“Yeah. My buddy Laser sent it to me. He’s hooking up with a girl I used to bang, and he found it on her phone. She kept it,” he explained with awe and pride. “Can you believe that?”
“No.” And I also couldn’t believe that he’d announced it to the entire restaurant as he’d shown it to me. I stared at my steak like it was the Aurora Borealis.
“Well, now, at least you know you won’t be disappointed,” he said with what sounded like complete sincerity.
This guy could not be for real. Against my better judgment, acting of its own accord, my gaze lifted from my northern lights steak plate. With a smug look on his face, he gave me a wink he must’ve thought was sexy, and it was all I could do not to laugh.
One thing was sure; I definitely had a dating story from hell to tell now.
Chapter 10
Cara
“It wasn’t what I put my face on for.”
~ Dolly Briggs
“Wait.” Destiny waved her hands in front of her as she bent over the table in uncontrollable laughter. We were seated in the back corner booth at the Tipsy Cow, and this was far from her first giggle-fit of the night. It was, however, the most intense. When she finally pulled herself together, she sat up. “Okay, back up. It was his thunder from down under?”
“Yeah. That sounds like Peter.” Harmony was laughing, but not as hysterically as Destiny. She was amused, but not shocked. “He’s always been proud of his package. He whips it out all the time. In fact, I wouldn’t put it past him to have planned the whole thing. He probably had his friend send him the dick pic at dinner just so he could show it to you.”
“What are you talking about?” I leaned towards Harmony. “Why would he want to show it to me?
“For you to be impressed.” My friend shrugged as if that were the most obvious thing in the world. “You have to admit, Wally is pretty impressive.”
“Wally?” Destiny repeated.
“You’ve seen it?” I asked at the same time.
“That’s what he named it,” Harmony replied to Destiny, then turned to me. “And yes. Like I said, he whips it out all the time. You know how guys are.”
“No.” Destiny and I both shook our heads in unison then glanced at each other before finishing. “We don’t.”
Destiny was an only child. I had my older brother Colton, but he wasn’t really in the habit of “whipping it out.” At least, not that I was aware of. This conversation was one more example of how different Harmony’s experience of growing up with eight older brothers had been, when compared to ours.
“Well,” Harmony sighed. Then she continued as if she was tryin’ to explain the alphabet to kindergartners. “They do that sometimes. Not all guys, and not all the time. But you get them in a group, especially if alcohol is involved, and chances are a pissing contest will take place.”
“A pissing contest is one thing.” Destiny’s face scrunched. “But showing a girl you just met a picture of your, you know, Wally? That’s…that’s not the same. Also, why would did he name it Wally?”
“Because it’s always lookin’ for The Beav.” Harmony and I answered in unison.
Destiny’s head fell back as laughter bubbled from her belly.
“I told you he was funny,” Harmony half-heartedly defended Peter. “I mean, how do you not love a guy that can make Leave it to Beaver dirty?”
I shook my head even as a grin pulled at my lips. “He also informed me, bluntly, that he was quite the ladies’ man in college. Even entertaining more than one lady at a time,” I said, explaining as delicately as possible.
“More than one at a time?” Destiny questioned.
“A threesome,” Harmony replied, filling in the blanks. Then she rolled her eyes and picked her phone up. “I can’t believe that he was bragging about that. I’m going to kill him.”
“No!” I tried to pull the device out of her hand. “Don’t say anything to him. I’m just telling you guys all of the more shocking events of the evening. Honestly, he was sweet in his own way. It just wasn’t a love connection. That’s all.”
“Fine. I won’t kill him.” Harmony retained an ironclad grip on her phone, but she did put it back on the table. “I really am sorry, Care Bear. I knew he could be kind of an idiot, but I thought it was in a fun, party kind of way. Not in a totally-inappropriate-behavior kind of way.”
“I’m sure he is fun.” I popped an onion ring from the appetizer platter we’d ordered in my mouth. “Maybe a little too fun for me.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure bachelor number two will not show you any dick pics,” Harmony assured me.
