Stealing Kisses With a King (Kings of Carolina #3)- Sylvie Stewart Page 0,63

lips turned down. She was what Clara would call a hot mess.

“You should never try to outdrink Nolan. He’s practically a professional and he’s twice your size.”

“We should call him,” she declared, using a ridiculous amount of strength to open her eyes wider.

“Over my dead body.”

She smiled lazily. “He asked me out on a date.”

“Did he?” I did my best not to growl again. “And what did you say?”

She extended her free hand from under the table to poke me in the chest with her index finger. “I told him I couldn’t.”

“Smart girl.” It seemed Nolan had left that bit out, hadn’t he? Shot down cold.

Alice shook her head vehemently, knocking herself off balance and nearly cracking her face on the table. I lunged forward to keep her from hurting herself and managed to right her enough to secure her in place. But she shook her head again, this time more gently. “I’m not a smart girl. I’m a stupid girl.” Surprisingly, her speech wasn’t slurred despite her drunken state—I’d have to remember to tell her that tomorrow. She’d be most pleased.

“Why would you say that? You’re one of the smartest people I know.”

She beckoned me forward with a crooked finger and I went willingly. When I was close enough to smell the wine on her breath, she whispered loudly, “Because I’m in love with a man-baby.”

This sent my head back and had me smiling again. “What exactly is a man-baby?” Was this some sort of mythical creature from a wine-induced hallucination?

But she just poked me with that sharp index finger again. This time I caught her hand and brought it to my lips, laying a soft kiss over her fingers. Then she inexplicably whispered, “You.”

I started to laugh, but then caught myself. Was she saying I was a man-baby? I conjured a picture in my mind of a full-grown man wearing a giant nappy and sucking on a dummy, but that felt more like something taken from a sexual role-playing manual. Maybe by man-baby she just meant an immature man, a whinging man.

But that was preposterous. I didn’t whinge.

Although, now that I thought about it, Nolan had just this evening accused me of whinging. Oh, God. Was I a man-baby?

As disturbing as that thought was, my mind caught on something else. Alice had said she was in love with a man-baby and pointed at me. Which could only mean…

My natural instinct when presented with the idea of something as intimate and binding as that word was to run as far away as possible. So, naturally, my foot began tapping nervously on Alice’s kitchen floor as I forced myself to think.

But her coffee maker dinged at that precise moment, causing her head to shoot upright. “Ding. Dong.”

“Th-that’s right,” I stammered, standing and hurrying over to pour us each a cup. “Coffee time.”

But when I turned back to the table, Alice had repositioned herself so she faced me fully with her blouse halfway undone and an expression on her face that no doubt aimed for sultry but fell short somewhere between drunk and jungle cat.

Unprepared, I stopped short, which prompted her to lick her finger and trail it down between her breasts before shaking her shoulders in an attempted titty shake and repeat the words, “Ding. Dong,” carefully pronouncing each as some strange declaration of intent.

My racing mind stopped as fast as my feet had and I allowed myself to fully take in this ridiculous woman, this crazy drunk person, this buttoned-up assistant in disguise, this living contradiction who had become so integral to my life that I’d fall apart without her. So I smiled at her and shook my head, allowing myself for the first time to consider that perhaps love wasn’t so scary. Crazy, yes, but scary? Maybe not with her.

Chapter 17

Alice

I had somehow turned into Snow White, complete with the dress that did nothing for my figure. The Seven Dwarves had just decided to turn on me and use their mining equipment to poke holes into my head. As I asked Sleepy why, he just said, “We’re sick of all the short jokes,” before raising his pickaxe. I tried to tell him I was on his side with the whole short thing, but he must not have heard because a bolt of pain seared through my skull a moment later, making me grab my head in an attempt to hold it together.

“Hey. Hey. Stop thrashing.”

If they thought I’d go down without a fight, they had another thing coming.