“Griiiiiiiiiiiiiiff,” Morgan said, putting every ounce of annoying little sister possible into groaning his name. “I told you she was coming. You had time to prepare actual words to say rather than your usual Neanderthal-grunting thing. I promise, she’s not interested, so you don’t have to worry about losing your bet with Nash and Dixon. Kinsey’s engaged. So you’re totally safe and single forever.”
Too bad “safe” and “single” were the last things he wanted to be now that he’d met Kinsey.
It would be fine. He had this. All he had to do was get the woman who kept looking at him like she was ready to personally etch Good Riddance on his gravestone to fall in love with him. Probably using hand signals.
That’s when his sister’s words sank in, and it was like having Mac’s fist connect with his jaw all over again.
He looked down at the gleaming diamond on Kinsey’s left ring finger.
He. Was. Fucked.
Chapter Seven
Griff
Griff’s hair was still wet. It stuck to the sides of his head, and a single line of water slow-dripped from his nape, ran down his neck, and snaked its way south along his spine. The feeling was almost as unnerving as sitting this close to Kinsey and not being able to say a damn word.
Not that he hadn’t tried. It all came out as grunts or a handful of grumbled words. Talking around her was like trying to carry water cupped in his hand across the room—a lesson in futility.
So it was a silent movie on his side of the table while Morgan and Eggsy were yapping back and forth like the two main characters in a screwball comedy from the forties. Sure, those two were arguing per usual, but they were like that, always had been. Him? He’d always been like this, king of the mumblers. Most of the time, he was like that because he had 482 possible responses and couldn’t figure out the right one to use. With Kinsey? He was just too fucking nervous that he’d say the dumbest thing and ruin any chance he had. Not that he had a chance.
Engaged.
Decent-size rock on her left ring finger.
It was a fake diamond, but still it was there, glinting in the light coming in from the big window next to their table. Outside, people were chatting away while he was sitting in the restaurant like his mouth had been glued shut.
He snuck a glance at Kinsey over the top of Wakin’ Bacon’s ten-page menu. Her blue eyes met his. His gaze dropped immediately back to the menu page showcasing the twenty-five types of waffles available (chocolate cherry for the win).
“How are the biscuits?” Kinsey asked, her attention still focused on the menu. “I mean, nothing can touch Meemaw’s, but I’ve got a hankering.”
It was like coming into a movie when it was three-fourths of the way through and being expected to know all the characters anyway. The challenge of it made some of the wayward strands of his thoughts thread together as he ran through the options. His closest guess was a cat, but that made no sense because cat-made biscuits were definitely not the kind served at a restaurant.
“Meemaw?” he asked.
“My grandma. She makes the best biscuits with enough butter in them to knock your heart straight outta your chest.” Her eyes rounded and she winced, her face squishing up with regret. She reached out and covered his hand with hers and gave it a quick squeeze before releasing it. “Sorry, I know y’all lost your grandma recently. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“It’s okay,” he said, not wanting her to feel bad. He liked talking about Grandma Betty. Really, she’d be pissed if people stopped talking about her. She hadn’t lived her life to be forgotten about. “You sent a pie.”
It had been homemade and wrapped in a red-and-white-checked tea towel with a rooster embroidered on it.
“Mm-hmmm.” Kinsey nodded as she put down her menu. “Sweet potato pecan. It fixes just about everything and, if it doesn’t fix what’s ailing you, at least it makes your belly feel good.” She shook her head, sending her blond hair waving around her shoulders. “You do not want to know the fight I had with Earl at the post office about the fact that dry ice was not a liquid but that it was carbon dioxide in solid form and that it wouldn’t melt, but that sublimation would take it straight from that Ziplocked chunk into a gas.”
She leaned forward, her forearms on the table, the fire in her eyes snapping. “Plus, I’d met all the requirements for regulation three forty-nine in the postal code, but instead of seeing my logic, he just about threw a fit. You’d have thought I’d asked him the oxidation/reduction reagents of carbonyls and alcohols for an organic chemistry test. I was half tempted to tell him all about Carbon-13 NMR just to see the smoke come out of his ears, but then the postmaster came in, and she set him straight.” She sat back, her grin big enough to show matching dimples on each side of her smile. “I know I shouldn’t cause a scene, but good gravy, that was worth it.”
Griff loved the way her brain worked, how it moved from one interconnected topic to another at lightning speed. There were a zillion questions he wanted to ask, details he needed to get about everything, from if she’d share the pie recipe to what regulation three forty-nine was (he’d look it up later).
Instead, all that came out was, “Thanks.”
“For the pie?”
“For thinking of us.” Grandma Betty had left behind a lot of people who loved her, and they’d hung together the best they could.
“Well, of course,” she said, her dimples deepening a bit. “Morgan’s my friend.”
The light caught her ring as she tucked her blond hair behind her ear, taunting him with the realization that he was fucked. He’d met the woman he wanted to marry, and even if he could string together more than five words when talking to her, he was too late.
“You’re engaged.” Damn. Did he sound like Eeyore to her? Because he sure did to his own ears.
“Not exactly.” Her gaze dropped, and her smile faltered just a bit. “It’s a pre-engagement ring.”
“Tell me more.” About anything. He liked listening to her even if she could not, would not ever be his, because he was too fucking late and she was already engaged.
Her cheeks went pink as she fiddled with the napkin in her lap. “Todd lives in Canada. This cute little town in Alberta called Moose River, but someday—once our careers are settled—we’ll get married.”
Then she went back to looking at her menu, flipping the pages like it was a speed-reading contest. Something that felt a little bit like hope—of the fool’s-gold variety, no doubt—had his mind going a million miles an hour. The woman could tell an in-depth story about mailing a pie but only a sentence or two about her almost fiancé? Griff had questions.