Page 10 of Quit Playing Games with My Heart

Worst of all, I’d kissed him in the café, while we were both technically on the clock for the event. I could have waited until we’d locked up and left, or until Brian was over at the house I shared with my brothers, which he was more and more lately. But I hadn’t done any of that. I’d just gone for what I wanted, and in the end, Brian had run away.

“I heard all about how things went last night,” Gilbert said as he walked into the office on Wednesday morning.

I’d been sitting sprawled in the desk chair, staring at nothing, my lips tingling as they remembered the contours of Brian’s mouth and his taste. My brother’s arrival had me jerking to the point where I could have slipped out of the chair and sitting straighter.

“It was a lapse of judgment,” I defended myself. “I shouldn’t have done it. I’ll face whatever consequences there are.”

Gilbert froze on his way to the smaller desk at the side of the room. He looked at me as if I’d sprouted antlers. “The games night,” he said in a voice that said he thought I was being weird. “I was talking about the games night.”

“Oh,” I said, face heating.

Gilbert broke into a teasing chuckle as he walked the rest of the way to the small desk. “Although I did hear another rumor about last night,” he added as he sat down and turned on his laptop.

Mortified, I slumped in my chair. “I wasn’t thinking,” I said. “It was totally inappropriate.”

“Yeah, it was,” Gilbert continued to laugh, focused on his computer and not me.

“I really do know better,” I went on. “I won’t let it happen again.”

Gilbert flinched and swiveled in his chair to gape at me. “What do you mean, it won’t happen again? You and Brian have been circling around each other for ages now.”

It was my turn to stare incredulously at him. “He’s an employee. You know the rules.”

Gilbert sent me a sideways look before facing his computer again. “Last time I checked, we were the ones who make the rules around here.”

“True,” I nodded, trying to focus on my own computer and the purchase orders I needed to complete before noon. “But you remember what happened with Matt and Melissa.”

Gilbert huffed a loud laugh. “God, they were insufferable. Both when they were head over heels in love and after everything blew up. I just wish they’d both quit and spared us the grief of having to fire them. That sucked.”

It had more than sucked, but again, that’s why the rule discouraging employee dating had been put into place. Both Matt and Melissa had been good workers who had brought something special to Common Grounds. Losing them had been a pain.

A few more minutes passed, and I was just about convinced I’d gotten away with my indiscretion without too much teasing when Gilbert spoke up again with, “Personally, I think the two of you make a cute couple. And if the two of you working together and doing other things together means you come up with ideas like games night, I’m all for it. Just try to keep the noise down if you do your collaborating at our house in the wee hours of the night.”

I sighed and frowned at him. “It’s not like that. We’re not going to⁠—”

My insistence that I wouldn’t end up with Brian on his back in my bed with his ankles by my ears was cut short by the teeth-clenching sound of a jackhammer starting up outside, just on the other side of the office wall.

“Goddammit,” Gilbert hissed, slamming down the top of his laptop. “This noise has to stop.”

He got up and marched out of the office, looking like he would singlehandedly fight an entire army to gain a little peace for the café.

I hated to say it, but I was glad he left. I was still so edgy with emotion and pumped with memories of Brian that I would have only embarrassed myself if he’d kept pressing and teasing. And I had work to do. Not only were the purchase orders still lingering, the first tournament-style games night that I was in charge of was tomorrow, and I still needed to rustle up business for it. Brian might have been cute and exactly my type, but I’d be damned if I let him win in our little games night competition.

I’d just finished the purchase orders and submitted them when there was a knock on the office door. When I glanced up to find Brian standing in the doorway, looking somehow gorgeous, even though he just wore the standard black trousers and green polo with a Common Grounds apron. The man didn’t need to do anything at all to take my breath away.

“Hey,” I greeted him, smiling way more than I should have. Although under that was a pulsing, frazzled fear that I’d ruined everything and wouldn’t be able to fix it.

“Hey,” Brian echoed me, his smile uncertain. He took a few steps into the office and just stood there, watching me like I might leap over the desk and kiss him again.

Whether that was something he wanted or dreaded, I couldn’t tell.

“What can I do for you?” I asked, way too stilted and boss-like once the awkward silence between us had stretched on for too long.

“Diccon just checked the comment box from last night and I thought you’d like to know what people are saying,” Brian said, loosening up a little and striding quickly over to the chair by the small desk that Gilbert had vacated to go on his mission of vengeance with the builders.

“Oh, great,” I said, pivoting my chair to the side so I could face him more directly. “How did people like it?”

“They loved it,” Brian said, a big, adorable smile spreading across his face. “We’ve got two categories of reactions, for the most part. There are the people who came in groups who say Common Grounds is the perfect place to host something like this and that they’ll definitely come back.”