“Well, this guy sure isn’t complaining,” Maverick said. “Can I?”
“Sure, but that’s your last one until dinner, Tramp!” I said sternly. “You can’t eat all the merchandise.”
Tramp looked at me, panting happily. Yeah, I wasn’t much of a pack leader. He walked all over me, but he was cute doing it.
Maverick bent to feed a biscuit to Tramp, which naturally meant he had to give one to Lady when she peeked into the kitchen, drawn from her doggy bed by the promise of yummies.
“So, enough small talk,” Silas said. “Tell us more about this dating disaster.”
I groaned. “Can’t we just drink wine and make fun of how disgusting Maverick and Damon are together?”
“Hey!” Maverick grinned. “We’re not that bad. Although,Damon did somethingsocute this morning. I woke up to find these post-it notes all over my body.”
“That’s not creepy at all,” Silas muttered.
“They said stuff like,Best heart ever,and um,prettiest smile…”
“He put these on you while you weresleeping?” I asked.
“Yeah, pretty clever, huh?”
I exchanged a look with Silas. “Creepy,” we both said at the same time.
“No!” Maverick exclaimed. “You know we prank each other. It used to be kinda mean, but now it’s all these sweet things. Every time he does it, my heart melts.”
“Because you’re sickening,” Silas deadpanned, “as was previously established.”
Maverick pouted and took a gulp of his wine. “I guess you had to be there.”
“Either way, it’s not really helping Jamie feel better, is it?”
Maverick winced. “Sorry.”
I sighed. “It’s fine. The wine will help. Lots and lots of wine.”
“I’m just confused,” Silas said. “I’m not into this matchmaker stuff, but it sounded like you guys hit it off. You said you were texting and he was really sweet. So, what went wrong?”
“Well, for one thing, he turned out to be straight.”
“Shut up!” Maverick exclaimed.
Silas raised his eyebrows. “How the hell didthathappen?”
I waved my hands. “The whole thing was a big, mortifying mix-up. He told me Iola set him up with a woman, so I can only assume he got my number by mistake or something.”
“That sucks so hard,” Silas said, while Maverick nodded in solidarity.
“Yep.” I gulped my wine, downing half the glass. “Maybe it’s a sign I should just give up on a love life.” I shrugged. “If I want to launch a new business, I don’t have time to date anyway, right?”
“You can’t give up just because of one bad experience,” Maverick said.
I gave him a flat look over the rim of my wineglass. “What makes you think this is my only bad experience?”
My last attempt at dating had been a pushy guy who got angry that I didn’t want to fuck on a first date. The one before that had wanted a casual hookup situation only, which had been fine at first, but…
Well, I wasn’t getting any younger. I could get sex when I needed it. I wanted something more than that, though. I wanted a partner—someone to come to at night, to take to dinner at my family’s place, to wake up beside in the morning.
Ridiculously, Hank’s image flashed behind my eyes. Well, that wasn’t going to happen, no matter how much I liked the guy. And truthfully, I barely knew him. He was probably hiding a dozen red flags anyway, right?
