Chapter Three
They missed their reservation.
“Maybe they’ll still be open,” Sassy said, feeling optimistic as she and Nick speedwalked through downtown Dark Canyon.
Nick, hair wet from his shower, checked his watch. “They closed ten minutes ago.”
She could see the display windows of the Sauce Spot ahead and ignored the fact that they had already gone dark.
“Tony knows we have a standing wing appointment.” Breaking into a run, she prayed the Sauce Spot’s owner, Tony Vasquez, a classmate of theirs from high school, would hold out.
She booked every one of Nick’s birthday dinners at the Sauce Spot twelve months in advance.
Every February, she tracked Tony down to make sure the reservation was still on the books.
Nick groaned. “I’m so hungry at this point, I’d eat a squirrel.”
Unbidden, the image of two raccoons wrestling over a rotten, half-finished can of Spam flashed before her eyes. “Question.”
“Go ahead,” Nick said, not taking his eyes off the Sauce Spot’s windows. The neon Hot Wings sign was off.
“Did you change the security notifications for the gallery to an alarm?” she asked.
That got his attention. That signature half smile of his tugged at one corner of his mouth. His light brown eyes flashed mischievously. “Maybe.”
She’d had her suspicions. He and Ryan had installed the security system in the first place.
Nick had access to her phone and knew the numerical passcode to unlock it.
She was notoriously forgetful and often forgot important dates, meetings, appointments…
He’d been setting reminders and alarms for her for years.
“Thanks,” she offered with a sardonic lilt.
He smirked, which tugged the other half of his mouth up. The full-toothed gleam of his grin and the humor dancing in his eyes were nothing short of disarming. “Don’t mention it.”
Sassy was aware that her best friend was attractive.
She also knew there was a running rumor around town that the two of them were more than just friends.
Because how could two single twenty-seven-year-olds spend all the time they did together and not bump uglies on occasion?
Especially when the two of them were notorious for discarding members of the opposite sex after only a handful of dates.
Sassy was aware her and Nick’s individual dating histories featured a long list of seemingly compatible contenders who for some reason hadn’t made the final cut.
The people of Dark Canyon assumed just because they knew each other like peanut butter and jelly that intimacy…
the kind that made clothes hit the floor…
was inevitable between them. They thought she and Nick were incapable of remaining friends.
What happens when he gets married? she’d been asked on several occasions. How are you going to feel watching him build a life with someone else?
Do you really think his wife will want you around? Or that she won’t feel threatened by you? That you won’t have regrets?
She hadn’t known how to answer those questions. She still didn’t. Probably because she was a one-day-at-a-time kind of girl. She lived in the present, embracing every moment.
Just because Nick spent a lot of those moments with her didn’t mean their futures were tied up in marriage, kids and joint tax returns.
She loved Nick. He was a great guy. He was equal parts brawn and brain.
He cared deeply for others, and he was more loyal than anyone she’d ever met.
He could climb mountains and white-water kayak.
He’d jumped out of planes with nothing more than a Hail Mary and a parachute strapped to his back.
Even his bad jokes, combined with his killer smile, could summon women in hordes.
She’d once accidentally overheard that he was excellent in bed.
Playful…attentive…could last for days had been the exact words exchanged in front of a ladies’ room mirror by two unidentified women while Sassy had been trapped awkwardly inside a bathroom stall.
For some undefined reason, those words had bored into her skull and made a home there.
But Sassy loved her messy single life. And she was messy, while Nick was…
Well, a neat freak. Organized to a fault.
He’d organized his own life to such a degree that he’d started organizing hers.
The notations in her phone. The reminders.
The texts when he was too busy to drop in and he knew she was swamped at the gallery.
Did you remember to grab lunch? or It’s Soledad’s birthday today or Don’t forget: Rogue needs cat food.
She should’ve found it annoying. His type-A tendencies should have driven her type-B personality up the wall a long time ago.
The funny thing was, she loved them. She loved the dynamic they’d built. There was no way in hell she was going to ruin that by throwing herself at him when she was horny.
She had any number of other single male friends’ numbers she could dial when she reached the point of no return.
She and Nick had never spoken of the rumors about them. They’d been mutually shrugging or laughing off comments made to them in public for the last decade. The So, how is she? Wink, wink, or the We know you’ve tapped that.
