Page 1 of Own the Eights
Prologue
Georgie: Two Years Ago
“Are you waiting for someone?”
Georgiana Jensen glanced up at the bartender. “Yes, I am,” she answered, then looked toward the entrance of the cozy bistro, only to find a young couple waving to a group of people at a table near the front of the restaurant.
In the up-and-coming Tennyson neighborhood, not far from the bookstore she’d recently opened thanks to a small business loan and emptying her savings, the bistro felt like the perfect little rendezvous spot, buzzing with conversation and the possibility of new things.
Georgie could just feel it. Her life was about to change.
“I’m Irene,” the bartender said, brushing her bangs from her eyes.
“Georgiana, well, Georgie is what most everyone calls me.”
The woman nodded. “I feel like I’ve seen you around.”
“I just moved to the area. I own the little bookstore a few blocks down.”
Irene slapped the bar. “That’s it! Jensen’s Books, right?”
A warmth filled her chest. “Yep, that’s my shop.”
The bartender gestured to the cocktail napkin on the counter’s polished surface. “Are you doing okay tonight, Georgie?”
Once a perfect, crisp square, Georgie had decimated the poor thing, working out her nervous energy, tearing and twisting the white paper into a little pile of sad confetti.
She felt her cheeks heat. “I’m sorry. I’m a little nervous.”
“Blind date?” the bartender asked, brushing the white fragments into her hand.
Georgie shook her head. “No, we met at a housewarming party last night.”
Irene smiled. “That’s got to be a good sign to meet at a party and then make plans to see each other the next day.”
Georgie couldn’t hold back her grin. It wasn’t just a good sign. It was perfect.
Her mind drifted to last night. She’d arrived late to the party. It was honestly a miracle she’d gone at all. She wasn’t the party type, never had been. At twenty-five years old, she had more in common with the Golden Girls, minus Blanche, than a party girl. But when she’d bumped into an old college acquaintance earlier in the day, and the woman had insisted she come to the gathering, Georgie found herself saying yes instead of her typical no.
And that’s where she’d met Brice Casey.
Perfection wrapped into one man.
They’d talked all night.
Scratch that.
She hadn’t talked much.
Extremely loquacious and undeniably handsome, Brice filled the space between them with his sparkling smile and shining green eyes. He spoke of his job—he was already a VP at his father’s company at the age of twenty-nine—and he drank Manhattans, which seemed sophisticated compared to the bottle of eight-dollar Chardonnay she’d picked up on her way to the gathering.
It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know the first thing about wine and spirits. Her Friday nights were spent baking muffins with her nose buried deep in a book as the warm, comforting scents of chocolate and cinnamon filled her modest bungalow. The fictional characters Lizzy Bennet, Jane Eyre, and Hermione Granger kept her company while the rest of the twenty-somethings scoured the clubs in search of findingthe one.
But something had made her take a chance and agree to attend this party.
She and Brice had spoken, well,he’dspoken, for nearly two hours before the low hum of an incoming text stopped him mid-sentence, and he told her he had to leave. It did seem strange that he’d have a family emergency at quarter to one in the morning, but when he’d asked for her number and suggested they meet for drinks tonight, all her worries melted away.
In the age of dating apps and low expectations, it seemed almost primitive that she’d met someone at an actual gathering of quasi-adults. There were a group of gentlemen doing keg stands in the small backyard, but Brice didn’t seem like those overgrown man-boys. No, Brice was going places. He’d actually told her that, several times. He’d also mentioned he was quite a catch, which he certainly seemed to be.
