So close, Callan mused, typing a K and sending it back to his friend.
He put his phone away. Several people walked past him and headed into the bar. The sound of live music poured out, quieting when the door closed behind them.
He considered his options. He could turn around and head back to his grandfather’s place, but his grandfather’s bedtime was fast approaching. He could call someone else and invite them to come hang out. He’d normally call Javy, but his ballplayer neighbor was on a road trip. Some of his teammates might be available though. Or he could just head home and chalk it up to fate that an evening out wasn’t meant to be.
Even as that thought ran through his mind, he found himself reaching for the door to the bar. He suddenly felt compelled to go inside and see where the evening led him.
Chapter Six
“Then he pulled down his pants right in front of the couple I was walking through the listing,” said Jeanie Latimer, one of the real estate agents in the same brokerage as Roxy. “Hashtag awkward.”
What was awkward, at least in Roxy’s opinion, was verbal hash-tagging. Since Jeanie was overall a nice person, she let it slide.
They were currently seated along with four of their fellow agents around a couple of joined high-top tables at The Copper Keg. Jeanie sat to Roxy’s left and Roxy’s mentor at the brokerage, Darcy Moore, sat to her right.
Across from Darcy was the most senior agent among them, Ted Duvall. Ted was a retired pilot who got so bored in his retirement he decided to give real estate a try. He specialized in working with seniors and had strong connections with many of the local 55+ adult communities. He was also consistently near the top of their brokerage’s sales leaderboard every month.
Next to Ted and across from Roxy was the newest addition to the brokerage, Joe Daulton. Joe was the great-nephew of their broker of record, Arnie Daulton, and had recently graduated college. Arnie had approached the team about Joe coming on over the summer to gain some experience and no one even considered telling him no. Now Joe was partnered up with Ted to learn more about the day-to-day tasks of a real estate agent, much like Roxy was with Darcy.
Today marked the end of Joe’s first week and they had all decided to go out and celebrate to officially welcome him aboard. It hadn’t taken more than one round of drinks for the real estate horror stories to start flowing.
“Did the guy have on any underwear?” asked the sixth member of their group, Ava Oakley.
“Not a stitch,” Jeanie said.
“I hope the guy was at least packing,” Darcy drawled, earning a round of laughter.
“Nope.” Jeanie wiggled her pinkie finger. “Tiny Tim.”
More laughter.
Roxy sipped her margarita and glanced around the bar. She had been the one to suggest their celebration destination. She’d been there a few times and enjoyed the atmosphere, which was classy without being overly expensive or stuffy. Even though it was a couple miles from the brokerage and was often packed at happy hour, everyone agreed to her suggestion. They hadn’t even asked why she chose this particular place.
Not that she would have admitted it. Telling them she hoped to run into a certain hot hockey player would have led to questions she wasn’t even sure she could answer.
After what Allison claimed was the best night of sex of her life with Christian, Roxy had spent some time trying to get more details about Christian—and indirectly, Callan—from her friend. Allison admitted that she and Christian hadn’t done a lot of talking, but they made some small talk on the drive to her apartment. Among the things they discussed were some of the places Christian, Callan, and some of their friends liked to hang out.
Since then, Roxy had found herself visiting some of those places. At first, she told herself it wasn’t because of Callan. The guy apparently liked to frequent some of the most popular venues in Atlanta, after all, and she was bound to visit some of them herself.
By the time she visited the third place on Allison’s list, this time with a date she really didn’t want to be with, she had to admit to herself that her motivations were questionable. It wasn’t like she could afford to visit these places as much as she had over the past few weeks. She’d secured one sale on a friend’s condo that netted her a couple thousand dollars after closing, but that only covered one month’s rent.
On top of that, her attention had barely remained on her date. She kept looking at the door so much that he eventually thought she was eager to end the night. While that was true, she hadn’t wanted to leave.
In case Callan showed up.
This obsession—for it was hardly anything less—was completely unlike her. She enjoyed variety in all aspects of her life, including the men she chose to spend time with. Before her no-sex pact, she had often gone on multiple dates in a week, all with different men, many of them quite attractive, fun, and entertaining.
But none of them were Callan Murphy.
Of course she knew his last name now. She had done her research. She hadn’t been able to help herself.
After a week of thinking about him way more than she should, she finally went online to learn more about him. She had hoped that would satisfy her and allow her to move on. Instead, it just fueled her fantasies.
Most of the photos she found were of him in his hockey gear. Action shots, posed shots, and everything in between. She would have thought seeing him in so much gear would bank her fires, but it tossed lighter fluid all over them. The guy was sex on skates.
The other photos of him were split between shots of him wearing suits or tuxes and shots of him wearing nearly nothing at all. It was really a toss-up which photos were the hottest, but they all had her deeply regretting not taking things further when she had the chance.
So here she was, using yet another flimsy excuse to visit a place where she might run into him. As her grandmother liked to say, sometimes fate needed a hand.
Not spotting him during her brief scan, she tuned back into the conversation. Jeanie had just finished saying that she ended up getting the sale on the house despite the homeowner’s ex-husband’s impromptu flashing. Roxy joined her associates in lifting her glass to toast Jeanie’s success.
“How about you, Roxy?” Joe asked. “Do you have any fun stories so far?”
She smiled. Joe was sweet and quite smitten with her. They had bonded over being the two “newbies” in the group and he’d been finding excuses to drop by her desk to chat most of the week. Earlier that day, she overheard him asking Ted about the policy for dating among the agents, of which there wasn’t one. It hadn’t escaped her notice that Joe looked right at her as he asked the question.
As sweet as he was, though, he was too young for her. Not just in age, as five years wasn’t a remarkable age gap, but in his speech and behavior.
She’d eat him alive.
Never one to enjoy hurting a guy’s feelings, she had taken care to avoid being alone all afternoon in order to deflect any possible advances. She had been shadowing Darcy on a complicated closing, so that hadn’t been too difficult.
“No interesting stories yet,” she told Joe, “but I’m sure my time is coming.”
His expression fell. “Oh.”
“Just you wait, Rox,” Darcy said. “The next time we all get together like this, you’ll have your own war stories to tell.”