Adam knew for sure he had been played when two women were seated behind him and Brandon came over to take their drink orders. One was a thirtyish blonde in a stylish gray suit; the other, a petite brunette with cherry colored streaks in her sable hair, dressed more casually in jeans and some kind of loose-fitting top. The blonde had caught his eye as they passed, her pretty baby blues widening with instant interest. The brunette hadn’t even glanced his way.
“Hello, ladies,” Adam heard Brandon say from behind him. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“You’re just saying that because I forgot my bifocals last time and gave you a fifty instead of a five,” one of the women said. Her voice was low and musical, filled with amusement. It was clear she was teasing him.
“You’re not wearing your bifocals now,” Brandon observed.
“No, but it’s Liz’s turn to pay tonight, and she’s a notorious cheapskate.”
Adam discreetly glanced back to see the one called Liz stick her tongue out and flip the brunette the bird at the same time.
Brandon laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now, what can I get you ladies to drink?”
Originally, Adam had planned on eating his meal as quickly as possible so he could get the hell out of there, yet he found himself taking his time. He wasn’t in the habit of eavesdropping, but the two behind him were loud enough to be heard without any effort on his part. They really were a hoot and a half.
One of them—Adam thought it was the blonde—was a systems analyst at a software development company. The other, as far as he could tell, was currently a writer, though judging by the way they spoke about people at the office, he guessed they had both worked together at one time.
The analyst seemed nice enough, but it was the writer that piqued his interest. She had a pleasant, soothing voice that was completely at odds with her rather pessimistic and jaundiced views. Oh, she laughed and made jokes—she really was quite funny— but he heard the cynicism underneath.
It was ironic, really. The blonde worked at a software company, yet still believed there was a Prince Charming waiting out there for her. Meanwhile, the brunette wrote romance novels for a living, yet believed the only thing awaiting her was a bunch of frogs.
They didn’t talk about five-minute orgasms, but they did have quite a detailed discussion on female sexual aids that he found both shocking and rather fascinating. By the time they ordered their after-dinner coffee, Adam was reeling.
As if romance novels and Disney’s false expectations imprinted upon females shortly after birth weren’t bad enough, now a man had to compete with thrusting, revolving, life-like vibrators with front and back stimulating attachments? No wonder modern women were so empowered.
His male confidence suffering a mortal blow, he was just about to slide out of the booth and go home to lick his imagined wounds when he heard something that had the blood freezing in his veins.
“HEY, DID YOU CATCH that guy sitting right behind us when we came in?” Liz asked, lowering her voice slightly.
Holly swirled a piece of broccoli around in the buttery cheese sauce that had pooled beneath the chicken. “No. Why?”
Liz shook her head sadly. “No wonder you can’t get any, Holly. The guy was totally hot.”
Holly leaned over in interest. “Do tell.”
“Around our age. Dark brown hair. Gorgeous icy blue eyes; kind of like Ian Somerhalder’s, but more ... I don’t know, intense. And not as pretty. A little rough around the edges, if you know what I mean. Clean shaven, but with a sexy shadow around his jaw. Big, broad shoulders; muscular arms and chest. Couldn’t see any lower,” Liz said, her disappointment evident. “The table was blocking the good stuff.”
“Damn. Think he’s still here?”
“I doubt it. He was by himself, and we’ve been here for hours.”
Holly sighed deeply. “Figures. If he’s really as good-looking as you say, he might have made a good muse. I’m completely stuck on my latest alpha male. I need some inspiration.”
“Sorry, I should have said something sooner. Hey, I think that cute waiter kid was talking to him earlier. Maybe he knows who he is. I could ask.”
“Nah, don’t bother. He already thinks we’re nuts, and I have no desire to publicly broadcast my patheticism.”
“Is patheticism a real word?”
