“Hilarious. Don’t listen to her,” I muttered as the doorway to the sandwich place filled with a couple of familiar looking silhouettes. Diesel entered before Bennet and Troy trailed in after them.
“Is my wife inciting rebellion again?” Bennet asked, dropping a kiss on his young wife’s head.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Darling, it’s just a team building weekend. I wasn’t ganging up on you,” she quipped, making me laugh, remembering a recent weekend we’d taken the whole office on a trip to a local paintball place. Then she turned to me and fixed me with a wicked look I was starting to recognize. “I was just telling Darby the deal at the office, and how Diesel and Emily are inevitable. It’s just a matter of time,” Laura said, then picked her glass up and sipped through her straw, as if she hadn’t just made half of the people present completely uncomfortable.
“Very funny. Knock it off or you’ll embarrass Diesel,” Bennet said, ruffling her hair in a way that made her squeal. I looked at Diesel and met his eyes for a microsecond. I felt filthy for a moment, sitting there in front of my brother, still smelling like his best friend. He hadn’t even let me shower, not that I’d wanted to, but still.
“Do you need anything else?” Diesel asked, lowering his eyes to our table.
I shook my head as the other women followed suit. The guys left and headed toward the counter.
“Ok, I see it now,” Darby said, making Laura laugh.
“See what?”
“The chemistry! If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d just hooked up and were in the awkward post hook-up stage,” Darby said. Laura snapped her fingers and nodded to her enthusiastically.
“You nailed it. That’s the vibe today.”
“You can all get lost. Maybe I like Troy?” The third co-worker with Diesel and Bennet would certainly be believable, in that he was sexy as hell. He was tall, broad, andquiet, a simple positive characteristic that Diesel was definitely missing.
“Troy is fine as hell, but he doesn’t rile you up like Diesel does. You think you are both so hard to read, but really, it’s too obvious.”
“Leave me alone,” I muttered as I saw the guys heading back in our direction.
“Emily, what do you say you and Diesel train later in the gym? He needs to cover some basic maneuvers, locks and such that can be used against larger opponents,” Bennet said. He held a takeout bag, so at least I was being spared sitting innocently beside Diesel while we ate with my brother.
“Oh, I’m sure Emily won’t complain about getting pined by Diesel in the gym later,” Laura muttered, just loud enough for the girls to hear. I kicked her under the table, and she smirked. “We have to leave earlier. Don’t forget we have Benji’s band recital,” she said to her husband.
“Don’t forget? I already brought a backup camera in case our phones fail us,” Bennet said, pulling Laura’s chair out and grabbing her tray with one hand while taking her other hand in his.
“Good! He’ll hate that. You should see the hats they make them wear,” Laura commented as they drifted toward the door. Darby, sitting beside me, was looking at her phone, frowning.
“I’m going to head back,” I told her. “You want me to wait for you?”
“No, I’m good. I just need to make a quick call,” she said, giving me a warm smile. She was lovely to work with so far, and far better suited to train me in kicking ass, probably, since she was actually my size and could certainly hold her own. That being said, she only looked the same size as me, when she was probably packed with muscle and I couldn’t do a full push-up. I left Darby and her phone, and went out to the street, drawing up short as I saw that Troy and Diesel were waiting outside. Diesel grinned at me as soon as he saw me and pushed off the wall.
“Going back to the office?”
“Yeah.” I smiled back at him.
“Where is Darby?” Troy asked.
I jerked my head back to the sandwich place. “She needs to make a call.”
Troy nodded, spare as always with his words. He settled back against the wall without a word. Ok, so it looked like he was going to wait for her.
“Let’s go,” Diesel said and shocked me by reaching out and taking my bulging handbag. It looked ridiculously feminine in his large tattooed hands.
“You might not know it, but I am strong enough to carry my handbag,” I teased him.
He shrugged. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to walk beside you and carry your bag. You can pry it from my cold dead hands,” he said.
I let out a peel of laughter at that. “Fine, whatever.”
As we walked, we got closer to Bennet and Laura, just ahead of us. By unspoken arrangement, we slowed. My hand brushed the back of his once, twice, before he reached out and laced his fingers through mine. A thrill ran up my arm.
Shit, I had it bad for this man, though, that was nothing new. I wanted to kiss him and climb into his lap and go home with him after work and ride together to the office the next morning, but we’d agreed to keep the recent development in our relationship under wraps, until Diesel spoke to Bennet. He had some bullshit old-fashioned idea that he wanted to tell Bennet about us before he found out that we were dating.