AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She wrinkled her nose, glancing toward her brother. After a few seconds, a subtle consideration seemed to fill her eyes. “I suppose he’d be a better option than Lucas, right?”
“Right,” Scarlett said firmly. “So now we just need another girl.”
“You know what? I think I have the perfect idea. I work with a girl who might be interested. Let me call her and see if she’d like to go on a date with my brother.”
Scarlett held up both hands to stop Annabel from making any plans. “Whoa. I said we do a group thing, not a couples thing. Elijah might not even want to go, so if you think assigning a date to him is going to work, I’d think twice.”
Annabel gave her a funny sort of look. “Are you actually giving me advice on how to set up my brother on a blind date?”
“No,” Scarlett shot back. “I’m just saying—”
“Sounds like you’ve gotten a little too close to my brother,” Annabel sang teasingly. This drew Elijah’s gaze, and Annabel got a wicked-looking grin on her face. She absolutely looked like she’d swallowed the yellow canary. “Oh, Elijah!”
Scarlett’s eyes flew wide. She knew that look. She would recognize the tone of Annabel’s meddling any day. What got her the most, however, was the fact that her best friend actually seemed to think it would be funny to set her up on a date with her brother.
Her brother!
The one rule they’d had growing up, and now Annabel was willing to break it.
“What are you doing?” Scarlett hissed. “This isn’t funny, Anna.”
“Sure it is. Mostly because it’s like you said. You guys can’t stand each other, and it’s not like he’s Lucas. Elijah’s not gonna hit on you like Luke would.” She waved her hand in the air, calling her brother’s name again.
Scarlett snatched her friend’s hand out of the air. “Don’t you dare.”
Annabel laughed again. “Oh, come on, Scar. What are you afraid of? You think something serious is gonna happen between you? Doubtful. Elijah is weird, but he’s boring. I don’t even know if he’d agree to it.”
“Agree to what?” Elijah materialized in front of them.
Scarlett’s focus bounced from sibling to sibling as she watched the whole thing unfold. This could go wrong in so many ways. Elijah could give away their secret. Annabel might already know, and she was just trying to get them to confess to it. There was a slim chance nothing would happen and they’d all walk away from this conversation scot-free.
That last one was least likely to happen, and Scarlett knew it in her soul. This conversation had turned into a runaway train. All she could do at this point in time was watch the outcome like it was a very bad accident.
Annabel elbowed Scarlett in the ribs. “I’ve been telling Scar for weeks that we should go on a double date with the guy I’m seeing, and she keeps telling me that she’s too busy. Either you’re keeping her from me, or she’s just scared to get out there even though she claims this was why she came home in the first place.”
Elijah lifted his brows, a smile playing at his lips. He shot a mildly smug smile at Scarlett. He couldn’t possibly think this was funny, could he? If anything, he should be upset that she didn’t tell him about Annabel pressuring her to go on a date.
And yet here he was, acting like this was the funniest news he’d heard in a while. “Okay, so what did you need me for? I thought you didn’t want Scarlett to date any of your brothers.”
Annabel scrunched her face and made a disgusted sound. “Date? No, I don’t want you guys to date her. I want her to get out there again. And I wanted her to go out with Derek’s cousin.”
The smile faded from Elijah’s face faster than butter melting on a hot sidewalk in the middle of summer. “What?”
“Yeah, Derek wants to do a double date. But Scarlett thought it would be better to ease into things if we were all part of a big group.”
Elijah’s eyes flitted to Scarlett. Still, he didn’t seem pleased with this concept, and she already knew the reason why. If they were in a group setting, everyone would be fair game. What if one of the other guys asked her out or flirted with her. Heaven forbid they tried to hold her hand or steal a kiss. Elijah wouldn’t be up for that.
Yep, Scarlett should have just kept her mouth shut about this little plan of theirs. Maybe she could have gone on one date with Derek’s cousin and then called it good. She would have had to let Elijah know, of course. But based on his current lack of enthusiasm, it wasn’t likely he would have gone for that idea either.
“A group date,” Elijah ground out.
“Yeah. A couple girls. A couple guys. And we all hang together and do something fun. You work too hard as it is, and Scarlett seems to think that you would never agree to something like that.”
“She’d be right.”
Annabel laughed, though Elijah’s statement couldn’t have been more serious. “It’s fine, Elijah. Maybe if you got yourself out there every once in a while, you would have found a girlfriend already. Heck, you might even be married already by now.”
“Maybe I’m not ready to meet anyone new.” He gave Scarlett a meaningful look, one that was short-lived and undetectable by his sister. “Maybe I’m already dating someone.”
