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His answer is so simple and sounds so damn logical I want to smack him.
“There is no right woman,” I say, wanting to burst Matt’s happily-ever-after bubble. “You’ll eventually settle. Trust me.”
“And you won’t,” Gage says, though I know he’s not disagreeing with me. “I know I don’t plan on settling. I don’t plan on tying myself down whatsoever.”
“Neither do I,” I agree. “Settling is for pussies.”
“Absolutely,” Gage says grimly.
Matt focuses his attention solely on me. “I’ll bet big money you’ll be the first to go down.”
“Go down how? On a woman?” This earns a laugh from Gage. “Go down in flames? What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’ll be the first to fall in love with a woman and beg her to marry you,” Matt says.
My mouth goes dry. It feels like an invisible noose just tightened around my neck, making it hard to breathe. “Yeah, right,” I finally manage to choke out.
“You two are so damn resistant to being in a relationship, I figure you’ll both be slapped upside the head and fall hard. And it’s going to happen sooner rather than later,” Matt says, his voice full of confidence.
That smug tone irritates the hell out of me.
“There is no way I’ll fall in love anytime soon,” I say.
“Me either,” Gage agrees.
“If you guys want to believe that, then cool. Live in your world of denial, I don’t care.” Our friend is trying to piss us off. And it’s working.
“You wanna make that bet you just mentioned? Because I’m in. I’ll prove it to you. I don’t need a woman or a relationship.”I cross my arms in front of my chest. Matt’s done this before. He enjoys getting a rise out of the both of us. Drives me crazy.
So let’s see if he goes for it. Always running that mouth of his. Time to put up or shut up.
Gage snorts. “Don’t just bet him. Let’s all three get in on this one.”
“How much we talking?” Matt scrubs his hand along his jaw. The guy is loaded. We’re all loaded; we come from wealthy families and we lived in the same neighborhood during high school. When we all turned twenty-one within a few months of each other, we started going to Vegas and dropping big money like a regular person plays the quarter slots. Once we graduated college and got real lives, we had to stop that shit. I still miss it. Sort of.
“A million bucks to the last single man standing,” Gage throws out, a triumphant gleam in his eye. He acts like he’s already won the prize.
“A million dollars?” Matt’s eyes practically bug out of his head. Asshole acts like he’s not good for it despite having to recently bow out of a lucrative pro baseball contract due to a career-ending injury—and he didn’t lose a dollar of that contract either. The guy has buckets full of money. He recently invested some of it in a winery not far from where I live just so he could claim a loss for his taxes.
He’s definitely not hurting financially. Neither is Gage. He’s one of the top real estate investors in all the Bay Area, right behind his father. They both have the magic touch, finding properties and businesses for a song and turning them around for a tremendous profit.
The hotel industry claims I have the magic touch as well, despite my father’s irritation at that particular assertion. Ican’t help that I saw a need and filled it with the loser hotel he gave me. He firmly believed I’d fail.
I proved him wrong. Hell, I’m getting ready to expand. And he hates that.
It’s almost as if my own father would relish seeing me fail.
“What, you scared?” I say this because I know there is no way in hell I will lose this bet. No woman can sink her claws into me so deep I can’t escape.
No way, no how.
Gage laughs and shakes his head. “Don’t be such a pussy, DeLuca. A million bucks is chump change in your bank account.”
“Not really,” Matt mutters. “Not that I’m worried. I’ll win.”
Ha. Matt making that confident of a statement pushes me to prove him wrong. “You really think so?”
“I know so.” Matt smiles. “I’d even bet an extra fifty grand the next woman you talk to, you’ll end up marrying.”
