Thank freaking Christ the bartender showed up again with his drink. Jack knocked twice on the bar and, not taking his eyes off Legs, said, “Put it on Chris Dooley’s tab.” Jack was about to lose his wits to a woman, and it was all his friends’ fault for making him leave the house. They were buying his drinks for the rest of the night.
He made his way back to Chris and Joey, still looking at their goddamned phones and not at the beauty next to them. No wonder they were constantly swiping and never actually meeting any of the bots populating most dating apps face-to-face. And no wonder Chris had been single since dumping Jack’s sister, Bridget, a year and a half ago. They didn’t pay attention.
Considering the sister dumping, maybe Jack should have drowned Chris in the kiddie pool when they were five.
But if they were aware of their surroundings, maybe Chris or Joey would be the guy getting to talk to Legs, and Jack would be left holding his dick. So, thank Christ his friends were idiots.
It wasn’t until he was a few feet away that he noticed the other women with Legs. Both of the other women were knockouts, but they didn’t rate for him. Jack had homed in on Legs, and he would not be deterred.
Maybe he could figure out how to keep things casual with Legs for the first three months or so. He doubted it. Once he’d tasted a little bit of a girl’s magic, Jack didn’t like to date around. He enjoyed flirting as much as the next guy, but he was—in essence—a commitment-phile. He liked having a girlfriend.
Maybe he and Legs could get a dog. He could compromise and live with a French bulldog. Small and cute, but still a real dog.
“Are you guys both swiping?”
“Yeah.” Joey swiped left. “But I’m coming up empty.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Because of his affinity for having one lady for years at a time, Jack had never been on a dating app. He didn’t see the appeal. If he’d met Maggie on an app, he wouldn’t have been able to figure out that the lotion she wore smelled like lilacs. He wouldn’t have known that Katie’s singing voice rivaled that of an angry tomcat, but that it was so charming he didn’t care. He’d never have clocked Lauren’s sassy walk across the stage in the production of Hello, Dolly! that he’d been reviewing for the Michigan Daily when he’d first seen her.
And he would have seen Legs’s face first. To be honest, a picture of her face might be the only thing in the “pro” column for online dating. He needed to see if her face would captivate him as much as her rocking body did.
“It means he’s not matching with any of the hot girls,” Chris piped in as he swiped right multiple times. “I swipe right on everyone so that I get more matches.”
“But he matches with mostly dogs,” Joey said. “I’m not looking to get caught up with a girl so ugly I gotta put a bag over her head.”
Yeah, he definitely should have drowned both Chris and Joey twenty years ago. Instead of clocking both of them, he pointed an angry finger in their faces. “Both of you are nothing to look at yourselves so you get what you get.”
He ran his finger under his collar, longing for his worn Michigan football T-shirt instead of a stupid button-down. It was damn sweaty in this goddamned hole of a bar that didn’t have decent beer or a television.
“Yeah, you’ll eat your words when you’re forced to swim in the waters of Tinder, loser.” Chris pointed back at him, finally looking up from his phone. “Then you’ll realize that it’s kill or be killed. The women on here are either bots or butt ugly.”
That had to be the moment when Legs turned around. Jack could tell by the look on her—beautiful, gorgeous, absolutely perfect—face that she’d heard every word that his asshole, knuckle-dragging squad of buffoons had just said. Her eyes were so narrowly squinted that he couldn’t tell what color they were. Her nose wrinkled up and her red-lacquered lips compressed with anger. Couldn’t hide the fact that she was a knockout from all the angles. Not even with a raised middle finger partially obscuring her face.
She was like a sexy, rabid raccoon. And he was a goner.
* * *
—
SOME DIPSHIT WITH TWINKLING green eyes wasn’t going to stop Hannah Mayfield from raining holy hell on the bros swiping left on the girls standing right next to them. Two of whom happened to be her best friends.
His tousled dirty-blond hair and the muscles straining his shirt’s buttons didn’t make her want to throw a drink in his face any less, and they weren’t about to stop her from curb stomping his buddies. Didn’t matter that the goofy fucking smile on his face said he couldn’t read the room. She was about to de-ball all three of these assholes, and he was smiling. Maybe he was missing more brain cells than the average young professional man in Chicago—which is to say all of them.
“What the hell is your problem?”
Stupid-Sexy Green Eyes answered even though she’d turned her glare on his two bozo friends. “I didn’t say anything.”
No, his deep voice, which rolled over her with the subtlety of a Mack truck, wasn’t one that had been calling all the women on Tinder, including her friends, dogs. But that didn’t stop her from saying, “Well, then. Keep yourself busy sucking a bag of dicks while I disembowel your two friends here.”
Although that was a harsh statement to lob at an innocent bystander, she couldn’t risk showing any weakness in the face of the enemy. And all men were the enemy. Especially the pretty ones who looked at her like she was their favorite slice of cake. Those were the especially dangerous ones: the ones who could seep into her heart, which made it much harder when they left. And they always left—usually because they just didn’t want anything serious right now.
“Why are you so angry?” He seemed genuinely perplexed, and honestly, she didn’t know why she was so angry, either. It wasn’t like she was on dating apps anymore. She’d given it the college try, but every petty humiliation suffered on those apps felt like a stab to the gut. And even when she’d met a few guys for drinks, she’d felt like she’d been at the worst audition for the worst reality show in the world. She didn’t understand how people ever actually made it to sex with someone they’d never met before.
Probably drinks. Lots and lots of drinks.
“I’m pissed because they”—she pointed at Sasha and Kelly—“forced me to come to this hipster nightmare for drinks after I’d been working all damned day.” She’d only been guilted into it because Kelly, a management consultant, was in town for the first time in months.
“The shoes.” Green Eyes’s gaze dipped to her feet.
“Not your business.” She hated how warm his slow perusal of her made her feel, as though he’d already seen her naked. It was creepy, and she ought to have called him out. And the warmth melted some of her righteous indignation on behalf of her friends. Not the plan here.