Her parents ran the only Indian restaurant in town for twenty years before they retired to Florida a while back. Theodora grew up waiting tables and helping out in the kitchen, a combination that made her fluent in Hindi, English, and Spanish, and which she credits for her gift of gab.
She insists she talks all the time because she spent so much of her life helping her Hindi-speaking parents communicate with the English-speaking servers and getting everyone on the same page with the mostly Spanish-speaking kitchen crew. I, however, believe she was born chattering and never stopped. Sometimes her bubbly stream of consciousness makes people underestimate her, but Theo is a force to be reckoned with—in or out of the kitchen.
As we take our place at the back of the line, I watch her breezing around her little kingdom, holding forth with a steady stream of criticism and encouragement as she keeps the yumminess rolling out, and I feel a surge of pride. She’s all grown up, our Theo, as is the cute brunette with the braids working one of the two cash registers while Shep mans the other, enjoying the relative anonymity that comes with being a band’s drummer instead of its lead singer.
Bridget spots me, and I wave. But instead of the grin I’m expecting, my sister goes pale and drops her blue eyes back to the register.
I frown, nudging Colin in the ribs. “Hey, was Bridget okay when you dropped the new linens by the B&B yesterday?”
“Yeah, she was fine. Why?” Colin asks.
I shake my head and scratch Murder’s neck thoughtfully, summoning a purr from his chest. “I don’t know. She’s acting weird.”
“Probably just busy,” he says, dismissing my worry in a way that’s a little odd, too. But before I can ponder it further, Bridget is flapping an arm behind her like she’s having a seizure, and Theo is suddenly not talking.
Not talking, but she is hurrying around to the back of the cook station and then scurrying back.
Something is definitely up, and I intend to get to the bottom of it before Bridget and Theo have a lapse in judgment. Ninety percent of the time, they’re trustworthy mid-twentysomethings with their heads on straight.
But every once in a while, they pull a Kirby, giving in to sudden, out-of-character impulsivity that ends in disaster.
“You two are not going to hike the Appalachian Trail,” I say as we step up to Bridget’s register, pointing a warning at her. “You’re not in good enough shape, and it’s way too late in the year to start. You’ll freeze to death. And need I mention that neither of you has ever backpacked in your life?”
“I know,” Bridget says with a sharp exhalation. “You guys want two plates, right?”
“Yeah, two specials,” Colin says.
“Do you know?” I press, because the thought of her and Theo following through with their latest crazy plan scares me half to death. “Because you could die out there, Bridget. You could freeze. Or starve. Or get eaten by bears. Or wolves.”
“I know, Kirby. I hear you, I promise.” She sighs, gaze still fixed on her money drawer.
“Or get really bad poison ivy or hypothermia or infected blisters or—”
“I said I know.” She looks up, the shine in her eyes making my heart flutter into full-on helicopter sister mode.
“What’s wrong,” I whisper, leaning in. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying,” she whispers, blinking faster as she shoots a panicked look Shep’s way. “I’ve just got smoke in my eyes.”
“The smoke is super bad,” Theo says, dropping two claw-filled plates off personally and giving Bridget’s arm an encouraging squeeze. “Hi, Kirby and Colin. Bye, Kirby and Colin.”
And with that, she disappears, sending my internal alert level from Code Yellow to full-on Imminent-Danger Red. “What’s going on?” I demand as Shep shifts over to stand beside Bridget. “That’s officially the fewest words I’ve ever heard her speak at one time. By several hundred thousand.”
“She’s just slammed.” Shep casts a worried glance down at Bridge before he adds, “And Bridget’s upset because we…had a fight. Right, Bridget?”
She turns round eyes his way, hesitating a moment before she nods too fast. “Yes. We did. You were really awful.”
“A total jerk,” he agrees. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“I don’t know.” Bridget lifts her nose with a sniff. “Probably not. I am really, really disappointed in you, Shepherd.”
“What did you do?” I ask Shep, who avoids my gaze. I look back to my sister. “What did he do? I’ve known him practically since he was born, Bridge, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be a jerk.”
“Gotta keep the line moving,” Theo says, poking her head in quickly, her eyes also refusing to meet mine as she says, “We’ll all talk later. Bye, Kirby and Colin.”
Colin gathers our plates, shooting a hard look Shep’s way. “Yes. We’ll all talk later. Come on, Kirby.”
“Call me if you need me,” I tell Bridget as I move away.
She smiles, but I can tell she’s still sad. Or mad. Or something. “I’m fine. Go on. Just…be nice, okay?”
I frown, but before I can demand she explain what the hell is going on, Colin has his arm around me, dragging me away.
“No, I have to go back,” I say, getting more upset with every step we take from my sister. “Something is seriously up with her. I know when she’s about to act out. Remember that time I woke up and found a note saying she’d run away to join the circus?”
“She was thirteen,” he reminds me as he sets our plates on one of the bar tables scattered throughout the center of the pier.
“That time. There have been others.” I try to head back the way we came, only to have him to take hold of my upper arms and bend down until his face is in front of mine.
