“He’s not exactly creepy. Just formal. Also, no one’s dead yet and most of the actually rich guests haven’t even arrived.”
“You’re there alone?”
“I’m with Eve.”
“Eve... the little Baby Chandler?”
Funny how he’d stopped thinking of her as young. “Yeah.”
“Aw. How old is she now? In college?”
“She’s an adult. Twenty-four.”
There was a beat of silence and then Rhi spoke. “You like her.”
Gabe glanced around, but there was no one on the deck. The door to the home was closed. “Yes, I like Eve. She’s a good person. Fun. Sweet.” Hot. Mysterious.
“I mean, you liiiiiiike her.”
Gabe rolled his eyes, though his sister couldn’t see it. “You are the worst.”
“I’m the best, and don’t you forget it.” Rhi dropped her teasing tone. “Far be it for me to interfere in your love life—”
“Then don’t. There’s nothing going on between me and Eve.” Except mutual lust. Maybe mutual lust? Or he’d imagined that interest in her eyes the night before. Anything was possible.
“But a Chandler would be messy.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I mean, any sweet young woman would be messy for you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not a messy guy.”
“With the wrong woman? You’d be devastating.”
“Hey now.”
“No offense, baby brother. You’re decent and kind and charming. But you’re basically that guy who we in the industry call the several-night stand.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means a guy who’s terrified of intimacy, but also doesn’t want the impersonal hassle of a one-night stand. So you sleep with one woman multiple times, which, cool. But it’s all shallow. You don’t really call her or talk to her outside of bed. You drop her when it gets too close.”
Jesus. Now both of the women in his family were harping on his intimacy issues? “That makes me sound like an asshole. I’m never with a woman who doesn’t want the same thing as I do.”
“You aren’t an asshole. Just a man in the modern-love world.” Rhi grunted. “Dating isn’t what it used to be.”
“You made a fortune off a dating app.”
“I didn’t say I don’t take responsibility for my small role in creating this hellscape,” Rhi said, sounding mildly offended. “It is what it is.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it again. What could he say, really?
Was she wrong? Not totally, no.
Fuck, that was depressing. “I can’t...” He stopped. There was no way to end that sentence. It wasn’t that he couldn’t, it was that he didn’t know how to be close to someone else. “You’re right. Regardless of what I prefer, getting involved with a Chandler would be messy. Especially with... you know.”
“Yeah.” She was silent for a beat. “Robert.”
