Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 42882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Lane gave me a helpless look I couldn’t interpret, and then his jaw firmed. “Actually, Chad, I already have lunch plans…”
Suddenly, I thought I understood Lane’s look. He wanted me to bow out gracefully so I wouldn’t make him uncomfortable. “Oh! No, Lane. Don’t, uh, don’t worry about me.” I put both hands up. “You two can go ahead. I’ll catch up with you later. At home.”
“Home?” Chad asked curiously, his eyes ping-ponging from Lane to me and back again.
Lane blushed. “Yes. I mean…” His face turned a red so deep it looked painful. “Jay and I… Jay is my…”
He gave me another helpless look, but this time, I caught on faster. “Landlord,” I supplied. “Yep. I’m Jaybird Proud, and I lord Lane’s land. As his landlord.”
Pete, Chad, and Lane gave me identical slack-jawed looks. Lane was the first to recover. “Jay is my friend,” he said firmly, “and the best man I know. He and I have lunch plans at the Steak n’ Bait.”
I had to suck in a breath, partly because the way Lane defended me made my chest squeeze and partly because the Steak n’ Bait… well, I wasn’t sure anyone had ever explained it to Lane, but that restaurant had a particular reputation. It was the Thicket’s number one spot for romance, at least according to the Yelp reviews, and so many proposals had taken place there they kept a running tally on the big sign out front, even though Chuck Gimbal had to climb a ladder once a week to update it.
Unfortunately, Lane ruined the effect of all this after a long moment of awkward silence by telling Chad with grudging politeness, “But you can come with us, if you’d like… I guess?”
Chad smiled like Lane had sent him an engraved invitation. “Perfect!” He gave me a look that made me wish I’d changed my boots for something that didn’t probably have peacock poop stuck to the bottom and that I’d worn a shirt with sleeves. “We can take my Lexus.”
Unfortunately, things only went downhill from there.
Riding in the back seat of Chad’s Lexus was a special kind of hell—one where I worried what kind of stains my boots were leaving on his pristine cream interior while Chad updated Lane on the lives of every single friend they’d ever had in common—and it didn’t improve once we got to the Steak n’ Bait (currently boasting 2,726 YESSES AND COUNTING).
“Doc Lane!” Barbara McNamara gushed the second we opened the door. “How are you? You know, everyone wants our dinner special, but hardly anyone takes advantage of our lunch offerings, and we were all just so tickled when you called to make a reservation for you and… and…” Her eyes took in Chad’s tall form standing between us, and she pressed her lips together. “Oh.” She blinked. “There may have been a mix-up.”
“Story of my life,” Lane muttered. More loudly, he said, “There’ll be three of us for lunch now.”
I’d say he blushed, except he hadn’t stopped blushing since the moment Chad arrived… which sorta told me everything I needed to know about how Lane felt about Chad, didn’t it? Still, Lane had invited me. Lane had insisted. So… for Lane, I’d stick around.
The place was fairly quiet at lunchtime—ladies in nice dresses chatted over cocktails while folks in business suits brokered billion-dollar deals… or whatever corporate types did at lunch. Barbara guided us past them to a two-person table way in the back that had been set with flowers. She paused awkwardly.
“Uh. Maybe… maybe this one instead.” Barbara spun toward a four-person table and placed our menus down. “I’ll just… um…” She twisted her hands. “I’ll go see where your server is.”
Chad took a seat, and Jay and I followed.
“This place is cute,” Chad decided. “Lane, you remember the time you and me and Mark Levy went out for dinner to that nouveau cuisine restaurant with the fake fireplace?”
“I remember getting food poisoning,” Lane said tightly. “And riding home in the Uber alone.”
“Oh.” Chad frowned. “God, I forgot that part.”
For the first time in my life, I had the urge to commit murder… or, at the very least, to hit a man directly in the face.
How the hell had Lane been with someone so mean? I thought maybe I understood now why he reacted to the smallest kindness like a plant in the desert after a nice cool rain.
It was like a gift from the heavens when Kelsey came bustling over with a huge tray, interrupting Chad’s reminiscing.
“Happy Entwinin’, you two!” Kelsey smiled broadly as she set down a plate in the center of the table… and only then seemed to do a quick head count. “Um. Three?” She frowned like she was recounting.
I frowned, too, when I saw what she’d placed on the table. “These are tots, Kels.”