Annie nods. “I know right, my man has great taste. I mean, hello, heisdating me.”
We head to the back of the room, past bodies guzzling free beer and eating tiny canapés and Vietnamese rice paper rolls.
Annie grabs three plastic cups from the counter and hands us one each. A cute, dark-haired guy literally covered in tats from neck to foot, slides up to the counter I’m leaning on.
“Hey, Annie. You didn’t introduce us,” he says with a thick Australian accent.
She raises a brow and looks down her nose at him—and yeah, okay, sometimes my new friend Annie is a total dick. “Mace, this is Clementine and Lo.”
He frowns. “Lo? What kind of name is that?”
Maybe Annie isn’t the only dick in this room.
“Well, I was just about to ask you the same thing, but with your name.”
“Mace is short for Mason.”
“Oh my god, your accent is adorable.”
“Fuck me,” he murmurs, shaking his head. “Please tell me you didn’t just call me adorable.”
I smile with my cup to my lips. “In a very rugged, Aussie kind of way?”
“Alright,” he says, nodding. “I can get on board with a little Aussie fandom. Let’s start again. G’day, I’m Mace.”
Clementine laughs and throws her arm around my shoulder. “And she’s smitten.”
“I’m not smitten.” I shrug her off and hold out my hand for him to shake. “I’m Harlow, but my friends call me Lo.”
Mace grabs my hand and jerks me toward him. My drink sloshes over the side of the red Solo cup, as this complete stranger mashes his lips down on mine. My eyes are wide open in surprise as he kisses me, and his are too, but his have a playfulness in them that is oddly sexy.Cocky as all hell, but sexy nonetheless.
“Jesus, Mace,” someone calls from the stairs. “Will you quit assaulting the potential clientele? You’re gonna get me shut down before I’ve even had a chance to open.”
Mace releases me a beat later and I giggle like a damn kid as I step back and glance at the newcomer, the tattoos, the hair, the overwhelmingly large physique that I wanted to climb like a tree the second I first saw him standing next to me in the bar three months ago. “Oh my god! SVD?”
“Freckles?”
“Freckles?” Annie and Mace ask at once.
Annie’s gaze darts between us. “You two know one another?”
“Yeah, we met once.” Gabe’s lip tips up in the corner in one of those half smiles and my stomach dips.
“Oh shit,” Clementine says, taking a large gulp of her drink.
Oh, shit is right. If I’m reading Annie’s irate expression correctly, this guy,mySouthern Viking guy is actuallyherguy.Goddamn it.
“Yeah, um ... Gabe saved me from my ex one night at a bar.”
“He did?” Annie’s icy glare could rival the White Walkers. “How nice of him.”
“Oh, it wasn’t like that. He just pretended to be my boyfriend so I wouldn’t sleep with my ex—you know ... this is really a great space here. I think I’m going to go look at some of the tattoos.”
I attempt to slink away but Annie grabs my arm, as in she literally grabs me and digs her perfectly manicured claws into my flesh. “I think I’d like to hear the rest of this story.”
“Um ... okay, but ... ow!” I glance pointedly at her white-knuckled grip on my wrist. “Can we lose the bear claw, Annie?”
She releases me with a tight smile and glares at Gabe. “Babe, do you wanna tell us the rest of the story?”