Neanderthal by Avery Flynn
Chapter Twelve
Kinsey
The Becketts were awesome. Meemaw would love them. Kinsey’s sisters would be all over Nash like he were chocolate and they were full-on PMSing. And Griff? Good Lord. That man was completely wrong for thinking she was a disaster, but that didn’t mean her pheromones weren’t reacting to him as if he was 100 percent right.
He’d caught her staring at him about a million times during dinner. One time, he’d even winked at her, one side of his full mouth going up in a completely unexpected teasing grin. Her totally-not-a-disaster response? A whole mouthful of water that went down the wrong pipe. Her gasping coughs had everyone at the table staring at her as Morgan whacked her on the back and told her to put her arms in the air. It had not been Kinsey’s most shining moment.
Neither was dropping a forkful of twirled spaghetti into her lap when she heard that he was on the hunt for a date—not that he wanted one and not that she wanted to date him. She had fake Todd and the found-at-a-flea-market pre-engagement ring. She didn’t date. She had priorities—getting established at work and folks taking her seriously despite her age and outward Southern-sorority-girl exterior. Until that happened, she had her fingers, a drawer full of toys, and a significant collection of female-gaze-centric erotica on her ereader.
Still, she was just now realizing that a whole lot of those stories centered around gruff, strong, and silent types. By a whole lot, she meant pretty much all of them, and oh my God, how in the Great British Bake Off was she supposed to know that that type of tatted-up, burly, quiet, and really-could-fill-out-a-lab-coat guy existed in real life?
Even more, that a prime example lived just on the other side of her bedroom wall?
Good gravy. She was surely gonna burn for all the dirty thoughts she was having right now, because the flames were already licking at all her most sensitive spots.
Lucky for her, when dinner ended, everyone gathered up their dishes and took them into Dixon and Fiona’s kitchen. While everyone else filtered back out into the living room, Kinsey stayed behind with Fiona.
“Don’t you worry about this,” Kinsey said, taking up the prime spot by the sink. “I’ll get everything loaded into the dishwasher.”
And if by doing so, she could have fifteen minutes of alone time to get her shit together before she made an even bigger fool of herself because her friend’s older brother flipped her switch and had her glowing like a bonfire on the beach, then that was a win-win situation if she’d ever seen one.
“Are you sure?” Fiona cocked her head to the side and lifted an eyebrow in obvious disbelief. “Dishes are the worst part of a dinner party.”
Kinsey whipped one of the tea towels with the bright-red flowers off the oven handle and tied it around her waist, Meemaw-style. “It’s the least I can do for showing up unexpected.”
Fiona shook her head, sending her dark ponytail swinging from side to side. “You brought wine, and we love having you.”
“Well, next time when I have an actual invitation to join you,” Kinsey said, “I’ll ignore your dishes. But tonight they’re mine.”
“You’re very stubborn. You’ll fit right in.” Fiona took another look around the kitchen counters that were piled high with plates, glasses, pots, pans, and utensils galore. Just then, Dixon’s voice raised above the din in the other room as he shouted for Fiona to get in there now before Nash forced him to bet their house away. “Oh boy, there’s no telling what Dixon will do without me there to remind him he actually likes losing. Just leave this mess and I’ll take care of it in the morning.”
And with that, Fiona darted out of the room in search of her man, which was fine with Kinsey, since that meant she wasn’t here to stop her from doing the dishes anyway. She glanced at the massive stack of dishes and murmured, “Let’s see how many of you I can get clean before Fiona comes back and stops me.”
“I’ll help.”
Kinsey didn’t have to turn around to identify who had just walked into the kitchen. She did anyway. Griff stood in the doorway, his corded arms crossed over his snug-fitting T-shirt, his gaze firmly on Kinsey. Heat and awareness sizzled across her skin as sure as a touch.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” He crossed the room and took the remaining tea towel off the oven handle. He stared at it for a second before holding it to his waist.
Yeah, there was no way that was gonna happen. If he’d been a swimmer with a narrow waist to go with broad shoulders and long arms, maybe it could work. However, Griff was built like a concrete wall—hard, thick, and covered in graffiti that Kinsey just wanted to trace her fingers over.
For science.
Finally, he tossed the towel over one shoulder and joined her at the sink.
Kinsey might have responded. She wasn’t sure. The nervous energy bounding around inside her had her as jumpy as Meemaw after her fifth cup of coffee.
She had no idea what to say, so she turned on the faucet and started rinsing the wineglasses and setting them on the counter. Griff fell into step with her, taking the glasses and doing the elite Tetris required to fit a dinner party’s worth of dishes into the dishwasher.
They’d gotten through the glasses and the pasta bowls in silence while laughter and good-natured shit talking filtered in from the living room when Griff cleared his throat and said, “You’re not a disaster. I’m sorry.”
“Okay, I’ll bite—tell me more about how you came to this conclusion.” Okay, sure. Meemaw was probably on her front porch right now and had some kind of psychic urge to reach out and smack Kinsey upside the head, but every woman had a right to get her snippy on after someone insulted her.
