Three
It turned out that the place where Brandon had invited me to meet him was a block from his office.
All the lawyers hung out there after work, swapping stories, getting drunk, and dancing badly.
At the table, sitting with my date, they were talking about a case they were all working on.
I was drinking. There was not one attempt to include me in the conversation or segue into a new one that might have interested me.
After a few more minutes ticked by, I pulled my phone out of my leather racing jacket and posed the question to Dylan, Evan, and my pal Aiden: Why am I attending happy hour instead of being out on a date?
When I looked up, the waiter was back, and I ordered another mojito. I slipped him a twenty and asked him to separate my bill from the rest of the table’s. My phone gave out a catcall whistle to let me know I had messages.
Evan thought he was showing me off because I was so pretty.
Dylan thought he was the kind of guy who needed the approval of his friends on who he could or could not date.
Aiden said he was out to make his friends jealous because I was not only hot but also talented and successful.
They were all ridiculous.
I told Evan that he was on crack, sent Aiden the same, and agreed with Dylan. The man for me would not have cared what his friends thought, as Brandon so obviously did.
“Are you okay?” Brandon asked, leaning in beside me, hand on my leg. “Can I get you another drink?”
Maybe his friends had to see me first before he even decided whether to waste time taking me out to a real restaurant or not. I sent that back to Dylan.
“Jory?”
“I’m good.” I sighed and saw that I had a picture from Dane of him and Aja on some beach, drinking. They were both smiling into the phone.
“Excellent,” Brandon gushed.
It was rude to sit on my phone and text, so I sent Evan one last message, asking him if he and Loudon wanted to have dinner with me on Friday.
I got a yes back with a promise that Loudon had another friend for me to meet.
I couldn’t stifle the groan. The last guy Loudon McKay, Evan’s partner of the last two years, had had me meet ended up having a cat with some kind of weird skin disease.
There was ointment that needed to be applied every four hours. I had run like hell.
“You all right?” one of Brandon’s friends asked me.
“Super,” I answered cheerfully, shoving my phone back into my jacket as it hung on my chair.
When the music changed from whatever weird electronic down-tempo crap they had on to classic seventies, I was very happy.
When I started singing along, I looked down the table and saw the girl at the other end singing along with me.
The shy smile was very appealing. So were the dimples and the riot of red curls.
Bonus, she knew all the words to “Rich Girl” by Hall and Oates, just like I did. I waved, and she waved back.
I got up, walked down to the other end of the table, and squatted beside her chair. She turned to look at me, one rusty-colored brow arched up high.
“Hiya.”
She smiled slowly, and her fingers brushed the hair out of my face. “Hiya back.”
“Would you like to dance with me?”
“I would.”
She took the hand I held out for her, and I led her to the dance floor.
“I’m Jory.” I smiled at her.
“Aubrey.”
“Beautiful name, beautiful lady,” I said as I dipped her low.
She didn’t giggle, she laughed, and it was deep and throaty. “Rightbackatcha, pretty boy.”
I chuckled as I brought her back up to her feet and we started to dance.
It was fun, and she followed me as we moved around each other like idiots.
Twenty minutes later she called a time-out for alcohol, and I followed her back to the bar.
It quickly became a routine: dance a little, drink a lot, rinse and repeat.
We both lost track of how many we had. I bought a round, then her, then me again…
and there was yet more dancing until we took a long break to sit down, gulp water, and put our numbers in each other’s phones.
The dance music came pounding out of the speakers, and we went back to the floor.
It was fun, and I didn’t care what had gotten me there anymore, I was just looking forward to getting to know my new friend.
I saw us shopping for matching sequin tube tops or something equally ridiculous.
When I spun her around and dipped her in my arms, she laughed so hard I thought she was going to pee.
When we were both tired out and liquored up, we decided to sit for a while. I had her in my lap when her date, Adam Myers, came and grabbed her arm. She yanked it out of his grasp, and when he did it again, harder, she lost her balance, slipping off my legs to the floor.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled at him, kneeling down on the ground to make sure she was okay.
“She is embarrassing me, and you are embarrassing Bran. God, do you guys not understand that this is where everyone at our firm hangs out after work? From the associates on up, this is where we go.”
I looked at Aubrey, and she shrugged.
She pointed back at him over her shoulder. “I just finally gave in because this guy’s been asking me out for a month and a half.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, helping her to her feet, checking her over, realizing she looked no worse for wear. It was more a bump than a fall.
