He shrugged. “Not much. I’m more of a coffee-shop guy. Once I moved back to New York, Melanie and I went out for drinks occasionally, but she liked upscale places where we could meet up with her friends. No karaoke for sure. She’d be horrified.”

“Yeah,” Kincaid agreed. “She didn’t strike me as the karaoke type. So this is good. You’re guaranteed not to meet someone like her here.”

He gave her a patient look. “Kincaid, watch my lips.” He circled his mouth with his finger, and she was transfixed for a moment. “I’m. Not. Here. To. Meet. Anyone. I don’t want to be your project. I know how you can get when you’re focused on something.”

“Helpful?” she suggested.

He put his hands on her shoulders. “Other words. I was thinking other words.”

She sighed. “Fine. You just fired the best wing woman ever.” She nodded toward a table at the back of the bar. “You see that beautifully happy crew over there? See how they’re all nicely paired off? Those are my friends. Guess who made all those relationships happen?”

“Fate,” he said with mock seriousness as he lowered his hands to his sides. “Probably some alcohol. And maybe a little hormonal magic.”

She pointed to her chest. “Nope. This girl. I’m great at matchmaking. It’s my third best skill.”

He lifted a brow. “And what are the first two?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” She grabbed his hand. “Come on.”

Kincaid led Ash through the crowd, her heart beating a little faster when Ash tightened his grip on her hand. She could tell he was nervous about meeting her friends. She tried to imagine what it’d be like to walk into an already established group, especially with people you sort of knew from the past. For her, that wouldn’t be a big deal. She loved meeting new people, but Ash had always been more reserved. He had been able to do customer service at the bookstore, but Kincaid knew that was only surface Ash, not the real him. He only let his guard down with a choice few.

Her friends looked up when she approached. They’d gotten a big table in the back. Finn was standing behind Liv’s chair, his hands on her shoulders, his normally serious FBI agent face soft with amusement over something someone had said. Rebecca was laughing and leaning into her husband, Wes, who must’ve come straight from work since he still had on a T-shirt with the name of his food truck. And Shaw, Taryn’s husband, was flying solo while Taryn was probably getting ready to sing, his thickly muscled arm thrown over the back of an empty seat.

Kincaid’s chest warmed at the sight of all of them together. These were her people. She was never as happy as she was when she was with them. “Hey, y’all,” she said, dragging Ash with her. “What’d I miss?”

Shaw smiled her way. “Nothing really. Just telling them about a guy who came into the gym way too confident and didn’t listen to the safety instructions. He fell off an obstacle and got his too-loose pants hooked on the equipment in the process. Ended up in the foam pit naked as a jaybird.”