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Tina’s plan, as Megan understood it, revolved around the T-shirt—hot off the silk screen and sporting the slogan GOT SPERM?—folded neatly on the cocktail table between them.
“I mean, seriously, who’s to say this total, random stranger enticed by your thirteen-dollar custom call for baby batter isn’t attempting to walk off the early stages of Ebola or worse? Casual, unprotected sex is stupid. And you’re trying to talk Megan into it. For God sake, why don’t you pick up a knife and stab her.”
Turning the glass upside down, Megan watched as a single last drop of martini goodness slid to the rim. Catching it with her tongue, she hoped the cocktail waitress would take her action as the plea for help it was and bring a refill. Fast.
“You’re such a prude. It’s pathetic.”
Eesh.
“What I am is too much of a lady to say what you are.”
“Girls, please,” Megan interjected before the volley of barbs got any more intense. “I totally appreciate you two looking out for me this way.” Okay, she was stretching the truth, but somehow her tongue let her get away with it. Honestly, she’d have rather been of such little interest they both got her name wrong all weekend and ignored her through dinner. But courtesy of her mother’s propensity to spill secrets, the family grapevine had guaranteed her Vegas arrival for cousin Gail’s wedding was met with a tempest of polarizing opinion regarding her decision to undergo artificial insemination in two months’ time. “Tina, I love—really love—this T-shirt, but the only place it’s going is into my scrapbook. And, Jodie, thank you for the support but—”
Jodie’s hand came up, cutting her off. “I don’t, really. Support what you’ve decided to do. You ought to wait to find a husband like the rest of us.”
Images of Barry and the two years they’d dated flashed through her mind, threatening to suck her into a vortex of churning emotions she wouldn’t allow herself to surrender to. Shame, embarrassment, anger and helpless frustration.
“Megan, I swear I didn’t even realize it myself. Not until right that minute...and suddenly I knew. I’d never stopped loving her.”
She wasn’t going there again, wasn’t wasting another precious second on the man who’d left for a conference talking about starting a family with her and then come home married to someone else.
Spine stiffening, she reined herself in.
She didn’t need Barry.
She didn’t need any man to have the child she’d always wanted—well, at least not for more than five minutes of quality time with a plastic cup.
Jodie sighed, a faraway look settling over her features. “Wait for your Prince Charming and you’ll have someone to share your special moment in the nursery, making it all the sweeter.”
“Well, actually,” Megan started, but Jodie wasn’t finished.
“You’re what’s wrong with our society. I mean, life isn’t about getting everything you want the instant you want it. Some things are worth waiting for. That said, in a toss-up between bedding down with the next patient zero or hitting the drive-thru for prescreened sperm...I’ll back the bank.”
Megan felt the telling wash of heat rush through her cheeks, but thinking about Gail and what kind of wedding she’d have if all three of her bridesmaids were at each other’s throats, she tamped it down. “Okay. Well, thank you...for your thoughts on the issue.”
Tina’s less-than-delicate snort sounded from beside her, and Megan craned her neck in search of their waitress. Only, rather than the leggy server with the no-nonsense attitude, she found her attention snared by the man walking past their table. Hand raised in casual greeting, mahogany eyes fixed on someone across the room, he was tall, dark and handsome in the most traditional sense. Broad and tapered, chiseled and cut. All clean lines and classic good looks. The balanced symmetry of him so flawless, it might have made him bland.
If not for his mouth.
This guy had one of those slanted smiles going on. The kind so lazy only half of it bothered to go to work. And yet, something about the ease of it suggested a near permanence on his face, while its stunted progress implied—well, she supposed that was part of the lure. It could really imply anything.
That smile was the kind women got lost in while trying to unravel its mystery.
Only, Megan was through trying to read signs and figure guys out. Which was why she pried her eyes loose from the table where this one had settled in with a friend or associate or whomever, and forced herself to refocus on Tina and Jodie...who were totally focused on her.
In tandem they leaned forward, resting on their elbows.
“Window-shopping the gene pool, Megan?” Tina asked with a knowing smirk as one pencil-thin brow pushed high. “See something you like?”
Jodie’s eyes narrowed. “His suit is too perfectly cut to be anything but made-to-measure. The suit, the watch, the links. This guy has quality catch written all over him. Megan, quick, cross your legs higher and give up some thigh. Tina, get his attention.”