“No, he won’t,” Destiny agreed enthusiastically.
“I don’t know, guys.” I hesitated before saying, “I’m not sure this is such a great idea.”
“You can’t bail out now. My guy is up next. Please, just give him a chance,” Destiny begged as she folded her hands like she was praying.
I did not want to spend another awkward night on a blind date. “Do you guys remember me talking about that lawyer that is in the same building as the magazine? He’s asked me out for coffee a couple of times. I was thinking about maybe going.”
My announcement was met with blank stares.
“What?” I asked after a few awkward beats of silence.
“I’m just confused.” Harmony tilted her head to the side. “The only lawyer you told us about was that guy… I think his name was Derek, and you said he was short and balding.”
I was seriously regretting that I’d shared that not-so-flattering description with my besties. Derek might’a been short and balding, but at least I knew him—kind of. We’d shared several conversations on the elevator and one significantly longer exchange in the parking garage. A dinner with him would have to be less uncomfortable than the one I’d had with Peter.
“I mean, yes, he is smaller in stature than most—that’s true. And his hairline is a little farther back than is common for a man his age. But he’s in his late twenties and he’s employed.”
Even to my own ears, my sales pitch was weak at best.
“He sounds nice. And you should definitely go for coffee with him, but there’s nothing wrong with keeping your options open,” Destiny pragmatically pointed out. “I say go to dinner with my guy and then coffee with yours.”
Since I’d let Harmony set me up, it was only fair to let the third in our trio do the same.
“Who is your guy again?” I asked.
“His name’s Brett. He’s my college roommate’s brother. He recently moved back here after being in school in California. He got his PhD in internal medicine from Stanford.”
“So, he’s a doctor?”
Most girls would probably jump at the chance to date a physician, but I’d spent so much time in hospitals and doctors’ offices that I didn’t share that enthusiasm.
“He is.” Destiny beamed, obviously thinking that his occupation would be firmly in the pro column. “He’s doing his residency at Valley Memorial. I saw him when Gram was there.”
Destiny’s great-grandmother had raised her. She was the only parent Destiny had known. Her mother had passed away during childbirth, and her father had been serving overseas at the time and had been killed in action. When her gram had been hospitalized, Destiny had not left the hospital for three days straight. She’d left when Dixie had left.
“How’s Grandma Dixie feelin’?”
Destiny’s gram was a pillar of the community and had pretty much adopted the entire town as her own. There wasn’t a Wishing Well resident under the age of sixty that didn’t call her Grandma Dixie.
“She’s doing so much better now that they’ve worked out the iron deficiency. And she can’t wait to be a great-great-grandma.” Destiny rubbed her still-flat belly.
“Wait, what’s Brett’s last name? Maybe I’ve met him,” Harmony asked Destiny. “I’ve spent much more time than I’d like to admit over the past few weeks in various waiting rooms and the cafeteria in that hospital.”
<
br /> From what Harmony had said, things with the good doctor were not moving fast enough for her liking, and her much-hated nookie drought was still in full effect. The last time the subject had been broached, her exact words had been, “It’s been so long I wouldn’t be surprised if there were cobwebs down there.”
“Hall. Brett Hall,” Destiny replied, mimicking the way people said, “Bond. James Bond.”
“Hall…Hall…Hall,” Harmony repeated as she drummed her fingers on the table and narrowed her eyes. After a few beats, she snapped her fingers. “About six foot tall, wavy, blond hair, brown eyes, broad shoulders, with a scar above his right eye and a dimple on his left cheek?”
“That’s him,” Destiny confirmed.
“Wow. That’s a really specific description for someone you weren’t even sure you knew,” I observed.
“The name didn’t immediately ring a bell, but then I remembered when I was waiting for Dr. Hottie to get off his shift I overheard a couple of candy stripers talking about all the things they wanted to do in the hall with Dr. Hall. Out of sheer curiosity and boredom, I did a little covert spying and found out who was inspiring this talk of naughty hallway fantasies.” Harmony wrapped her fingers around the stem of her glass and took a sip of her cosmo.
