“Mind meld,” I deadpanned. “Hand signals are so last year. Seriously, dude. We won fair and square. Now, give us our stuff.”
“Whatever.” Danny all but tossed Alden’s bag at us. “We weren’t going to keep it anyway. Just having fun with you. Good job letting yourselves get suckered into that game, though.”
“We still won.” I held the bag tightly while Alden made quick work of cleaning up our cards and counters. Adrenaline still surging, I wanted to celebrate, but not in front of these losers. Pride made my shoulders lift—pride at Alden for trusting me, and for both of us working together, and a little for myself, at having an idea that actually worked. It was a good omen heading into Vegas.
Also, the combo of adrenaline and pride had me feeling better about the kiss. Maybe I wasn’t totally useless to Alden. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing to kiss him again. A celebratory thing. And okay, a thing I really, really wanted. The chance to be alone again couldn’t come soon enough.
* * *
It was too bad we were already behind schedule, because a couple of beers and a lengthy make-out session sounded like the perfect afternoon to me. But as a second choice, watching Alden enjoy himself at the deli he’d found wasn’t bad. Little smile on his face, he studied the paper menu we’d grabbed from the hostess station like a little kid deciding between ice cream flavors. Blintzes versus latkes was apparently that exciting. I’d wanted to kiss him back at the car, but he’d immediately started fiddling with the GPS, and we’d been a bit too exposed in the game-store parking lot for me to press the matter.
“I still can’t believe we won,” he said as we waited in line for a table.
“I can. We’re the better players.” I didn’t let on that I’d been nervous too. “Especially you. Aren’t you the one who’s always saying you’re better than our competition?”
“Do I really act that way?” Mouth twisting, he bit the inside of his cheek. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re confident about your abilities. It’s one of the things I like about you.”
Blinking, he made an adorable surprised squeak. “One of the things?”
Right then, the server, a woman around our age, arrived to lead us to the table.
“I’m not letting that drop,” he whispered as she retrieved glasses of water for us.
“Look at your menu,” I ordered, insides far too mixed up to give him a real answer. I did like Alden, despite trying hard not to, and it wasn’t just his ability as a player that attracted me. Nor was it how he cared far more than I’d ever given him credit for. Or the fact that he was pretty cute to look at. There was something else there, something more elusive and harder to name.
“Fine.” He gave me an incredulous look, like maybe I’d sprouted some horns. But blessedly, he let the matter drop. “I still can’t decide. If I get both, can we share? You can add a side of some meat for you if you want.”
“Sure.” It was another blatant move to feed me on the cheap, but I was too relieved to protest too much. While we were waiting for our food, we both checked our texts. Necessary, but also another chance to avoid talking. Because if we talked about anything real, that kiss was going to come up again, and I still didn’t have a very good answer for him. I hadn’t been lying—I didn’t regret it, couldn’t regret anything that achingly sweet and sexy, but I also had no clue what to do next. Oh, my body had plenty of ideas, including blowing off the rest of the day’s driving, but my mind refused to let my baser impulses do the driving.
“Professor Tuttle is looking forward to the Denver footage,” I reported to Alden as part of my effort to keep the conversation on neutral subjects. “That should make a good story for him later.”
“How about we don’t tell him about the near deck hijacking?” Alden had that vaguely guilty expression of a kid who’d never been in much trouble.
“What, and miss the chance to look all victorious?” I grinned at him. “Trust me. I can tell it so it doesn’t sound so bad. And he’ll be happy to hear we’re working well together.”
“We did make a good team.” Alden’s ears went pink as if he too might be thinking about the kiss. Good. At least I wasn’t the only one whose brain kept going there. But also bad because it meant we’d have to talk about it eventually and gah.
“See? Great teamwork, no one injured, and all our decks safe and sound. He’ll be thrilled.”
“If you say so.” Even Alden’s eye roll did something to me, made me grin. I was behaving like a fourteen-year-old with a crush, and I needed to rein it in, hit the reset button or something. Funny how before the trip, I’d been so sure Alden’s greatest risk was to my sanity, not my heart. I might take a lot of risks, but never that one. I knew better than to go chancing that kind of hurt. Not that it kept me from wanting more kisses, but I tried to use the reminder to focus on something other than his cuteness.