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She frowned. “Are you... Are you hitting on me, Lachlan?”
“If you have to ask, I’m not doing a very good job.”
“Huh. Well... Interesting.” She didn’t sound thrilled, but she didn’t seem put off either. “I would love to come to the poker game. That sounds like a decent plan.”
Maybe she was sick of pining after Landry, assuming that’s what their deal was.
Sick enough that she was willing to take him up on this, even though she clearly thought it was weird. She was a pretty woman. A delicate build, but pretty generously endowed, freckles across her nose, wide green eyes. Yeah. He liked the look of her. It was more academic than it was visceral, but he supposed that was probably the best way to approach these sorts of things.
He didn’t want or need to get carried away by anything, that was what he and Charity had discussed, and on that score, he did think she was right. He also was supposed to stay away from the alcohol tonight.
Difficult to do since that meant heading over to the kids’ table and grabbing sodas out of the cooler.
“Okay,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Six o’clock. We’ll have pizza.”
“Great.”
They stood there for a second, and okay, they weren’t going to have an instant rapport. But hell, if she wanted to go on a date with him, she must be interested enough. So he’d take that.
After town hall ended, they convened at McCloud’s Landing. “Poker at my place tomorrow,” he said, grabbing a beer and sitting down at the table with his brothers. That was a fair moment to have a beer. It had to be.
“Okay,” Gus said. “But we might skip. Cameron hasn’t been sleeping, and Alaina is pretty tired.”
Their baby was only a couple weeks old. Being an uncle was a damned joy as far as Lachlan was concerned. All the cuteness without any of the sleeplessness.
“Well, her sister will be there, so maybe she’ll decide to come anyway.”
“Why will her sister be there? And which one?” Gus asked.
He looked deeply suspicious. And probably rightly so.
“Because I asked her to be. I asked her out.”
“Son of a bitch,” Brody said. “You can’t go sleeping with Gus’s sister-in-law. That’s a mess waiting to happen.”
“Who said anything about sleeping with her? I asked her out.”
“We all know what that means to you,” Tag said.
“Deeply,”Hunter added.
“Look, you all have gotten married. Settled down. Why can’t I make a move toward settling down? Maybe my idea of what dating is has changed.”
“Maybe,” Hunter said. “But I kind of doubt it.”
That just did it. It made him agree to Charity’s celibacy demand. Then and there in his own heart because his brothers were assholes who didn’t think he could, and damn them, he would.
“Look at Brody,” Lachlan said. “He’s a dad. If Brody can settle down and literally be raising a kid, why can’t I start dating a little bit more seriously? In fact, I’m not having sex. Six months. No sex. Unless I get married first.”
“What?” Brody just about fell out of his chair. “You. No sex. Six months.”
“I asked Charity to reform me, and that was what she said I ought to do.”
“Charity cockblocked you for six months?” Tag asked. “Well. That’s a riot.”
“It’s not ariot, Tag. It is my attempt at getting some of the happiness that you all have.”