Once…only once when Nick had had a few too many drinks at a party had he responded to crude comments made about them with his fists. But they’d been sixteen at the time and he’d still been dealing with his father’s absence.
The growling of his stomach made her eye the taut line of his abs beneath his shirt. “If you pass out from hunger…”
“You’ll catch me. Right?”
“Right.” Movement beyond the windows made her snatch Nick’s hand up in hers. “Did you see that?”
“Someone’s inside,” he hissed.
Together, they broke into a run, her limping slightly. Those hiking boots she’d borrowed from Sabrina West, US Forest Service officer and her cousin Noah’s girlfriend, had rubbed a blister on her heel.
Sassy all but ran into the door in her desperation.
She knocked furiously. “Tony!” she called, peering into the seating area.
The peanut shells had been swept off the floor.
The Ms. Pac Man machine in the far corner had been unplugged.
The dining room lights had been dimmed. Not a good sign.
“Tony Lorenzo Vasquez, open this door before I break in and raid your fridge!”
She kept knocking and calling as Nick stepped around the building to see if he could spy Tony’s vehicle or catch someone coming out the side door.
Her hopes were slipping away like smoke.
Then she saw the metal door to the kitchen swing open and Tony emerge.
He approached the door with a measured tread.
Sassy bounced on her toes in anticipation.
She could already taste the Sauce Spot’s signature barbecue blend.
“Nick. Nick! Get back here! He’s coming! ”
Through the glass, Tony’s narrowed eyes passed over her face. He didn’t look happy. Nonetheless, when he unlocked the door and opened it, she nearly threw her arms around him.
He stopped that notion by opening the door a few bare inches, enough to peer at the two of them. “Colton,” he drawled.
“Hi,” she greeted quickly. “Feed us.”
Tony gave her a slow blink. “It’s after ten.”
“So?” she challenged.
“On a Tuesday,” he added. “During the slow season.”
She shook her head. “I’m missing the point.”
“And we’re super hungry,” Nick chimed in.
“I’m hungry,” Sassy amended. “Nick here is about to start gnawing on his own arm.”
Tony’s brow arched. “You two don’t have food at home? There’s a grocery store up the road—”
“We need wings,” she told him. “Your wings. Feed us.” She clasped her hands together. “Please.”
He flicked a glance from her to Nick and back again, shaking his head. “You two are worse than a pair of raccoons.”
“I resent that,” she said.
“Don’t knock raccoons,” Nick commented. “They aid in pest control, seed distribution, composting…”
“Nick, focus,” she advised. “Tony, wings. Don’t make me say please again. It pains me.”
“Read the sign,” Tony said, pointing to the placard in front of her nose. “We’re closed.”
“We had a reservation.”
“Two hours ago.”
“It’s Nick’s birthday.”
“Happy tidings, Malone.”
“Appreciated,” Nick said with a nod. Then he offered him the most boyish smile he could muster. “Wings?”
Tony scowled, but Sassy saw him soften.
How could he not? She’d felt the impact of that smile, too. It was so sweet, it wormed its way into her joints, where it did a tingly tap dance.
What the hell, Haseya? she asked herself when a shiver went up her spine. That was the happy little shiver of anticipation of a first date coming to an end and the kiss that came after…
…the kind of kiss that left her knees quaking, her back pressed against the beveled glass of her front door and her mind empty of everything but oh, yes, more, please…
Tony heaved a resigned sigh. He parted the door wider. “Come on in.”
“Yes,” Nick said, the boyish smile morphing into something triumphant, almost wicked, something she recognized from their shenanigans through the years. This was the Nick she knew best.
As Tony held the door open for them, she turned her attention fully on him and gleaned a tiny glimmer of amusement. “You were going to let us in all along, weren’t you?”
“There’s something about watching the two of you beg,” Tony said as he flipped the lock on the door again.
“You’re pure evil,” she muttered.
“What can I say?” Tony asked. “It’s my new kink.”
“Whatever keeps you warm at night, Tony, my friend,” Nick said magnanimously. The chairs had been stacked upside down on the tables. He pulled two down and righted them. Pulling the first out for her, he kept his hands braced on the backrest as she lowered to it.
It was a courtesy he’d offhandedly performed for her countless times. Had she ever dwelled on it before?
She could feel the thought tumbling around in the messy hamster wheel of her mind.