Hurting for her, I had to blink back my own tears. “I really, really hope you are.”
“Clam chowdah!” The bartender rudely burst into our moment by dumping two big bowls in front of us.
Harper’s lips twitched and that set me off.
We both burst into laughter, hysterical, rib-hurting laughter, over our bowls of clam chowder. Not because the interruption was really that funny, but because we both needed to laugh.
It was either that or cry.
Twenty
The month of May was one of my favorites in Boston. The weather began to turn a little warmer, to pleasant mid-sixties during the day, so I could walk around without a jacket. And so far the weather, other than the rainfall last weekend, had been sunny and bright, like the city was trying to lift its inhabitants’ spirits.
However, at night the temperatures dropped to upper forties. So while I was enjoying a beautiful Wednesday afternoon on a long lunch date with a man Stella had set me up with, I was surprised to get a text from Patrice inviting me onto her boat on Saturday night.
She was having a boat party.
That was going to be a chilly event.
“Everything okay?”
I stopped licking my ice cream and glanced up from my phone.
Leo Morgan was licking his own ice cream and staring at me quizzically. The sight should have really done more to me in my excitable areas. After Caleb left, Stella took the fact that I’d been seeing him as a green light to start setting me up again. When she first mentioned Leo Morgan, an acquaintance’s son who was getting back into the dating game after the end of a youthful marriage, I’d said no. Stella didn’t take no for an answer. She started telling me about how he was a successful corporate lawyer, about all the charities he worked with, and blah blah blah. It was only when she finally shoved his photo in my face and I saw him that I paused. He looked awfully young.
Turned out Leo Morgan was a very, very handsome twenty-six-year-old.
And I started to rethink the idea.
Not out of shallowness, but pragmatism.
Perhaps the only way to get over Caleb was to get under someone new. Yet I didn’t want to get into a relationship with any man. A casual arrangement, however, didn’t sound like such a bad plan. And before I saw Leo’s photo, I knew he was a divorcé—which meant he was way too capable of commitment—a lawyer, and a philanthropist. Something about him didn’t say casual date. But the cheeky twinkle in his eye and the fact that he was only twenty-six made me wonder. Maybe Leo Morgan got married too young and maybe Leo Morgan would like something that was mere fun this time around.
Moreover, he was way more my type than Caleb ever was. He had thick, light brown hair that was brushed back off his forehead in a natural silky wave, glittering dark eyes a woman could drown in, beautiful lips, a perfect nose, and an angular jaw. He was about six feet tall with a possible swimmer’s build underneath his shirt, tie, and suit pants. His shirtsleeves were currently rolled up to his elbows, revealing corded forearms and more of that tan skin. No tattoos in sight.
He would have been almost too perfect if it weren’t for his smile. Although he had the most beautiful, straight, gleaming white teeth, there was a crookedness to his smile that chipped the perfection. It was a boyish, wicked smile that suggested that, underneath his good intentions, he was actually up to no good.
A man that hot, licking ice cream, should have affected me more than it did. I definitely felt a fizzle of something. But there was no great, rolling wave of lust that a certain other person managed to elicit. Damn him.
But I wasn’t giving up on the idea of casual sex with this guy. If anything, I was more determined than ever to find someone who could make sex with Caleb look like a clumsy fumble in the dark.
Presently I was walking through the Public Garden with a very cute man on our lunch break, hoping he could still be that one. I really liked that Leo was happy to meet this way for the first time. Casual, relaxed, no pressure.
“Uh—” I glanced back at the text from Patrice.
Patrice: Darling, having party on the boat this Saturday.
Anniversary thing. Will call to explain later. Just wanted you to RSVP now. Kisses.
“A friend is having a party on a boat,” I explained as I quickly typed an RSVP reply with one hand while trying to lick my melting ice cream and talk at the same time. “That’s going to be cold.”
He chuckled. “Will anyone turn up?”
To a Danby event? Yes. “Yeah. And she knows it. She’s probably doing it to deliberately torture us.”
Leo grinned. “She sounds fun.”
“She is.” I tucked my phone back in my suit jacket pocket. I’d unbuttoned it and rolled my own sleeves up, but I was still too hot.
“So …” He threw me that boyish smile of his. “How do you think this is going?”
Quite well, actually. So far we’d talked about work and living in Boston. We were both out-of-towners who had been adopted by the city, but we seemed to share a similar love for it.
Still, I decided to be honest. “Good, but—”
“Damn, there’s a but?” He stopped, having finished off his ice cream, and gestured to me. “Hit me with it. It’s the hair, isn’t it? It’s too perfect.”
I laughed, shaking my head.
Leo gave me a wide, comical grimace and pointed to his teeth. “These?”
Giggling now at his antics, I shook my head again.
“Hmm. Stella told you I play One Direction when my boss’s kid visits the office, didn’t she? It’s just for my boss’s kid.” He raised his hands defensively. “I don’t secretly listen to them when I’m soaking in the tub with a glass of wine after a long, hard day. That definitely … doesn’t happen.”
Grinning so hard, my cheeks were hurting, I shook my head again. “None of the above. All of which is hugely endearing.”
Leo crossed his arms over his chest, his expression turning mildly more serious. “Okay. Honestly, hit me with it.”
I sucked in a breath and exhaled it slowly. “I don’t know how to say this without coming across as someone I’m not. I’m not someone who sleeps around. At all. I assure you.” I winced. This was coming out wrong. “But I, um … I’m not looking for anything serious right now. If this”—I gestured between us—“was to go any further after today it would have to be totally casual.”
He stared at me with a little frown line between his brows, and for so long I wondered anxiously if he now did think I was promiscuous. Oh God.
Then he dropped his arms to place his hands on his hips and he grinned. “Are you for real?”
“I take it that means you’re okay with casual?”
“Ava,” he said, starting to walk again, approaching Lagoon Bridge. “I got married when I was twenty-one years old. All was great for the first year, and then the next three years were an absolute hell of disappointed expectations, pressure, misery, and resentment. The last year of divorce proceedings hasn’t exactly been a picnic either. A casual relationship with a beautiful, sexy, smart woman who laughs at my jokes sounds like heaven right now.”
Although relieved to find us on the exact same page, I was curious about something. “Stella gave me the impression you were looking for your next big romance—that’s why I was reluctant to meet you.”
He shook his head, smiling wryly. “Stella is friends with my mother. And my mother is determined to have grandchildren. She forgets that I’m only twenty-six and have time for that stuff. Anyway, she’s the one filling Stella’s head, and I’m sure other would-be matchmakers’ heads, with this idea that I’m looking for wife number two.”
“But you’re not.”