It was true.
Over the past several years everything had changed. Some of the changes were good though, like the fact that their businesses were doing well and none of them were in danger of becoming homeless anytime soon. Some of the changes were horrible, like Bethany dying. Like Dex losing Grant’s friendship. Like her and Brinley not talking anymore.
She sighed, still feeling weird that no one in her not-so-new-anymore life even knew about Brin. First, she’d had a falling out with her twin, and now with her best friend too—gone out of her life like someone had taken an eraser to them both and leaving a yawning, blank space.
If it wasn’t for her brewery, Evil Pixie, she wouldn’t have anything left.
At least business kept her busy.
She should be going home to work soon, yet here she was, lusting after a man. Maybe it was okay as long as she didn’t tell anyone that her work didn’t occupy a hundred percent of her brain. It only got about seventy-five percent, and she thought that was enough. Work-life balance and all that.
They got to Grant’s office and he went around his desk and settled into the seat.
Wow.
Will’s fiancée, Juliet, had redesigned the club to look classier, but there was something mildly humorous, yet damned sexy about Grant sitting behind a huge executive oak desk while wearing a Kink Monsters T-shirt and beat up jeans. He kicked his booted feet up onto the desk and then put them down again as though he’d thought better of it.
Grant had that irritating, hyper-masculine self-assurance that men have when they knew they could have any woman they want—cocky, arrogant, irresistible. She used to find it funny, but now it turned her on.
He crossed his arms over his muscled chest and studied her as she took the chair opposite him. It all felt very formal, as though she’d been called into the principal’s office. Now there was a roleplay she wouldn’t mind trying with him, although with all of the tattoos and the long hair he might really have to work to make it believable.
“So what’s up?” she asked determined to ignore her imaginings of him in a suit looking severe and disapproving. He had the severe-and-disapproving thing down cold. The suit would just be window-dressing.
His lovely green gaze dipped to her breasts then back up to her face. Wordlessly, he reached a hand between his shoulder
blades and yanked his T-shirt off over his head and threw it at her.
She caught it. “Thanks. Although I have no idea why you are giving me another shirt. I have several of your T-shirts at home. I’m not going to tell you what I do with them, either,” she joked, smiling at him suggestively. Her words would have made him laugh back in the day.
He scowled. Of course. So predictable.
“Put it on,” he said quietly.
“Are you suddenly offended by my breasts, Master Grant?” Dex asked sarcastically. “And is the issue mine, in particular, or just breasts in general?”
He just held her gaze, his expression cold.
“I know, you’re taking holy orders next week and you’re trying to make sure that you’re not tempted to stray from the path,” she teased.
“I want to have a serious discussion with you—a friend conversation. If we’re just going to be friends again, I need you to help me out by not making it impossible to think of you platonically when we’re alone. I know breasts aren’t necessarily sexual, but I can’t talk to you and not think of sex if you’re half naked.”
“You’re welcome to think of me in the context of sex anytime you please. Hell, call me up in the middle of the night if you want. You’re the one who is making this weird.”
“I know. I know!” He pulled the hair tie out of the bottom of his braid and ran his fingers through his hair, undoing her earlier work. “I’ve admitted before that it’s me and not you. And I know the last thing you deserve is to have a best friend dragging his ass around complaining about being friendzoned, but this is hard for me and I’m just asking you not to make it worse.”
Like it wasn’t hard for her?
Pissed, she huffed out a breath. He wanted to act all butthurt? Whatever.
Feeling vengeful, she peeled the tape off her nipples before she slipped his T-shirt on over her head. Maybe she enjoyed the way he couldn’t bring himself to avert his eyes as she’d done it, but she was a bitch like that sometimes. It was only fair, considering that she was now in the position where she was going to have to look at his gloriously muscled and tattooed bare chest and wasn’t allowed to touch. Men always thought they were the only ones with frustrated urges, but then sometimes men were idiots.
The shirt was still warm from his body, and she tried not to let him see how comfy it was after her skin having been slightly cool all night. It smelled like him too—that sharp, clean, masculine scent that had to be his deodorant or something because it wasn’t strong enough to be cologne or aftershave. Maybe it was just him.
Jerk.
“I—” He stopped and scrubbed a hand over his face. “There’s something I wanted to talk through with you.”
She made herself comfortable in the leather club chair, draping her legs over the arm. “Shoot.”