I swallow hard. Is Easton Connor coming on to me? I don’t want to be the idiot who believes that could be true. I don’t want to be the dumb fat girl who fell for the practical joke because she believed a guy like Easton could be attracted to her.

I don’t know how long I stand there trying to decide, but my skin tingles where he licked, and my mouth has gone dry.

“Want me to go first?” he asks, his voice a little husky.

I nod.

He takes my wrist and brings it to his mouth, licking off the salt. Shocks of pleasure roll down my spine and settle into a riot of butterflies in my stomach. He doesn’t even take the shot glass from me, just wraps his hand around mine and leads the glass to his mouth so he can shoot it back. Then he pops the lime in his mouth and makes a goofy face at me as he sucks the juice.

“Got it?” he asks, still squinting from the sourness.

“I think I can do that.”

He refills the tequila then looks over his shoulder again.

“Why are you so worried about Carter seeing?” I ask. “He knows I’ve had alcohol before. He’s just being a prude about the shot.”

“I don’t want him pissed at me,” he says, shrugging. “God knows he did worse than take a couple of shots when he was sixteen, but—”

“I’m seventeen. Eighteen in a few months.”

He slowly turns his attention away from the back door and back to me. “My timing is shit.”

“Timing for what?”

His eyes are so intense on mine, but it’s a good kind of intensity. Like he sees me. Has anyone ever looked at me before? Really looked? “Nothing.” He lets out a puff of air and shakes his head. “Then Carter really would kill me.”

I laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”

“What? Why do you say that?”

“You just got drafted into the NFL, and you’re acting like you’re attracted to me.”

His gaze skims over me, from my hair all the way down to my bare feet and the bright pink polish on my toes. “What does one have to do with the other?”

I don’t understand what’s happening here. Am I dreaming? Has he had more to drink than I realized? I throw the shot back before I can lose my nerve, totally forgetting the salt.

I shudder. “That’s awful!”

He laughs. “You did it wrong. Are you always this terrible with directions?”

Only when you’re here. Only when you’re looking at me like this and making me think I can have things I can’t. But as awful as the taste was, warmth blooms in my chest. It’s more intense than the effects of the glass of wine I drank with Easter dinner, and I do like that.