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I rolled my eyes, not bothering to respond.
“You guys seemed close there for a while. What happened?” Whitney asked.
I glanced at Meg and she gave me a sympathetic smile. She knew what happened. There wasn’t a single thing in my life that Meg Galloway Decate wasn’t aware of. It was both the blessing and curse of best friendship.
“I hate to disappoint you, but there’s nothing sordid or dramatic to report. We were sort of friends for a while. Now we’re not. End of story,” I brushed off. I really didn’t want to talk about my almost...whatever...with Robert Jenkins, attorney extraordinaire.
“Sort of friends?” Lena prodded. “There was nothing ‘sort of’ about it. You guys were up against each other’s asses for months. I have never seen that man on the phone so much. Everyone knows Jenkins is allergic to all social activity.” She gave me a loaded look. “But for you, he seemed to make all kinds of exceptions.”
I felt stiff. I didn’t want to talk about Robert, Lena’s law partner. I didn’t want to talk about how I found myself liking the shy but incredibly intelligent man. How I hadn’t been swayed by his sexy good looks, but by his thoughtfulness and his huge...brain.
I had just come out of a too serious, too shitty relationship. I was brittle and raw and Robert seemed to sense that. He wasn’t a pushy guy. He was so laid back he was in danger of becoming horizontal. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, you listened, because it was usually something interesting that made you think.
For a brief moment, we had spent time together. I couldn’t get enough of talking to him. We started sliding toward the beginnings of something. But then I realized that the more we talked, the less Robert actually said.
Sure we had conversations about everything from the death penalty to our favorite Bruce Lee movies. We talked about all the little stuff but none of the big stuff. And when I told him about Mac and how torn up I had been even as I tried to hide it from everyone else, he never shared anything about himself. When I asked him questions about his past or his family, he somehow never really answered them.
So, no, I couldn’t call him a friend, because at the end of the day I knew absolutely nothing about him.
“Look, he’s a nice guy, but I don’t have time for a man who is all mystery and no substance,” I snapped, picking up my beer and walking into the living room, hoping my friends would clue in on my not so subtle cue.
“Dude, that’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” Lena called out, following me. “Sure, he’s kind of boring, but we’re talking about Mr. Morals. The man who once drove back to the city when he realized the restaurant he had gone to undercharged him.”
“It’s not about his personality. That wasn’t the problem,” I found myself saying. I sat down heavily on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table. My mother would have screamed her head off if I had dared to do that when I was younger, so now I found myself putting my feet up on anything and everything—just because I could.
Whitney sat down in the recliner as Lena and Meg settled on either side of me. “I can’t imagine there being any problem with Rob. He’s the nicest person I’ve ever met. It doesn’t hurt that he’s freaking gorgeous too,” Whitney chimed in.
“Right? When he’s next to Adam and Jeremy he sort of disappears into the background. But when it’s just him you realize how downright smoldering he is. You forget that there’s a damn nice face behind the glasses,” Meg piped up.
All the women nodded in agreement. Even I had to incline my head in acknowledgment of Robert Jenkins’ level ten hotness. The fact that he dressed like an accountant and had the social skills of an awkward teenager made him weirdly more appealing. It was like being in the presence of Clark Kent. Mild-mannered by day, muscled superhero by night. He had all the earmarks of a guy with a secret identity. I just didn’t have the patience to stick around to find out who he was. If a man couldn’t be up-front about who he was, it led me to believe that there was something about him I didn’t want to know.
“Was it his obsession with gardening magazines? Jeremy gives him so much shit for that. I mean who under the age of seventy has not one, but three subscriptions to gardening magazines? And then there’s the golf. Okay, I think I get it now. He’s a total snooze-fest,” Lena laughed and Whitney joined her. But they weren’t laughing at Robert. Everyone liked Robert. It was impossible not to.