Megan’s lips parted to protest, but Tina was a woman of action. “Wow, Megan, I knew you were a gymnast, but I didn’t think anyone’s legs could do that!”
Tina’s face took on an expression of benevolence and she crossed her arms, leaning back in her seat. “You’re welcome.”
Needles of tension prickled up and down her back as she struggled for her next breath. Eyes fixed on the tabletop in front of her, Megan held up her empty martini glass and prayed to the cocktail gods for a refill. When she thought she could manage more than a squeak, she cleared her throat and replied to anyone within listening distance, “I’m not a gymnast.”
At which point Tina and Jodie burst out laughing.
* * *
“It may not seem like it now, but you’re better off without her...”
Connor Reed shifted irritably in his chair, swirling the amber and ice of his scotch as he listened to Jeff Norton forfeit his status as one of the guys. “Noted.”
And not exactly a news flash.
“...You and Caro were together for almost a year... It’s okay to be hurt...”
Hurt? Connor’s eye started to twitch.
This wasn’t guy talk. It wasn’t the promised blowing off of steam with which he’d been lured to Sin City.
It wasn’t cool.
“...a blow to the ego, and for someone with an ego like yours...”
Growling into his glass, he muttered, “We need to get your testosterone levels checked.”
“Whatever,” Jeff answered, unfazed. He was as secure with his emotional “awareness” as he was with his position as Connor’s oldest and best friend. “All I’m saying is you were ready to marry Caro two weeks ago. I don’t believe you’re as indifferent as you make out to be.”
“Yeah, but you never want to believe the truth about me,” Connor replied with an unrepentant grin. “Seriously, though, Jeff, like I told you before, I’m fine. Caro was a great girl, but hearing what she had to say...I’m more relieved than anything else.”
The following grunt suggested Jeff wasn’t buying it.
And to an extent, the guy might be right. Just not the way he figured.
Connor wasn’t heartbroken over the end of the relationship because his heart had never played into the equation. Callous but true. And something Caro had understood from the first.
Connor didn’t do love. All too well he understood the potential of its destructive power. He knew the distance of its reach, had experienced the devastation of its ripple effect. No thank you. He hadn’t been signing on for more.
What he’d been after was a family. The kind he’d only ever seen from the outside looking in, but coveted just the same. The kind his father hadn’t wanted some bastard son to contaminate, and his mother had been too deep in her own grief to sustain. So he’d been determined to build his own.
There were a lot of things he’d done without as a kid. Things he’d made it his purpose to secure as an adult. Money, respect, his own home...and the thriving business he ran with an iron fist that garnered them all. But a family...? For that, he needed a partner. One he’d thought he found in Caro. She fit the bill, fundraiser ready with the right name, education and background. Coolly composed and devoid of the emotional neediness he’d spent his adult life actively avoiding. Or so he’d thought, right up to that last day when she’d folded her napkin at the side of her plate and evenly explained she wanted a marriage based on more than what they had. She hadn’t expected to, but there it was.
Fair enough. He gave her credit for having the good sense to recognize she wanted something she wouldn’t find with him. And most important, before the vows were exchanged.
So, heartbroken? No.
Disappointed? Sure.
Relieved? Hell, yes.
“...I think you’re lonely. Sad...”
Throwing back the rest of his single malt, Connor relished the burn down his throat and spread of heat through his belly. If he weighed in fifty pounds lighter, it might have been enough to fuzz out the discomfort of this conversation.
But there was always the next one.
“...remember, there are other fish in the sea—”
“Come on, what’s next—hot flashes?” Holding up the empty, he scanned the crowd for the cocktail server.
“—hell, apparently the one over there is a gymnast.”
Connor quirked a brow, angling his head for a better look. “Which one?”
Jeff winked. “Just making sure you were listening. Care about you, man.”
Though he’d never figured out why, Connor knew.
That caring had been the single constant in his life from the time he’d been ripped out of poverty and drop-kicked into the East Coast’s most exclusive boarding school at thirteen. He’d been the illegitimate kid with a chip on his shoulder, a jagged crack through the center of his soul and a grudge against the name he couldn’t escape—and Jeff had been the unlucky SOB saddled with him as a roommate. Connor hadn’t given him any reason to cut him a break, but for some reason, Jeff had anyway.
Which was why, for as much as he gave his friend a hard time about being an “in touch” guy...he also gave him the truth. “Yeah, you too... Now, where’s the gymnast?”