“Yes, honey,” she said with a sigh, smiling at me, standing up, and straightening her skirt. “Does this look right?”
Straight woman, gay man…we were a match made in heaven.
“I think the slit needs to go in the back.”
“Ohmygod yes, that’s right.”
“Where do you work?” I wanted to know, smiling at her.
“At a company called Barrington. We do—”
“I used to work at Barrington.” I smiled wider. “But I left to start my own business. I run Harvest Design now. I work with—”
“Oh shit.” She laughed and launched herself at me. “Jory, I’m Abe.”
I pushed her back so I could look at her. “What?”
“I’m Abe Flanagan, who’s coming to help you when Dylan’s out on maternity leave.”
“You are not!” I shouted at her.
“Yes I am,” she shouted back, which sent us into peals of laughter.
It took a minute for us to get ourselves under control.
“Holy shit,” she finally said with a sharp exhale. “The world is just a teeny little place.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, it is. C’mon, let’s go get some food.”
“I’ll get my bag,” she said, easing away, but as she turned, Adam barred her path. “Oh geez. Sorry. Could you move?”
“One of the partners at my firm is on his way over here, and you need to wait and meet him.”
“Like hell I do.” She scoffed like he was high.
“Jory.” Brandon grabbed my bicep tight. “Could you not try and completely embarrass me?”
“Shouldn’t have invited me if you didn’t wanna be embarrassed,” I told him. “You can’t take folks like me and Abe anywhere.”
Aubrey giggled, ending with a snort, which made me start laughing.
“Shit,” Brandon whined, glancing at Adam as Rick Jenner stepped in front of all of us.
I instantly understood that Brandon Rossi and Adam Meyers—I knew his last name because Brandon had introduced me when I arrived—worked at Riley, Jenner, Knox, and Pomeroy. They were petrified, and Rick wasn’t even looking at them. The twinkling green eyes were all for me.
“Hey.” I smiled at him.
“Hey,” he said, grinning back. “What brings you to a lawyer haunt, J?”
“I brought my friend Abe.”
He turned his attention to Aubrey Flanagan, and his smile widened. “Well, hello there, Abe.”
Her eyes narrowed as she gazed at him. “Hello back, um…”
“Richard Jenner, attorney-at-law,” he said fast, making his voice deep and serious.
“I hate lawyers.” She baited him, again arching that gorgeous copper-colored brow.
“Really.” He smiled, and it was wicked as he took her hand and drew it through his arm.
“Yes, really,” she breathed out as he eased her close to him.
“I can fix that.”
She made a hmmm noise like she wasn’t sure, and I saw his jaw clench.
“Call me Rick.”
“Okay,” she said, her eyes absorbing him—the thick black hair, the cleft chin, the laugh lines in the corners of his sparkling emerald eyes. “How do you know Jory, Rick?”
“He’s the little brother of one of my best friends in the world.”
Adam and Brandon went absolutely ashen, and I bit my lip so I wouldn’t smile.
“How do you know Jory, Abe?” he asked, vastly amused, just staring at her, riveted.
“We work together,” she said, her eyes meeting mine.
“That’s right,” I assured him.
“Well, you guys want to come with me and get some dinner?”
“Actually,” I said quickly, “I’ve gotta go, but Abe is free.”
“Well, not free,” she teased me. “But dinner sounds like heaven.”
Rick’s smile was warm, and he was obviously taken with her, with the energy you could feel, taste in the back of your throat, the passion that radiated off her and the glowing smile that lit her face.
The girl just had it. The it factor where she was so animated, so there in the moment that you just knew that if you missed her, it would be a real shame.
I was crazy about her already. I loved her hair—long and curly, the color of copper, red, and gold at the same time, completely wild—and her freckled skin and smiling rosebud mouth.
When she took a pair of lacquered chopsticks out of her purse and put up her tresses, pieces tumbled out, stray curls falling down the back of her long neck and forward into her lovely pale blue eyes.
Rick reached out and twisted a piece around her ear.
He was drowning in her after only moments.
“I should cut it all off,” she lamented, looking down and then quickly back up into his eyes. Her long lashes looked like they had been dipped in gold.
“Oh no,” he assured her, taking her hand again, this time slipping his fingers between hers, keeping her close to him. “Never.”
She grunted. “We’ll see, Mr. Jenner.”
“Yes, we will,” he said quickly, pointing at me. “You good?”