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Jules tried to match him with her best unimpressed shrug. “I’m going to start dating.”
Jack’s green-gold eyes, the one physical feature they had both inherited from their late mother, narrowed to slits. “And you thought I wouldn’t handle it well?” He looked over her shoulder to add Lili and Cara to the cozy circle of glaring. “You all thought that?”
Jules imagined she could hear the heavy, creaking nods of the girls behind her and she nodded herself, feeling curiously hopeful.
“Well, you were right,” her brother barked. “Is this why you moved out? So you could bring dates back to your flat?”
So he was still pissed about that. Jack’s reaction when she’d told him she was moving out was the perfect example of why she had wanted to keep this dating idea to herself for a while. He worried about her constantly. He was crazy as a loon about Evan. But she needed to stand on her own two feet.
“I moved out so I could have some privacy but I won’t be bringing any dates back.”
There was no way she would do anything like that with Evan around and that Jack thought so hacked her off royally. Irritation dogging her every step, she skirted him and marched back to the bar. In her wake, she heard Jack’s heavy tread followed by the lighter footfalls of the girls.
She scooped Evan from Tad’s arms and held him close.
“Jules, are you all right?” Tad’s brow furrowed like a corduroy swatch as he gauged her dark mood.
“Juliet Kilroy, wait just a second.” Still, Jack.
Her brother scrubbed his fingers through his hair, a gesture he made when he was annoyed as hell. Considering some of the stunts she had pulled, it was a wonder he had any hair left. “Where are you going to meet people? Are you going to be hanging out in bars? Are you going to be picking up men in bars?”
Fury stifled any effort to speak, not that Jack seemed to expect a response. He was too busy answering his own questions in his head.
He turned to Lili. “Help me out here, sweetheart.”
“Oh, you’re doing just fine by yourself,” she said with an eyebrow lift that would have made Jules laugh if her heart wasn’t thundering so hard against her rib cage. There was a time when she’d had no compunction about picking up a guy in a pub and letting him buy her a few drinks. She hadn’t thought so highly of herself then. Telling herself she was using them just as much as they were using her was the mantra of tough, broken girls everywhere.
Serenity, bloody well, now.“I was thinking of doing it more systematically. Online dating.”
“You’re going to start dating?” Shane gave her a crooked smile of solidarity. “Good on ya, Jules.”
She thanked him with her eyes before letting them wander to Tad.
Who opened his mouth to say something, but like some kooky ventriloquist’s trick out came the voice of Jack instead.
“Don’t encourage her,” he sniped at Shane.
Okay, it was time to bring out the big guns.
“Jack, you’re happy. Shane’s happy. You’re all so happy.” She whipped her gaze by Tad, who was happy as long as there were untapped sources of women in the Chicagoland metro area. “I want to meet a nice guy. Find that something that everyone I know already has.” She held her brother’s gaze and aimed for the jugular. “Is that so wrong?”
“No, of course not,” he said with a mix of exasperation and what sounded like guilt. It might be a low blow, but she could always rely on Jack’s nagging doubts about whether she was content to get the job done.
“I want you to be happy. We all do,” he went on. “I’m just not seeing how you candecideto date. Typically that’s not how these things work. Usually, love hits you when you least expect it.”
“Literally,” said Lili, as a nod to how she and Jack had met, when her frying pan connected with his big, arrogant head. She rubbed her husband’s arm soothingly. “It worked out for us, Jack, but it doesn’t have to be left to chance. Or the possibility of a concussion.”
Jules could feel Tad’s heated gaze on her cheeks, but when she met those sharp DeLuca blues, his face lifted in a grin.
“Practicing?” he mouthed, and she repressed her natural impulse to roll her eyes. So she had dug for her inner flirt with the repair guy and it had worked. Well, when that part came in, she would know it worked.
Jack was still muttering his discontent. “We need to talk about this some more. I only agreed to let you move out because you would be living in the flat I own across from Shane and he could watch out for you.”
Lether move out? A growling sound came from deep in Jules’s throat. Deeper than that, even. From her gut where a bitter-tasting pool of frustration simmered.
“Jack, this isn’t your decision to make. I’d appreciate your support but with or without your blessing, I will be dating.”
Her brother looked like he’d sucked down an entire lemon tree. She didn’t care.
