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“Would you two like to join us?” The third woman at the table looked greatly amused at the scene that was playing out in front of her. She was cute, and he would bet she was smart. She looked like she belonged in a lab or teaching a class at university.
He was about to turn them down and make a hasty retreat. This situation was not what he’d been expecting when Brian had announced they needed to be more social. He’d been perfectly ready to stare at the brunette most of the night and then go back to his suite. Soon he would move to the conference hotel, and it would be all work for a few weeks. Yep. They should wish these beauties a good night and run as fast as they could.
“Would love to,” Brian said, pulling the fourth chair out and sliding it closer to the object of his desire. Who might also be the person who killed him given her look of disdain.
He hadn’t expected Brian to be a masochist.
In the months he’d worked with him, Brian had been the happiest of all go lucky men. Brian was easy to be friends with. He took everything and everyone as they came and was excellent at making the people around him feel comfortable. Pink Hair didn’t look comfortable. Or rather she did, but in a deeply predatory way that Brian did not seem to be picking up on.
“I’m perfectly willing to let a woman buy me a drink,” Brian was saying.
“Then you should find one who wants to,” Pink Hair replied.
“I think we should probably call it a night.” The brunette started to stand. She wore a pretty yellow top that showed off the curves of what looked like generous breasts and jeans that clung to her hips.
He wished she’d glanced his way, but it looked like he wasn’t catching any breaks this evening. “We’ll go back to our table. I don’t want to interrupt your evening.”
“Not at all,” the one with the glasses said. “We were recently discussing how much fun it would be to meet some new people.”
She was obviously American. Pink Hair sounded like she was straight out of Sydney, but Glasses and the Brunette had flat American accents, the kind that likely meant they’d been raised in large cities where accents rounded out due to the amount of diversity found there.
“I thought we were doing fine on our own,” Pink Hair argued.
Glasses frowned her way, and the two seemed to have a silent argument. Which Glasses won as Pink Hair sighed and nodded his way. “Please join us. It looks like it’s my shout. I’m Kara, by the way.”
Her sister would give her hell about having to buy the drinks, but she proved she knew how to Aussie. A shout was a round, and her sis was paying.
“Brian.” Brian held out a hand, and Dare watched as Kara barely managed to avoid rolling her eyes before she shook it. “Brian Peters.”
He said it in an almost James Bond way. It was good to know his friend could lose his mind over a woman. He’d kind of thought Brian was impervious.
It still felt weird. He looked down at Glasses, who seemed to be the only one enjoying herself. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“I’m Lou.” She grinned up at him, and she was adorable. “This is my sister, Tasha. We’re in town visiting Kara, who happens to be our cousin. It’s our first night here. We thought it would be fun to hang out at a pub and meet the locals.”
“They’re not locals.” Kara managed to make the words an obvious complaint.
He should introduce himself. It felt like he should. Like it was the polite thing to do. He pulled over a chair and placed it a distance from the table in between Lou and the brunette who was named Tasha. A pretty name for a gorgeous woman. Who wasn’t interested in him.
“My name is Dare Nash, and I’m not a local. I’m in town for work. Brian and I work together,” he explained, though he wasn’t going into the ins and outs of what they did. It was a lot of boring banking stuff, and women tended to get glazed expressions when he detailed how investments moved the medical world. Being the guy who connected doctors to the funds they needed for research wasn’t the sexiest job.
Tasha turned those soulful dark eyes on him, and he actually had to catch his damn breath. “It’s nice to meet you, Dare. That’s an interesting name.”
Yep. Now that she was looking his way, all the thought of leaving kind of flew out of his head. Sure she’d wanted Brian, but maybe she would settle for him, and then he would show her she wasn’t settling at all. He would show her exactly how good he could be.
