The Single Dad (Red's Tavern 4)

But instead he kept his eyes down, focused on his work. He wasn’t even wearing one of his flashy tank tops today—he was in a simple black Red’s Tavern T-shirt.

“You okay, Sam?” I asked after he gave us both our beers.

“Yes. I mean, no, but, I will be okay.”

Luke and I exchanged a glance.

“What’s got you down, Sam?” Luke asked him, and Sam just sighed, shaking his head as he kept working.

“I got catfished last night.”

“Oh God, no,” I said.

“Wait,” Luke said. “What does that mean?”

Sam and I both looked at him. “You don’t know what it means to get catfished?”

“Should I?”

“Well, I can explain perfectly, after last night,” Sam said, sighing and leaning forward against the bar, his muscles bulging as usual. “I’d been talking with this gorgeous man on Instagram for a few weeks. He always loved my photos. Commented on every single one, especially the ones where my ass looks good.”

“Naturally,” I said.

“So we decided to meet up,” Cam said, pushing his blond hair to one side. “And I was very fucking excited. I hadn’t seen more than a couple photos of the guy, but he looked like a damned model. I drove a long way to this fancy restaurant in Kansas City. And when I get there, I see not one, but three people waiting at the front door.”

“You’re kidding me,” Luke said.

“I am not,” Sam told him. “Turns out Mr. Hottie was Miss weirdo. She is nineteen, and was doing this as some weird social experiment, proving she can seduce anybody. She was filming my reaction for a TikTok video as I walked up, surrounded by two punk-ass friends who laughed the whole time.”

“That is insanely cruel,” I said, furrowing my brow.

“She tried to apologize,” Sam said, shaking his head. “It was fucking bizzare.”

“She made you drive all that way?”

Sam lifted an eyebrow. “She actually tried to give me a twenty-dollar bill to pay for the gas that got me there.”

“What is wrong with people?” Luke asked.

Sam just shrugged. “Be careful who you meet on the internet,” he said. “You never know who it is you’re talking to on the other side of a screen. I’ve given up on love.”

I snorted. “Yeah, right,” I said. “You’re even more of a hopeless romantic than me.”

“That’s the problem,” Sam said, his halo of blond hair making him look angelic for a moment under the bar lights. “I fall in love so damn easily.”

“But that’s what’s so great about you,” I told him. “I think when you finally find someone, he’ll be the exact same way.”

He shook his head. “I’ve had enough of chasing after guys.”

“You’re going to chase after the next hot guy who walks in here, and you know it.”

Finally, he smiled a little. “Maybe.”

“You’ll find love sooner than you think, Sam,” Luke said. “I know it.”

“Until then, I have an entire closet full of toys to keep me company,” he said with a wink.

“Wait. A whole closet?” I asked, but Sam was already bouncing off.

“There is no way it’s a whole closet,” Luke told me.

“I don’t know, man, Sam is a very adventurous person.”

Luke and I kicked back and relaxed, sipping our beers as old Queen songs played on the jukebox.

“Okay,” Luke said after a minute, reaching in his back pocket and unearthing a folded newspaper. He spread it out on the bar top in front of us, revealing a half-finished crossword puzzle. He tapped it with a finger. “I’ve been working on this one. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out this long word right in the middle.”

“Oh my God,” I said, looking from the puzzle back up to Luke’s furrowed brow. “Did you just do what I think you did?”

“What?” he asked.

“Pull out a crossword puzzle. In a bar.”

“Shut up,” he said. “You got me addicted to these things, anyway. Even though it takes me two weeks to finish an easy one.”

“Luke Warren, doing a puzzle in a bar,” I continued. “Exactly what you once made fun of me for.”

He gave me a wicked grin. “I didn’t make fun of you, that first night,” he said. “I’d just never seen someone who had the balls to do it in a place like this.”

“So you’re saying I’m the cool one, huh?”

“Maybe you are,” he said. “Maybe you have more guts than all of us.”

“Now you’re flattering me.”

His eyes danced across my face. “Well, you’re awesome,” he said. “And I definitely need some help from Cam-brain figuring this shit out.”

I puffed out a laugh, looking down at the puzzle. “First off, you don’t want to worry about the long words in the center until the end. They’re always the hardest ones to get, and the clues for them tend to be more vague.”

“Okay,” Luke said. “But the rest of it seems impossible right now, too.”