“I got sick.”
Jacob groaned. “He always tells it like it was him getting sick that brought them together. But, really, I think it would have happened anyway. In fact, I’m pretty sure I nearly walked in on them making out a couple of times months before he got sick. They would have gotten together anyway.”
“Yeah, but Karl might not have asked her to marry him over my hospital bed if not for the fact that I got sick.”
“Maybe. Maybe he would have done it somewhere much more romantic.”
“Either way,” I said, falling into Adrienne’s eyes, “he proposed over my hospital bed, she said yes, and they were married three months later. And they’ve been married ever since.”
“Twenty years next month,” Jacob said. And even he seemed to have a little awe in his voice.
“That is impressive,” Adrienne said, squeezing my arm and pulling back, lifting her wine glass to her lips.
“Isn’t that an interesting story?”
“I only asked why you didn’t look alike.” Her eyes moved from Jacob’s mousy brown hair and milky green eyes to my gold curls and deep blue eyes, from his slight stature to my overwhelming height. “You could have just said you were stepbrothers.”
“But what would the fun have been in that? Besides, we’re not just stepbrothers. ‘Step’ implies angst. But we’ve never shared a bit of bad blood.”
“True,” Jacob said, inclining his head slightly. “As long as he remembers I’m the older brother in this little arrangement.”
“How could I forget? You never fail to remind me.”
Adrienne laughed. “You certainly sound like siblings.”
“Do you have brothers or sisters, Adrienne?” Jacob asked.
Again, that flash of sadness burst into her eyes for a brief second. But it disappeared so quickly that if I hadn’t seen it before, I might have thought I’d imagined it.
“No,” she said.
“Well, not only do I have to contend with this one,” Jacob said, jabbing a thumb in my direction, “but we have a little sister, too. She’s eighteen and she thinks this one over here roped the moon for her.”
Adrienne looked at me with something like a new appreciation. “Yeah?”
“She adores him, too. He just doesn’t like to admit it because then it might mean he has a heart.”
Jacob busied himself trying to get the waitress’s attention again, purposely ignoring me. I focused on Adrienne again, wondering if I’d lost her there. Some women seemed to like Jacob’s aloofness. His soon to be ex-wife not the least of them.
“So,” I said, leaning in close to get her attention, “would you like to come back to the house with us? I have a lovely bottle of Chateau Margaux that is pretty exquisite. It’d probably make that stuff you’re drinking taste like a cheap wine cooler.”
She glanced at Jacob, then back toward the bar.
“I hardly know you,” she said.
“I’m not a bad guy. And my brother will be there to supervise.”
She smiled at that last bit, her eyes moving to Jacob. I was really beginning to wonder if she had a thing developing for him. But then her eyes moved back to mine, and she sighed softly.
“I have to warn you, I have pepper spray in my purse. And a rape whistle. So you better keep your hands where they belong.”
“Certainly,” I said, raising my hands from where they’d been moving slowly over her knees. “I won’t put them anywhere you’d rather they didn’t go.”
That smile was going to be the end of me. The way she looked at me, the way her lips curved just the tiniest bit at the corners to reveal the slightest bit of a dimple in her right cheek. I wanted to press my finger against it, wanted to slide my tongue over it. And those lips… I could almost taste them already.
“Okay,” she said on a little bit of a sigh
I raised my arm and caught the waitress’s attention immediately. Once paid, the three of us slipped out of the bar into the cool, dark evening. I tossed my keys at Jacob.
“You drive.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, but he did as he was told, pressing the button that unlocked the doors on my Mercedes S550 sedan. I could have directed Adrienne to the front, given her the comfortable leather passenger seat, but I opened the back door instead, climbing in beside her as Jacob shot me a dirty look in the rearview mirror.
“Wouldn’t you rather sit up front with your brother?” Adrienne asked as I slid close to her on the slick seats, resting my hand on her bare knee.