A Game Of Brides (Montana Born Brides) (5 page)

“
Absolutely,” Griffin muttered, directing her toward a set of bar stools with a light touch to the small of her back that she shouldn’t have felt at all, much less the way she did. Like a bolt of lightning. “It gets worse by the day.”

This time, Emmy was
going to be able to order something other than a diet Coke, at last. She felt as excited about that as she had about ordering her first legal drink on her actual twenty-first birthday in Atlanta all those years ago.

And then Griffin slid onto the barstool next to her and she allowed as how her excitement was a many splendored thing, indeed.

He’d thrown a hooded sweatshirt on over his t-shirt and he should have looked like an adolescent hooligan. Or something other than the successful owner of a vastly expanding, international business that he was. But he didn’t. He did something extraordinarily male with his chin and a particular look, and the Australian bartender slid him a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass. And then when Griffin did something with his eyebrows, a second one.

“
You really do ruin everything,” she said crossly when he poured out two shots and nudged one toward her. “I’ve been looking forward to ordering a drink here since I was ten years old.”

“
Then by all means,” he said in that smoky way of his that threatened the integrity of her bones, turning all of them to mush even as she tried to sit up straighter. “Let this be apology number one.”

He lifted up his s
hot glass and Emmy did the same. She felt something darker than mere heat wind through her when he tapped the two together, yet never moved that intent green gaze of his from hers.

She tossed her shot back and let the whiskey roll through her,
a mellow fire that wasn’t at all helpful when it tangled with all that heat already inside of her. Not helpful, but it made her feel bold. Softer around the edges, especially after a long afternoon spent dunked neck deep in the sea of Margery’s college friends.

I just don
’t
understand
you,
one of them had cooed at Emmy, her head cocked to one side so that Emmy had been all but mesmerized by the cunning placement of the barrette that swept her glossy light brown hair back in a kind of wave from her forehead.
You’d be so cute if you let yourself.

Emmy will never let herself be anything she can
’t control and call practical,
Margery, the raging control freak in the Mathis family by such a large margin it was almost funny, had trilled with no apparent sense of irony.

Everyone had laughed, including Emmy after
receiving a warning look from her frazzled mother from across Gran Harriet’s large and comfortable living room, and Emmy still didn’t know which part of that she found more annoying. That the most controlling woman she’d ever known, who had been like that when they were both under the age of ten, dared say something like that to Emmy in front of all of
her
friends? Or that she was currently sitting much too close to the reason she’d decided recklessness was for idiots like the one she’d been at eighteen, and since then had set about making only decisions that might keep her far safer?

In other words, i
f she
was
controlling, then that was probably Griffin’s fault.

She licked her lips because they burned
from the whiskey, and felt the kick of it when Griffin’s green eyes followed the motion like he couldn’t help himself. She was suddenly afraid she might slide right off the barstool, boneless and lit on fire, which would no doubt count as one of the shenanigans Jason Grey and Reese Kendrick discouraged. It was a measure of how out of control simply being in Griffin’s presence again made her that she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

“
I want to sleep with you,” he told her, and for a moment, while her heart pounded so hard it actually hurt, she thought she’d fantasized that. But then he reached over and traced the lips she’d just licked with the calloused pad of his thumb, and she felt a bolt of sensation sear through her, so bright and hot there was no possible way she’d made it up in her head. “Soon.”

Emmy
thought she might faint. Instead, she reminded herself that he’d said things like that before, and to only sad and painful ends. There was no point getting excited about something he might change his mind about.
Again
. So she shrugged as if men like him said things like that to women like her seven times a night.

“
Noted,” she replied flippantly.

And Griffin grinned.
A real grin, hot and male and
wow.
Like he’d thrown down a challenge and she’d met it, and this was a game they were playing. A game with only one possible conclusion.

It took everything she had not to shiver
so hard he’d see it. Or fall off her seat to the floor beneath her into an inelegant heap.

“
I last saw you when you were eighteen,” he said.

“
I remember, thank you.”

A little crook of his hard mouth.
“We’ll get to that night. First, tell me what’s happened since. Job. Major life events.” His gaze hardened. “Husband?”

Emmy leaned
her elbow against the bar, swiveling around on her stool so she could face him. She didn’t pretend not to understand what this conversation was about. Not a
getting to know you,
but a removal of obstacles. She told herself she was offended by his arrogance—

But she wasn
’t. She hadn’t been ten years ago. She certainly wasn’t now, when anything that might have been glib or reckless in him back then had been so deliciously tempered by the passing of all that time.
And experience,
a little voice whispered.

“
I went to Emory and majored in English so I could read books all day,” she said, managing to sound calm and cool when she was neither. “I liked Atlanta, so I stayed there afterward. I got a job in an ad agency and have been writing copy for them ever since.”

She waited, and so did he, and she would have sworn neither one of them breathed.

“No husband,” she said after a moment, and she wasn’t sure why it felt like the worst kind of obvious flirting to say that. Or like a green light to a very slippery slope—and she already felt like she was tipping over the edge of it and about to start sliding down. “I broke up with my last boyfriend a few months back. It wasn’t very dramatic. He thought we might as well get married. I realized I wanted something else. Like a man who wanted me more than
might as well.
” She slid her glass back toward Griffin and waited while he poured her another shot. “I’ve heard he’s already talking an October wedding with my replacement.”

