Page 19 of Own the Eights
He reached out and took her hand into his, and his touch knocked the sneer clean off her face. The breath caught in her throat, and heat pulsed from his body into hers as her heart rate skyrocketed. Butterflies erupted in her belly, and her mouth grew dry just like when she’d seen him run past the bookshop.
She looked up, and he stared at her with a dumbfounded expression. There was no handshaking going on, only hand-holding, and she hadn’t held anyone’s hand in…
She could barely remember.
It had to have been before the Brice Casey incident. She’d gone to the movies with a guy she’d met online, and he’d held her hand. But he did it after he’d wolfed down ninety-nine percent of the buttery popcorn, which made for a slimy grip. Holding Jordan’s hand had to be the polar opposite of that slippery experience. His hands were warm and just the right amount of rough, probably from gripping weights or throwing boulders or whatever musclebound morons did to get a body like his.
Ripped abs.
Sculpted arms.
Even his legs were perfect.
Perfect!
She gasped as the elevator pinged their arrival to the twelfth floor and pulled her hand from his grip.
“It’s a deal,” she murmured, darting between the barely open elevator doors.
Holy Mary! Touching him was…a momentary lapse in judgment, right?
But her trifecta wasn’t buying it. She could picture their skeptical expressions. It was time to bring out the big guns, aka her list. Her Own the Eights list. She needed to fall back on the advice she gave her followers every day. Think of the list and remember that good looks and great hair were scribbled out in permanent ink. She glanced over her shoulder at Jordan, a few paces behind her.
He had great hair. Short, but not too short. His jet-black locks with just the hint of a curl were coiffed to perfection along with his five o’clock shadow, which often looked messy on most men, but really worked for him.
“Gah! Stop!” she mumbled.
“Yes, stop. We’re here,” he said with a grating edge to his voice.
She turned to find Jordan standing by a door with the founders’ names stenciled into the frosted glass.
“Oh, right. I was kind of in my head.”
“And mumbling like a crazy lady,” he said, opening the door for her and found what looked like an adult Chuck E. Cheese.
Hanging swings and retro arcade machines dotted the space, while ping-pong tables and a bank of television and computer screens lined the walls. Sofas and futons created little enclaves of comfortable workspace. The office, if that’s what you’d call it, had to be double or triple the square footage of her entire house.
“Look, Bobby!” a man exclaimed. “It’s Own the Eights gal and the Marks Perfect Ten Mindset guy! Our first team has arrived!”
Team?
But before she could give that whopper another thought, she was eye to eye with Hector Garcia and Bobby Chang. She’d know these two men anywhere. Their faces were splashed all over the CityBeat website. Hector and Bobby were the tech power couple who started the Colorado-based company. Originally a site for metro Denver lifestyle blogging, CityBeat had exploded to become the most trusted and visited place on the web to get the pulse of a city, just about any city on every continent, even Antarctica, where a Norwegian scientist stationed there blogs about the pitfalls of falling in love with a penguin researcher. Spoiler, this penguin researcher wanted the scientist to wear flippers when they were getting it on. Truly, a captivating and somewhat disturbing blog, to say the least.
Bobby fiddled with his glasses before giving them an awkward nod. Hector was the flashy, flamboyant partner, a tech genius in his own right, but it was rumored his husband, the quieter Bobby, was the real brains behind the CityBeat platform. Together, they’d taken over the blogging world as the premiere lifestyle blogging destination.
“Let’s sit,” Hector said, gesturing to two small couches positioned across from one another. Hector and Bobby settled themselves on one side as she reluctantly sat down next to Jordan, who’d turned a ghostly shade of dishwater gray.
“Alana called up and told us you two met in the lobby,” Hector said with a wide grin.
“Alana?” she asked.
“The receptionist who gave you your badges,” Bobby answered.
“You each thought you’d won, didn’t you?” Hector asked with a glint in his eye.
She shared a look with Jordan. “Yeah, I thought I’d won.”
“I did as well,” Jordan answered, his voice void of cocky bravado.
