His jaw twitches. “Quit reading something into nothing.”
“Whatever. I’m not here for you anyway.” She drops her hand and turns to me. “Brinley said you’re a pool shark.”
I slide my gaze to her table again, but this time Brinley’s busy talking to Savvy and doesn’t see me looking. “Not so much anymore.”
“But you still have some skills, right?” Stella grabs me by the wrist and tugs at my arm. “I need someone to play eight-ball with me who doesn’t totally suck at it.”
I look at Smithy. “Surely there’s someone around here who can play?”
“Nah.” He shakes his head. “Nobody like you.”
I put down my beer. “Sure, but I might be rusty.”
Stella beams. “Not a problem.” She grabs me by the wrist—I’m beginning to understand that she’s become the touchy type since high school—and pulls me away from the bar and not toward the pool tables but toward the booth with her friends.
“You know, you can let me go,” I say. “I’m not going to run away.”
She winks at me as if I just told an inside joke only the two of us would get. “Table first. Then game.”
“Whatever you say.” I don’t know why she thinks she needs to lead me by the hand, but she doesn’t release me until we get to the table.
The girls stop talking when we stop at the booth.
“Brinley, I found you a teacher,” Stella announces.
Brinley looks back and forth between me and Stella. “A what now?”
“Someone to teach you how to play pool.”
Brinley rolls her eyes. “Stella, honey, for the hundredth time, I don’t care about billiards.”
Stella snorts. “Okay, Princess Brinley, but us common folks call it pool, and it’s really just basic adulting.”
Brinley turns her skeptical gaze on me. “You came over here to teach me how to play pooooool?”
Laughing at the way she draws out the word, I shrug. “I thought I agreed to play a game against Stella, but I can teach you if you want.”
“She does,” Savvy says. “She definitely wants.”
Brinley narrows her eyes at Savvy. “Et tu, Brute?”
I shake my head and offer my hand to Brinley. “Come on. Let’s do this.”
She takes my hand and I help her slide out of the booth, but as soon as she’s standing, she pulls her hand away.
Still not a couple. Okay. Message delivered.
“You two versus me,” Stella says. She’s already headed toward the pool tables.
We follow her, and I grab a pool cue from the rack on the wall as Stella loads the table with quarters and sets it up.
“You didn’t need to have your friend ask,” I tell Brinley, chalking the end of the stick before handing it to her. “I would have been happy to teach you without the social gymnastics.”
“I didn’t. Stella’s got a mind of her own.”
“Some things never change.” I remember Stella’s antics in high school. Of all the people who hovered around Brinley all the time, Stella was one of my favorites. There was never anything fake about her.
“I’m sorry about this,” Brinley says, watching Stella set up the table.
“Why?”
“You had your own plans tonight, and she pulled you away from them, from your friends.” She drags her bottom lip between her teeth.
Damn. That’ll always be hot to me. “The guys will still be here in ten minutes. Don’t worry about it.”
Stella rolls the cue ball to our side of the table. “Brinley, you break.”
“Yay,” Brinley mutters, and I chuckle.
“Come on. It’s not that bad.” I position the cue ball and motion for her to strike it. “Just hit the white ball into the cluster of balls at the opposite end of the table.”
Brinley takes the stick and aims, but I stop her with a gentle hand on her wrist before she can take her shot.
“Hold it like this.” I adjust her hand on the stick then position my body behind hers to show her how to line it up.
We lean over the table, and I guide Brinley’s arm as she takes her shot. The cue collides with the other balls with a crack, and I look up just in time to see Stella give me a nod of approval, even though Brinley’s break was too weak to sink a single ball.
Brinley straightens and turns to me with a smile on her face. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?”
I tuck back a lock of her hair, brushing the shell of her ear with my fingertips. “Not bad at all.”
Brinley holds my gaze for a beat longer than necessary before swallowing hard and turning away. “Okay, Stella. Show me what you’ve got.”
Stella takes her turn and sinks a stripe first, followed by four more, before she misses her target.
“Solids, then,” Brinley says, scanning the table. “Okay. Three ball, corner pocket.”
She lines up the shot, and I step behind her to make adjustments, too aware of the heat of her ass against my cock when I lean over her. No doubt this is what Stella was after, but she has no way of knowing this takes me back to Vegas—back to that club with the poles and Brinley’s giddy smile as she showed off her moves. Free, confident, happy.