“And there’s him,” Jess said, almost breathlessly.
Brynn lifted her eyes and from the second she saw the look on her friends’ faces, she knew who they were looking at. The hair on the back of Brynn’s neck stood up and a shiver chased up her spine as she slowly turned her head.
Sure enough, Axel was walking toward her. He was wearing aviator sunglasses, a black T-shirt, and khaki shorts. He looked like he should be on the cover of Men’s Health.
Before he got to their table, a server approached him and handed him a to-go bag. That gave Brynn the opportunity to turn back to her friends and mouth, “That’s him.”
When she glanced back over her shoulder he was only a few feet away.
He lifted his hand and grinned. “Hey, I thought that was you. I was just picking up some lunch.”
“Oh, yep, it’s me!” Brynn wanted to facepalm. Why did she sound so happy about it being her? “Um, Axel these are my friends, Jessa and Ali.”
Jess smiled brightly and Brynn knew she was in trouble. Her raven-haired friend loved to stir the pot, and she had no shame when it came to embarrassing her friends if she thought it was in good fun. “Brynn was just telling us about you.”
Ali kicked Jess beneath the table as Brynn rushed to explain, “I was telling them that my mom has a new tenant.”
Axel’s expressive eyes were blocked from the reflective glasses so she couldn’t tell if he bought it or not.
“So, Axel what brings you to—” Jess continued but was cut off when Axel’s phone rang.
He looked down and Brynn knew who it was, from the way his jaw tensed. “I’m sorry. This is my sister. I have to take this. It was nice meeting you ladies. Nice to see you, Brynn.”
As she watched him walk away she knew two things to be true. One, he looked just as good going as he did coming. And two, his voice had lowered an octave when he’d said it was nice to see her.
When she turned back around, her friends were staring at her with mouths agape. Then suddenly all three of them burst out laughing.
The rest of the brunch was filled with talk of Axel, the wedding, and Jess’s engagement. But there was one thought that kept rising to the surface of her mind: he’d seen her in her dress.
Maybe it shouldn’t make her that happy…but it did.