Page 7 of The Best Parts of Him
“Oh, I know how to work wood.” Ryland gave Dabbs an up and down glance. “Very, very well.”
He wasn’t sure what to expect from Dabbs. For him to be so turned on that his cheeks pinked and he stuttered over his words?
Dabbs, coolly confident in a way Ryland had never managed, did neither of those things. Instead, he drawled a lazy, “Me too,” and added three tiles to the Scrabble board, adding w, o, and d to an existing o.
Wood.
Ryland had to laugh, surprised by this aspect of Dabbs’ sense of humor. “Not exactly what I meant.”
Dabbs grinned. “Wood for eight points, plus a double letter score on the w for a total of twelve points. Your turn.”
Swearing under his breath—word games weren’t Ryland’s strong suit—he added a g and a t to an existing e, netting himself four points for get.
“It’s okay,” Dabbs said. “We can’t all be good at everything.”
Ryland laughed. “Oh, you did not just go there.”
“Hey, are we heading out to dinner, or what?” Jason called from the front door. “I’ll drive.”
“Do you play darts, Dabbs?” Ryland asked, grabbing his wallet from the table in the foyer.
“I’ve played a game or two,” Dabbs said hesitatingly. “Why do I get the feeling I’m going to regret admitting that?”
Ryland grinned. “You’ll see.” And followed the group out the door.
Ryland had always enjoyed the atmosphere at The Striped Maple. Located on Maple Street—Maplewood’s main strip—it was always busy. The pub had a traditional feel with its dark paneling and dim lighting. Tonight’s tunes piping through the speakers were a bland mix of the current Top 40 songs, which Ryland had stopped listening to after the third sounded like the second sounded like the first.
Not that he was here for the music. He was much more interested in the six-foot-four gray-eyed, ginger-haired team captain sporting a half-inch of beard. As Dabbs held his dart at chest height, gearing up to throw it, Ryland sidled up behind him, pressing the front of his right shoulder against the back of Dabbs’ left. “They used to have amateur dart competitions here when I was a teenager,” Ryland said in his ear. “I won three years in a row.”
Dabbs turned his head a fraction. His gaze landed on Ryland’s lips for a too-brief second before traveling lazily upward to meet Ryland’s eyes. “I don’t know why that surprises me.”
“It shouldn’t. I’m good at everything I try.”
Dabbs chuckled, and Ryland felt it in his chest.
“Not Scrabble,” Dabbs countered, turning back to the board. He let his dart fly. It hit the wall.
“You’ve got Scrabble; I’ve got darts. Here’s your refill.”
Dabbs took one of Ryland’s beers with a murmur of thanks.
“So, tell me.” Ryland edged around him, brushing up against him as he did so, gratified at Dabbs’ sharp intake of breath.
Whatever Dabbs’ hang-ups about dating him had been back in the spring, they clearly didn’t apply now. Or perhaps they did, but Dabbs wasn’t letting that get in the way of a little harmless flirting.
Ryland sat on the arm of a nearby couch and gestured with his beer. “What do you think of my town so far?”
Dabbs retrieved his dart from the floor. “I haven’t seen enough of it to judge. It’s pretty, though. Ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Who are they?” Dabbs tipped his head in the direction of Jason and Bellamy, sitting at a four-top by the pub’s front windows with a couple of guys Jason and Ryland had grown up with.
“The guy on the end, that’s Conall. He bartends here, so he’s probably on a break. The guy with the shaved head is my best friend, Denver.”
“You’re not going to introduce me?”
Ryland rolled his lips inward, let them out with a pop. “Con flirts with everything that moves, and Denver’s been known to be a bit of a ladies’ man, and I want your attention on me tonight, so . . . no. I’m not.”
