Neanderthal by Avery Flynn

Chapter Sixteen

Griff

Griff was halfway through reading the morning reports on his iPad while working through the question of what in the hell Nash was really up to with this bet when he walked into the conference room he shared with his cousins for their weekly Beckett staff meeting—also known as shit talking each other while stuffing their faces with the best bagels in the city.

Nash was at the espresso maker set up on the credenza, steaming the milk for his double espresso latte—the one thing he did in perfect and utter silence. He lifted his chin in greeting when Griff set his iPad down in front of his usual chair about midway down the ten-person conference table.

Dixon sat at the head of the table, a black coffee in front of him, and he slathered cream cheese on a toasted everything bagel. “You’re late.”

Griff swiped a blueberry bagel off the tray in the middle of the oak table. “I had stuff.”

He carried the bagel to the toaster set up on the credenza along with a fresh pot of coffee, orange juice, and a chilled bowl of mixed berries. Even with his back to them, he could feel the weight of their stares. The fact that he’d ignored their texts last night about the bet had only delayed the inevitable, but that was all according to plan.

He had his cousins exactly where he wanted them to figure out what was really going on. Nash was up to something, and the surest way to get him talking—not that it was that difficult—was for Griff to keep his mouth shut. So that’s exactly what he did.

His bagel popped up from the toaster, and he stayed silent. He unwrapped the foil on a tab of butter and spread it over the bagel and didn’t move his mouth. And when he loaded up his plate with strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries until they surrounded his bagel like a sea of fruit and then walked back to his spot at the table? Not a fucking peep, no matter how many weighty and expectant looks he got from his cousins. It wasn’t hard; it was pretty much his MO for life.

As his dad loved to tell him, nothing was gained when Griff opened his mouth. Everyone figured out then that he would never be as intelligent as his father, according to said sperm donor.

“Sooooo,” Nash said, dragging the word out as he crossed over to his chair opposite Griff’s and sat down, coffee in hand. “The situation with Kinsey.”

Situation.

Yeah, that was one way to describe it.

A solution that was eluding him was another.

Then there was the one he’d come up with last night while staring at his ceiling until the wee hours of the morning: a total and complete clusterfuck.

“It was her idea,” he said around a bite of buttered bagel.

And a damn good one. If she was anyone else and if he’d given two shits anymore about winning the bet. As it was, it was going to be six dates of shoving how he really felt down in some deep, dark hole so no one—least of all Kinsey—figured out that he was in love with her like the dumb-ass his dad always said he was.

“She’s engaged?” Dixon asked, having demolished his bagel in record time even for him.

Griff nodded and shoved half the bagel in his mouth, not that he needed any help not saying anything.

“And that doesn’t bother you?” Nash asked, ignoring the latte in front of him that he usually drank with all the reverence of an Ice Knights fan getting to view the Stanley Cup.

That he wasn’t but was instead focusing on Kinsey’s engagement had Griff’s hackles up. He wasn’t in the mood for Nash’s games. The man always thought he knew things better than anyone else.

“Why should it?” Griff said with a hefty dash of extra snarl. “Should help me win.”

“No,” Nash said, shit-eating grin firmly in place. “The way to win is not to be in love.”

Griff stabbed a series of blackberries with his fork, his brain going in fourteen directions at once but his aim true as realization sank in. It was so fucking obvious—how in the hell had he missed it? Everything lined up in his head. It really was the perfect way to interpret the rules so that Nash won the bet. Clever bastard. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Griff was the one stuck in the middle of Nash’s trap, he would have admired the simplicity of it all.

“Just as there’s nothing in the rules that says the date can’t be someone who is already attached or someone you know,” Dixon said, not realizing that Griff had worked it all out already. “There’s nothing that says that Kinsey has to return your feelings.”

Fucking A. Being willing to watch each other wallow in the emotional gutters of heartbreak was harsh even for their brand of competitiveness. If Griff bought that bullshit Nash was slinging, he’d be pissed as hell. But he knew his cousins better. Soft touches, the both of them. This was reverse psychology at its most elementary.

Anyway, it wasn’t like he wasn’t already uncomfortably familiar with the sensation of caring about someone who didn’t give a flying fuck about him.

Hello, daddy issues, it’s Griff calling.

Loosening the tightness in his jaw—and giving his molars a break—he rolled his head from side to side like he did before stepping into the ring or sitting down in the chair at the tattoo parlor for the latest addition to his full sleeves. Battle required focus and calm. Usually, it took all his concentration to quiet the billion and one thoughts clanging around in his head—or the sound of Kinsey’s voice, but he wasn’t going into that now. He wasn’t about to give that up to his cousins.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said as he started scanning the latest report on the new extreme hydration serum they were launching next year.

“Because you’re not gonna catch feelings?” Nash scoffed.

“No.” He already had—but his cousins didn’t need to know that. No one needed to know that, because he was going to fix it. That’s what he did. He found solutions to impossible problems, like falling in love at first sight with an engaged woman. Hell, he hadn’t even seen Kinsey before he had fallen over the edge into this mess. Well, he had six dates to climb his way out of the chaos and fall out of love with Kinsey Dalton, because unrequited love was the last thing he needed in his life. “Kinsey Dalton is not going to be the love of my life.”

“That may be the case, but let’s go through the motions anyway,” Dixon said. “When you wouldn’t answer your texts last night, we had a great conversation with Kinsey, setting everything up for tonight.”

Griff grunted an of course. He’d figured that was the case with what Kinsey had said this morning.

“You have reservations at Montclair’s,” Nash said, not even pretending that the place wasn’t Griff’s biggest nightmare.

He let out a groan that he felt all the way down to the jagged scar on the top of his big toe. “You’re kidding.”

His cousins’ evil chuckles told him exactly how much they were not.

Exclusive, expensive, and exhausting—those were the three words Griff would use to describe Montclair’s, the restaurant that had become the it place for dates. According to the media—because God knew he would rather have every tattoo removed than set foot voluntarily in that place. Snobby. Overpriced. Tiny little servings of food. A no-cell-phones rule so he couldn’t monitor his latest eBay auction bids when the conversation with Kinsey petered out—and it would; it always did with him.

Montclair’s was hell on earth, and Griff had reservations.