“It is now. I’m an author. I can do that.” Holly slid out of the booth. “Pay the check while I hit the ladies’ room. I’ll never make it home without peeing my pants. With my luck, I’ll get stuck behind an accident or something and wet myself. Here.” Holly dropped a couple of bills onto the table. “Add this to the kid’s tip, will you? He’s the only one besides you who smiled at me all week.”
ADAM SAT BACK IN THE corner of his booth seat as the petite brunette walked by. Again, she didn’t even look his way. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed. Despite that, he couldn’t help appreciating the sweet curve of her backside, or the way her hair hung in loose, natural waves halfway down her back.
“Brandon,” he heard the other woman whisper from behind him. For once, Adam was profoundly grateful for his acute auditory senses.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Gah, do you have to call me ma’am? I’m not that old, you know. Anyway, do you happen to know the guy who was sitting behind us when we came in? You were talking to him before.”
“Yeah, he’s my uncle.”
Adam cursed under his breath and considered changing the locks to his house before Brandon finished his shift. Emergency locksmith service was expensive, but it would be worth it.
“Does he live around here?”
“He does.”
Adam pulled out his phone and started googling local locksmiths.
“Is he married?”
“No.”
Adam scrolled through his choices.
“Do you see him often?”
“Yes.”
“Could you ...? I mean, would you give him this?”
Adam paused, his curiosity getting the better of him for a brief moment. What was she giving him? A card? A number?
“Will you be there?”
Not a card or a number then. An event of some sort?
“Yes.”
“Then I will definitely pass this along.”
Adam stared at his phone, his finger poised over the call icon. Shit, if he called the locksmith now, the woman would hear his voice and realize he was still here. He would just have to wait until he got outside.
When Brandon walked away to ring up their check, Adam left enough to cover his bill and tip on the table before he slipped quietly out of the booth, heading for the exit. This evening had been entertaining, but now he felt the urgent need to flee. He did not want to be sitting there when the women left. The blonde might try to talk to him, maybe ask him out, and he would panic. He never knew what to say when that happened. He didn’t want to be rude, but he simply didn’t like when a woman took the initiative. Yeah, he knew it wasn’t politically correct, but he was an old-fashioned kind of guy. Flirting was okay; that was how he knew a woman was interested. If there was going to be any asking, though, he wanted to be the one doing it.
Keeping his eyes focused on the Exit sign, he rounded the corner and felt an instant impact from his chest down. He looked down just in time to see the little brunette falling backward.
“Ah, fucking-A,” she murmured before she seemed able to help herself, wincing as she started to pull herself up.
The words were so shocking coming out of that pretty little mouth that, for a moment, Adam was too stunned to say anything. By the time he held out his hand and opened his mouth to apologize, she was already back on her feet.
“Sorry about that,” she said. Her voice was back to being low-pitched and musical, but her eyes were calling him all sorts of nasty names.
“Totally my fault,” he managed, his throat suddenly dry. Hell, she was cute. Big green eyes, pert little nose, little or no makeup. Naturally p
retty. “Are you hurt?” He reached out to steady her, but she stepped back in a clear message.
“No, just my pride. And my ass.”
She zipped around him, her cheeks a lovely shade of rose, not looking back and not slowing her pace until she dropped into the booth across from her friend. Then she put her elbows on the table and covered her face with both hands.
“TELL ME YOU DID NOT just have hot bathroom wall sex,” Liz said with equal parts worry and hope, eyeing her friend’s bright red face and look of total mortification.
“No,” Holly mumbled from beneath her hands. “I was zoning out and just face-planted a guy’s chest.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. Was he good-looking?”
“Yes,” Holly moaned. “Insanely. At least from my view on the floor.”
Liz covered her mouth with her hand to hide her grin. “Oh, Holly, you didn’t.”
“Yeah,” Holly replied with a rueful grin. “Princess Grace strikes again. The guy was so freaking hard I bounced right off his chest and landed on my ass. Then I went all über classy on him and uttered a few colorful expletives.”
