nervous, and I imagined by her expression that she was giving herself a pep talk. I stopped myself from bouncing in my seat as I watched her talk to him, saw the look on his face and the look on hers. A furtive glance from them both—probably to check Liam’s location—and they took off, hand in hand, abandoning our drinks at the bar.
I got up to gather them and bring them back to our spot, forgetting about Collin. Two steps, and he slid in front of me.
“There you are. One for you”—he put a shot glass in my hand—“and one for me. Cheers!”
He lifted it and knocked it back. I took the tiniest sip of mine.
“Listen,” he started, “I know I’ve been hinting around that I like you for a while now—”
I legitimately had to swallow a laugh.
“—but you and me? We make sense. You know? You’re single. I’m single. We work together.”
“Collin, that is the extent of things we have in common.”
He laughed, oblivious. “Seriously, Laney. Why fight it? You don’t have anyone else to date, do you?”
I blinked, leaning back in shock. But in a grand display of restraint, I didn’t say what I wanted, which was for him to fuck off. “I’m sorry if I misled you, but I’m not interested in dating.”
He took a step closer and said with a knowing smile, “We don’t have to date.”
Several responses crossed my mind. A swift punch to the nose would stop him, and if my brothers had taught me one thing, it was to throw a successful punch. I considered going ahead and telling him where he could go and the best way to get there. I could throw the remaining tequila in my shot glass in his face in the hopes it would get him in the eye. Or I could just turn around and do nothing, which didn’t feel like me at all.
Before I could decide, gravity shifted in the direction of one very tall, very serious Mr. Darcy.
“Excuse me,” he said to Collin with unmistakable anger beneath the thin veneer of politeness. “I don’t think we’ve met. Liam Darcy.” He extended his sizable hand for a shake.
“Collin.” When he went to shake Darcy’s hand, his almost disappeared. His face tightened, and I wondered over the force of Liam’s grip.
“And what is it you do at the bookstore?”
“I’m the manager of the comic and graphic novel department. The whole department,” he bragged.
“The whole department, huh? Impressive,” Liam said with a wry tone. “Pardon the intrusion, but I was hoping Laney would dance with me.”
Collin frowned. “Actually—”
“See, I owe her one. We’ve been caught in a series of misunderstandings, and I thought this would be a good start in making it up to her. You understand.”
“Hey, man,” Collin started. “I was just about to ask her to—”
“That is, if she’d like to dance with me,” Liam said, watching me with an amused glint in his eyes, his hand out, palm up, waiting for mine.
“Now hang on a minute—” Collin interjected.
“I’d love to,” I answered, slipping my hand into his with just enough friction to feel electric. “I’ll catch you later, Collin. I think Ruby’s over there alone! You should ask her to dance.”
Collin opened his mouth to argue, but Liam was already towing me away toward the dance floor. When we passed a cocktail table, I managed to rid myself of the tequila, and with a quick glance, I noted that Georgie and Jett were nowhere to be seen.
If I wasn’t with Liam, I would have giggled, and maybe even clapped.
The second we reached the edge of the dance floor, he turned me with little more than a hand on my waist, and before I knew what was happening, we were dancing to an Adele song. Thankfully, the crowd had gotten over their nerves—even Cam and Tyler and the rest of them were swaying on the parquet.
But Liam looked down at me, and it didn’t matter if anyone was there or not. One glance, and we were an island.
For a moment, I couldn’t speak, stunned silent by his presence alone. He wore a small smile that did something bright and alluring to his eyes. And though my tongue was a fat and useless thing in my mouth, he seemed unaffected.
His gaze flicked to Collin, I guessed when he said, “I hope I just saved you and that you weren’t waiting for whatever proposition he was about to give you.”
A bout of laughter eased the tension. “You did