Real Men Will (Donovan Brothers Brewery 3)

She had to find that again, but it wasn’t going to happen tonight. Not with Davis. “Thanks,” she said again.

His hand finally slid away and Davis stepped back, looking only slightly disappointed. “I’ll call you. Maybe we’ll dare more next time. Dinner?”

“Maybe,” she said coyly, offering a quick kiss on his cheek before she escaped into her apartment.

Beth set her purse on the table, then hung up her coat in the hall closet. Her apartment was so quiet and so palpably solitary, that she was already regretting sending Davis away as she walked to the kitchen to pour a glass of wine. She’d lied to him about that. One glass of beer hadn’t been enough. She should have had three, and then maybe she would have been brave enough to let him in. She could’ve tried to lose herself. It wasn’t impossible.

It was in her somewhere, and it couldn’t just be about one man. Beth wouldn’t let it be.

CHAPTER TWO

BY THE NEXT DAY, BETH WAS thoroughly pissed at herself. One minute with him, one glimpse, one touch, and she couldn’t get the man out of her mind. And the worst part was, it was becoming more and more obvious to her that he’d been desperate to get her out of there. First, he’d edged her farther down the hall, then he’d jumped at the chance to say goodbye as quickly as possible.

He was in a relationship. Which was fine. But what if he was married? What if he’d been married then?

Her heart thumped so hard at the thought that she had to press her palm to her chest. That would explain everything, wouldn’t it?

She tried to put it from her mind as she walked into the shop and waved to Cairo. She tried not to think about it as she unboxed the newest toys and put them on display. But as she unboxed the high-tech vibrator and showed Cairo how it plugged into an MP3 player to thump in time to one’s favorite music, Beth couldn’t stop the thoughts swarming through her head.

“Cairo?”

Cairo was busy scrolling through songs on her phone, trying to find something with just the right beat.

“Yeah?”

“I was at Donovan Brothers last night and—”

“Oh!” Cairo looked up with a big smile on her face. “I forgot to ask how your date went.”

“My date?”

“With Davis!”

“Oh. Great!” Beth nodded with too much enthusiasm. “Yeah, it was wonderful!”

Cairo’s brown eyes lit up. “Wonderful? Oh, yeah? Do I detect a little dirty morning-after tone to those words?”

“You do not. But Davis was really nice.”

“And hot, right?” Cairo pressed, smiling as if Beth was hiding something. “How’d you like that dragon tattoo on his stomach?”

Beth raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t see his stomach, Cairo.”

The girl laughed, her glossy black bob swinging forward to frame her pretty face. “I know. I already talked to him this morning.”

“He called you?”

“No, I saw him at yoga. Which is how I know about the dragon tattoo, and why I fixed you two up in the first place. If I didn’t have two men already, I’d hit that so hard he’d never recover.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “It was a nice date. Though I’m not sure about a man who’d tell you whether he spent the night or not.”

“He didn’t say anything about that, but I figured a guy wouldn’t need to show up for an 8:00 a.m. yoga class if he’d spent the night in your bed. Good sex is way more relaxing.”

Well, that would be an interesting test of Beth’s abilities. Let Davis spend the night, then see if he went to yoga the next day.

“By the way…” Cairo said with a familiar twinkle in her eye. “You really, really want to see that tattoo. It’s done by the best artist in Colorado. And it follows the muscles in his abdomen all the way past his waistband. His very low waistband. I’m pretty sure he waxes. Everything.”

Beth must have winced.