Neanderthal by Avery Flynn

Chapter Thirty-Three

Griff

The Beckett Cosmetics boardroom was a glass fishbowl in the middle of the fifty-second floor at the crossroads of an extra-wide, north-south hallway and another going east-west. On a good day, Griff hated the exposure that had obviously been Nash’s idea, but today it made his skin crawl. Everyone walking by on their way to the employee kitchen could see them sitting there like gorillas at the zoo—even worse was the paranoia that they could hear him.

Talking with his cousins had never bothered him, and communicating with the other folks in R&D wasn’t a problem because the lab was full of introverts and millennials who only wanted to converse via text or email. However, that didn’t mean the idea of having someone else overhear his not-thought-out-to-oblivion comments to his cousins didn’t give him the cold sweats. He’d spent way too much time facing down the disappointed disgust of his father followed by a warning about showcasing all the areas he lacked proper mental acumen not to have his flight-or-fight response kick in at even the thought of talking in front of people.

Especially about what happened this morning with Kinsey.

He kept his gaze on the row of numbers on the report he was white-knuckling and gritted out, “She left.”

“What do you mean, she left?” Dixon asked from his spot at the head of the conference table.

Griff concentrated harder on the row after row of typed digits until they got blurry around the edges. “She was asleep when I got in the shower, and by the time I got out, she was gone.”

He’d come out of the bathroom still half wet, a towel wrapped around his hips, so he could get another peek at her sleeping in his bed. The sight of her earlier when he’d gone into the bathroom had been better than a double shot of espresso after an all-nighter. It was like getting a sneak peek at the future, and he liked that. It settled something that had always rattled around in his chest like a loose Lego brick, the extra one that was left in the clear plastic bag for step five.

“Maybe she had an early meeting,” Nash said. “Or maybe she was weirded out because she had morning breath. Or maybe—”

Griff shook his head, cutting his cousin off before he could invent another ridiculous theory. “I told her I loved her.”

That had to have been it. He hadn’t meant to say it, but she’d taken down all his walls during sex and it just…came out. She’d stilled in his arms the second the words slipped out of his mouth, but then when she melted against him half a second later, he figured it was gonna be okay and that he hadn’t fucked up everything. Again.

Dixon let out a harsh gust of breath. “For a guy with a big brain, you sure can make some dumb-ass decisions.”

Well, he might as well admit to all of it.

“Then I fell asleep,” he said.

Nash plopped down into his chair, laughing so hard, his whole face turned red. “Jay-sus, Griff.”

“I know.” He sank into his chair. Way to go, moron. “I fucked up.”

Nash, still grinning like a complete asshole who’d just taken a massive hit of nitrous oxide, started fiddling with his pen, switching between tapping it against the table and repeatedly pressing the button on top. Anyone who didn’t know him would think he was being annoying on purpose, but Griff knew this meant an idea was forming. Would it be a good one? That was a toss-up, but the odds were pretty good in his favor.

“I think you’re all looking at this wrong,” Nash said. “This could be the best possible thing.” The tap-tapping of his pen against the edge of the walnut table went into overdrive. “It’s all out there. So you don’t press it, but you’re cool with it being in the open.” He flicked the pen so it rolled across the table to Griff. “You’ve told her, so now you just have to show her.”

Griff ran the possibilities, everything speeding through his head like that person-doing-mental-math meme. The odds were against it working, but they were better than his chances if he sat down with Kinsey and explained to her that he’d fallen in love with her the second he heard her tell the numb nut twins the solution to their never-ending argument. It sounded laughable to him, and he knew it was true. Kinsey would probably back away slowly and never be alone with him again if he pushed his case now. Instead, he could do all the things to show her that he was partner material.

He looked up from the report, realization a concrete block in his stomach. “I need to learn to be a boyfriend.”

“You mean you didn’t figure that out from what’s her name in Canada?” Dixon asked as he balled up a page of his copy of the report and tossed it at Griff.

He easily caught it before it could smack him in the face and shot it back at Dixon, hitting him square in the center of the forehead.

One time. He’d lied to his cousins one time when he was in high school about having a girlfriend in Canada. They’d given him shit about it ever since. “Fuck off, Dixon.”

The asshole just laughed. Griff tried to keep his snarl in place, but it was impossible. It was just too fucking funny. God, he’d been an idiot—not that he’d admit that.

Nash cleared his throat, all the pen-fidgeting gone. “Maybe if you’d done less fucking around and more relationshipping, you wouldn’t be so clueless right now.”

A direct shot that had Griff squirming in his chair. “Relationshipping isn’t even a word.”

The fucking part was fun, everyone had a good time, no one got attached, and it never happened with the same woman more than a few times because everyone knew the score. All of that, though, had been nothing like what had gone down between him and Kinsey last night.

“Maybe not,” Nash said. “But I notice you aren’t arguing about the truth of what I’m saying—”

“Assholes, can we focus on what’s important here?” Dixon interrupted before Nash could dial in his inner Aunt Celeste and get all deep and meaningful on them. “You gotta cook for her.”

Of all the solutions his cousins could have offered, that was pretty much the last one he’d been expecting. “What?”

“Show that you aren’t some make-me-a-sandwich Neanderthal,” Dixon said, propping his forearms on the table and leaning forward the way he did when he was working the Beckett Cosmetics board of directors so they’d vote the way he wanted. “Show you have layers, that there’s more to you than grunts and an ill-timed ‘I love you.’”

“It’s a perfect date three,” Nash said, using that smooth, confident, trust-me-I-know-what-I’m-talking-about tone that either got him death glares or 100 percent trust; it never landed anywhere in between. “Plus, she’s already been to your place. Did you show her your Lego room?”

“I didn’t give her a tour. We were busy.” It had pretty much gone hallway to bed.

Pretty much?

Fine. It had gone hallway to bed. He’d been too focused—bordering on obsessed in the non-stalker way—with Kinsey and the way she reacted to his touch and how he could get her to make that sexy moan again to even think of going anywhere else. Hell, it had taken all of his brainpower not to just sink down on the hard floor of the front hall and fuck her against the marble.

“Think with the big head, Griff,” Dixon said, the look on his face showing he knew exactly where his cousin’s thoughts had gone. “If you’re gonna win her, you gotta think with the big head.”

For once, Nash didn’t have anything to say, which was weird enough that Griff took a closer look at his cousin, who was holding his phone under the table and grinning at it like a fool.

“What are you doing?” Griff said, already knowing in his gut whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good.

Nash looked up, his eyes blank for half a second before he pulled it together. “Texting Kinsey about your dinner date tomorrow.”

Yeah right. The asshole was definitely up to something.

“I can talk to her,” Griff said, ready to fight off whatever shit show was about to go down.

“How do you grunt over text?” Dixon asked, chuckling at his own joke.

He flashed back to the parking garage and everything he’d said to Kinsey in that moment when he’d forgotten the rest of the world even existed outside of the two of them. That wasn’t just out of character for him to talk that much. It was out of any possible consideration. He wasn’t that guy, the kind in touch with his emotions who shared his thoughts—even the dirty ones. But with her? It had just happened. He couldn’t stop himself. He just talked.

His gaze dropped back to the report on the table in front of him, but he didn’t see it. He was seeing her. “I can talk to Kinsey.”

For a second, neither Nash nor Dixon said anything. Then Nash let out a low whistle.

“Well, shit,” Dixon said. “You really are fucked.”

Not that Griff would admit it out loud, but his cousin had never been more right about anything in his life.