“So,” Dane said slowly. “You seen Brenna?”
Two sets of eyes were suddenly focused on him, though Rome kept playing the video game.
Grant took another gulp of beer, thinking about what to say. He went with the truth. “She’s up sleeping in my bed.”
Colt raised a hand for a high five.
He hit him back, then took a bite of pizza. “It’s not like that,” he said after a moment. “We’re just having casual sex.”
“Hell yeah,” Dane said, and then he leaned forward for a high five as well. “That’s my man.”
Grant scowled at Dane, but smacked his hand anyhow.
“You don’t strike me as the casual-sex type,” Colt observed.
“That’s because I’m not.” Grant shook his head, still unable to wrap his brain around the concept. “Brenna insists. She doesn’t want to be in a relationship. I told her she could move in with me, and you’d have thought I’d stabbed her or something. She freaked out.”
Dane grimaced at him, popping a cap off his beer and chugging it before saying, “You mean to tell me you nailed her and then asked her to move in with you? No wonder she freaked. She’s going to go down on you and you’ll be showering her with engagement rings or something.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Grant said in a surly voice. He was getting irritated. Sure, Dane had been a player before Miranda had whipped him into shape, but Grant wasn’t like that and his friends knew it. “I’m still, I don’t know. Adjusting. With Heather’s death, I just . . .” He sighed, picturing Heather’s bright blond hair and radiant smile. Then he pictured miles and miles of mountain and rock and snow, and then her crumpled body half-buried. He shuddered. “I don’t know.”
Colt leaned to Rome. “Grant’s first wife died about five years ago,” he told him, catching him up. “Brenna’s his first hookup since she passed.” He gave Grant a disapproving look. “And she’s our coworker and friend, so if you hurt her, it’s going to get ugly. She’s like a sister to me.”
“And by sister, you mean all redneck and crazy?” Dane teased. Colt threw a bottle cap in Dane’s direction, and Dane deflected it with a big hand, grinning. “Brenna’s a free spirit. You don’t chain those down.”
“What do you know?” Grant asked.
“I know a lot about women,” Dane proclaimed. “Had my fill of puck bunnies back in the day.”
Rome just took another slice of pizza from one of the boxes and ate in silence, watching the others as they talked. Grant got the impression that he was absorbing every bit of the conversation as well as the exchange between the men. Not intruding, just watching and listening and analyzing.
Colt rolled his eyes. “You’re so expert, how come you nearly f**ked it up with Miranda?”
“Because my baby’s complicated,” Dane said proudly. “But Grant here sucks with women.” This time, he ducked when Grant tossed a bottle cap in his direction. “It’s true. You’re rusty and out of practice. You need some advice or she’s going to run over you rough-shod.”
Grant stilled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you let her call the shots, she’s going to call all the shots. You need to take control of the situation.”
“Gee, you mean like letting her drag you to go taste cakes? Or dragging you to pick out wedding colors?” Colt said in a dry voice.
Dane shot him the bird.
Rome smiled into his pizza.
“Fuck you, man,” Dane said, but his grin belied the hard words. “This isn’t about me. I already know she’s got me whipped.”
“True enough.”
“Thing is, Grant here’s a control freak.”
“Hey, now—”
“True enough,” Colt said again, smirking.
“And Brenna’s the same, but she’s just controlling in a different way.”
Now that was an interesting way to look at it. Grant considered Dane. “How so?”
“She’s deliberate in everything she does. Didn’t you notice?” Dane gestured at her desk. “All the crap she has piled on there? It’s other people’s stuff. She borrows and snatches what she can, which makes you think that she’s broke, right? Except she gives away all her own money, too. And her clothes.”
“And her cabin,” Rome murmured. When all three men turned to him, he continued. “When she gave me the tour earlier, she told me I could have her cabin. I thought it was empty. Other than a few pieces of clothing, there were no personal items in there.” He gave them a curious look. “She new here, too?”
“No,” Grant said in a sour voice. What the hell? How did everyone know more about Brenna than he did? Even Rome had been inside her cabin and deduced that Brenna was different. Grant had never been in there. He’d never bothered.
And now it bugged him that he’d never looked beyond Brenna’s flighty surface.
“I’m telling you, man. There’s some sort of freaky-deaky control thing going on in Brenna’s mind. You just gotta figure out what makes her tick, and you’ll understand her.” Beer in hand, Dane extended a finger and pointed at his temple. “It’s about control for her, too. She wants control of the situation with you. You want control of the situation with her. One of you’s going to have to yield.”
“Or compromise,” Colt drawled, his accent thick on the word. “There’s a concept.”
Dane snorted. “You ever tried to compromise with Brenna?”
The man had a point. Grant was thoughtful, pondering Dane’s words as he devoured his slice of pizza. He knew he was a controlling sort. He liked things done his way, and he liked organization and neatness. That was why Brenna usually got under his skin. She was the antithesis of neat and orderly.
But what if that was another kind of control, and Dane had been the only one to see it? Grant vowed that he was going to pay more attention to Brenna from this point forward. Watch what she said, what she did, everything. He needed to find out what made her tick.
Because then he could figure out how to make her want to be with him, instead of pushing him away. On a hunch, he got up and walked over to Brenna’s desk, examining it. He rescued his coffee mug from where it was dangerously close to tipping over the side. He glanced at the stack of folders on her desk—all of them had Dane’s handwriting. He opened a drawer and found two chewed pencils—those were Colt’s, since he tended to chew on both pens and pencils. A pack of Altoids—those were Grant’s, Grant’s business credit card, Grant’s monogrammed letter opener, and his business card wallet. Frowning, he shut the desk.