CHAPTER ONE
EMORY
“The oysters here are incredible. Did you have the appetizer?”
I was terrible at mingling, especially with men. Especially with men who followed up that ridiculous line with, “You know what they say about oysters’ aphrodisiac properties.”
It had been forty minutes since we finished the sit-down dinner portion of my friend Christy’s engagement party and it wasn’t going well. For me. While Christy had met an amazing man in her fiancé Paul, his cousin, who was attempting to work his lackluster charm on me, was a complete dud. It was crowded in the restaurant and bar area, situated six floors up in a new boutique hotel right on the Baltimore waterfront. The amazing view of the harbor seen through a wall of glass was an attraction.
I smiled vaguely at…Bob. No, Bill. Something with a B. He was in his thirties, well dressed in a suit with a gray tie, as if he came directly from work. He had all his hair, was well groomed, yet seemed perfectly…average.
I really wanted to give him the brush-off, but he was related to Paul and I owed it to Christy to keep from alienating one of her future relatives. Besides, I’d probably have to see him at the wedding in a few months, and God forbid he was one of the groomsmen. Diplomacy was good in this instance and I tried to smile and nod, smile and nod, but he had the personality of a sea slug. We’d talked about Paul and Christy for a minute or two, but after that…he showed himself to be a player. He stood a little too close, his gaze surreptitiously dropping to my chest, and he had an odd leer. It had to be a leer or he had some kind of tick in the corner of his lip.
Why the guy was lingering with me where there was zero hope of…anything, I had no idea. I’d been burned by a man, okay, scorched to a charcoal briquette, and I wasn’t looking for another one. I’d survived, survived because Chris needed a mother, needed me to be the strong one. But he was away at college and I wasn’t shielded behind the role of parent any longer. I could chat about off-sides rules in soccer or PTA fundraisers, but talking to a guy, a real guy and not another parent from high school, was unbelievably hard. God, I was such an introvert!
It was so hard meeting new people because I was terrible at it, unlike Christy who never knew a stranger. The whole introvert-extrovert dynamic helped when she’d been able to pull me out of my shell my first day of work, thankfully introducing me around, which had made us instant friends. It’s not as if I was shy or weird or anything, but I was set in my ways. That’s what I called it, at least. Christy called it lonely and I couldn’t think of anything more depressing than that. She considered me lonely. I was just cautious. Wary and jaded enough to show up at the engagement party without a plus-one and why I wasn’t interested in Bob/Bill and his ridiculous pick-up tactics.
I sighed and took a sip of my water. “Look, I’ve got to go. I think Christy’s calling me over.”
I took a step away but he put his hand on my bare arm.
“You should only eat oysters in the months that don’t have an R.” He must have realized the direction he’d first taken with the oysters wasn’t working, so he’d pulled out another ridiculous fact. He nodded as if to confirm his statement.
My brain had wandered a bit, but stopped to think about what he said. Months without an R. November. No. April. No. May. Yes. June, July, August. This was the most interesting thing he’d said so far, but really…oyster-eating months?
“Then I guess you shouldn’t have eaten them then, right?” I wondered, eyebrow raised.
He shrugged sheepishly, even flushed a little. “September’s not too far past all the non-R months.” He grinned and I noticed a slight overlap of his front two teeth. “I like to live dangerously.” His thumb stroked over my arm and I stepped back out of the hold.
Right. I inwardly rolled my eyes. He didn’t look like he took any chances at all since he was talking to me and not some of the other women in the bar who were more provocatively dressed and a sure thing. Younger, too. At thirty-eight, I wasn't really old, but most women my age didn't have a son in college.
I wasn’t giving off any indication to Bob/Bill that said take me home with you. The way I had my arms crossed over my chest, even while holding my glass, was a classic indication of not interested. He had no clue. A woman wanted a guy who pushed her up against the wall and kissed the ever loving daylights out of her. Well, I did. This guy? Not a chance. If I had to guess, I’d say…accountant.
I took a sip of my ice water with lime and glanced up at him through my dark lashes. “What do you do?”
“I’m an auditor with Social Security.”
Close enough. I nodded vaguely, trying to keep my eyes from glazing over. He was looking for a woman who wanted the white-picket-fence life with two kids and a dog. Been there, done that. I even got the T-shirt and now used it to clean my toilet.