If not for his mouth.
This guy had one of those slanted smiles going on. The kind so lazy only half of it bothered to go to work. And yet, something about the ease of it suggested a near permanence on his face, while its stunted progress implied—well, she supposed that was part of the lure. It could really imply anything.
That smile was the kind women got lost in while trying to unravel its mystery.
Only, Megan was through trying to read signs and figure guys out. Which was why she pried her eyes loose from the table where this one had settled in with a friend or associate or whomever, and forced herself to refocus on Tina and Jodie...who were totally focused on her.
In tandem they leaned forward, resting on their elbows.
“Window-shopping the gene pool, Megan?” Tina asked with a knowing smirk as one pencil-thin brow pushed high. “See something you like?”
Jodie’s eyes narrowed. “His suit is too perfectly cut to be anything but made-to-measure. The suit, the watch, the links. This guy has quality catch written all over him. Megan, quick, cross your legs higher and give up some thigh. Tina, get his attention.”
Megan’s lips parted to protest, but Tina was a woman of action. “Wow, Megan, I knew you were a gymnast, but I didn’t think anyone’s legs could do that!”
Tina’s face took on an expression of benevolence and she crossed her arms, leaning back in her seat. “You’re welcome.”
Needles of tension prickled up and down her back as she struggled for her next breath. Eyes fixed on the tabletop in front of her, Megan held up her empty martini glass and prayed to the cocktail gods for a refill. When she thought she could manage more than a squeak, she cleared her throat and replied to anyone within listening distance, “I’m not a gymnast.”
At which point Tina and Jodie burst out laughing.
* * *
“It may not seem like it now, but you’re better off without her...”
Connor Reed shifted irritably in his chair, swirling the amber and ice of his scotch as he listened to Jeff Norton forfeit his status as one of the guys. “Noted.”
And not exactly a news flash.
“...You and Caro were together for almost a year... It’s okay to be hurt...”
Hurt? Connor’s eye started to twitch.
This wasn’t guy talk. It wasn’t the promised blowing off of steam with which he’d been lured to Sin City.
It wasn’t cool.
“...a blow to the ego, and for someone with an ego like yours...”
Growling into his glass, he muttered, “We need to get your testosterone levels checked.”
“Whatever,” Jeff answered, unfazed. He was as secure with his emotional “awareness” as he was with his position as Connor’s oldest and best friend. “All I’m saying is you were ready to marry Caro two weeks ago. I don’t believe you’re as indifferent as you make out to be.”
“Yeah, but you never want to believe the truth about me,” Connor replied with an unrepentant grin. “Seriously, though, Jeff, like I told you before, I’m fine. Caro was a great girl, but hearing what she had to say...I’m more relieved than anything else.”
The following grunt suggested Jeff wasn’t buying it.
And to an extent, the guy might be right. Just not the way he figured.
Connor wasn’t heartbroken over the end of the relationship because his heart had never played into the equation. Callous but true. And something Caro had understood from the first.
Connor didn’t do love. All too well he understood the potential of its destructive power. He knew the distance of its reach, had experienced the devastation of its ripple effect. No thank you. He hadn’t been signing on for more.
What he’d been after was a family. The kind he’d only ever seen from the outside looking in, but coveted just the same. The kind his father hadn’t wanted some bastard son to contaminate, and his mother had been too deep in her own grief to sustain. So he’d been determined to build his own.