Page 86 of Holding On To Good

“Twenty,” he agreed, digging his wallet out of his pocket. He pulled out a twenty. Waved it at her. “I’ll even give you three chances.”

Verity smiled, all confident in her superior female powers of deduction and intelligence. “I’ll only need one,” she said, pulling a neatly folded twenty from her pocket. “And it won’t be a guess but sound reasoning based on years of research, data collection and previous experience.”

She unfolded the twenty and did her best to smooth out the wrinkles before placing it on the table.

Miles set his cash down and succumbed to Verity squirting more hand sanitizer into his palm—they’d all heard her do you know how gross and dirty money is? lecture before.

“Okay,” Verity said, squeezing enough sanitizer into her palm to clean her hands, Urban’s hands and the entire tabletop. She rubbed it in, looking like some maniacal villain trying to come up with a plan to rule the world. “Let’s see… last night you” —she pointed at Toby— “said something to him” —jerked her thumb in Urban’s direction— “about the nature of his and Willow’s relationship suddenly and magically changing from pretend platonic—”

“It wasn’t pretend platonic,” Urban muttered, slouching in his seat.

“—to holy God, the sexual tension pulsing between you two is setting off the Richter scale—”

“About knocked me on my ass when I accidentally walked between them,” Toby interjected.

“—and then you,” Verity continued with a wave in Miles’s direction— “made it worse by bringing it up today. But instead of just admitting you figured it out all on your own, you decided to blame him” —a nod at Toby— “for spreading the word so you could sit back and watch him” — another thumb jerk in Urban’s direction— “get ticked off, because there’s nothing male Jennings love more than messing with each other.”

Sitting back, she smirked. Met each of their eyes in turn while they stared at her—Urban horrified, Miles suspicious and Toby grinning proudly. “How’d I do?”

“You told her you suspected something was up with him and Willow,” Miles accused Toby as Verity made a show of picking up both twenties and giving them air kisses.

Toby held up his hands. “I didn’t say a word.”

“He didn’t have to,” Verity said. “As always, I didn’t need any of you to man-splain what was going on right in front of me.” After squirting yet more hand sanitizer into her hands—she needed a twelve-step program—she turned to Urban. “Both you and Willow were acting, like, super weird last night. It was completely obvious you two hooked up and either regretted it immensely or couldn’t wait to get rid of all of us so you could do it again.”

“I vote for regret,” Toby said. “One hundred percent.” He sent Urban a cocky grin. “At least on her part.”

Verity wrinkled her nose. “You could be right. I mean, I can’t see Urban regretting it. Willow is, like, flaming hot.” When she leaned across the table, Toby did the same. “But maybe he’s… you know.” She glanced around then dropped her voice to a whisper. “Not very good at sex?”

Urban picked up his butter knife and mimicked stabbing himself in the temple.

“He hasn’t had much practice,” Miles drawled. “Living like a monk, the way he does. Grunting and growling at people instead of using his words. Scares most females away.”

“The beard doesn’t help,” Toby put in.

He was surrounded by the worst kind of idiots.

The kind who thought they were hilarious.

“I didn’t sleep with Willow,” he ground out from between clenched teeth.

But he wanted to.

He wanted Willow.

He wanted to prove to her the spark that’d always been between them was real and growing brighter. Wanted to fan it into flames. He wanted to touch her. Kiss her. He wanted to hear the sounds she made when he slid inside of her. Wanted to see her expression when he made her come.

He wanted all those things and more.

And she was barely speaking to him.

While his family wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

“Well, there’s your problem right there,” Verity said, setting her silverware on her empty plate.

He stroked the underside of his jaw. “My beard?”

“No. Although you might want to consider getting a trim—beard and hair. I’m talking about you not sleeping with Willow. As previously mentioned, there’s too much tension between you two. You need to bang it out, as it were.”

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