Love, Exes, and Ohs (Cactus Creek #4)(11)

“Yeah, I don’t really want credit for this.”

“Don’t be modest. We’re making dating history here.” With a big relieved sigh, she laid her head against Jackson’s chest and closed her eyes, mumbling, “The fate of my finding Mr. Right is in your hands, ladies. Good luck. Godspeed.”

Just like that, a wave of exhaustion washed over her. It felt like it’d been months since she’d last slept. And though Jackson was jostling her head quite a bit with all his chuckling—weird, she couldn’t remember anyone saying anything funny—he was still mighty comfortable.

A sleepy haze fell over her rapidly while her friends, new and old, continued to talk in soft floating bubbles around her that made less and less sense as she drifted off.

“Um…that sort of backfired on us a little bit,” murmured Lia quietly.

“You think?” Sienna was back to sounding like Grumpy dwarf. “Let’s flip a coin. Loser has to tell him.”

Idly, Xoey wondered who they were talking about.

But she was fast asleep dreaming about cute little dwarfs playing tic-tac-toe on bar coasters before she could ask them.





CHAPTER FIVE


“XOEY DID WHAT?” thundered Isaac.

He brought the phone away from his ear and whacked it against his forehead in frustration. Of all the crazy ideas Xoey had come up with in the past, this one was aiming for top honors. The woman was going to be the death of him.

Keeping his voice level, he started bombarding Sienna with questions.

The answers were way worse than he thought.

He had no idea who these three 6-foot tall former All-American football playing Disney dwarfs were, and he didn’t want to begin to imagine why Xoey had named one of them ‘dommy,’ but all in all, the whole description of last night’s drunken events was making him freefall down a bizarre rabbit hole.

“And you four girls helped her come up with this plan?”

“Nooo, not even a little bit,” came Sienna’s reply. “That was all her. Well, her and a lot of tequila. It was just me and Lia there last night, and we were completely ill-equipped for this level of girlfriending. I haven’t even had a chance to talk to Dani or Quinn about the whole man-quation thing.”

Man-quation. A collective list of what Xoey was deeming to be perfect man traits based on the fact that these were the only three exes that she’d had a ‘connection’ with—aka the only three that had managed to give her orgasms.

Jesus, how much had she had to drink last night?

“Was she drinking on an empty stomach?” He’d never known her to get this drunk before.

“No, actually. Jackson was feeding her pretzels. That’s Doc dwarf by the way, who I’m pretty sure she said was the dwarf most like you.”

This conversation was getting him nowhere. All it was doing was inspiring an ulcer.

“Thanks for the heads-up, Sienna. I’ll go make sure she’s okay. Odds are, she probably won’t remember any of this.”

“Um.”

He tried his best to keep his bark-like grunt civil. “What now?”

“While I didn’t get a chance to talk to Dani yet, Lia did. And she said that Dani already has the perfect Mr. Right date lined up for Xoey for the night after next.”

“Already?”

“Well, it’s Dani.”

Point taken. Lordy, he should be thankful she’d only set up one date.

“Xo did sound like she had her heart and hopes set on this, Isaac. So Dani, Quinn, Lexi, and I can’t just ignore it.”

No, he wouldn’t expect them to.

While it killed him to say it, he did anyway, “If you girls are going to do this, just…find someone worthy of her. If you can’t find someone amazing, don’t settle. She deserves someone really great.”

“Isaac—” An empathetic exhale filtered over the phone line.

The powerless sigh made him clear the emotions clogging up his throat. Get it together, McKnight. “I’m fine. I’m heading over to her place now to check on her. Thanks again for calling, Sienna. I appreciate it.”



*



ISAAC CLIMBED THE STEPS up to Xoey’s little apartment above the brewery, wondering what it was about this apartment that his friends liked so much.

Dani had lived there for years. Luke hadn’t been a fan. It had rattled him to think of Dani living there without neighbors in screaming distance.

In contrast, none of them had been worried at all during the short stint that Lia had lived there—well, not for her safety anyway, not with all her martial arts training.

Manslaughter charges for her beating a burglar senseless was another case, of course.

But that had been Lia.

Xoey was a different matter.

It’s not that he thought she couldn’t take care of herself. She could. He had no doubt she’d be able to skewer an unsuspecting intruder by the balls with her stilettos without flinching.

Didn’t stop him from worrying about her constantly though.

When Xoey had first decided to move into the little loft studio a few months ago, after Lia and Hudson had found their own place, Isaac had tried to talk her out of it, sighting all the concerns Luke had had for Dani.

The woman had an independent streak a mile wide, however, and failed to see any logic to his arguments.