"Yes. Go on believing that until you're at least…forty," Fiona said jokingly. "Maybe fifty. I amnotready for you to grow up and start dating."
"When are you going to start dating?" Sarah asked her.
Fiona almost choked on a piece of bread. When she'd finished coughing, she said, "When you're forty. Until then, I have my books to keep me warm." She slid me a sly look. "Did you know Riley and I exchanged books? He likes a good mafia romance too."
"That explains a lot," I said.
Should I be jealous at the idea of them sharing something like that? I decided I shouldn't. They'd known each other for so long, if something was going to happen between them, it would have by now. Both of them made it more than clear it wouldn't.
Honestly, it was cute. I hadn't known Riley was a reader. Was Connor one too? He seemed more like the kind of guy who would sit down in front of a different action movie every night. Or make furniture out of reclaimed wood, just for fun.
She laughed. "It really does, doesn't it? Those two would make good mafia henchmen. I can see it now.” She held up hand in front of her as if sketching out the scene. “Breaking kneecaps and threatening people during the day, showering women with presents at night."
"I might have to start reading mafia romance," I said.
Although, my reality sounded better than that. Yeah, they claimed they were assholes, but they gave good orgasms. Better than anyone I've ever been with by a long way.
Imaginary guys couldn't do that, could they? Maybe they could, with virtual reality and the right toy, but give me the real thing.
"I can let you borrow some if you want," Fiona offered.
"I'd like that," I said. "I can let you borrow my dinosaur romance in return." I picked up my wine and held it in front of my grin.
"Dinosaur romance?" Sarah echoed. "What?—"
"I think it's time for ice cream," Fiona interrupted. She gave me a sidelong look, but smiled as Sarah scrambled out of her chair and raced over to the freezer.
32
RILEY
"Bookings are up."I looked from my laptop, over to Connor.
He was looking through invoices on his own laptop, a frown on his face.
"Good. We're going to need it to pay all of these." He tapped on the keyboard, putting the invoice details into the accounting app.
"That bad?" I finished answering a potential customer enquiry and pressed send.
He shrugged. "It's the price of expansion. It will be worth it; we just need to get past the teething phase. We've got this."
"Do we?" I scrolled down to the next query, opened it and started to respond.
"Ri." He sounded frustrated. "Ri, look at me. We've worked too long and hard not to succeed. When we took this over from Dave, we knew it was going to be a challenge. You and me, we don't back down from a challenge. Right?"
"Right. Failure is not an option." He was hot when he got all blunt and bossy like this. Sometimes I provoked him just to see it. Today, though, this was something different. I needed to know he was still on board with me.
"Exactly." He pointed a finger gun at me. "In fact, I was thinking about hiring more staff. We could expand faster if we don't have to deal with shit like this. And we could run more tours."
I nodded slowly. "I'd prefer to be out there than sitting in your kitchen doing this."
But my stomach dropped. I couldn't help reading more into it. If we had more staff, he'd have more time for the pub. And less for me.
"Yeah, sorting invoices sucks." He rolled his shoulders. "If I can hand this off to someone, I'm there for it."
"I don't mind answering questions, but it's not as much fun as rafting. Or zip lining. Or skiing." I want to remind him why we were doing this in the first place. We both liked the freedom of running our own business, and loved the one we chose. He'd go crazy in the pub all day long. And all night.
"Nothing is as much fun as those, except fucking," he said. "Speaking of fucking, we could ask Leah if she wants to work for us doing some of this." He scrubbed his chin with his hand, looking thoughtful.
