Chapter 4
Chapter Four
“What the hell are you guys doing here?” Keeley asked before she could stop herself.
She’d met Joel in the lobby of Saloon, and the two had engaged in some polite conversation while they waited for their table. She’d been very relieved when he’d arrived and looked exactly like his picture on Tinder.
She’d gone on dates with a couple guys who’d made liberal use of filters, and one idiot who’d flat-out photoshopped his head on some super-buff body.
And, of course, her favorite was the guy who’d used a picture that had to have been him fifteen years earlier, insisting he hadn’t lied about his age being twenty-seven.
Yeah, right. That asshole hadn’t been a day younger than forty.
Gio held out his hand, revealing her cell phone. “You left this at the mansion.”
“The mansion?” Joel asked, clearly surprised by the arrival of two men at their table.
“Joel,” Keeley hastened to explain, “this is Gio and Rafe. Rafe’s my boss. Apparently, I left my phone at work.” She took her phone from Gio. “I didn’t realize it wasn’t in my purse until I got here. You guys didn’t have to bring it to me. I could have swung by tomorrow and grabbed it.”
“It was no problem,” Rafe said. “We didn’t think you should be in the city without it.”
Though he was looking at her, Rafe’s tone could be considered nothing less than a warning to Joel to toe the line.
“Well, I have it now. So…thanks.” She hoped they would take the hint and get lost.
Gio was looking at Joel, who was starting to get visibly uncomfortable under the intense scrutiny. Keeley was no stranger to this tactic. God knew she’d watched her brother employ the same with every guy she’d dated during high school.
“Do I know you?” Joel asked Gio after a moment. “You look familiar.”
Gio shook his head but didn’t offer a verbal reply.
“I could swear…” Joel mused, not bothering to finish his statement.
“Okay.” She waved her phone in front of them. “I’m good now. Goodbye,” she said firmly, when neither man moved.
Gio’s attention returned to her—and the second she saw his wicked grin, she knew she wasn’t going to like what came next. “You two have a nice date.”
Then he stopped a waitress who was walking by and pointed to the empty table next to hers and Joel’s.
He wouldn’t.
Shit!
Apparently, he would.
The waitress nodded, and he and Rafe claimed it.
Joel frowned. “That’s your boss?” he asked quietly.
Keeley nodded, her blood boiling.
“And the other guy?”
“Just a friend,” Keeley replied, glancing in Gio and Rafe’s direction, trying to establish eye contact so they could see just how furious she was. Both men pointedly ignored her, looking at the menus, talking quietly.
She wondered if there would ever be a point in her life where her brother and his friends didn’t treat her like some helpless child.
She’d actually—foolishly—believed perhaps she had turned that corner with at least Gio and Rafe.
After their night together in the storm, and this past week at work, she’d felt less like Kayden’s kid sister and more like a friend in her own right.
Then there were those brief wonderful moments…
Gio’s good-night kiss.
Rafe’s near-miss kiss.
Both times, they had looked at her like she was a desirable woman. Those looks ensured her vibrator continued to get one hell of a workout every night. Her fantasies had been quite steamy of late, always starring either Rafe or Gio.
Even now, when she wanted to be totally pissed at them, she couldn’t quite work up enough anger because it was overshadowed by the stupid feeling that it was sweet of them to go to such lengths to make sure she was okay.
If it was Kayden sitting at that table, she’d have already blown a gasket, so she wasn’t sure why something that felt intrusive from her brother felt…possessively hot from Rafe and Gio.
Was possessively hot even a thing?
She forced her attention back to Joel, determined to ignore the sexy men at the next table.
“I’m sure I know that guy,” Joel said again.
Keeley refused to discuss Gio, so she started with her standard get-to-know-you questions.
The queen of first dates, she was a professional and had a long list of conversation starters on hand to keep things moving.
The list also allowed her to get a pretty clear picture of the guy in just one night.
“So tell me about your job,” she said.
Joel, mercifully, forgot about Gio and Rafe at the next table and began talking. He worked in the family business, running a flooring store downtown. It occurred to Keeley that was probably how he knew Gio, but she didn’t bother to point it out.
Unlike a lot of her previous dates, Joel was very good at keeping the conversation two-sided.
