyes found mine then, and they narrowed into slits. “You’rethatconfident, that you’d bet money on that fact?”

I nodded.

“Why? Doc could have taken my order,” she tried. “Or another bartender. It could have been a night you were off work.”

“There are no other bartenders, and I don’t take nights off.”

“Ha!Nowwho’s the liar?” She pointed her finger back at me. “You do too take nights off. You did when you went to the first home game with me, and again last Sunday for that game.”

“First two nights in twelve years, including when I had the flu.”

Technicallythat was a lie, since I did have Saturdays off and we did have two other temp bartenders on staff, kids who just liked to make some extra cash while they were in college. They were the ones who covered the bar on Saturdays. Still, I knew she wasalsolying. She hadn’t been to Doc’s before that first night I saw her.

Gemma’s eyes softened, questions lining them as she watched me. But she schooled her features in the next second. “That’s just not sanitary.” She ran a hand back through her ponytail. “And still doesn’t mean I’ve never been in this bar before the night we met.”

“You haven’t,” I said, this time leaning over the bar on both elbows. I leveled my gaze with hers, my focus slipping to her ruby-painted lips briefly before we locked eyes again. “I know, because there’s no way in hell I wouldn’t have noticed if you had walked through those doors.” I shook my head, grinning. “Just like I can’t forget you ever since the night you did.”

A smile tugged at the corner of her full lips, and Belle visibly swooned from where she was watching us — not the game — on her barstool. But Gemma just watched me, that hint of a smile, her eyes softening a bit before she cleared her throat.

She pulled back, breaking our eye contact and taking a drink from her glass. “You’re wrong about me being here for you,” she said, hissing through her teeth at the taste of the tequila. Then, she glanced over her shoulder before facing me again with a wild grin. “And I’m going to show you just how wrong you are.”

In the next second, she tilted that tequila back and chugged it like it was apple juice instead of a thirty-dollar alcoholic drink. Her eyes watered a little as she sucked the lime, and she didn’t offer me another glance before she was walking across the bar in the opposite direction of me.

“Oh, boy,” Belle murmured, and both our gazes followed Gemma until she stopped.

Right at a table full of rowdy, drooling guys.

Zach

“You know, if you’re really that into torturing yourself, I could always loan you my flogger.”

Belle sipped on her martini, shoving another olive in her mouth. I’d just given her a bowl of them this time.

“It’s meant for sexual pleasure,” she continued, waving the little wooden sword she kept sticking the olives with around as she spoke. “But, if you whipped it hard enough, it could do some damage.”

I blew out a breath through my nose, digging a shovel into the ice bin and dropping the cubes loudly into a glass. I filled it with Jack Daniels first, pushing the button for Coke on my gun and topping it off before sliding it down to one of the Packers fans at the end of the bar.