11. The Snickers

11

The Snickers

KINGSTON MOORE

The downstairs break room had three round tables beside the kitchen countertop and four huge vending machines.

Kingston perused the possibilities. “Pop-Tarts?”

From behind him, Nicole said, “Absolutely. Should I get the ax from the fire emergency box?”

He straightened and looked back at her. “We don’t need to go ragtag anarchist. I can just use a credit card and buy whatever we need. I’ll put it on this month’s expense report.”

She flopped at one of the tables. “Yeah, better to rob those evil venture capitalists for our supper. Do that.”

“Besides, these machines don’t even belong to the evil venture capitalists,” Kingston said, choking a little because deception had never really been his strong suit. “The sticker in the corner says they belong to and are stocked by Vend-O-Land Limited.”

“Oh, well, they might be a small business, then. Sure. I’ll take some Pop-Tarts and a package of sunflower seeds.”

Kingston tapped his card against the machine’s sensor and started dropping candy into the bin at the bottom. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a supper like this in my life, but it’s never too late to learn.”

“What, you didn’t eat supper out of the library vending machines at college when you were cramming for your calculus final?”

“Didn’t take calculus in college,” he said and dropped every package of nuts, corn nuts, and granola from the machine’s metal coils, as well as several candy bars.

“I’m sorry. I just assumed—I hang out with nerds way too much, and I have a big mouth. Um, tell me about yourself?”

Kingston gathered the packets from behind the flap and carried several dozen over to the table. “I majored in sociology. So I crammed for a stats final, not calculus.”

“Oh, stats. Yes.” She nodded gravely. “Very difficult. Much cramming.”

He knew when he was being patronized. “You had to take the three-semester calc with analytical geometry sequence, didn’t you?”

“Well, I was in the College of Engineering, so yeah. Calc with geometry is a core class.”

“All right. For that bit of preciousness, you do have to arm wrestle me for the Snickers. Elbow on the table, Ms. Professional Engineer.” He rolled up his sleeves with flips of the silk fabric and set up, bracing his elbow and tucking his other hand behind it. “Let’s go.”

Nicole grabbed the lone Snickers bar from the middle of the table, even though she’d had one for lunch, too. Snickers was her favorite candy bar. “It’s mine now.”

“Hey, that’s not fair! We were going to arm wrestle for it.”

“I outsmarted you, and possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

He shook his empty hand that was waiting for her to wrestle. “Stand and deliver.”

Nicole eyeballed his forearm. “This is ridiculous. There is no way I could even start to arm wrestle you. You can have the Snickers.”

“Set up, little lady.”

She hung her mouth open at him and then said, “You obviously work out a lot, and I obviously don’t. Your forearm looks like a python is wrapped around it.”

“Aw, you’re just saying that.”

“I am not just saying it. Is that even real? Do plastic surgeons do forearm implants?”

“That’s a question you would only hear in California.” He pinched his arm. “I can assure you, that’s a hundred percent beef.”

“Great, if the doors don’t unlock tomorrow, it’s reassuring to know that I could fry you up for dinner.”

“Surely we don’t have to resort to cannibalism the first night. Come on, what do you have to lose?”

“Evidently, my Snickers bar. Why do you even want to go through with this preposterous arm wrestling?”

Because he wanted to hold her hand again.

Because holding her hand while he’d helped Nicole up and steadied her and pretended that there must be some reason why he was still holding onto it had blistered through him like lightning.

Picking up a woman in a bar for sex paled in comparison. He’d looked into Nicole’s eyes. Her fingers had wrapped his, and his attention hadn’t wavered every second their palms and fingers had been intertwined.

He said, “Because we agreed to arm wrestle for the Snickers.”

“Fine.” Nicole slapped the contested Snickers bar on the table and sat across from him, examining how he had braced his arm and fidgeting as she figured out how to copy him like a kitten choosing its angle of attack. “This farce should be over with in one second, anyway. One-two-three-go.”

Aw, she’d tried to trick him. So darn cute.

As she tried to shove his arm over, Kingston locked his muscles and held her arm straight upright.

And enjoyed holding her hand again.

Nicole was straining, leaning in her chair as she tried to find leverage to push his arm over, but he held her hand vertically.

Yeah, he went to the gym a lot. He wasn’t even pushing back. He was just stopping his arm from moving.

Her eyes were clenched shut, but she sneaked a peek at him.

Kingston screwed up his face like he was working hard.

“You’re just toying with me!”

Nope, just enjoying it. He wondered if he could make himself sweat to look like he was working harder than he was. “I assure you, you are a formidable opponent.”

“This is stupid.”

She leaned back in her chair and tried to flick her fingers away from his, but before Kingston knew what he was doing, he’d flipped her hand around, grabbed her fingers in his, and brushed his lips over her knuckles.

He hadn’t meant to do that. Human Resources was going to be pissed at the owner making a pass at one of the employees.

Then again, there were no surveillance cameras to catch him doing it.

But when he looked over Nicole’s hand into her eyes, her pearl-pink lips were parted, and she didn’t pull away.