I look at Kace for confirmation, and he shrugs. “Smithy’s got a better handle on the gossip around here than I do, but I never got the impression that my sister was a fan of the change in their relationship.”
“Your sister?” I ask.
“Abbi Matthews. She’s the chef at The Orchid’s restaurant and one of Brinley’s best friends.”
I nod. “I met her last night.”
Smithy grins. “Right. I hear you cornered Brinley in the hall, and she ran out.”
I turn to him, brows raised, because seriously, we were alone in that hallway.
Smithy points to the tables by the front window. “Those spots have a great view of the bathroom hallway and people around here like to talk. There’s not much that happens in my bar that I don’t know about.”
Kace snickers and shakes his head. “Let me get this straight. You show up all macho rich guy after not seeing her for a decade, corner her in the hallway, and tell her you’re here for her, and she runs away from your cocky ass like you’re some sort of creeper.” He chuckles again and sighs. “Jesus, that’s good.”
“Thanks for the support, Kace,” I say.
He stills his beer halfway to his lips and shakes his head. “What? Did you really expect her to wait for you all this time? That’s not how these things work.”
Smithy leans forward. “Yeah. How’d you even know if there’d still be a spark there? What if she’d gotten ugly or developed some sort of unidentifiable stinky cheese smell?”
Kace and I both blink at him. “That’s oddly specific,” Kace says, brow arched.
“Happened to a girl I knew once.” Smithy shakes his head sadly. “She was a tiger in the sack, but that smell was always right there beneath the surface.”
“How . . . unfortunate,” Kace says.
Smithy shrugs. “She got married recently. I can only assume her new husband has sinus troubles. Either that or he also smells like Limburger.” He sighs. “Anyway, obviously Brinley doesn’t stink and is still the stuff of wet dreams, so—”
“Dude, she’s your cousin,” Kace says.
Smithy turns up his palms. “By marriage and whatever. You can’t tell me you don’t think Abbi is fuckably hot.”
Kace chokes on his beer, then returns it to the table with a clunk. “What the hell, asshole. She’s my sister.”
Smithy rolls his eyes. “Objectively speaking.”
Kace turns to me with a pained expression that seems to say, “Can you believe this idiot?” but I can only laugh.
“I think what Kace is trying to say, Smithy, is that for most of us, there are certain women in our lives we can intellectually see as beautiful, but our brains don’t connect them with sex.”
Smithy makes a face. “Huh.”
“And if you ever refer to my sister as fuckably hot again,” Kace says, nodding in Smithy’s direction, “I’ll punch you so hard in the nuts, you’ll feel ’em when you brush your teeth the next day.”
“Noted,” Smithy says, but his grin reveals he’s not really worried. He turns his attention back to me. “What I’m saying, man, is that’s a lot of faith to come back for Brinley out of nowhere.”
“It wasn’t out of nowhere.” I look at Kace, wondering how much his sister tells him. Of course, I don’t know how much Brinley told Abbi about the last time we met. “I ran into Brinley in Vegas in September. We spent—” I almost say “spent the night together” but catch myself. I don’t want to start Smithy down that path. “We spent some time together.”
Kace frowns. “Right, Abbi said something about Savvy and Brinley going to Vegas for Brinley’s twenty-seventh birthday.”
“And one week later, she had Hallison’s ring on her finger,” Smithy says. He must see the shock on my face, because he cringes. “Sorry. That probably sucks for you to think about. Like, how much did you fuck up that night together if she came back here and hitched her horse to the guy she’d been passing on for years?”
Kace calmly lifts a hand and covers Smithy’s mouth. “Excuse him. We’ve looked into it, but there’s no known cure for this mouth.”
Did she get engaged because of what happened in Vegas? Or did she come to Vegas because she was trying to make a decision about the engagement? And if it’s that, then why the fuck did she come home and say yes?
I don’t believe it’s all just a coincidence. Brinley doesn’t make decisions impulsively—save for one Vegas wedding she can’t even fucking remember.
I push my beer away, my stomach suddenly too sour for even a sip.
Smithy peels Kace’s hand away from his mouth. “At first, we thought maybe she was pregnant, but then they started talking a May wedding and she never got a bump, so clearly not.” Smithy shrugs, then his eyes go comically wide. “What if she got knocked up with your kid?”