* * *
Another two rounds and some forty minutes later, Connor leaned back in his chair watching as Jeff reasserted his status as a testosterone-driven male by smoothly intercepting the cocktail girl he’d been eyeing for the better part of an hour. Connor didn’t even want to think about the rap this guy had laid on her to get those lashes batting and her tray cast aside so fast, but whatever it was, it must have been phenomenal.
Jeff shot him a salute, and the deal was done.
Reaching into this breast pocket, Connor pulled out his wallet, tossed a few bills onto the table and then set his empty glass atop the stack.
The night stretched out before him with all its endless...exhausting possibilities.
He could hit the blackjack tables.
Grab a bite.
Pick up some company. Or not. With this apathetic indifference he was rocking—
“Excuse me.”
Glancing up, he’d expected another waitress ready to clear, but instead it was the blonde in the midnight dress from the other table. The gymnast, who most definitely wasn’t a gymnast if her height and the soft S-like lines of a figure draped in one of those clingy wrap numbers were anything to go on.
Very nice. “Hi. What can I do for you?”
Her smile spread wide as her big blue eyes held his. “This is going to sound like a line. A really, really bad one. But you’ve got to believe me when I say it’s not.”
The corner of his mouth twitched as he readied for what inevitably was the rest of the line. Playing in, he gave her a nod. “Okay, you’ve got the disclaimer out of the way. Go for it.”
She nodded, releasing a deep breath. “I noticed you were about to leave. And I’d be more grateful than you could imagine if you wouldn’t mind walking out with me. So it looks like we’re leaving together.”
Right. “Just looks like we’re leaving together?”
Again her wide smile flashed, and Connor saw shades of girl-next-door. Not usually his type, but for whatever reason, there was something about the look of this one...
“Yes. My...friends saw me notice you earlier and...well...and you don’t even want to know what it’s been like since. I told them I’d come over and see if you were interested because I want them off my back. But I can tell from looking at you, that I’m not the kind of woman you’d be interested in...which is, actually, the only reason I decided to come over. I’d love to get out of here without them following me for the rest of the night.”
She’d been checking him out, eh?
Well, fair being fair, he gave his eyes the go-ahead to run the length of her and back, spending more time along the way than he’d done in his first casual glance. Very, very nice. Even with her scolding finger wagging at him on the return trip.
“None of that. You’re handsome, but I’m honestly working an escape strategy here.”
He shifted, the smile he hadn’t quite let loose earlier breaking free with the realization she was serious. Glancing past her, he noted her friends blatantly staring back.
“Subtle.”
She shrugged delicately. “So far as I can tell, subtle isn’t really their thing.”
He raised a brow. “So far as you can tell? What kind of friends are they?”
“The kind on loan until our bridesmaids’ obligations have been fulfilled, sometime before dawn on Sunday. I hope. They’re my cousin’s best friends from kindergarten.”
Ah. “And they’ve taken an interest in your love life because....?”
Her nose wrinkled up as she scanned the ceiling. “Any chance you might just walk me out of here?”
Connor eased back into his chair, pulling out the seat Jeff had vacated with his foot. “Not if you want it to look convincing. I’ll walk you out of here...in ten minutes.”
The skeptical look said she’d figured out he was thinking about more than the next ten minutes.
As different as she was from the women he usually pursued, she looked as if she really might be exactly the kind of fun this night called for.
The kind who didn’t generally hook up with strangers. The corruptible kind, he thought, feeling less apathetic by the second.
“Ten minutes. We’ll talk. Flirt. You can touch my arm once or twice to really sell it. Maybe I’ll tuck some wayward strand of hair behind your ear. Your voyeuristic friends will gobble it up. Then I’ll lean in close to your ear and suggest we get out of here. Maybe do it in a way that has you blushing all the way to your roots. You’ll get flustered and shy, but let me take your hand anyway. And we’ll go.”
The look on her face was priceless. As though he’d gotten to her with this bit of scripted tripe.
“That’s...um...” She swallowed, her gaze darting around, landing on his mouth and lingering briefly before snapping back to his eyes. “More of an investment than I was really asking for.”
“The better for you.”
“Yeah, but what’s in it for you?”
Connor flashed a wolfish smile. “Ten minutes to convince you to give me twenty. We’ll see where it goes from there.”
