She blinked in confusion. “Who?”
“The bar owner from Fort Lauderdale.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t the first clue how that night at Schooner Wharf Bar had anything to do with Mr. Dick Pics. “Um, Drummer.”
“Drummer?” His top lip curled. “That’s not a name. That’s an occupation.”
“Says the guy who shares his moniker with an animal.”
“Touché,” he allowed. Then, “Did he break your heart?”
“Who? Drummer?” When he nodded, she shook her head. “No. But he certainly hurt my feelings and stomped all over my pride.”
“So you didn’t…” He looked at her like he was trying to see inside her head. “You weren’t in love with him?”
“God no. Ilikedhim an awful lot though.” Now his eyes were black lasers, boring into her. “What?” she demanded.
“I’m tryin’ to reckon how it was you were hankerin’ to build a life with someone you weren’t in love with.”
“Oh.” She waved a hand through the air, noticing it was a little stale. She should probably light a candle. “That’s easy. He seemed like the solid, settling down type. And also, I don’t believe in falling in love.”
His face blanked. He blinked slowly. Just when she thought they were done, he said, “I’m sorry. I thought I heard you say you don’t believe in fallin’ in love.”
“That’s not quite right.” She screwed up her mouth and tried to come up with a way to put her thoughts and feelings on the subject into words that would make sense. “It’s not that I don’t believe in it. It’s that I don’t ever plan to do it myself. Falling in love makes you do stupid shit. Take it from me, I had a front row seat more times than you can imagine.” She tried to head toward the kitchen again, but his grip on her thigh tightened.
She sighed, not attempting to hide the annoyance on her face.
“Hell, no.” He shook his head. “You done gone and opened up a can, now you need to sit here with me until we’ve eaten it down to the tin bottom.”
She laughed. “Where in the world do you come up with all your country-fried sayings?”
“I grew up in an Oklahoma cattle town, darlin’. They float around on the wind there.”
“I don’t hate them.”
“No? Not like my quotes?”
She hitched her shoulder and resumed her seat.Might as well. He’s not going to let me go until he’s said whatever he needs to say.
“I don’t really hate your quotes either,” she admitted. “I just hate that you always have a sage saying that fits every scenario. It’s unfair and intimidating to the rest of us.”
He returned them to their original subject. “When you say you had a front row seat…” He let the sentence dangle.
“You’ve heard me talk about my mother and her four husbands, right?”
His eyebrows bunched over his nose. He looked so fierce she was tempted to kiss him.
Oh, who am I kidding? Fierce looking or not, I’malwaystempted to kiss him.
So do it!that no good, double-crossing voice whispered.
It was time for an old-fashioned lobotomy. That’s all there was to it.
“You’ve mentioned them on occasion,” he said cautiously.
“Well, let me tell you, the four husbands were the tip of the iceberg. Before them, between them, and after them was a string of boyfriends that would stretch from here to Stock Island. My mother wasalwayslooking for love.”
“In all the wrong places by the sound of it.”