“I wasn’t talking about you.” He grabbed a massive stack of plates she’d just rinsed off and started slotting them into the dishwasher. “I mean, I was, but I didn’t mean it like it came out.” He stopped in mid-motion and looked over at her, determination and sincerity shining in his eyes. “You’re not a disaster. I’m sorry.”
Something in her chest fluttered, and her insides went a little gooey. It took her a second to realize that she’d been rinsing the same colander for the entirety of what for Griff was likely a whole speech. Yanking herself back to the task at hand, she set it on the counter for him.
Cheeks flushed and hands a little shaky, she took to scrubbing the saucepot with more effort than it needed. “That was a lot of words.”
He grunted his agreement.
That whole caveman thing should have annoyed her. It didn’t. It wasn’t endearing, either. What she felt each time he did that little growly voice thing wasn’t anything close to the kind of word someone’s great aunt would use to describe a puppy. Nope, the way her heart was hammering in her chest and her palms were all sweaty? That was definitely not because she found Griff Beckett endearing.
Good gravy, she was messier than Meemaw’s kitchen that time her sister’s dog Parsnip got into the five Fourth of July blackberry pies cooling on the not-quite-high-enough-to-stop-a-determined-mutt counter. It had taken hours to get rid of all the partial purple paw prints—not to mention the bits of fruit that had somehow ended up on the ceiling.
“Thank you,” she said, putting the rinsed pot on the counter and then picking up the pan with burned pancetta and dried sun-dried tomatoes stuck to it. “I accept your apology.”
He gave another grunt, and she went to work trying to get up all the bits seemingly glued to the pan.
“Can I give it a try?” he asked, taking a step closer so they were hip-to-hip at the sink.
She handed him the pan and the plastic scrubber before moving a step over. The extra space didn’t seem to make a difference in her awareness of him, though. It just gave her a better vantage point to admire the bright reds, blues, and greens of the boiling-flask tattoo on his arm, the liquid inside realistic enough that it seemed to swish from side to side as the muscles on his forearm moved. Above it, designed to fit into the smoke coming up from the flask, was a chemical formula. It disappeared under his sleeve before she could get enough information to figure out what it was a formula for.
“Are you using the dishes as an excuse to hide out from your family?” Kinsey asked, needing to start the conversation again before she got lost in the high-end artwork on his body.
Griff shrugged and put the pan in the dishwasher before shutting the door and starting it.
Wringing out the water from a fresh dishcloth that she’d grabbed off the stack on a shelf above the sink, she started wiping down the counters. Griff echoed her move and went to work on the tomato-sauce-splattered stovetop. It was mesmerizing to watch. He kept his entire attention on the task at hand, each move deliberate and precise. God, what would it be like to be the center of all that focused attention? The idea had her biting the inside of her cheek as she pocketed that thought for later.
“So that bet,” she said, pulling back from the edge of completely inappropriate thoughts. “It sure is something.”
He let out a low, growly sound of acknowledgment.
“So what’s the bio say exactly?” Sure, it wasn’t her business, but she was nothing if not completely and utterly curious.
He stopped and turned away from the stovetop to face her, his expression grim. “It’s awful.”
That reaction she’d been expecting. What she hadn’t was Griff fishing his phone out of his front pocket and pulling up his Bramble bio so she could read it.
Talk for hours? Reforming Neanderthal? Oh, good gracious. Were they trying to kill him?
Deep dive into feelings and emotions? That one even made her feel icky.
Settle back and do nothing? The man couldn’t even do nothing long enough to get through this dinner party.
She took a deep breath, suddenly having flashbacks to her first year in college when she was a braces-wearing fifteen-year-old and had tried to rush a sorority in an ill-figured attempt to better fit in at college. It had gone about as well as could be expected. There was no way she could let another human being go through that level of awkwardness if she could help. But what was the best way? The answer came as quickly as they usually did and, after grabbing her phone from her pocketbook sitting on the counter, it took all of forty-five seconds to download the Bramble app.
“Now to fill out my profile.”
His eyes went wide, and he leaned in close, looking over her shoulder at her screen. “What are you doing?”
She typed out a quick bio. “Helping you.”
“This is probably breaking the rules.”
That gave her pause, and she hesitated, her thumb hovering over the Submit Profile button. The last thing she wanted was to make him lose the bet. “Okay, when you set up the bet, what was the rule about who you had to go out on a date with?”
He shook his head. “Just that it had to be the first person to respond.”
“So nothing about it being a person you already knew or who knew about the bet?”
He made a grunt that her brain translated to no.
“Well, we don’t have any time to waste, then.” She hit Submit on her profile and then narrowed her search for matches to a ten-block radius. Griff’s profile was third in her rotation. She hit Like and sent a message with a waving emoji, then grinned up at him. “Looks like you have a date.”
His face was only inches from hers. Her mouth went dry, and her heart went into overdrive as the air thickened with promise.
Oh God. What in the hell had she done?