He asked about her work, stealing a glance or two at the next table when she talked about Rafe hiring her to be his marketing director and how much she was enjoying it.
She snuck a peek over as well, watching as Rafe and Gio received their drinks and placed their orders.
They were obviously hunkered down for the duration of her date.
“I was really glad we were able to make a connection on Tinder,” Joel admitted. “I took one look at your picture and knew I needed to meet you.”
She tried to take that as a compliment, but she always hated it when guys confessed to asking her out because of the picture rather than mentioning the profile she’d put together.
She was proud of her pros and cons list. If a guy started the date by discussing the list and laughing at the funny stuff she’d included, he got a point. If not…the first red flag.
This time, Keeley let the comment go because it was still early. She’d learned at least twelve dates ago to hand out those red flags judiciously.
From there, they discussed their families.
Joel came from a pretty typical family of four, two parents, him, an older sister.
His grandparents were still alive, but they lived in other states.
She shared a little bit about her parents dying in the plane crash, and her brother stepping in to raise her.
Her retelling of that part of her life was always kept simple and told with the same words.
She found that helped her keep her emotions under control.
She never dove any deeper than just those few facts.
And Joel was appropriately compassionate about it.
She noticed that he’d downed three bourbons in the time she’d finished one glass of wine, so he was getting a lot more relaxed and talking more freely, laughing a little louder. She attributed the drinking to nerves and let it go.
By the time their meals arrived, Keeley was almost ready to call the date a success, despite the fact Gio and Rafe were sitting nearby. But there was one last big hurdle to leap.
So she guided them to the past relationships topic. He managed to say all the right things, claiming he was tired of the dating game, and that he was looking for a woman long-term, with an eye toward marriage and kids.
And she believed him because Joel appeared to have better luck in the long-term relationship department, claiming three past girlfriends whom he’d dated for a year or longer. That was better than she’d done, and that information seemed to prove he wasn’t just looking for online hookups.
But then she felt less good about him when he confessed that, ultimately, every single one of the girlfriends dumped him. “For no good reason,” he claimed.
Which—fuck it, she was counting the first—was the second red flag.
She was old enough and wise enough that she knew not to tug on that thread…but she did anyway.
“No good reason?”
Joel shrugged. “They were dumb bitches, so no big loss.”
This was what she got for tugging. Joel was slowly crossing the line from pleasant company to rude and inebriated the longer they talked. It wasn’t a good look on him. At all.
“Yeah, well.” She struggled for some way to recoup her losses, but nothing clever came.
Instead, she changed the subject because, well, dammit, her steak looked really good, and she was starving.
“The online dating game is tough,” she threw out lamely, cutting a big bite of steak off and shoving it in her mouth.
“I guess.” Joel laughed. “But you know, there are ways to make it easier.”
She chewed and swallowed, and then against her better judgment said, “Oh yeah?”
Because karma hated her, Joel managed to screw it up once and for all with his next question.
“Have you ever considered having a boob job?”
“What?”
“My last couple of girlfriends got them and they looked great. Didn’t feel fake at all.”
“Riiiiight,” she drawled, trying to decide if the steak tasted good enough to endure ten more minutes of this so she could shovel it all in. Then she studied the garlic mashed potatoes on her plate. She freaking loved garlic mashed potatoes. “I’m not interested in plastic surgery.”
Joel shrugged, then sighed as his gaze drifted down to her tits, clearly unimpressed. “I’m just saying you should look into it. Maybe don’t be so quick to dismiss it.”
Aaaand now the date was over.
She was going to bed hungry tonight, but not before paying it forward for the next woman. Because Joel needed a little wake-up call.
“Here’s a little dating tip for you, Joel.
No woman is going to stay with you as long as you keep trying to make her into your ideal.
That’s a one-way ticket to becoming a skeezy, swaggering, lonely fifty-year-old man that no woman would touch with a ten-foot pole.
If you seriously want to get married, get to know a woman and love her for who she is on the inside, not on the outside. ”
She reached for her purse and pulled out her wallet.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Date’s over, hotshot. Because you just showed me your inside, and it’s butt-fucking ugly.”
“Oh God, you’re one of those feminists, aren’t you? Get pissed off whenever a guy offers a little constructive criticism on your looks.”