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Lori clapped her hands together with glee. “You do think he’s great! I can’t wait for you to meet everyone,” she said as if it were now a done deal.
“I can’t date Zach!” Heather’s words came out too loud, too fast, too impassioned.
God, she was making such a fool of herself. As soon as Zach had shown up with Cuddles, she and Atlas should have hightailed it out of the ballpark. But she’d been so happy to see him. Had felt so incredibly, wonderfully alive just at the sound of his voice.
She’d thought she was strong enough not to be tempted by him. But not only had he succeeded in tempting her...he’d done it so fast it made her head spin. He was slipping in under her walls, and the armor she wore around her heart, too fast. Too frequently. It seemed that no matter how much energy she expended to try to push him away—when she remembered to push him away and wasn’t laughing with him or wanting him—she wasn’t even close to succeeding.
The problem was that while Zach was fun and blatantly sexual, he also came with a core of something real beneath the devil-may-care sarcasm. And that was precisely what scared her: the real man beneath the jokes and the sexual innuendo.
She could fight her reaction to the charming Zach, but the sweet, loving, genuine Zach was a whole other story.
Still, she knew she needed to keep fighting. Because if she made the mistake of letting him in, and then he ended up hurting her, she’d never forgive herself.
Of course, she hadn’t meant to insult the older brother Sophie and Lori clearly worshipped, so she said, “Zach is a nice guy. I’m sure he’ll find someone great one day.”
“I hope so,” Lori said with a sigh. “I know he acts like he doesn’t need anyone, but I’ve never bought his act. Then again, maybe it’s because he’s my brother and I love him and I don’t want him to be alone forever.”
“He loves you, too. All of you.” She’d known that ever since the first time he’d spoken of his family, before she’d ever met them. “He has pictures of you all over his house.”
Lori shot Sophie a look before saying, “You’ve been to his house?”
Heather clarified, “He had a bit of an emergency with Cuddles the first night they spent together. We had an emergency training session.”
One that ended with her hand in his and his lips on her cheek.
Strangely, Lori picked that moment to stop torturing Heather. Instead, she leaned back in her seat, popped a handful of popcorn into her mouth, and said around it, “Sophie’s right. I shouldn’t have said all that stuff to you. I was just so caught up in a fantasy of having someone like you as a sister-in-law instead of one of the awful girls he usually hooks up with.” She sighed. “It figures you’d be too smart to want anything to do with him.”
Jealousy hit Heather at the same moment as the urge to defend Zach did. Clearly, he could have—and regularly did have—any woman he wanted. Heck, as they’d been watching the game hadn’t every woman in their section been drooling over Zach, with Sophie’s good-looking husband coming in a close second?
“Trust me,” Lori continued, “I totally get why you don’t want to date Zach, but I have a couple of other great brothers who are single. Smith and Ryan are total catches, if you ask me.”
Heather was flattered, but couldn’t imagine being with a movie star or a professional athlete. “Thanks, but I’m not looking for a relationship right now.” Or ever.
Before Lori could get in one more word about her brothers and what great catches they all were, Heather turned to Sophie and asked her about her pregnancy. Heather loved kids as much as she loved dogs and as she edged closer to thirty, she was thinking more and more about when she was going to try to have them. She was beyond glad that there were so many options for a single woman, between in-vitro and adoption.
“Are you excited about having twins?”
Sophie lit up. “Yes. When I’m not terrified about having them.” Her face went all dreamy. “Jake is going to be a great father.”
Lori made a puking sound. “It’s bad enough that you’re all over each other like Saran Wrap. Save us from the love is perfect soundtrack, would you?”
Even though she silently agreed with Lori on the whole love thing, Heather was amazed that Sophie didn’t look the least bit insulted. Instead, she started singing, “Love is perfect, oh so perfect,” to the tune of I Feel Pretty.
Lori covered her ears and started singing Love Bites in a perfect imitation of Def Leppard’s singer until the three of them collapsed into giggles.
Suddenly, Heather actually wished she could date Zach. Not just because her hormones wouldn’t leave her alone, but because there was no doubt in her mind about how fun it would be to be a part of the Sullivan family.
But, even as she let herself envision that for a brief moment, she knew the reality was nothing like the fantasy. Regardless of how well things might start for her and Zach, no matter how much he seemed to like her and want her in the present, she knew with utter certainty that he wasn’t the kind of man who would ever commit to one woman forever.
So if a part of her was at all envious at the way Jake had continually kissed his pretty wife, if she secretly longed at all for a man to look at her with such complete adoration, all she had to do was remember the vow she’d made to herself when she was seventeen and had found out the truth about the extent of her father’s lies.
