Page 263 of Handsome Devil
“Oh,” he said, and the coat slid down his arm and off, puddling on the floor. He looked down at it. Then looked at me.
The goofiest smile spread across his face and his eyes squeezed into two drunken, happy slits.
Holy angels of procreation.
I’d never seen him smile like that.
It instantly warmed me… and saddened me that he never thought he had a reason to smile like that.
“Dane—”
A bubble of laughter popped out of his mouth. With a small snort. He wavered on his feet again. Then he said, “I may need some help getting my coat on.”
Jesus. How drunk was he?
Way, way drunker than I thought.
I picked up his damn coat. “What happened to your clothes?”
He looked down at his suit. What was left of it. He frowned. “I dunno.”
It was winter. I highly doubted he showed up like that. Which meant… “You took your suit jacket and shirt off and put the wings back on?”
“I was hot. I think.”
“Is that why you didn’t do up your pants?”
“I didn’t?”
He looked down, frowned again, and then took approximately five minutes trying to do up his belt buckle. I finally swatted his hands away and did it up for him.
When I looked up, he was way too close to my face. He was smiling that goofy smile again, but faintly.
“God, I missed you,” he gushed. “Why aren’t we friends?”
“We were never friends, Dane,” I told him, as I steered him out of there.
Truer words had never been spoken.
There was no getting drunk Dane into his security guy’s SUV without taking the wings off, so I stood on the sidewalk stripping the giant angel wings off a very hot shirtless man in the cold while people honked as they drove by.
Then I gave the driver the wings and he stuffed them into the back of the SUV, while I tried to wrestle a two-hundred-pound-plus man with temporary loss of balance, hand-eye coordination and depth perception into the backseat.
No matter how I came at it, I ended up underneath him. Finally, I climbed into the vehicle myself, with him half on top of me.
We fell onto the seat and the driver closed the door for us.
I sighed and pushed Dane off my lap. He ran his hands over his naked torso, slowly, like he was absently looking for his wings. Or his shirt. And wondering what happened to them.
Christ, how was he planning to get himself home before he ran into me? His friends just abandoned him like this?
As the driver got us on our way, I dug out my phone to text Lex.
Me:You just left your brother like this? Shit faced and half naked?
Lex:Where is he?
Me:In my lap.