“
You might as well have been a sofa, then. What a thrill.”

“
That was my thinking.” She twisted the shot glass around, watching the amber liquid catch the light. “I’m sure this means I’m a narcissist, but I’d rather not be quite so easily replaced.”

He
laughed, and she caught her breath at what genuine humor did to that face of his. That beautiful face of his that she worried was imprinted inside of her somehow, making it impossible to really see anyone else. Was that why no one else had ever appealed to her the way he had? Throughout all these years?

Emmy had always
told herself he was a childhood addiction that she’d conquered by avoiding him. But she’d been equally sure that if she saw him again, the spell would be broken. Childhood myths and legends were nothing more than favorite stories once you grew up, weren’t they?

Tonight she thought that maybe she
’d been lying to herself for a very long time.

“
I got engaged last June,” Griffin told her in that low, sexy rumble of a voice, and she hoped he hadn’t seen any of that
imprinting
nonsense on her face. “We’d been together for a few years, she worked in my company; it was all a big, happy team.” He tossed back his second shot, then slapped the glass down on the wood in front of him. “Then one day in the middle of September we got in a fight, which wasn’t unusual. She said she was moving out. She did that a lot, too. Then two days later she and my best friend Henry—who’s also my CFO—took me to dinner. I thought he was there to mediate.”

Emmy pulled in a breath.
“Oh, no.”

“
They told me they were thinking they might date someday, since she and I had finally run our course, which was news to me.” His smile was fierce and beautiful at once, and something hollow and hot scraped through her, making her wonder how anyone could leave this man. For any reason at all. “But when I dropped by Henry’s place later that night, she was there. And they weren’t dressed. It’s hard not to draw a few conclusions about how long that must have been going on, looking back.”

“
That all sounds unduly civilized,” Emmy said after a moment when he didn’t elaborate. “Did you have a polite chat over wine? Compare notes? Are you all
robots?
”

“
I left out the part where I punched him in the face and called her a few names I’m not too proud of.” Still that hard smile. And it felt even more like a very focused kind of flirting when he reached over and drew a pattern on the back of her hand, the way he’d doodled on every available surface when they were kids. It felt like more than flirting. It felt like history and need, and his green eyes were so warm it made it hard to breathe besides. “I’m trying to make a good impression on you.”

“
To talk me into sleeping with you.”

“
God, yes.”

“
By talking about your ex? Pretty risky move. Amateur, even. Huge potential for that to backfire in a major way.”

“
There’s no way you’ve forgotten the fact your sister mentioned my supposed broken heart earlier,” Griffin drawled. “Even if you’ve shoved it to the back burner, it’s still there. Unless you’ve undergone a complete personality shift, you don’t forget a single thing. I figured I’d approach it head on.”

Emmy studied him for a moment, aware that everything felt taut.
Pulled tight, stretched thin. And yet too full besides, with a kind of happy glow that he remembered her personality at all.

“
I think I’d draw serious conclusions about the length of their relationship and then fire the both of them, for good measure,” she said, her tone light. “You’re the boss, right? You can do that. I bet that would be even more satisfying than name-calling. Or face-punching.”

“
Punching him in the face was pretty satisfying. I can’t lie.”

“
I can see that. I think any reasonable person would call that a justifiable face punching, really, given the circumstances.”

That
hard mouth of his shifted into the small crook that was his usual smile, and Emmy’s heart flipped over in her chest. She told herself it was the whiskey.

“
I’m considering my options.” He studied her face for what felt like a very long time. “I don’t care that they’re together anymore. I’m sorry to disappoint the Grans and your sister, who all love a good tragedy, but I’m not brokenhearted.”

“
I’ll be sure to pass that on the next time you come up,” Emmy assured him. “Which will probably be every five minutes or so, now that all the bridesmaids got a good look at you. I’ll have to break all of their hearts and tell them you’re
fine
. No need for their tender loving care.”

He smirked a little bit.
“Just tell them I’m bad news,” he advised her. “Or I’d probably care more that the two people who were supposed to mean the most to me betrayed me. And I don’t.”

Emmy shrugged
, a prickling sort of thing sweeping over her, making her feel much too on edge. “Or maybe they revealed their true faces, and what’s the point of caring past that?”

She didn
’t know what made her hold his gaze a little too hard, but she recognized the panicked thing that dripped through her again, the way it had when she’d imagined
sleeping in his bed
. Surrounded by his scent, resting her head where he laid his… She felt reckless and wild, and that terrified her. She knew where that led: her, naked and alone and rejected.
No, thank you
.

It made her feel mean.
Or desperate. “Guess where I learned that?”

She didn
’t know what she expected. But it wasn’t the way he laughed then, low and smoky, like the bad news he’d said he was.

“
Let’s be real, Bug. You’ve seen my restraint and self-denial, which might have been pretty rough on you ten years ago, but were necessary evils.” He studied her for a moment that turned into something smoldering. Something undeniable. Something so stark she thought it was really more like beautiful. “You couldn’t handle my true face.”

Emmy considered him through the riot inside of her.
The alarms that kept ringing and the deep, dark hunger that countered them. The chaos of it all—of wanting this man even more than she had before, as if she’d learned nothing in all these years. As if she’d learned nothing
from him.