“Oh, Holly.” Liz was doing her best to be sympathetic, but it was kind of difficult when she was trying so hard not to laugh.
Chapter 5
Adam looked at the half-page flyer on pale blue paper taped to the toilet seat and sighed. It was wrinkled and smudged, probably from the last several times he had crumpled it up and thrown it away. First, when he had found it tacked up on the refrigerator. Then, on the TV. The last time, it had been left on the inside of the front door. Brandon must have been pulling it out of the trash. The kid was like a dog with a bone.
Cursing, he ripped it off the toilet lid. He had half a mind to rip the thing into little pieces, drop them into the bowl, and piss on them, leaving them there for Brandon to fish out. Let him try to piece that back together. Common sense and a temperamental septic system won out over his irritation, though.
He simply folded the flyer and stuffed it into his pocket instead. He was going to have a talk with his nephew later and explain in a calm and mature manner that he did not need his nephew’s not-so-subtle matchmaking attempts.
It wasn’t as if Adam wasn’t interested in the possibilities, but the thought that the blonde had pushed the flyer at the kid bothered him. He had learned the hard way that the chances of hitting it off with a woman forward enough to do something like that weren’t good. He was past the “go out and have a good time anyway” stage. He had been for a long time.
Adam sighed, realizing he would be wasting his breath. When he had been Brandon’s age, he wouldn’t have understood, either. How could he explain to a twenty-year-old that sex wasn’t enough after a while? That what he wanted most was what he was most unlikely to find—a woman who satisfied his mind and heart, as well as his cock. Though, to be fair, the sex would have to be pretty good, too.
No, what Adam was looking for was a woman who could just as easily sit in comfortable silence as hold a decent conversation. One who was intelligent and thoughtful. Independent, yet retained an air of innocence. Someone who could live with his old-fashioned, caveman-like mentality without being a doormat.
Someone who, most likely, didn’t exist.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t looked. Adam didn’t have his brother’s movie star looks, but he was a good-looking enough guy and had a decent, well-paying job. He couldn’t complain; he’d had more than his share of dates and hookups over the years. While he’d had some good times and met some great women, none of them came close to his ideal.
The blonde at the restaurant seemed nice enough, and she had shown interest. If he did go to this book signing thing, she would probably be amenable to coffee, then dinner, maybe even sex. It would be pleasant. Enjoyable, even. But he already knew that was all it would be, because she just didn’t do it for him.
Now that little brunette, she was a different story. She had a voice that stroked him in all the right places, and a husky laugh that made his dick hard and his balls clench. And when she had run all those soft, lush curves into him and looked up at him with those big green eyes, he’d had the sudden urge to throw her over his shoulder and take her out to his truck like the Neanderthal he was.
Even now, he couldn’t seem to go five minutes without thinking about her.
Holly, that was what the blonde had called her. Adam wondered if she would be at the book signing, too. Then he decided it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going.
HOLLY’S FINGERS FLEW over the keyboard. The visions and words in her head were coming so fast it was hard to keep up. Rather than write complete sentences, she just jotted down phrases and words, enough to get the gist and flow before she forgot them. She would come back and fill in the details later.
Three days. Three days of absolute gold and enough imagined fantasies to finish her alpha-male novel and spawn the continuing storyline through a few sequels. All Holly had to do was close her eyes for a moment, picture the guy from the restaurant, and the ideas came to her.
Tall. Broad. Muscular. Too rugged to ever be called pretty. He was the epitome of her perfect alpha, at least in looks. Thank God he hadn’t said more than a few words and ruined it all. As it was, he had said just enough for her to hear the deep, baritone rumble that fueled the fantasy. If she changed the length of his hair and imagined that body in different period clothing, he could fit into any genre. She could picture him as a brawny Highlander, a fierce SEAL, or an alpha shifter, just as easily as she could see him as the hero in any of her contemporary romances.
