Page 15 of Bourbon Bliss
“Apparently we do.”
I looked up again and noticed he’d also chosen rocky road on a sugar cone, although his was piled with two scoops, not one. I was about to point out our similar taste in ice cream as being another commonality we shared when the door opened, letting in a blast of cold air.
Misty Lynn Prosser waltzed in. She wore a puffy pink coat with a thick band of fake fur around the collar and a pair of skin-tight jeans. Cassidy and Scarlett hated Misty Lynn. I didn’t waste energy on hating her. She was unintelligent and unnecessarily promiscuous—hardly worth anyone’s notice, as far as I was concerned.
Instead of going to the counter to order something, her eyes landed on George. Her lips curled in a predatory smile and she sashayed over to my table. And suddenly I had a feeling I understood more about why Scarlett and Cassidy hated her.
“Well hi, there,” she said, her greeting clearly meant for George, not me.
George’s eyes darted to me once, then to Misty Lynn. “Hi.”
“Aren’t you a big hunk of man,” she said, openly appraising him. “In town for a visit?”
His brow furrowed and he leaned slightly away from her. “Guess so.”
“I’m Misty Lynn.” She traced a finger down the zipper of his coat. “Welcome to Bootleg Springs.”
A surge of heat poured through me and I dug my fingernails into my palm. My ice cream was still melting, but I didn’t care. I didnotwant Misty Lynn to touch George Thompson.
“Are you here for ice cream, Misty Lynn?” I asked. “Or something else? I don’t think Penny carries nicotine gum. You’ll have to get that at the Pop In.”
She finally looked at me, her expression annoyed, as if she’d been trying to pretend I wasn’t here, and I’d ruined it by speaking. “No, I have plenty of gum.” She patted her coat pocket and turned back to George, her smile returning in an instant. “I was in the mood for something sweet, so I figured I’d stop in.”
“That’s nice,” George said, and I was not unaware that he still hadn’t given her his name.
Good.
“What’s that you’re having?” she asked.
She reached out toward him again and I had the strangest desire to fly out of my seat and claw her eyes out. George deftly side-stepped and sat in the chair across from me.
“I’m just having some ice cream with my friend June,” he said. “It was nice meeting you.”
His dismissal was so obvious, even Misty Lynn understood it. She stared at me, and her wad of chewed gum almost fell out of her open mouth.
I stared back. I didn’t have anything else to say to her, so I just waited for her to leave.
She pulled the gum back into her mouth with her tongue. With a dramatic roll of her eyes, she spun on her heel and left.
“Now you’re really making a mess,” George said.
“Oh.” My ice cream had dripped all over my hand. I hadn’t even noticed the cold sticky drips. I quickly licked the excess off the cone, then switched it to my other hand.
Before I could grab a napkin, George had my messy hand in his. It looked so tiny nestled in his huge one. With slow strokes, he gently wiped the ice cream off with a napkin.
Strange things were happening to my body. The feel of my hand touching his elicited a rush of heat between my legs. How very perplexing. George wasn’t doing anything overtly sexual. He was cleaning up the mess I’d made while I’d been in the throes of inexplicable jealousy. Why was this making me feel so tingly?
I pulled my hand back. “Thank you. Rocky road ice cream was invented by William Dreyer, one of the founders of Dreyer’s Ice Cream. He was reportedly inspired by his business partner’s candy. He cut up walnuts and marshmallows with his wife’s sewing scissors and added them to chocolate ice cream.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It dates to the late nineteen twenties. They named the flavor rocky road not long after the stock market crash in nineteen twenty-nine. Their intention was to give people something to smile about in the midst of the Great Depression.”
George licked his ice cream, twisting it across his tongue to get all the way around. “I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t know if it worked. I’ve never come across data that indicates the namerocky road, or the particular flavor combination, increased people’s happiness during that time in American history.”
“I’d be willing to bet it did, at least for some people.”
