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“What about the talent here?” Lili cast an assessing gaze around the gym, seeking out potential guinea pigs for Jules’s Big Dating Experiment. “Oh, there’s Tad.”
Yup. There he was.
The Italian hunk lay stretched out on a bench at the back, pumping weights like they were matchsticks. Holy Channing Tatum, look at those forearms! Not to mention his strong, muscular thighs as they strained against the hem of his shorts with every smooth motion. The sight of his glistening olive skin and the touchable thatch peeking above the neckline of his tank completed the unwholesome image and boosted her pulse precipitously.
One look at Tad DeLuca: cardio without moving your arse.
A perky gym bunny—a two-percenter in the body fat department—approached and settled in for the show. Within seconds, she was joined by another. And another. It was if they were breeding. As Tad set down the weights, there was a minor scuffle over who should hand him his towel.
“See anything you like?” Lili asked with a smirk.
“Catfights are always entertaining,” Jules said, ignoring Lili’s insinuation. After wiping down the bench like a good gym citizen, Tad generously allowed his horseshoe of admirers to pay homage for a few before he swaggered off to the showers.
Swallowing a green lump of envy shot through with want, Jules turned back to Cara, who was clicking through menu options with nimble-fingered expertise.
“Now, what do you want in a guy?”
This was more like it. She had given her requirements some thought. “All his own teeth. No rugs. No aspiring anything like actor or poet. Maybe somebody who works with his hands.”
“Okay, starting low,” Cara said suspiciously. “An auto mechanic? A carpenter? Do you want to date Jesus?”
She’d take an emotionally intelligent and sensitive guy over a hot shot lawyer or brain surgeon any day of the week. Smart guys always freaked her out.
“What are you looking for?” Cara continued. “Companionship, friendship, marriage?”
“I’m supposed to come out and say that? I thought we were fudging the truth.”
“Not about this,” Cara said gravely. “The whole physical profile is one thing, but the expectations going into the relationship are important. You want to be on the same page with potential matches about where the dates are going. If you want a commitment, you don’t want to be with a guy who’s looking to play the field.”
Since becoming pregnant with Evan, she had been the good girl. No reckless behavior like stripping to her undies at a party on a dare or pulling a guy she had just met into an alley to play doctor. No self-destructive indulging her need to make her body feel good because it compensated for her lack in the brain department. Bad Girl Jules was a thing of the past.
Her little monkey would always be number one, but wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to talk to where there was a potential for a little more? A chance to dress up, be admired in flickering candlelight. Jules suspected she looked wonderful by candlelight.
She wasn’t expecting the great love story the girls had with Jack and Shane. Like Cara said, that was a one-in-a-billion thing and she’d already fulfilled her quota of wild passion when she’d fallen flat on her face for Evan’s father.
Simon had been her great love and look where that got her. Evan, yes, and she wouldn’t swap a single day, but it had also landed her a heaping load of heartbreak. The kind that no amount of cookies and ice cream could fix.
Most of all, she needed to get over this crush on her friend. What a cliché. The lonely single mother hankering after Chicago’s most eligible bachelor. Tad was a bona fide bad boy, hottie, and heartbreaker in one sizzling package. Paeans were written to his beauty and his skills with a cocktail shaker. Woman loved him, men wanted to punch him. And during her moment of weakness—the Incident—he had told her in no uncertain terms that he would never, ever, not in a million years think of herthatway.
Dating would open her mind to a non-Tad, non-Simon world. Things were fairly insular right now. She spent all her time with family and that lip-licking fantasy of her dreams was always there, not so much holding her back but making her wishful for things. She needed to expose herself to new people and new men.
“Just companionship at first. A nice guy who I can talk to—”
“Who’s good with his hands,” Lili finished.
Cara’s suspicious tone waylaid her expression. “Why don’t we add, lives in his mother’s basement? Works the line at Mickey D’s? Dungeons and Dragons 100th level wizard?”
“They only go to 20,” Lili said, and when they looked at her curiously she added, “I dated a gamer in college. And those guys are smart, too.”
“Hmm,” Cara said, not convinced. “You don’t want some idiot who can barely put his pants on in the morning. You want someone gainfully employed, nicely groomed, who can afford to take you out to dinner.”
“Or can make you a nice dinner,” Lili said. “We know lots of chefs.”
“No chefs,” Jules said so sharply that the girls looked taken aback. After her experience with Simon, she was done with chefs. “It’d be nice to date a guy who was around at night time.”
That left handsome, Lothario wine bar owners out of the running.
The girls sighed in recognition. Both had chosen to make their lives with chefs who had insane working hours, but they came from a restaurant-owning family so they knew the score.