At any given time, Holly had between six and ten stories in various stages of development, encompassing a wide range of subgenres. What she chose to work on depended on her mood of the day, as well as her level of sexual frustration. Since Tuesday night, she had been ... inspired.
Granted, it had been embarrassing at the time, running into him like that and landing on her butt. But hey, if it got results like this, she might have to start scoping out various places and deliberately staging a few such “accidents.”
Or better yet, she could just stalk the restaurant guy. She wouldn’t even have to instigate another embarrassing physical encounter. Simply observing from afar would be enough to spawn a few ideas. With his dark hair, pale blue eyes, sculpted features, and hard body, the man was the perfect muse for sweaty, erotic fantasies.
He had to be the guy Liz had spotted in the booth behind them, and boy, she hadn’t been exaggerating when she said he was hot. Not in a polished, pretty boy sort of way, though. There was something inherently male about him, something that made all of Holly’s girlie parts sit up and shout a great big “hey, howdy.”
Smelling of clean male soap and deodorant, a bit of stubble around his strong jaw, and a deep, slightly husky voice that Holly couldn’t seem to get out of her mind, he really was the perfect inspiration.
The only bad thing was, Liz seemed interested in him. She hadn’t come right out and said so, but she had admitted to pumping the server for info and passing along a flyer for the book signing they were going to in a few days.
Holly sighed and absently petted Max with her foot beneath the table. If Liz was interested, her fantasies would have to stay just that—fantasies. For one thing, no man was worth jeopardizing Liz’s friendship. And for another, she didn’t stand a chance.
Most men took one look at Liz and started acting like lovesick puppies. They never looked at Holly, not unless Liz shot them down and they were forced to troll elsewhere. It was one of the main reasons Holly never went anywhere with Liz, except to their girls-only weekly dinners.
Liz was her bestie, her BFF, her only true friend, really, but Holly’s decided lack of people skills and fragile ego couldn’t take the rejection she would inevitably face at Liz’s side. Besides, her pride wouldn’t permit her to knowingly be someone’s second choice.
It was for the best, really. She didn’t need the aggravation and disappointment that inevitably accompanied getting h
er hopes up. For the first time in her life, Holly felt truly at peace. She had her own place and did her own thing. Her life was all about what she wanted, what made her happy.
Holly once again said her daily prayer of thanks to her late great-aunt, whose bequeathal had allowed her to purchase this little cottage and move out of her hometown for good. Great-Aunt Rose had been the only one who had ever understood Holly’s love of books, of reading and writing and getting lost in a really great story. The only one who had ever encouraged her to follow her dream. With the exception of Liz, no one else got it.
Both of her sisters, one older and one younger, were blessed with social skills and thought her preference for spending the day holed up in her room with a book was weird. And both of her brothers, one older and one younger, thought everything about her was weird. Her parents ... well, they were just disappointed. Disappointed she had hit the big 3-0 and still wasn’t married. Still had no kids. Disappointed she had quit her job as a software engineer to write romance novels, of all things. Disappointed she hadn’t told them she was moving out of town until after the ink on the mortgage papers was already dry.
It had to be that way, though. If they had known about her plans to buy this place, to move out and start living her life the way she wanted, they would have held an intervention. Deep down, they meant well, but they just didn’t, or couldn’t, seem to understand her desire to live alone or spend her life doing what she loved. That sort of thing was reserved for the spinster types. Or lesbians.
Not that there was anything wrong with either, but her family, especially her mother, was convinced that a woman could only be truly happy if she had a husband and children of her own.
At the moment, she was neither a spinster nor a proud member of the LGBT community. Despite the lack of male human companionship, Holly was still a twig and berries kind of girl. Though, if things kept going the way they were, spinsterhood was looking increasingly likely.
However, she did have Max, who was her saving grace. Old maids had cats or parakeets, not dogs. She reminded herself of this known and scientifically proven fact daily.
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