Some Like it Hotter
“Did he tell you about that dinner?”
Eva extracted a glittering orange knit hat. “What dinner? When?”
“This big black-tie client dinner at one of the city’s best restaurants. He asked me to go with him right before I left.”
“Well, if he hasn’t found another date yet, he can take me.” She scowled at the orange hat.
“Are you kidding me? Stuffy in the extreme. You’d hate it. That’s my point, Eva. I can’t see you and Ames together. You’re not his type, either.”
“Yes, I am.” She was back at the gym bag, pulling out a green brimmed cap. “I totally am. He just hasn’t figured it out yet.”
Silence, except for some by now familiar and increasingly loud noises of incredulity.
“Chris?” Eva paused, one leg up on the stool. “Do you need a Heimlich?”
“Eva...” Chris blew out a long breath. “You don’t know the guy. You can’t trust early infatuation. You should know that after all the relationship train wrecks you’ve had.”
“Don’t worry. It will take him a while to understand that he feels the same way about me. I just have to make sure it’s less than a month before he proposes.”
“Before he—” Another sigh. “Eva, my darling sister, you sound like a crazy person.”
Eva laughed and gave the hat a thumbs-up in the mirror, pulling her hair so it cascaded out of the material and over one shoulder. “Yes, I know. But I don’t feel crazy, I feel fabulous. And if I get my heart smashed again, okay, at least I’ll have fun trying, and someday I’ll rise to try again. This is just how I roll. Now tell me what’s going on in California. How’s business? How are you settling in?”
“Well...now that you ask.” Her sister’s voice turned low and suggestive. “Zac—”
“Zac?” Eva nearly fell off the stool in her excitement. Chris and Zac? Why hadn’t she thought of it before? How perfect! She’d found Ames, now Zac could fall in love with her sister, and vice versa. “You’re dating him?”
“Who, Zac?” Chris sounded as if she’d just stepped in something disgusting.
“Oh. Guess not.”
“God, no. He’s so... I don’t know, overbearing or something.”
Eva rolled her eyes. Chris could be so judgmental. “No, he’s not, he’s a total sweetheart!”
Chris chuckled. “Wait, didn’t we just have this same conversation about Ames?”
“Yes, yes. But then we shouldn’t be surprised.” She pawed through the gym bag, pulled out a green-and-white fringed poncho. “We figured out we have different tastes in men around age ten.”
“You were Jesse McCartney, I was Daniel Radcliffe.”
“Beautiful Soul vs. Harry Potter.” She dropped the poncho over her head, careful of her phone. “So who’d you meet?”
“An incredible guy. Sweet, sensitive, sexy as hell. His name is Gus.”
Eva’s eyes shot open and stayed there. “Gus Banyon?”
“Yes! That’s him! You know him?”
“Uh...yeah.” She tried not to sound dismayed. Gus Banyon was a narcissistic moron child. “How many times have you gone out?”
“We just met once, then he had to go to some surf thing, but there’s magic happening, I’ll tell you.”
Uh-oh. “Like bed magic or heart magic?”
“We’ll start with one then see about the other. Unlike someone I know, I just think the guy’s hot. I’m not planning to bear his children.”
“Humph. I know what I’m doing.” She hopped down from the stool again. Getting dressed in this tiny office was like a step aerobics class. From the gym bag, an outer pocket this time, she pulled out a pair of jade-and-silver earrings that looked like tiered fans and reached nearly to her shoulders. “But I also know Gus, and he’s—”
“How well do you know him?”
“Well enough.”
“About as well as I know Ames?”
“But... That’s not... But...” Eva threw up her hands in surrender. “Okay, I get it. We both make our own mistakes and live with them.”