Just Jelly Beans and Jealousy (The Reed Brothers 2.5)

Emily frowns. “What happens when you have to kiss some strange guy?” she asks.

“Then I guess I get to kiss some strange guy.” I shrug. I can’t get out of it now. “I’d hoped that Sean would, you know… But he didn’t.”

“You’ve got yourself in quite a predicament,” Emily says.

I flop down in a chair. “Tell me about it.”

“Why did you want to be just friends?” Friday asks. “I don’t think you ever told me. It’s pretty damn obvious you have feelings for him.”

“I was afraid,” I admit. “I can’t live without him. He’s my best friend. What if we start dating and then it all falls apart? I will lose him forever.” I shake my head. “I just can’t let that happen.” I wince. “I may have made a mistake giving him that piece of paper, but I’m going to chance it. If I don’t, I’ll never know. I love him. I just need for him to love me back.”

“What mistake?” Emily asks.

“What piece of paper?” Friday asks right after.

I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll either show up or he won’t.”

I slide on my sandals and pick up my jar of jelly beans. It’s big and heavy, but I don’t have to walk too far. “You guys want to come?” I ask.

Friday snorts this time. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

We walk up to the booth, and I set up my display. Emily and Friday help me take pledges for a solid hour. People write their names and guesses on a piece of paper, and Friday sorts through them as they turn them in, tossing out the ones that aren’t even close. We keep the two closest to the actual number, both over and under. There will only be one winner, but it’s whoever comes the closest that will get to kiss me.

I see Sean in the crowd. He’s walking with Logan and three of his brothers. There’s a wide path around them. They are some fearsome-looking boys, that’s for sure. They’re also head-turners in every sense of the word. But none of the Reed boys are as handsome as Sean. His brown eyes meet mine, and he looks away. He pulls his baseball cap down low, shielding his eyes in shadow so I can’t even see them.

Logan hands me a ten-dollar bill and ten guesses.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Emily breathes.

He winks at her, and she crosses her arms under her br**sts. He crooks a finger at her, and she shakes her head. She signs something to him really quickly. He laughs out loud and signs back. All the tension leaves her body, and she deflates.

“I’m not going to kiss you,” I tell Logan. “Give him his money back.” I motion toward Emily.

But she just sorts through his entries and keeps one out to the side. I take it from her. It’s close. It’s really close.

“Emily,” I warn.

She smiles at me. I have no idea what’s going on.

Logan’s brothers all have guesses, too, and each of them hands me a stack of tickets. Emily and Friday sort through them and pull another one out, discarding the one that belonged to Logan. Thank God. Emily would kill me if I kissed her boyfriend. I wouldn’t be able to do it. I just wouldn’t.

So far, Logan’s brother Matt is the closest, but I can’t tell him that.

Friday and Emily keep taking the money as I talk with the men who stop to buy tickets. When the hour is up, my heart is racing and my pits are sweating. Logan hands me a tissue and points to my brow. I blot it dry.

On the hour, the bell rings and the announcer calls me to the stage. “And now for the results of the kissing contest,” the announcer says. He looks at Friday who has the winning ticket in her hand. “Do we have a winner?”

She nods and walks across the stage. She stops and takes a bow when she gets catcalls and whistles. She’s very Katy Perry-pretty with her tattoos, vintage dress, and old-fashioned hairstyle. She puts the winning ticket in the announcer’s extended hand.

“And the winner is,” he sings. He waits, opening the folded piece of paper slowly, drawing out the suspense. I can barely hear him over my own heartbeat, which is thumping like crazy. Is it too late to back out? Shit. I don’t want to do this. “The winner is the person who guessed twelve hundred and forty-eight!”

The crowd is silent, and all the participants look to one another. But then I hear a thump, thump, thump, thump as someone comes up the stairs onto the platform. I see the baseball cap before I see the rest of him, and I hope to God that’s Sean’s cap. But Sean didn’t even buy a ticket. Not a single one.

Yet it’s his brown gaze that meets mine. It’s his baseball cap, and they are his tattoos. They’re his broad shoulders and his long strides that eat up the distance between us.

He turns his hat backward and looks down at me. He stops with less than an inch to spare between us. “Congratulations,” I squeak out. “You didn’t even buy a ticket. How did you…?”

“I bought one hundred and forty-two tickets, dummy,” he says.

My heart trips a beat. “You did?” All he had to buy was one. I put the winning number on the piece of paper I gave him.

He nods, and he takes my face in his hands. His thumbs draw little circles on my cheeks as his fingers thread into the hair at my temples.

“You didn’t look at the paper I gave you….” My heart is pounding like mad.

“What paper?” he asks. His smile is soft and inviting, and I want to fall into him.