Neanderthal by Avery Flynn

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kinsey

Kinsey stared at her phone.

Griff had been taken over by aliens. He had to have been. This was a lot of words.

GRIFF: Had a great time with you the other night. I really appreciate you helping me out with these dates. I owe you huge. Our next date is across the harbor at the Paint and Sip place. I know it’s weird, but I’m hoping you’re still game. Promise I’ll make it up to you.

So.

Many.

Words.

KINSEY: So many words. Are you okay? Have you been kidnapped and is this a call for help?

GRIFF: Nash.

Kinsey relaxed back in the chair. That explained it. His cousin had either stolen Griff’s phone or held him at gunpoint. But in just one word, she knew her man was back. Wait. No. Not her man. Her man was her fake fiancé, Todd. Griff was Morgan’s older brother. That was all. Nothing more. Definitely not the guy she kept thinking about at odd hours.

GRIFF: So this paint thing?

KINSEY: Sounds great!

She hit Send and immediately regretted the exclamation point. Too young. Too enthusiastic. Too much, as if she was about to lie and say oh-my-God-I-dreamed-about-you-last-night-and-it-was-ah-mazing. That was not the look she was going for. Not even close.

The last thing she needed was to get distracted from work. That’s why she’d moved to Harbor City: job of her dreams. Boss of her nightmares, yes, but the job was exactly what she’d been dreaming about since she’d mixed up her first face mask from a kit Meemaw had found at Michaels. She wasn’t going to lose this opportunity because everyone thought she was too young and too country for it. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to mess it up because she lost sight of her goal because she couldn’t stop looking at Griff, who was a huge, muscular, tattooed genius of a distraction.

GRIFF: Pick you up at seven?

KINSEY: Perfect!

Fuck her life. There it was again. The subconscious why-don’t-you-use-your-extra-key-to-let-yourself-in-and-ravish-me exclamation point.

She needed help. She needed to kill off Todd. She needed to have a million orgasms, the kind that left a person breathless, mindless, and jelly-kneed. A million of those might burn her battery stash or give her carpal tunnel, but a few would do a body good.

Sadly, stress masturbation had its place, but that wasn’t what she was in the mood for. First she needed a long bath, the kind with bubbles, water hot enough to turn her skin pink, and tons of steam that would make all her worries evaporate.

Taking advantage of the alone time because Morgan was at barre class and would be bringing home dinner for the both of them after, Kinsey crossed over to her bedroom door and closed it. She peeled off her top and let it drop to the floor as she walked to the en suite bathroom, then reached behind her and unsnapped the costs-a-fortune-but-still-hurts bra. She slid the straps off and let it drop, leaving only wide indentions on the tops of her shoulders as the kind of tit-deep relief that only came with setting the girls free washed over her.

Letting out a happy sigh, she turned on the faucet and poured in enough vanilla-scented bubbles to span the tub and then some. While it filled, she stripped off her pants and panties and then grabbed her phone. A quick scroll through her playlists and she found the perfect one, dimmed the lights, and lit a few candles.

Okay, was all of this a bit much? Yes. Was she still here for it? Fuck yes.

Self-care kept her sane, relatively stress-free, and the tub was her favorite place to let her brain unravel all the bullshit she’d encountered—like that asshole in line at Starbucks who’d told her she was being basic by ordering a black coffee. All she’d wanted was straight caffeine and the fact that she had to listen to that doofus before getting it had her reciting the periodic table in her head to keep from popping off on him.

Yeah, the last thing she wanted was for her overactive brain to flash to that jerk while she was flicking the bean. Bath first. Orgasms second.

Twenty minutes later, she was chin-deep in bubbles, her hair pulled up into a top knot, and halfway into the perfect sexy-times fantasy that involved a guy with a brain as big as his biceps when the perfect plan to kill off Todd hit her. Why it always worked out this way in the tub, she had no idea, but she wasn’t about to question it. She had a solution and best of all, with her heart broken because she’d been dumped, people would give her space at the lab to work away her sadness. It was the best of all the worlds—no more Todd and a license to work her face off. Satisfied but a little drowsy, she answered the buzz of her phone without thinking first.

MEEMAW: You won’t believe what that snake did now.

Kinsey giggled. There was no need to ask who the snake was, considering it was bingo night.

KINSEY: Mr. Fairbanks is just doing his job.

The three little chat dots popped up immediately. Oh man. Whatever had gone down in the Elks Lodge, it must have been wild. The old people took their church-sanctioned gambling seriously.

MEEMAW:He cheats.

All that explained it. Ashley Yeats must have won two in a row. Mr. Fairbanks had dated Miss Ashley a million years ago, and now that she was a widow, he had his eye on her. The whole town was watching and waiting to see if he’d be successful in getting a second chance. That, however, didn’t mean he was throwing bingo in her favor.

KINSEY: You can’t prove that.

GRIFF: Can we leave at six thirty instead?

Heart doing a little fluttery thing—obviously, she must have run the bath too hot—she stared at the new message notification from Griff a minute before clicking on it and responding.

KINSEY:Sure.

She’d barely hit Send when a new message notification popped up.

MEEMAW: So I’m assuming you’ve figured out the Todd problem by now?

Her plan was the perfect distraction to get Meemaw to forget about Mr. Fairbanks and his probably cheating ways.

KINSEY: Figured out the perfect way to kill off Todd.

GRIFF: WHAT?!

Kinsey sat straight up in the tub, sending water sloshing over the side. She checked the message she’d just sent and then the name of the person she was sending it to. Then, because maybe things would change if she looked again, she closed her eyes, counted to ten, and then opened them to look again. The information hadn’t changed. She’d sent that last message to Griff instead of Meemaw.

Holding her phone in the air, she sank down under the water to her eyebrows.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

She stayed under until her lungs started sending an SOS and reemerged, wiping away the bubbles from her face before she opened her eyes. She immediately wished she’d stayed under longer.

GRIFF: ON MY WAY OVER

Oh shit.

Oh fuck.

Oh fold her up and make her eat stale store-bought biscuits for the rest of her life.

She scrambled out of the tub, leaving wet footprints across the tile as she hurried as fast as she could to grab her robe and wrap it around her—realizing as soon as she did that drying off with the towel first would have been far more prudent. Now it was sticking to her skin, and she was still dripping water everywhere she went.

The option of drying off disappeared, though, at that second because there was a knock on the front door.

“Kinsey,” Griff called through the door. “We need to talk.”

She closed her eyes and sent up a prayer. Not that it would help. Even Dolly Parton—patron saint of women, corn bread, and country music—couldn’t save her now. Kinsey was well and truly screwed.