“Try before you buy? Jake, do you mean you want to do a test run before you start dating?”
“Definitely.” He waved a finger at Gill. “You and I seem to be on the same wavelength.”
And that roused giggles in the audience as he appeared to flirt with the MC.
Cool.
She wasn’t thrown. Hell, she ran a bar and probably had dudes hitting on her all the time. I didn’t doubt Gill could give us a run for our money. I kind of liked her, but she wasn’t in the proverbial hot seat.
“Can you give us another take on this subject, number four?”
“I gotta go with the rest of them. It’s how it is nowadays—bed on the first date, or even before you have a date at all. People are a lot more upfront, and people want what they want. There’s no reason to be down on things like that. Sure this set is from way back when my granny was courting with all the no sex before marriage and saving yourself for one person expectations, but our values and behaviors are modern day.”
Lewis getting way into the specifics and semantics was a recurring issue. Just like how he made plays more complicated than they needed to be, making absolutely sure who was getting the ball, asking multiple times. With as many questions as he asked, our team’s success was a wonder.
“This is 1960s inspired decor; I hope you like it,” Gill said with amusement.
“I love it. It’s cheerful and uplifting. Not sure I’d want to live with it. No wonder they got out of the sixties within ten years. I’m not even sure why it lasted that long. Ten years is a long time for lurid-colored flowers.”
And I had to hand it to him. He had the audience laughing again.
“So, there we have it. Contestant number four is a deep thinker who thinks ten years is too long for a decade, and he’d be happy to have sex before the first date. Am I right about you?”
“Yep,” he replied.
“Well, that’s good to know.” Gill winked mischievously and turned to the audience. “That is what we all wanted to know, right ladies?”
She sure knew how to work the crowd for a bar manager who stood in as the last-minute MC.
And the audience seemed to enjoy the show, which was the most important thing. As I scanned the sea of faces looking up at us, I noticed one lady who stood out as different from the mostly younger crowd. An older woman dressed up to the nines stood at the bar.
Mother.
It was odd seeing her there and out of place.
She wasn’t the sort of woman I expect to see propping up a bar. I guessed she’d turned up to watch me make a fool of myself. But she hadn’t told me she was coming.
“Right. After all that weirdness, we have another round before Jenny gets to choose her date,” Gill announced. “Let’s move on to the next question.”
CHAPTER FIVE
LEWIS ROLLINS
How can I woo one woman when I want to seduce another?
After laying eyes on the server who brought the food to our table, I decided to throw the contest. And I never cared about winning the damned game from the start.
But whatever I did to get out of winning, I couldn’t go all out dickhead about it because that wasn’t me, plus this was all being recorded. Corporate expected to get a fuckton of free good publicity out of the social media views and shares, so whatever I did or said had to be on point.
At worst, if I acted so bad that I bought the team name into disrepute, I’d be off the team and out of a job. Public perception seriously mattered. In order to take a dive, I had to be subtle about it.
More importantly, I had my eyes on another prize. And from the back of the room, she had her eyes on me.
The voice of the prize we were all meant to be competing for snapped me back to attention. “The next question I want to ask is, what does love mean to you?”
The question dragged me back into this competition, but also, out there, was a pretty woman I’d like to talk to about that very subject.
“To shake things up, number four, why don’t we start with you first?”
Well, luckily, this was one question we’d all prepared for. We’d spent an afternoon going over our gameplay for this event, and we’d discussed this.
“Good question, Jenny. I’ve heard it said that love is one soul occupying two bodies and seeking to be reunited. I hope I will find my soulmate someday.”
It wasn’t my idea. I’m pretty sure it was an ancient Greek philosopher who came up with that one, and I’d read it online.
My gaze drifted toward that mysterious girl in the crowd.