Neanderthal by Avery Flynn

Chapter Seventeen

Griff

The sky had just opened up and rain started to pelt Griff on the shoulders when he threw open the door to Montclair’s and rushed inside. It wasn’t like he was gonna melt or anything, but looking like a drowned rat in front of Kinsey was not his ideal. His plan was to fall out of love with her as fast as possible, not embarrass himself.

Good luck with that.

Clenching his jaw, Griff ran his fingers through his hair, clearing the sound of his father’s voice out of his head. He’d been ditching the old man’s calls all day and it had him on edge—something he nearly teetered over when he spotted Kinsey chatting with the man in the tux standing behind the host station. Unlike him, she’d found the time to go home and change before dinner.

Her back was to him as she chatted with the maître d’ at the host stand. She’d freed her hair from the morning’s tight ponytail and let it flow down across her shoulders in golden waves and had changed from the all-black work outfit to an icy-blue dress that clung to her curves and had him ready to swallow his tongue. She looked like she’d just walked off an Alfred Hitchcock movie set, the cool blonde who was up to something—the only question was which side she was on.

She turned when the door shut behind him, her smile genuine. “Oh, good. I was afraid you weren’t coming.”

He went to say hi, but nothing came out. Instead, he just stood there with his mouth clamped shut and his eyes wide as his brain took a side trip to a fantasy land where he got to unzip that dress and let it fall to her feet, fill his hands with her tits, and listen to that honeyed drawl as she came on his fingers, his tongue, his dick. The number of scenarios that flooded his mind replaced all other thoughts and plans. His auction strategy, his plans for the next round of safety tests on the new CC cream formulations, his unwinding of Nash’s suspect motivations for this bet, and his half-assed plots to shut down his feelings for Kinsey disappeared.

There was just her, taking up all the space in his head and the calm that settled in his chest even as the rest of him revved up, tempted beyond rational thought into wanting her to fall for him like he had for her—like a two-ton block of concrete tossed into the harbor.

The guy in the tux at the host table held out his hand, palm upward. “Just a friendly reminder that the use of phones is strictly prohibited on the premises, sir.”

That brought Griff back to reality.

She was engaged to someone else.

This was a pity date.

She didn’t want him or to be here.

He needed to accept all of that and fall out of love with her as fast as he’d fallen for her. He could do it—he had to do it—or he was exactly as smart as that box of rocks his dad was always comparing him to.

He tightened his grip on his lifeline to work—not to mention the eBay auction for the vintage 1994 Lego Eiffel Tower set. “No. I have an eBay bid.”

That sounded even sillier out loud than it had in his head, and he gritted his jaw.

The man tapped the sign that stated communication devices were not to be used inside. “Then I’m afraid I can’t let you in.”

So be it. That just made things easier. If he didn’t spend time with Kinsey, then it would be that much easier to ignore this pull she had on him.

Gaze still locked on Kinsey, he took in the way she watched him, with total focus, as if she was trying to unravel him. Oh, honey, I’m already beyond unraveled for you. Shit. That is not what he needed to be thinking about. Instead, his attention should be on winning the Eiffel Tower set that at three and a half feet high was the tallest kit Lego had ever released and came with four elevators and nearly 3,500 bricks. People didn’t put the unopened kits up for sale very often, and the auction closed in half an hour.

“I’m afraid, sir,” the host said, his tone just shy of snide, “there are no exceptions at Montclair’s.”

Griff was about to turn heel when Kinsey reached out, her fingers wrapping around his forearm and sending jolts of awareness straight to his cock, which was already a little too aware of her already.

She smiled at the host. “Can he come out here to check his bid during dinner?”

“That’s, uh, w-well,” the man stammered, the tips of his ears turning red, “highly unusual.”

“I get that,” Kinsey said, squeezing Griff’s arm when he inhaled—as if he was gonna say anything. “But he’s waiting on something really important, and he’d only check it once or twice.” She looked over at Griff, raising her eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you, dear?”

Really, what answer could he give except the one she wanted?

“Yes,” he mumbled.

The other man looked between Kinsey’s apple-pie-and-ice-cream smile and Griff’s scowl, obviously trying to process what was going on. “Okay, I can allow that just this once.”

Griff grunted his assent but made no move to reach for his phone.

And so they all three just stood there blinking until Kinsey hooked her arm through his, tucking herself in close against him. Then she reached in the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out his phone, the feel of her fingers and the friction of the slide dissolving his brain into overcooked oatmeal—but not before he realized he wasn’t the only one feeling an unexpected rush. Kinsey’s cheeks went pink as she snagged her plump bottom lip between her teeth, but she brazened through and dropped his phone into her purse as if that solved everything.

“Excellent,” the other man said. “Let me show you to your table.”

The maître d’ led them into the dining room. They got three steps beyond the pale-blue velvet curtain that shut it off from the entrance before Kinsey tugged on his arm, jerking him to a stop.

“I’m sorry about that; I shouldn’t have”—her cheeks went from pink to red—“taken your phone out of your pocket like that. I don’t know what came over me, I just…” She looked around the room as if the rest of her response was hidden in the soft, dim lighting of the dining room with its private circular booths, curtained off from the rest of the diners. The second she very obviously clocked how weird the setup was, she turned to him, her blue eyes wide. “What is this place?”

Hell?

A matchmaker’s paradise?

The absolute worst place to go with the woman he loved who’d only agreed to go out with him because she felt bad for him?

“This,” Griff said, glaring at the obnoxious movie-set romance of the dining room, “is Montclair’s.”