“Glad to hear you’re getting on so well here, Shannon.”
Was that a question? It sounded like a question.
I tensed.
“Yeah, it’s going great.” Cole suddenly appeared and walked toward me.
Weirdly, I’d never been happier to see him.
Stu looked at us both and then nodded. “Great. Glad to hear it. So I’ll see you at Cole’s birthday party, then?”
Birthday party?
Say what?
Panic. Yes, that was definitely panic causing my heart to do that horrible fluttery thing in my chest. “Uh—”
Cole reached me and slid his arm along my shoulders, pulling me into his side. I tried my best not to stiffen, in fact allowing myself to relax into him. I flushed, feeling his lean, hard body pressing into my soft one.
My head barely reached his shoulder.
I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I chanted in my head to remind myself as I quickly grew heated and turned on.
“Of course she’ll be there.” Cole gave me a squeeze and my left boob was crushed against his chest.
Oh boy.
I tried for a grin, but I was pretty sure it came out tremulous because Stu got this suspicious look on his face. However, the suspicion melted into a gleam of delight that quickly made me realize he’d gotten the wrong impression about what was going on between Cole and me.
“Oh.” He nodded and tapped a finger against his nose. “I got you.”
No, he did not get us! He did not get us at all.
“Have fun, kiddies.” He laughed and threw open the entrance door. “See you soon!”
The minute Stu was out of sight of the front windows, I wrenched away from Cole’s embrace, my hands flying to my hips. “Birthday party?”
Looking beleaguered, Cole nodded. “My friend Hannah is on maternity leave. She’s bored. Extremely bored. I am not telling my bored, pregnant best friend that she can’t throw me a birthday party no matter how much I don’t need that shit right now.”
There was a lot in that sentence I did not want to deal with. “I don’t think I should go.”
“That’s entirely up to you, but Stu will be there and he’ll wonder why you’re not there since the two of us get on so well. Everyone I know will be there.”
I growled in frustration.
Cole raised an eyebrow at my reaction. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. It’s not likely that we’ll cross paths at this thing. I’ll barely even know you’re there.”
And once more the irritant walked away with the last word!
CHAPTER 7
T he room was naturally dark since it was a basement room, but warm lighting had been placed in alcoves all around and rugs covered the flagstone floors. To the left of the bar situated in the back of the room were two long tables with enough buffet food to feed a small family for a good couple of weeks. Booths were situated around the edges of the room, and people had already laid claim to most of them.
There were no balloons, no banners, nothing but a birthday cake to suggest this was indeed a birthday party, which told me that Hannah knew her best friend quite well.
“Why am I here again?” I said to Rae.
Somehow despite protesting against it for days, I was standing next to Rae and Mike in the entrance to the basement bar that was part of a split-level nightclub called Fire. The basement had been turned into a private function suite for Cole’s party, organized by his friend Hannah, and hosted by the owner of the club, Braden Carmichael. And yup, Rae told me that Braden was J. B. Carmichael’s husband.