“So,” I prompted, my interest effectively piqued. “Was he nice? Did you talk to him? Is he cute?”
Of course, if Destiny was setting me up with him, she thought he was nice and cute, but she thought everyone was nice. Harmony had a much more discerning nature. Which was why her pick had shocked me so much.
“I didn’t actually have a one-on-one conversation, but I overheard via eavesdropping several convos he was involved in. He seemed very down to earth from the few interactions I witnessed. Cute? Um, no, I would not describe him as cute…”
Okay, well, looks weren’t everything. I mean, Derek was no prize in the looks department, but he had a lot of other things going for him.
Destiny jumped in to defend her bachelor. “Hey, I think he’s very—”
“I wasn’t finished.” Harmony lifted her hand. “Cute, not so much. Hot. Gorgeous. Sexy. Those would all be words that would describe Dr. Hall. Let’s just say McDreamy and McSteamy have nothing on him.”
“I still can’t believe they’re dead,” Destiny spoke reverently about two of our favorite characters on one of our favorite shows, Grey’s Anatomy. Destiny and I had taken the deaths particularly hard.
Harmony, who had a much easier time distinguishing between fiction and reality, continued, “As much as I hate to admit it, because you know how I do love to be the best at everything and win always, I think Destiny’s bachelor may be more your speed.”
I was stunned silent by our third angel’s confession. Harmony was, by far, one of the most competitive people I knew. Destiny and I had always humored her and figured that our friend was the way she was because of her upbringing. Having eight older brothers hadn’t just lit the competitive fire in Harmony; it’d caused a cut-throat inferno to blaze beneath the surface.
Colton and I had never been very competitive. I attributed that to our six-year age difference. My having been sick so much of my childhood had been a contributing factor as well. But, even before I had been diagnosed, my brother had always treated me like a princess.
My mom said that, from the time I was born, he’d hated seeing me cry and would do anything to make me stop. He’d give me his toys, make funny faces, do silly dances—whatever it had taken for his baby sister to be happy. That behavior continued to this day. If I wanted anything, Colton did what he could to get it for me. If I was sick, tired, or not feeling well, he would still do impressions or launch into funny dances to make me smile. Right after I’d gone into remission, he’d even agreed to go on Fairytale Love, a reality dating show, just because I’d wanted him to. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with it.
But I was glad he had. Now, almost four years later, he was still working in reality TV. He’d made it all the way to the finale and handled himself with so much class that he’d garnered quite the following. Ninety percent of which were female. Not that he’d noticed. Only one girl had ever caught and held my brother’s attention, and she’d been out of his life for over six years now.
“You made it!” A high-pitched scream filled the room, pulling my attention to the front of the bar.
The place was packed, especially for a weeknight. But, over the sea of people, I spotted the source of the excited exclamation. Trace Briggs had just walked in, and Lizzy’s response reminded me of an overexcited Chihuahua. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d peed herself.
“Oh look, your brother’s here.” Destiny pointed in Trace’s direction.
Harmony had to lift off her seat to try to peer over the high-top back of the booth. Before she saw him, she asked, “Sawyer?”
“No,” Destiny and I both replied.
“Coop?”
“Trace,” Destiny and I corrected her in unison, knowing she had six more she could run through.
Laughing, Destiny leaned towards me. “We really do need to start being more specific right off the bat.”
I nodded as I downed the rest of the cosmo I’d been nursing for the last hour in one gulp. My nerves started popping like bubble wrap under a steamroller. My stomach had suddenly been inhabited by a group of River Dancers who were doing a jig. Just knowing that Trace was there had my body going into hormone hyper speed.
