She resisted the urge to touch her bare ring finger. She’d taken off her wedding ring ages ago. “I’m not married.”
“Cool.” He cocked his head. “Significant other?”
Her cheeks heated. She might be naïve, but she couldn’t tell herself he wasn’t interested now. “No.”
His eyes warmed. “Me neither. What do you do? For a living?”
She hesitated. The phrasing was odd, because she had the privilege of not needing to really do anything for a living.
It was a circumstance that filled her with a vague sense of guilt. She’d been a regular middle-class kid growing up, with a regular divorced single mom, and would have stayed middle-class had it not been for a freak series of events: her mother’s death, her father taking custody, an agent discovering her in a mall, being catapulted into the kind of circle that would lead her to marry a rich, childless jeweler, his death, her own interest in investing and growing the nest egg he’d left her.
That wasn’t to say she didn’t work. She worked on herself, her businesses, her charitable donations, her cooking, and an ever-changing selection of art, crafts, research, and books. She picked one at random. “I make jewelry.” Her latest interest, one she’d picked up a little over a year ago in a nostalgic mood for her late husband.
“Oh. Wow, that’s so cool. An artist, huh?”
She lifted a shoulder. A therapist had suggested she try painting a few years ago, and she’d cycled through a million different forms of art since then. She parroted his question back at him. “What about you?”
“I used to coach rugby. Now I’m a nutritional coach.”
Rugby. That explained the thighs.
“Hey, do you mind watching my stuff for a minute? I need to use the restroom.”
“Sure.”
He rose from his chair and she tried to avoid checking out his aforementioned (in her head) massive thighs as he walked away.
She snuck one peek, though. Okay, well. It wasn’t news that she could feel lust over a pair of well-formed legs. It didn’t rise to the level of a zing, though.
She waited a second or two and got up as well. Katrina caught the eye of the blond ponytailed woman at the table next to her, no easy feat, since she and her companion were sitting silently together, furiously typing something on their phones.
Writers, she bet. “Do you mind watching our table for a second?” There was no real need, Katrina wouldn’t go far, but she didn’t want someone to poach it.
The woman nodded. “Of course.”
She walked to the counter and grabbed an extra couple of napkins. A large shadow fell over her. Jas leaned on the counter and signaled to the waitress for a refill for his empty cup.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “He had no other place to sit. He’s not bothering me.”
She got a barely audible grunt in return. Grunts were one of Jas’s favorite methods of communication, and she’d learned to decipher them the same way someone else might learn to decipher Morse code. This grunt was a satisfied grunt.
The grunts weren’t as sexy to her as his eyebrows, but they were still pretty cute, damn it.
She glanced up at that rope sign. Happiness is a radical act.
Focus on the new guy. Find a zing there.
She made her way back to the table. “Thanks for holding it,” she said to the blond woman, and got a wave in return, the lady not even looking away from her small phone screen, her thumbs moving at the speed of light.
Definitely a writer. Bet she’s in the middle of something juicy.
Katrina sat down and returned to her thriller. A few minutes later Ross returned. He placed a plate with a giant cookie on it between them. “I went biking this morning and worked up an appetite. Please help me eat this.”
She never turned down a good cookie. “Happy to assist.”
She was careful not to let their fingers brush as they demolished the cookie. Despite her brain urging her to let it happen, the bumportunities were bump-blocked by her own instincts.
Ross sat back. “The weather’s so nice today.”
Mona had all of French Coast’s windows and doors open, and the salt-tinged air was perfection. “It’s nice most days. Have you been to the beach yet?”
“Not yet. That’s on the agenda for tomorrow. I didn’t bring my flip-flops today.”
She named a popular park. “If you want to see the sunset tonight, you can see it from there. The view’s incredible.”
He smoldered and leaned over the table. She hadn’t been on the receiving end of a smolder in a long time, but this was most definitely a smolder of the highest caliber.
And like most smolders in the past, she was left cold. It was a sad day when a grunt could make her heartbeat accelerate, but a perfectly good smolder barely caught her attention.
“The view’s good from here too.”
She stifled the sudden urge to laugh. Were this a book or a movie, she might have sighed, but in real life, the line was cheesy and heavy-handed. “Uh, you mean the décor? Yeah, we call rope art beach chic over here.”
“Partially,” he said, the smolder turning down to a simmer. “Hey, you know of any good pizza places around here? No chains.”
The subject of food was never cheesy. Unless there was literal cheese involved. “There’s a place around the corner from here.” She gestured. “I order delivery from there a lot, and love it. I’m pretty sure they have a nice place to eat in.”
“Perfect.” He crossed his arms over the small table and leaned forward. This time, she forced herself to keep her body still. They touched, his forearm against hers.
Nothing. No zings. Not even a spark.
“Would you like to join me for pizza and a sunset tonight, then?”
She blinked. This was a bona fide meet-cute!
Except she didn’t care. It was flattering to have such a handsome guy flirting with her, but she could quite easily turn him down. “No, I’m afraid I can’t.”
He shrugged good-naturedly and, bless him, didn’t press. “No problem.”
“You should try Crush,” she offered. “I’m sure you can line up a date for the evening pretty easily.”
He made a face. “Never used one of those dating apps. I prefer meeting people like this. Face-to-face contact, you know.”
Katrina could at least tell Rhiannon she’d tried to convert another subscriber. “Totally get it.”
He gathered up his stuff. “Thanks so much for letting me share your table. I enjoyed having the company and the local tips.”
“Me too. Pet Sandy for me.”
He laughed. “She wouldn’t settle for anything less.”
He held out his hand and she shook it, expecting no feelings and getting none. This time she did watch him leave, satisfied at the contentment she felt.
One step after another. She could repeat this, message some of those guys lingering in her matches. And next time, maybe she’d want to go out with the guy.
She dawdled for a few more minutes, then tucked her paperback in her bag and collected her trash, depositing her stuff and the plate and cup Ross had left behind in the bin.
“Ready?”
She turned to find Jas behind her. She noted the bookmark sticking out of his hardcover with approval. No cracked spines here. “Yup.”