A Game Of Brides (Montana Born Brides) Read Online Free PDF Page B

only decisions that might keep her far safer?
    In other words, i f she was controlling, then that was probably Griffin’s fault.
    She licked her lips because they burned from the whiskey, and felt the kick of it when Griffin’s green eyes followed the motion like he couldn’t help himself. She was suddenly afraid she might slide right off the barstool, boneless and lit on fire, which would no doubt count as one of the shenanigans Jason Grey and Reese Kendrick discouraged. It was a measure of how out of control simply being in Griffin’s presence again made her that she couldn’t find it in herself to care.
    “ I want to sleep with you,” he told her, and for a moment, while her heart pounded so hard it actually hurt, she thought she’d fantasized that. But then he reached over and traced the lips she’d just licked with the calloused pad of his thumb, and she felt a bolt of sensation sear through her, so bright and hot there was no possible way she’d made it up in her head. “Soon.”
    Emmy thought she might faint. Instead, she reminded herself that he’d said things like that before, and to only sad and painful ends. There was no point getting excited about something he might change his mind about. Again . So she shrugged as if men like him said things like that to women like her seven times a night.
    “ Noted,” she replied flippantly.
    And Griffin grinned. A real grin, hot and male and wow. Like he’d thrown down a challenge and she’d met it, and this was a game they were playing. A game with only one possible conclusion.
    It took everything she had not to shiver so hard he’d see it. Or fall off her seat to the floor beneath her into an inelegant heap.
    “ I last saw you when you were eighteen,” he said.
    “ I remember, thank you.”
    A little crook of his hard mouth. “We’ll get to that night. First, tell me what’s happened since. Job. Major life events.” His gaze hardened. “Husband?”
    Emmy leaned her elbow against the bar, swiveling around on her stool so she could face him. She didn’t pretend not to understand what this conversation was about. Not a getting to know you, but a removal of obstacles. She told herself she was offended by his arrogance—
    But she wasn ’t. She hadn’t been ten years ago. She certainly wasn’t now, when anything that might have been glib or reckless in him back then had been so deliciously tempered by the passing of all that time. And experience, a little voice whispered.
    “ I went to Emory and majored in English so I could read books all day,” she said, managing to sound calm and cool when she was neither. “I liked Atlanta, so I stayed there afterward. I got a job in an ad agency and have been writing copy for them ever since.”
    She waited, and so did he, and she would have sworn neither one of them breathed.
    “No husband,” she said after a moment, and she wasn’t sure why it felt like the worst kind of obvious flirting to say that. Or like a green light to a very slippery slope—and she already felt like she was tipping over the edge of it and about to start sliding down. “I broke up with my last boyfriend a few months back. It wasn’t very dramatic. He thought we might as well get married. I realized I wanted something else. Like a man who wanted me more than might as well. ” She slid her glass back toward Griffin and waited while he poured her another shot. “I’ve heard he’s already talking an October wedding with my replacement.”
    “ You might as well have been a sofa, then. What a thrill.”
    “ That was my thinking.” She twisted the shot glass around, watching the amber liquid catch the light. “I’m sure this means I’m a narcissist, but I’d rather not be quite so easily replaced.”
    He laughed, and she caught her breath at what genuine humor did to that face of his. That beautiful face of his that she worried was imprinted inside of her somehow, making it impossible to really see anyone else. Was that why no