“Eat your lobster,” he insists.
“I’m not hungry anymore,” I insist back.
“Yes, you are, Larry. Now eat some fucking lobster before this surprise gets any worse.”
“Surprise?” Their weird behavior clicks, clues now obvious, banking my raging sisterly protectiveness. “That’s why you’re all being freaks except Murder?”
“That’s why we’re all being freaks except Murder.” He nods toward the plates. “So. Lobster?”
Setting my cat down, I move carefully around Colin, approaching the plates with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation. Why make such a big deal out of this unless it’s a big deal?
Maybe…a very big deal?
Is that why Bridget was being weird? Because she knows I’m weird and that I’ve never had any inclination to get married? Like, none at all? Is she terrified that I’m going to break Colin’s heart by telling him I don’t want to get hitched?!
I would never break Colin’s heart. I love him to the moon and back. I love him down to his cells and the code of his DNA. When I die, I want to be burned and stored on a shelf until Colin is ashes, too, and then I want us to be mixed together in a dusty cocktail and made into something creepy like a cremains statue so that our children can be horrified by how weird and in love their parents were.
I want to have babies with this man, desperately loved babies that will be half him and half me and all beautiful because they will have been made out of the strongest love I’ve ever known.
Pure, wild, soul-stirring, bone-melting, heart-healing love. The kind of love that I already know is forever—with or without a ring.
Though I’d honestly prefer without. I don’t want the law involved. I just want his promise and his time and his hand in mine.
Pulse speeding up, I search the plates for something sparkly, panicking a little until I spot the flat gray key clenched in one claw. My breath rushes out, “A key.”
“A key,” Colin says, smiling widely. “You should’ve seen your face.” He nudges my shoulder. “You thought it was a ring, didn’t you?”
I punch him in the arm. “Maybe. And you knew I would. You were deliberately fucking with me.”
“Maybe a little,” he admits, “but if I’d known it w
ould upset Bridge so much, I would have told her not to worry.”
“She’ll be okay,” I say. “As soon as she knows we’re okay.”
“I hope we’ll be more than okay.” He takes the key between two long, elegant fingers. Fingers that know exactly how to touch me and are attached to a heart that knows just how to love me, a fact he proves as he says, “This key fits in the lock of the new writer’s lair the contractors just added to the back of the tour bus. It’s just a little box, but it’s got a door you can shut, a window where you can watch the world go by, and one of those fancy chairs you like. And the desk is the same height as the one you have now. I had it built special so it would feel just like home.” He searches my face, excitement and nerves mixing in his expression. “The guys in the band are all psyched about it, and I hope you will be, too.”
Tears sting the back of my eyes as I realize what this means. “You want me to come with you? On tour?”
“I want you to come with me everywhere.” He brushes my hair from my face, curling his fingers around the back of my neck in that way that makes me go boneless every time. “I don’t want to be away from you, Larry. Not any more than I have to be, not until death does us part.”
“Me, either,” I say, echoing the vow. “Until death does us part.” I press up onto tiptoe, sealing the promise with a kiss that I feel everywhere. “I choose you, Colin Donovan.”
“And I choose you, Kirby Lawrence,” he whispers against my lips. “You’ll always be my only one.”
I pull back with a grin and tears in my eyes. “So that’s all the married we need, right?”
“All the married we need,” he says, hugging me closer with a laugh. “I know marriage isn’t your jam, Larry. And I don’t need a piece of paper. I just need you.” He glances up at the sky with an adorably shy grin as he adds, “And maybe some really cute kids with your baby blues someday. But it’s cool, too, if you don’t want kids.”
“Yes, to babies,” I say, smiling so hard my jaw starts to hurt. “But I want them to have your eyes. Your eyes are the best.”
“See,” Shep says, making both Colin and I jump and pull apart. We turn to see him standing behind us, a beaming Bridget by his side. “I told you it was going to be fine.”
“He doesn’t want to get married,” I assure Bridget. “Just to be together forever.” I hold up the key. “I’m going to write my next book from a lair in the back of the tour bus.”
“So you said yes?” she asks.
I nod, deciding to give her romantic heart what it wants. “I said yes.”
“I’m so happy!” Bridget’s eyes begin to shine again. “I thought you were going to say no, and Colin was going to cry, and everything was going to be awful. I’m so glad you’re going to be together forever!”
“Aw, come here, Bridge.” I pull her into my arms as she continues to sniffle with happiness, and Shep and Colin go in for a bro hug.
When I finally have her settled, Shep and Bridge return to their stations, and Colin takes me out to the tour bus to show me my new digs. “You sneaky bastard,” I say, laughing as I soak in the amazingness of my cozy new lair. “That’s why you had the tour bus parked by the pier.”
“Guilty,” he says, shutting the door behind us, locking Murder on the other side. “And because I wanted to do this.” He reaches for me, lifting me into his arms and guiding my legs around his waist as he slams me against the wall.
We kiss like we haven’t tasted each other in months—wild and hungry—as he fumbles my panties to one side beneath my skirt and I rip open his fly. And then we come together, and it’s magic and home and beauty and play and love, all of it dancing between us, creating a bubble of unshakable joy that nothing can break.
