Free I Still Do by Christie Ridgway Page B

first,” Tom said.
    â€œGetting out of Max’s way?” Will echoed. “Huh?”
    â€œAnd you say you’re ready to experience a bachelor’s life,” Max scoffed. “ Think, bro. Why would a bachelor be happy to get a beautiful woman alone?”
    â€œHuh?” Will said again, blinking.
    â€œI think she has a very kissable mouth,” Max mused, lowering his voice. “Don’t you think she has a very kissable mouth, Tom?”
    â€œOne-hundred percent very kissable,” the youngest Dailey brother acknowledged. “No doubt about it.”
    â€œWho?” asked Will, knowing as he said it he was taking the bait. But surely his brothers couldn’t mean who he thought they meant. He’d told them he knew Emily from summer camp. But he’d also told them that he and Em were just friends. Still, he didn’t believe…“Who’s so damn kissable?”
    â€œVery kissable,” Max corrected. “I’m talking about our hostess, of course. Tom, I’ll give you five bucks to get lost. You won’t even have to walk home, because Will here will drive you.”
    â€œFive bucks?” Tom heaved in a dramatic breath of air. “And leave the smell of that behind? I don’t think so.”
    â€œFive bucks and when you get back to our place you can have that pizza I’ve been saving in the freezer.”
    â€œTwenty bucks, the pizza and that tube of cookie dough. You promise that, then I’ll think about it.”
    Will looked from brother to brother. “You’re talking about Emily? My—I mean, that Emily?” He jerked his thumb toward the kitchen as he glared at the younger men. “Nobody in this house is kissing that Emily, not even for forty bucks, two pizzas and half-a-dozen tubes of cookie dough.”
    Max lifted a brow, a glint of amusement in his eyes. “Not even you?”
    Scowling, Will ignored that. “Just finish up so we can get on with this meal and then get out of here. The three of us together.”
    But the meal went forward at a leisurely pace, mostly due to Emily. She’d set the table they moved back under the new chandelier with two fat cream-colored candles. They didn’t smell at all, Will was happy to note—there was nothing he disliked more than the stench of scented candles. Their flickering light did encourage a man to take a few seconds to chew his food before shoveling in another delicious bite.
    And there was Emily’s attention to his brothers, too. Though Will hoped to God Max didn’t take her polite questions to mean she was returning his interest. He made sure to send his brother meaningful looks that he hoped told the younger man so. Emily was expressing mere curiosity about their lives because she was one of those people who could set a pretty table, serve up good food and also keep dinner conversation going.
    All the while causing him to stare at her kissable mouth.
    The entire time she had Max and Tom talking about their jobs, the apartment they shared, their broom hockey rec league, Will found himself relaxing in his chair and watching her lips move.
    They were a color somewhere between raspberry and cotton candy and while he’d raised sisters and so knew it was likely some lip gloss that helped make them look so tasty, it didn’t detract for an instant from their attraction. Or his desire to do that very thing—taste them.
    He pushed his plate away from the edge of the table and stretched his legs out, avoiding his brothers’ equally long limbs with the ease of long practice. They were laughing about something with Emily now, and the candlelight was shining in her eyes and shining against the very center of her lower lip where she must have just licked it.
    He thought of licking there, too, but at the moment was just content to think about it, basking in the warmth of good, hot food in his belly and in the easy company of his brothers.