Chapter 5 #2
“I’ll be a good friend to you, too. I like you, too, Gilman Hathaway.
You’re a funny man and a good friend to have around.
” He told her that she could use him as a reference on her applications when she applies for a new job.
“I might take you up on that, too. I don’t have a lot of references working for the same place for so long.
I can’t use the customers. Half of them wouldn’t even know my name, and the other half wouldn’t have any idea what someone was talking about when they asked them for a reference.
Most of the clientele is older, and they only go out once or twice a week to Murphy’s. ”
After they got the dating thing out of the way, they seemed to get along better.
It was like she was trying too hard for them to be a thing when all they needed to be were friends.
And she thought that she could enjoy having Gilman as a friend.
He’d certainly be a lot of fun when she needed someone to go out with for a good time.
And if it didn’t go anywhere, then they would be people who would know each other and not anything more.
As they were getting ready to leave the restaurant, she nearly fell off her shoes when Penrod was sitting at another table with a woman.
He didn’t look as if he was having a good time either, and she hoped that she was right.
“I should go over and tell him that he’s making a mistake, but I’m pretty sure he knows it.” She asked him what he meant. “That there is not going to be anyone in his life but you, and the sooner he knows it, the less miserable he’ll be.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He just kissed her on the cheek and told her that things would work out well for the two of them. “There isn’t going to be the two of us. He’s already told me that I’m not his type. Well, he didn’t tell me in words, but he let me know in other ways.”
“You’ll see.” Gilman guided her over to their table and said hello. The woman was clinging to Penrod like she wanted to have sex with him right there in the booth they were in and didn’t care who saw them doing it. “How’s it going, little brother? You having a good time?”
“Of course we are.” He removed her hand from his chest and set it in her lap. It might have been funny, but for the fact that she was all over Penrod in a way that made her head want to explode. “Did the two of you have a good time? This is a nice place to have dinner at.”
He looked at her, and she smiled at him.
She could feel how tight it was on her face and wondered if she was more grimacing than smiling.
As soon as they finished speaking, she pulled Gilman along, and they left.
The man laughed all the way to the car for some reason, and she wanted to smack the silliness out of him.
Whatever was wrong with him, it only made him laugh all the harder when she asked him.
“He’s jealous.” She said that she thought that he looked like he was going to get laid right there in the place. “That too. I wonder if she knows that he won’t allow her to do that much longer before he just takes her home. He’s done it before when a woman got too frisky with him.”
“Frisky? Is that what you’re calling it?
She looked like a vampire and was going to drain him dry.
” That made him laugh all the harder, and she couldn’t help herself; she laughed a little too.
“There is something seriously wrong with you tonight. Or are you like this all the time? Finding humor in your brother’s hard times? ”
“She’s one of those see-hers women. She wants people to see her with him so that she can tell them that she’s seeing a Hathaway brother.
It happens all the time. Once, a woman was upset that one of us didn’t own a jet so that he could take her someplace special for a date one night.
None of us owns one, by the way. We just take commercial flights when we want to go somewhere, and it’s not on a date night.
” She leaned back in the car and felt her anger getting the better of her.
“Don’t be mad at him, love. He’s only doing something that he thinks will work.
He’s trying to wash you out of his system.
The problem is, it won’t work. The two of you are a couple, no matter what happens from now on. ”
“I think that you’re getting ahead of yourself.
Your brother might enjoy that sort of date, for all you know.
I’m not going to be clinging to him like he’s the last man on earth.
I have my dignity. Besides, he’s never going to ask me out again, so that’s a moot point.
” He said he bets he asks her out before the end of the week.
“I’ll take you up on that since it’s almost Friday now.
You’re very strange. Has anyone ever told you that before? ”
“Lots, but not usually on a date.” He drove her home and walked her to her door.
Just as she thought he was going to kiss her, he pulled her into his arms and gave her a hug.
It was a brotherly sort of hug, and she loved it.
“Good night, my dearest friend. And I’ll see you tomorrow night with donuts. ”
After she unlocked her door and slipped inside her house, she watched as he pulled away.
He’d at least made sure that she got inside before leaving her, and she was glad for that.
After turning on the lights and making her way to the living room, she frowned.
There was no way that Penrod was going to ask her out again, and it made her depressed a bit more than she thought it should have.
~*~
It took him over an hour to get her into her apartment, and not have him go in with her.
She was determined; he had to give her that, and he wasn’t going to play her games.
As soon as he was able to get her keys from her, he opened the door and shoved her in, and he was gone before she realized that he wasn’t staying; he was sure.
As soon as he got in his car, he was spinning out of the driveway like his very life depended on it.
He was sure in some way that it had been.
She was determined to have him in her bed, and he wasn’t going to have anything to do with that.
He thought about how Gilman had come to his table. The very fact that he’d had the nerve to do so was making him want to find his brother and beat the shit out of him. He didn’t know why, not really, but he had a feeling that he’d feel better if he were to knock him around a bit.
Not that he would. That would just be nuts.
He was his brother after all, and he and Gilman usually got along very well, and he didn’t want a woman to come between them.
He decided that he was going to find himself a date for every night of the week until he found out what he’d been missing by not dating all that much.
But all he could think about was Lori. And how she’d made him feel when he’d kissed her. It was driving him crazy to think that one date had him thinking about forever with her, and he didn’t want that either. At least he didn’t think he did.
He’d been sleeping in his new home for the last two nights, and it wasn’t as much fun as he thought it would be.
He’d been wanting to make it his home, but something was missing.
He didn’t want to think that it had been Lori all this time.
She’d be making his place a home, and he wasn’t sure why that thought kept circling around in his head.
She was just a woman that he’d dated one time, and that didn’t make him fall in love with her.
“But I did.” He had come to the realization that he’d fallen in love with her the other night when he’d been roaming the house looking for something that was out of place. The only thing that he could think about was her. And how she’d be able to complete the house for him.
The only way that he was going to get her out of his system was to date her once more and make himself realize that she wasn’t for him.
He knew that would hurt his heart to do that, but he had to do something, or he was going to go insane.
It was that, or he was going to have to piss her off at him, and that would be the end of things.
He’d see that she wasn’t for him, and he’d be able to move on with his life.
At least that’s what he thought would happen.
He, at least, was going to give it a try. What could it hurt?
“It would kill me.” He had been talking to himself since he’d met Lori.
She was making him do things that he’d never done before.
Talking to himself was just one of them.
He’d find himself just staring off in the room he was in for no other reason than he was thinking about her.
If he were to have been asked what he’d been thinking about, all he’d be able to come up with is that she was on his mind.
Nothing more than that. He was going crazy, and he didn’t like the feeling that she was twisting him all up inside for no reason.
He couldn’t just blame it on her either.
He’d been feeling out of sorts since he’d met her, he realized.
She would make him laugh when she waited on them at the restaurant, and he couldn’t believe that it took him this long to realize that she’d been meant for him.
Well, he needed to get that shit out of his mind right now.
Penrod knew that he was going back and forth about her.
One minute, he wanted to strangle her for making him feel like this, and the next, he’d want to make love to her just to hear her scream out his name.
He also wanted to hear her say that she loved him too, but that wasn’t going to happen.
He’d screwed that up on their first and only date.