“Not complaining about it either.”
“Jesus. Between you, Callahan, and Danny, I feel like a stowaway on the Love Boat.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared morosely out of the passenger window.
“You could have what we have if you’d stop hanging out with jersey chasers and go after a real woman.” I wheeled my truck through the slushy snow on a roundabout, and headed down the road to the facility.
“Yeah, yeah. Easy for you to say. You flash those big green eyes of yours at a woman, and she can’t wait to drop her panties for you.”
I spat the gulp of coffee I’d just taken all over my steering wheel. “That’s what you think?”
He sank lower in his seat. “Sure seems like it.”
“Finnegan,” I intoned as I swiped at the mess on my steering wheel with a napkin. “I talk to girls. I don’t duck my head and let them flit around me.” After chewing and swallowing a bite of my breakfast burrito, I said, “The night I met Piper, I talked to her for a couple of hours before I walked her to her car with zero expectations, only a hope of getting her number.” A second bite, then: “’Han chased Jamaica for most of a semester before she gave in and went out with him. Danny held a torch for Taryn for over four years.” I finished off my burrito and tossed the foil wrapper into the trash bag hanging from the ashtray in my ride.
“I don’t know why you think finding the right girl is supposed to be easy because it takes work. The three of us are willing to work for it. You? Not so much, apparently.”
“Fuck off.”
I cracked up.
I wasn’t laughing when some moron let the underage jersey chasers into Johnson and Fitz’s party. From the way he was carrying on with a couple of the girls I’d seen hanging with Tory Miller last semester, Johnson was the culprit behind their attendance at this bash.
Shaking my head at his antics with two of them on the makeshift dance floor in the living room, I ambled into the kitchen to watch the flip-cup tournament between the basketball and track teams. Since we weren’t in season, we had a pass on the tournaments. I didn’t envy the b-ball team whose season straddled everyone else’s, which meant they never had a break in the drinking games.
My eyes took a tour of my brain when I saw how bad the track team was kicking their asses. For guys who had as much practice as they did, the basketball players should be the odds-on favorites every time someone set up the table. Leaning against the wall beside the door to the kitchen, I tipped my cup up and sipped some keg beer right as a waft of expensive perfume washed over me.
“Hello, Wyatt,” a soft, feminine voice purred beside me.
Glancing down at the hand resting on my elbow then back up to the owner of the voice, I cringed inside.
“That’s Bax to you Phillipa. Everyone calls me Bax.” Subtly, I disengaged her hand from my arm and put some space between us.
“Piper calls you Wyatt.” She pretended to pout.
If she thought she was radiating sexy, she had some work to do.
“Piper isn’t everyone.”
For a second her jaw tightened before she plastered on a sunny smile. “Everyone says I’m so much more fun than Piper.” She leaned in again, her tone conspiratorial. “I’m not all caught up with conquering the corporate world.”
“Huh. That’s too bad.”
Her eyes widened.
“I think ambition is sexy.” My beer suddenly tasted flat when I swigged some back.
Something over her shoulder caught her eye, and the next thing I knew, Philippa had her arms wrapped around me.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked as I worked to disentangle myself from her.
“Wyatt?”
Stilling, I closed my eyes at the ocean of hurt I heard in those two syllables.
“Piper. This isn’t what you think.”
Phillipa tightened herself to me like a damn barnacle, and short of manhandling her, I couldn’t push her off. “Wyatt, I don’t know why you’re paying her any attention. We both know you like me better.”
“I don’t know what your game is, little girl, but you’d better take your hands off me. Now.”