Because he’s mine, and I’m his, and we’re going to be banging best friends forever.
“Forever,” I whisper against his warm neck as we catch our breath.
“And ever,” he agrees, setting me down and helping pull my clothes into place. “Now can we get lobster to take home so I can eat it off your tits?”
I wrinkle my nose. “Lobster is a gross thing to eat off of someone’s tits.”
“Not someone’s tits,” he corrects, pretending to be scandalized. “Your tits, Larry. And everything is delicious and sexy when eaten off of your tits.”
I bite my lip. “Fine. You can eat lobster off my tits. But I’m licking cocktail sauce off your dick after.”
“That’s gross.” He kisses my cheek. “And I would expect nothing less. I love you a ridiculous amount, you know that?”
“Does this mean you intend to bang me stupid after we’re done playing with lobster and sauces?” I ask, wrapping my arms around his waist.
“The very stupidest,” he promises.
And then we collect our fur baby, buy an obscene amount of lobster, and Colin takes me home where he proves he’s a man of his word.
Ready for more red HOT friends-to-lovers rom com? Keep reading for a sneak peek of HOT AS PUCK. Available Now!
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Sneak Peek
The NHL's biggest bad boy is about to fall for the virgin next door…
I am the world’s biggest dating failure. We’re talking my last date went home with our waitress kind of failure.
But I have an ace in the back pocket of my mom jeans—my sexy-as-sin best friend, NHL superstar forward, Justin Cruise.
Justin owes me favors dating back to seventh grade, long before he became a hotshot with a world famous…stick. So in return for my undying platonic loyalty, all I want is an easy-peasy crash course on how to be a sex goddess.
How hard can it be?
* * *
I have never been so hard in my life.
The things I want to do to my sweet, kindergarten-teaching, mitten-crocheting best friend Libby Collins are ten different kinds of wrong. Maybe twenty.
But I’m a firm believer in teaching by example, and by the end of our first lesson, we’ve graduated to a hands on approach to her sexual education: my hands all over her, her hands all over me, and her hot mouth melting beneath mine as I prove to her there isn’t a damned thing wrong with the way she kisses.
Give me a month, and I’ll transform Libby from wall flower to wall banger, and ensure she’s confident enough to seduce any guy she wants.
Problem is… the only guy I want her seducing is me.
Hot as Puck is a sexy, flirty, friends-to-lovers Standalone romantic comedy from USA Today Bestseller Lili Valente.
Please enjoy this excerpt from
HOT AS PUCK
Available Now!
Justin
This is it, the night I’ll look back on in fifty or sixty years and stab a finger at as the moment my life changed forever. Somewhere out there, in the throng of people wiggling to the club beat pulsing across the Portland skyline from the most exclusive rooftop lounge in the city, is the woman I’m going to marry.
Next summer.
In eight short months.
Because I’m dying to settle down, develop a food-baby where my six-pack used to be, spend Friday nights on the couch in my give-up-on-life sweatpants arguing about what to watch on Netflix and picking out names for the five or six kids my wife and I will bang out as quickly as possible to ensure we’ll have an army of small people to share in the grinding monotony of our wedded bliss.
Ha. Right.
Or rather no. Hell no. Fuck no, with a side of “what kind of reality-altering dr
ugs have you been huffing in the bathroom?”
Sylvia is out of her goddamned mind! I’m twenty-eight years old—tonight, happy fucking birthday to me—and at the top of my game. I have zero interest in a long-term commitment to anything but my team.
The Portland Badgers are riding a ten-game winning streak, thanks largely to the fact that I bust my ass in the gym every other morning so I can bust my ass on the ice every time Nowicki spaces-out eighteen minutes into the period and forgets what his stick is for. That rookie’s untreated ADHD is a pain in my ass, but the rest of the forwards and I are taking up the slack and then some. I’m averaging over a point a game, leading the league in goals, and on my way to an elite season. Maybe even an Art Ross Trophy-winning season, though I don’t like to count my eggs before they’ve been scrambled, smothered in cheese and hot sauce, and wrapped in a burrito.
God, a burrito sounds good. I’m so fucking hungry. I would kill for Mexican right now, or at least something cooked and wrapped in something other than seaweed.
Nearly three thousand dollars in hor d’oeuvres are being passed around this party on shiny silver platters, and there’s not a damned thing I want to eat.
I let Sylvia—who has very firm opinions about many, many things—handle ordering the food, and apparently she thought sushi, sushi, more sushi, and some weird, rock-hard, low-fat cookies that taste like vanilla-flavored air were all anyone would want to shove in their pie-hole tonight. Just like she thought I should get down on one knee and put a ring on her finger in time to plan a blockbuster summer wedding or she would need to “explore her other options.”
Explore her other fucking options. What the fuck? Who says something like that to a guy they swear they’re desperately in love with? If she were really that gone on me, wouldn’t I be the only option? The only person in the entire world that she could even remotely consider spending the rest of her life with?
The Bangover Page 21
