“You do today. You didn’t even look this happy when you heard you were going to the Olympics. Me, I was swaggering for weeks. You just thought it was cool.” He waggled his finger at Tate. “You didn’t have any of this shit going on.”
Tate laughed and shook his head. “What shit?”
“That, right there.” Beckett started on his other skate. “Any other day you’d have told me to fuck off.”
“I would not.”
“Not in an asshole way, just in a don’t-bug-me way.”
“Whatever.” Tate grinned down at his skates as the laces moved effortlessly through his fingers.
He did feel different. He’d felt different from the moment Olivia had entered his life the night before. Lighter. Brighter. Happier. If he just kept the whole “I’ll never see her again” thing out of his head, Tate felt great.
“Thanks for making the right move with Quinn’s sister last night.” Beckett’s words snapped Tate out of his thoughts.
His smile dropped and his chest chilled. He had nothing to be ashamed of. He knew that. Still, he felt…weird about everyone knowing he’d had a fling with Olivia. “What?”
“Quinn’s sister. The cook? She saved our asses last night. I’d hate to think about what would have happened if Matt had kept her out and she’d gone home. God, what a disaster.”
Tate relaxed a little. “Yeah, you got lucky. She’s more of a chef than a cook.”
“Oh yeah?” Beckett tied off his skates and sat back giving Tate a speculative look. “Well, cook or chef, she impressed the hell out of Eden. She wants to fire our wedding planner, who fucked up the scheduling of our engagement party in the first place which lead us to Quinn and her mother, and hire their family to handle the whole wedding.”
Tate lifted his brows. “Wow, that’s great. But you should tell her, you guys can hire Quinn and her mother, but you can’t hire Olivia.”
“Why not?”
Tate felt Beckett’s eyes burning into him as he tied off his laces. He straightened and scanned the ice where all but a handful of kids had arrived. “Because Olivia lives in Paris. She’s only here for a couple of weeks.”
A moment of silence filled the space between them, peppered with shouts and laughter from the kids echoing through the enclosed rink.
“Huh,” Beckett finally said. “You sure know a lot about a woman you briefly before she got dragged into the kitchen. How long—exactly—did you talk to her?”
“I don’t know.” Tate laughed it off and shrugged. “I wasn’t checking the clock.”
More silence followed. More staring.
Tate rolled his eyes. “God, I hate the way you do that.”
“Do what?”
“You know what.” When he cut a look at Beckett, he found his friend grinning. “Fucker.”
“So?” Beckett nudged with too much hope, too much anticipation. “Did you ask her out before she left? Take her for a drink after? What?”
Tate knew his friends and family wanted to see him happy, but sometimes he got confused between what he wanted and what he wanted to do to please them.
Tate leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Flashes of his night with Olivia teased him with the first taste of her warm mouth. That first press of her curves against his body. The first real flutter of life back in his heart.
He had to tell someone. If he didn’t, it would come out in another way, a bad way. If he was going to tell anyone, Beckett was the person he trusted most.
“Yeah.” He exhaled, and with the secret on the tip of his tongue, Tate’s stomach clenched with a blend of guilt and disappointment. “I, uh…I took her home.”
“Cool,” Beckett said. “So you talked to her on the drive? Did you get her number? Did you make a date with her?”
A tingle of laughter rose up in Tate’s gut. He had such a reputation for not sleeping around that even when he admitted to it, no one believed him.
“No, Beck,” he said, glancing at his friend. “I didn’t drive her home. I took her to my place.” It took an extra push of effort to get the next words out. “She spent the night with me.”