A person could date up, but never down. And he was clearly up. A guy like him got to go to hot-guy nights where they did hot-guy things. And she got to go eat sushi and people watch.
“What’s wrong with Jack?” he asked April, scowling. Boy, he didn’t like her announcement at all.
“Whatiswrong with Jack?” Kitty scowled right along with Jack. “He fills out that suit very well, if you ask me. You can’t do better than that. And he’s here temporarily. You definitely can’t do better thanthat.” She refocused on him. “You’re temporary, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“No one is asking you to set me up.” April did her best to telepathically broadcast that Kitty needed to stop.
“Perhaps we’re misunderstanding each other.” His hands found his pockets. “Dinner tonight would be great. But I’m not saying April and I shoulddate, because I don’t date.” His elbows pressed the sides of his jacket back, exposing the black silk lining.
Gah, even the inside of his jacket was the kind of fabric that would feel like…well, silk…against her hands if he were someone else and they went on a date and then did adult things afterward.
“I think we are misunderstanding.” April laughed. Because she had clearly lost her grip on appropriate emotions. Kitty’s house apparently had that effect.
Maybe—and this was not something she would think too hard about—she’d reach out to Molly ASAP. Molly was her dating guru friend and she would know some reasonably attractive, but still in her league, men. Molly was like Kitty light. She meddled, but she still had boundaries.
Also, if April went on a Molly-arranged date, she could have an actual conversation with a guy who didn’t ask her for anything beyond eating dinner together and…well…maybe something else. Was she ready for the something else?
Perhaps.
Man, it’d been a lot of time since she had something else.
Something else that involved a scooch of spontaneity and maybe inventive use of a silk tie like the blue geometric patterned one Jack currently wore.
That silk around her wrists, holding her in place while his lips trailed down along her collarbone to her shoulder, down to her—
“Where on earth did your mind just go?” Kitty asked wryly. “Because it seems like it dropped straight into the gutter.”
Blaming her body’s reaction on her present lack of romantic prospects and the drought she’d been through with men was easier than acknowledging the truth, which was that Jack was just…soJack.
“You can stop now,” April said, seizing the fantasy and shoving it deep in that place she held for all the things she wanted but couldn’t have.
Yes, she shoved the intrusive thoughts deep, deep down, because Jack was there. He wasn’t just a face on a screen. And in person, she couldn’t fantasize about how he might look at her with those soulful eyes and whisk her off her feet. Especially because he was not looking like he wanted to whisk her anywhere. No, he scrutinized with scrunchy eyebrows and a gaze that seemed to x-ray vision straight to her soul.
And most certainly because they were in different leagues and his league didn’t date.
Best to remember that.
“We’re just colleagues,” Jack said, reassuring. “Who can go to dinner and talk about business.”
She gave Jack a grin and stepped to the door. “Okay. I will send you a message letting you know what I come up with for supper.”
What the flaming frogs was she going to serve the guy?
“You know, April, we can plan that when I’m over thereearlier—”
“Mom,” Harmony threw open Kitty’s partially open door, running clean through and straight into Jack.
She knocked him back a step, but he managed to stop her forward momentum. Unfortunately, she’d left a smear of something red on his formerly pristine white shirt.
This was how it always ended.
Jack set Harmony on her feet, more than a little awkward—like he didn’t quite know what to do with a child barreling face first into him while smearing God knew what across his button-down.
“What on earth?” April asked.
“Rohan ate a bee,” Harmony said, out of breath.