The bar was filled with age-appropriate, good-looking guys. A couple even shared Trace’s last name. Travis was there, and JJ had stayed after he’d dropped Destiny off under the guise of hanging out with Travis, but since he hadn’t taken his eyes off his expectant wife, his real motivation was clear. JJ was obviously off-limits, but Travis wasn’t.
On paper, Travis and Trace were almost clones. When they had been little, people had even mistaken them for twins. Their similarities didn’t stop at their physical attributes, either.
As kids, they’d been nicknamed TNT because of an incident involving firecrackers that had gone horribly wrong. If there was trouble within spitting distance, TNT were knee-deep in it. They looked alike, had been born less than a year apart, and had nearly identical personalities.
So, why were my reactions to each of them so different? Or the better question: Why was my reaction so different to Trace than Peter, Derek, or any guy I’d ever met?
“Trace, dance with me!” Lizzy’s loud, drunken voice was easily heard over the chatter and the music.
Her request brought up another frustrating question: why was hearing or seeing Trace with other girls like getting punched in the stomach? And the most important question of all: what in the world was I going to do about it?
Chapter 11
Trace
“She couldn’t take a hint if you gift wrapped it.”
~ Dolly Briggs
“Come on.” Lizzy pulled at my arm, tugging me onto the crowded dance floor. “Trace! Dance with me!”
The last thing I wanted to do was dance. But, if I didn’t oblige my inebriated friend, she would have had no qualms about making a scene. It was better to get it over with.
I encircled her small waist with my arm and led her to the center of the wooden floor. I pulled her against me as we began swaying back and forth. She was mumbling words she must have thought were seductive but were coming off as comical.
Her hands, which had started the dance resting on my shoulders, quickly migrated south, from the blades of my shoulders down to my lower back. She didn’t stop until she had a handful of my ass in her palms. The unwanted public display of affection did nothing to improve my sour mood.
I was trying my best to ignore her advances, both verbal and physical, but she wasn’t making it easy on me. After several failed attempts at nudging her hands up, I was starting to feel like a girl at a middle school dance. Since the subtle route had been a dead end, and I really didn’t want to discuss that I didn’t want her groping me, I got creative. I wrapped
my fingers around her wrist and lifted her arm up in the air. Then, with my other hand, I gave her hip a push and spun her in a circle. Which reminded me of something I’d seen on Dancing with the Stars.
It caught the attention of the other couples on the dance floor and those at the tables and the booths surrounding the square wood area. Thankfully, when her spin ended, the song did too. After a dramatic dip, I lifted her up and we both bowed as we were showered with applause and whistles.
She ate the attention up like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. I used her distraction to my advantage and slipped away while she was on her third curtsey. I hadn’t made it two steps off the dance floor when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of familiar-looking red. When I turned my head, I was not disappointed.
Cara was seated at a back booth with her two partners in crime.
My feet had already started heading in their direction when my sister waved me over. My first thought was that this might be a repeat of their celebration of Cara’s being cancer-free. That all three girls might be tipsier than the cartoon cow on this bar’s logo, but that theory was quickly discounted.
First, Destiny was expecting, so she was sticking to beverages of the nonalcoholic variety. Second, it was clear from the look in my sister’s eyes that she was not in the same state she had been when JJ had received a distress call from Bryson, who’d been bartending and had the unfortunate responsibility of cutting them off. With those two facts, there was no doubt in my mind that Cara was just as sober as the other two angels. She wasn’t a big drinker, and there was no way she’d be throwing them back on the solo tip.
“Hello, ladies,” I said as I approached feeling happier than I had any right to be over the fact that Cara was there and not on her date.
My eyes met Cara’s, and her clear gaze cemented my working hypothesis. She was not three sheets to the wind; she wasn’t even two. I couldn’t help the flicker of disappointment that I would not be needed to swoop in and save the day. The night I’d taken her home and stayed awake, seated beside her bed until morning to make sure she didn’t get sick or need anything, had been one of the best of my life. As fucked up as that sounded.
Convincing Cara (Wishing Well, Texas Book 2) Page 7
