“That still sounds so weird.” The woman stepped forward with an enchanting smile, offering me her hand. “It’s great to meet you.” She shot James a curious look as the two of us shook. “James doesn’t introduce us to many of his...friends.”
His friends? What a sweet way to put it, I thought, and that sweetness seemed to match the girl exactly. Everything about her was sweet, from her eyes to her face to her welcoming smile. Something about her just set me at ease.
After our warm handshake, I stepped shyly back to James’s side. “It’s great to meet you as well. James has told me all about you,” I said as a sudden memory clicked and I glanced between them with a grin. “You have great taste in shampoo,” I said.
Her eyes widened, and she clapped her hands in delight. “Has he been using it?” Then, before I could even answer, she whipped around and smacked James playfully on the arm. “I told you that you’d love it, didn’t I? Why do you even question me?”
“Old habits die hard, I guess,” he said with a grin, rubbing the place where she’d slapped him.
There was another introduction that had yet to be made, and for whatever reason, that one seemed to make James a bit nervous. His dark eyes locked on Nick’s, and the two shared a silent, communicative look, a look so intense I seriously wondered if they possessed some sort of telepathy.
“Nick Hunter,” the man said a second later, stepping forward with a sparkling smile on his face. He held out his hand as well, looking me up and down so intently that I felt like he could see all the way to my soul. His shake was polite, but firm, like he was measuring me up, seeing if I met some silent standard, testing whether or not I was good enough for his good friend.
I did my very best to impress him, considering that I had no idea what he was looking for and that I still felt nervous talking to James himself, let alone trying to engage his friends. “Delilah Jones,” I said, stiffening my fingers to match his grip. “Nice move there with the wallet.”
“Thanks.” His face brightened with a genuine smile, one that reminded me a hell of a lot of James’s. “He taught me everything I know, but it’s a sad day when the student becomes the master.”
“All right, all right. Enough already.” James shoved him back with a coy grin on his face. “I had...things on my mind. Now, tell me what the hell you two are doing here, would you?”
A sly sparkle lit Abby’s eyes, while Nick threw back his head like some longsuffering martyr, something else that reminded me very much of James.
“I could hear your bleeding heart all the way across the Atlantic. James, when you need me, you must only call. You mustn’t push our limits like this. It is not healthy.”
A cloud of sweet perfume swept over me, as Abby rolled her eyes and simultaneously slipped her arm through mine. It was a bold gesture, over-friendly to be sure, but for some reason, I didn’t mind in the slightest. In a way, I was comforted by the whole thing.
“Sometimes I don’t even know why we got married.” She rolled her eyes as the men muttered something between them, then burst out with identical laughter at the same stupid joke. “These two are clearly head over heels for each other.”
I giggled nervously, grasping her hand more tightly. “Yeah, their affair seems...pretty intense. On that note, I’m worried your husband will literally bite my head off if I say or do anything wrong.”
Abby waved her hand dismissively. “He’s a kitten really,” she said. “They’re just protective of each other. Ignore it, like I do. And on that note...” she said, then swung her bag out to nudge Nick in the back with it.
He shook back his golden-blond hair and glanced back at her with a breathtaking smile that froze me in my tracks.
“Honey,” she began innocently, “are you going to tell James why we’re really here?”
; For a second, his smile faltered. His sky-blue eyes narrowed infinitesimally before widening with that same childlike innocence I was coming to know so well. “I don’t know what you mean, babe,” he said, somehow turning a term of endearment into a warning with his inflection. “We were just in the neighborhood, so we decided to stop by, and—”
“In the neighborhood?” she quipped sarcastically, putting her hands on her hips. “By that, do you mean Manhattan?” Before he could answer, she turned around and cast her broad smile in the direction of James and me. “The truth is, Nick lost...a little wager. That’s precisely why we’re here.”
“A wager?” James’s eyes lit up with curiosity. “What was it?”
The couple shared a guilty smile before she shrugged a casual shoulder. “I gambled that he could not, uh...do something for five minutes, and I was right.”
We had no idea what that something was, but judging by the roguish blush creeping up Nick’s cheeks, I guessed it was something good.
“I could!” he insisted. “You should give me another try.”
James clapped Nick on the shoulder. “Hey, didn’t they call you ‘one pump jump’ in college?”
“Whatever,” he laughed. “I think that was your title.”
I shook my head. “Definitely not his title.”
Abby chuckled. “Well, it’s definitely not Nick’s.”
We all laughed.