The Bookworm's Guide to Dating (The Bookworm's Guide 1)

“Evidently not.”

“Have you found anyone?”

“Three possibilities,” I replied. “But I’m not showing you. She gave me specific guidelines, and I’m sticking to them.”

He stared at me. “If you set her up with a fucking idiot—”

“Give me some credit, man. I don’t want to see her with an idiot either. She’s already got you for a brother; she’s idioted out.”

He reached over and slugged me in the arm. “Fuck you. We both know that most of the guys around here are assholes.”

“Yeah, well, none of these guys are from White Peak. They’re all nearby towns,” I explained. “They fit what she wants. She gave me some fucking tight parameters to work within, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Are you surprised?”

“No. Kinsley would eat romance novels if they’d give her the necessary nutrition to survive.”

“Exactly. She knows what she wants but, buddy, I’m not sure those men exist outside of the books she reads.”

I shrugged and checked the messages again. “Whatever it is, I’m gonna try and get her a date and if I fail, it’s down to her. She said she wants to date more this year.”

“I know what she said, but do you really think it’ll go well? Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister, but she’s a dating disaster. You could do a Meghan Markle and marry her off to a prince, but that doesn’t mean it’s gonna go well.”

“Well, that didn’t go well, either.”

“I have no idea. I’m not even sure that’s her name.”

I snorted. “My sister is obsessed with the British Royals. It’s painful when we have a family dinner.”

And that was no lie. My youngest sister, Piper, was twenty-six, and she’d grown up with Kinsley and the other girls. She was the only one who’d left White Peak and was currently living in Vegas. She was working as a promoter while she saved up enough money to open her own bakery.

“I really don’t care about those,” Colt mused. “But Kinsley is an introvert, Josh, you know that. She’s awkward and nervous and all that other shit, which is why her dating life doesn’t exist.”

He was saying this like I didn’t already know. Like I hadn’t considered this before I went ahead and said I’d help her.

All right, I fucking hadn’t, but Colt didn’t know that.

“Yeah, I know,” I said as I deleted a message from a guy who lived across the state line in North Dakota, at least two hours away from us on a good day. There was another guy from Canada, but she’d already told me she wasn’t into border control being necessary for a date, so I blew him off, too.

“I think you’ve lost your mind,” Colt said putting his cup down.

“So you’ve said before.”

“Well, you have. Why do you care so much about what my sister does?”

“It was a spur of the moment thing. I told you that. I took pity on her.”

Colt made a noise that was halfway between a grunt of acquiescence and one disbelief, but he didn’t argue the point any further.

I got it. It was weird that I was helping her, but it would be even weirder if he knew I’d crushed on his sister for years.

When we were thirteen years old, we’d promised each other that we’d never hit on the other’s sister.

So far, I’d kept that promise.

I just hoped like fucking hell I’d carry on keeping it.***KINSLEY: What are you telling these people on the internet?ME: ???KINSLEY: Someone just wondered why you aren’t dating me if I’m so great.Oops. Maybe I’d talked her up a little too much.

Also, I’d promised her brother I wouldn’t.ME: I might have talked you up a little.KINSLEY: I’m not sure what else you could have said. I gave a stunning account of myself in that bio, Josh.ME: You tooted your own horn, Kins. It’s not that exciting.KINSLEY: Well, excuse you.ME: That’s not what I meant.KINSLEY: What did you mean?ME: That the internet is full of fakery and you know it. You were honest in your bio, other people might not be.KINSLEY: Yeah, I know that. I read.ME: You know your romance books aren’t real, don’t you?KINSLEY: If they were, I’d have killed Alexandra by now.ME: Who the fuck is Alexandra?KINSLEY: This bitch who picked the wrong guy.ME: So she’s in a book.KINSLEY: Well she’s not trapped in an oyster, Joshua.ME: You know people don’t pick the wrong guy in real life, don’t you?KINSLEY: You are so freaking cute I could put you in my pocket and feed you to the wolves without a second thought.Well, that told me.ME: That sounded like a big old insult, Kinsley.KINSLEY: Oh, good. You do still have some brain cells.ME: If I were you, I’d be nice to me. I’m setting up your dates.KINSLEY: Yeah, can you NOT set me up with people who do sports?ME: I didn’t.