Temptation Ridge (Virgin River #6)(43)

That made him laugh. He picked up his drink and had a sip. “No, Brandy. In fact, that’s about the last thing I’m after tonight.” He leaned back in his chair. “Well, I take that back, maybe that’s what I am looking for. But it’s not what you think. I’m not looking for a date. I’ve had more than enough dates. I’m kind of amazed to find myself thirty-six and still single.”

“Never married?”

“Not even close,” he said.

She tilted her head to one side, looking at his face. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Couldn’t tell you. I have a good job, good friends, nice big house, I brush and floss…”

“You’re not that bad-looking,” she said. “You shouldn’t have any trouble finding a woman who’d want to marry you, spend your money.” The corners of her mouth lifted slightly.

“Amazing. You don’t look like my mother, but you sure just sounded like her.”

“You’re an escaped convict? Serial killer or something?”

“In Grants Pass?” he asked, laughing. “You can hardly get away with unpaid parking tickets in this town. Nah, I’m boringly law abiding. I don’t even speed.”

Abby lifted her drink to her lips. “I think you were right about the seltzer,” she said. “Not a great pity drink.” She took another sip. “How long has it been since you were, you know, involved?”

He slipped over into the chair next to her instead of across. “Hmm. Long,” he said. “I was working up a pretty good crush a few months ago, but before I could close the deal, she married someone else. Real fast. He’d been on her mind the whole time I was staging my seduction.”

“Oh,” she said. “Broken heart.”

“No, not at all. We weren’t involved. I was hoping to get involved, but once it was over I could see that it never really got started. She wasn’t into it at all. How about you? How long?”

“God,” she said, lowering her eyes and shaking her head. “That’s pretty hard to say. I think maybe we have that in common—I was involved. He wasn’t.”

He touched her hand again and this time she allowed it. “Just break up?” he asked.

“No. It was over quite a while ago. He’s been with someone else for at least six months.”

“Yet you’re hurting?” Cameron asked her.

She took a deep breath. “I was just at a wedding. Weddings are awful places for women alone. It works great in the plot of chick flicks because it’s tragically funny.”

“You look like you might’ve just escaped from a wedding,” he observed.

“Just the thought of the bride throwing that bouquet and knowing I was qualified to line up with the single women to catch it sent me running for the bar.”

“To lick your wounds with a seltzer? Thank God I came along.” He turned around, caught the bartender’s eye and lifted a couple of fingers. “Tell me about the wedding,” he said.

“Oh, God,” she said, lowering her head to rest it wearily in her hand. “Don’t ask.”

“Why?”

“Because there was enough true love in that room to make a person throw up.”

He laughed. “That right? You represent the bride’s side or the nauseating groom’s side?”

“Bride’s,” she said, laughing in spite of herself.

The bartender brought them two more drinks.

“Trying to get me drunk?” she asked him.

“No, I’m trying to get you over the hump. You’re sad. And a woman as beautiful as you has no business being sad. Drink it. It’s going to make you feel better.” He grinned. “Or at least stupider.”

She laughed at him. “Yeah. Like that’s possible…”

“These bad nights, I’ve had a ton of them,” he said. “When it just feels like things work out for everyone else. But if I was trying to get you drunk, you’d be drinking the Chevis and I’d be drinking the champagne. That’s Kool-Aid. You’ll be fine. I, however, am slowly becoming pain free. Tell me about it. The wedding. Come on, make me laugh.”

She took another sip, getting to the bottom of her first drink and sliding the glass away from her. “Well, let’s see. They met five months ago when they had this passionate first date or something, then didn’t see each other for two months, then got back together. They’ve been a couple for two or three whole months. Both of them claim it was love at first sight. They can hardly keep their hands off each other. There was enough steam in that room to make my hair go straight.”

If that wasn’t disgusting enough, she told him, the whole reception was loaded with longtime girlfriends of hers who were madly in love with wonderful, loving, sexy men whom they’d found in the most unexpected places. She, however, had had lousy luck with the opposite sex. Since about the fourth grade.

That got them started, talking and laughing about the worst dates and relationships imaginable. They went over the disastrous dates, hookups that looked like they might turn into stalkers, their most embarrassing setups. For a while it was like horror-dating one-upsmanship, but it began to put them both in a better mood. Someone to find the humor in all of it helped. It seemed they were two people who just never scored good partners at all. He was thirty-six and she was thirty-one and neither had found the right one. While they talked, he occasionally held her hand, the hand that rested on the table. With either of them hardly aware, more than an hour had passed, and it had passed with some laughter and pleasure, surprising her more than him. He lifted two fingers; two more drinks were delivered.