“I’m not your love, and I can’t go to a movie with you tonight. I have a date.” In barely an hour. And she still didn’t know what she was going to wear. Swallowing a moan, she narrowed her green eyes at him. “What are you doing free on a Saturday night, anyway? Don’t tell me that Webb Brothers couldn’t get a date!”
He grimaced at her and dropped into a burgundy-and-dark-green striped armchair. “Maybe I just wanted to do something with you.”
“If you’d wanted to do something with me, you’d have mentioned it at work yesterday,” she pointed out, perching on the edge of the sofa and trying to hide her impatience to get back to her dressing trauma.
Webb scooped an eager Babs into his arms and began to scratch behind her long fluffy ears, apparently in no hurry to leave. “Okay, so my date canceled out,” he admitted. “She was called out of town on a business crisis. I thought since I was free, I’d see what you were doing.”
“Ever heard of the telephone, Brothers?”
He shrugged good-naturedly. “This is more fun. I can watch you dress.” He gave her a suggestive leer, part of the teasing flirting that had developed between them over their year-long friendship.
“Wrong.”
“Then I’ll wait and check out your date when he gets here.”
“Wrong again. I’m picking him up.”
“Well, hell, Reed. You take all the fun out of everything.”
“Sorry.” She wasn’t, of course, and her smile told him so.
“So who are you going out with tonight? Terry? Rick? Dwayne?” he asked, naming her three most common escorts, men she liked and whose company she enjoyed, though her relationship with each of them was light and platonic.
“None of the above.”
“Oh?” Autumn fancied that Webb’s ears perked up with interest, as Babs’s did when she heard an unusual noise. “Someone new?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I know him?”
“I doubt it.”
Webb sighed loudly. “This is like pulling teeth. What’s his name, Autumn?”
“His name’s Jeff Bradford,” Autumn returned in resignation, even the sound of Jeff’s name making her shiver. Lord, she was still doing it!
“Jeff Bradford, the doctor?” Webb asked with a lifted eyebrow.
Oh, no, not a friend of Webb’s, Autumn thought with a mental groan. “Yes. Do you know him?”
“Yeah, I’ve known him a few years. We belong to the same health club, and we’re in the same Jaycees chapter, though he’s not quite as active in it as I am. His work keeps him too busy.”
She shouldn’t be surprised that Webb knew Jeff. Tampa wasn’t that large a city, and Webb got around. Still, Autumn wished that he and Jeff were total strangers. If she was going to make a fool of herself over Jeff Bradford—and she pessimistically suspected that she was—she preferred to do it in total privacy. She had toyed with the idea of throwing herself into a crazy affair with the attractive young doctor until she’d worked out her foolish infatuation with him, at which time she would cheerfully tell him goodbye and return to her sane, carefully controlled life, with no one the wiser but her and Jeff. Now she had an audience. The smartest thing to do was to keep Webb from finding out the strange effect that Dr. Jeff Bradford had had on her from the moment she’d met him.
“So how’d you meet Jeff, anyway?” Webb asked curiously.
Autumn explained briefly, then tried to change the subject by adding, “I’ll be glad when you and the rest of the crew finish up that shopping mall remodel. I’m getting all the small, one-person jobs these days.”
Her diversion seemed to work. “That reminds me,” Webb commented, setting Babs on the floor, “you’ll be working with us for the next couple of weeks. Chuck’s going to take over the stuff you’ve been doing.”
“How come?”
Webb shrugged and made a face. “He can’t seem to get along with the property manager who’s supervising the remodel. The guy’s a jerk, but Chuck needs to learn when to keep his mouth shut. Okay with you?”
“Sure. Uh, Webb, I really need to start getting ready for my date now,” she hinted broadly, hating to bring up the subject again but anxious to get dressed—if she could ever decide what she was going to wear.
“Don’t mind me. I think I’ll have a beer.” Webb pushed himself out of the chair and headed for the kitchen.