What the hell?
“I just think,” his mother said, circling right back around to his failed relationship, “that maybe you’re not nice enough to your girlfriends. Nolan was the opposite, always falling in love in a minute, showering the girls with gifts, but you don’t smile enough. It makes the girls feel so insecure.”
“So I should smile more and I’ll nab an unsuspecting female? Okay, thanks, Mom.” He wanted to roll his eyes, but there was really no point. She meant well.
“You showered the girls with gifts?” Eve asked Nolan, her eyebrows raised, the corner of her mouth turned up in a teasing smile. “I don’t seem to recall that happening with me.”
“Oh, I meant when he was young,” their mother hastened to amend. “You know, cheap things, like teddy bears and chocolates.”
“I bought you leopard-print underwear and that crap wasn’t cheap,” Nolan told Eve.
“Nolan!” That was their mother, horrified.
Rhett grinned. He did enjoy a good Sunday dinner.
“Why are you so eager to marry Rhett off anyway?” Nolan asked their mother. “With me, you were always telling me not to rush into anything.”
“Because you were always impulsive, and you wear your heart on your sleeve. Rhett doesn’t attach very easily. It worries me.”
“Rhett is in the room,” he said, annoyed all over again. It wasn’t that he didn’t attach easily, nor was he opposed to marriage. The truth was, he was often guarded with women because he did attach. He was intense. Once he was in, he was all in, and he’d yet to find a woman capable of handling that facet of his personality and needs. They all eventually became frightened by his passion.
He was starting to conclude that he was just a whole lot of too much for the average twenty-three-year-old woman.
“It’s just because you’re the last one,” his sister Jeannie said. “Nine kids and eight are married. Mom wants to close the folder on her parenting.”
Yet another one of the joys of being the youngest.
Though most of the time, he didn’t mind it. His childhood had been happy, and his sisters had all doted on him, carrying him way past the age when he needed to be carried, and slipping him treats. He’d been their mascot of sorts and had satisfied their desire to role-play as mommies. But there was no question his parents had been a bit worn out by the time he’d been coming up, and he had never quite gotten over his resentment about his name. It had given him countless bloody lips and bruised knuckles on the playground when he’d been forced to defend himself against bullying.
Maybe he could let the whole thing go if just once his mother admitted that perhaps it had been a poor choice, but she didn’t. She still thought his name was the shit.
“She can do that whether or not I’m married. I have my own apartment. I have a job. A social life. It’s all good.” He glanced at Eve again, but she was cramming a dinner roll in her mouth.
“Speaking of social lives, or lack thereof. Eve, do you still have your book club?” Danny asked. “Can I join it? I would love to do something like that and get out of the house a little.”
Nolan laughed. “Eve’s book club is a front for getting together with her friends and drinking wine. She had it last night and they wound up in a bar.”
“I’m in,” Danny stated emphatically. “I need one night to be an adult. Who else is in the group?”
“It’s not a front,” Eve protested. “We read all the books and we do discuss them. It’s just, why not discuss them with wine, right?”
Nolan scoffed. “That still doesn’t account for the bar. And don’t tell me that was Harley’s or Shawn’s idea, because I seriously doubt either one of them would suggest it.”
Shawn? Rhett set his fork down and looked down the table at his sister-in-law. How many women named Shawn could there be in this town? Who had been in a bar the night before? With female friends?
“Are you suggesting it was me?” Eve asked hotly. “Nolan Ford, you are going to pay for making me sound like an alcoholic in front of your mother. It was actually Charity’s idea, because Shawn said that a place like that doesn’t exist.”
Rhett went still. The Shawn in the club had said virtually the same thing.
“Bars don’t exist?” Jeannie asked.
Shawn. Four girlfriends. Skepticism about a fetish bar.
Holy shit, Eve had been in the club the night before with the woman he had danced with.
Eve suddenly seemed to realize what she had revealed. “Oh, sh–, I mean, shoot. I mean, like a specialty bar. Never mind.” When she glanced at him, her cheeks were burning red, confirming that Rhett was one-hundred-percent right.
Whattya know. Rhett grinned at Eve.
While his initial reaction was one of mortification that his sister-in-law had seen him out at a fetish club, it paled in comparison to the rush of excitement and satisfaction he felt knowing that he now had a way to find out who Shawn was and where he might be able to see her again.
Rhett took the platter of sliced pork tenderloin his brother-in-law passed him and served himself a hearty helping. His appetite had suddenly returned, full force.
EVE couldn’t look at Rhett without picturing him paddling a simpering female. It was pissing her off. She liked her brother-in-law, damn it. They worked together and were just starting to get to know each other. They were essentially starting a new business venture together, and she did not want to know about his sex life. It was like walking in on your parents having sex. Or seeing your husband’s father naked in the shower. She didn’t care what Rhett did in his private life, she just didn’t want images of it popping up in her head every time someone used the word “bossy.” Or “dominate.” Or “whip.”
There had to be some sort of mental trick she could use to disassociate Rhett from sex. Like every time she started to conjure up inappropriate imagery, she could think of dead rabbits or something. That might work.
As long as he never knew that she knew, they would be cool.
Speak of the devil, when she opened the door to the kitchen from the garage, having gone out there to snag a beer from the overflow fridge, he was standing there, smiling at her. He gestured for her to go back into the garage and then he pulled the door firmly shut behind him.
“So Eve, how did you like The Wet Spot?” he asked.
Crap on a cracker, how did he know? Never one to back down from what she’d done or a challenge, Eve just shrugged nonchalantly. “It was alright. A little underwhelming, to be honest. I take it you saw me there?”
“Nope. But I put two and two together, given that the woman I danced with was named Shawn, and she was with three friends out strictly to satisfy their curiosity, not pick anyone up.” He leaned against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. “But you saw me.”
“Yes, I did. And we don’t have to discuss it in any way. Ever.” It was cold in the garage, given that it was the beginning of February, so she gestured for him to move. “Now let me in the damn house, I’m freezing.”
“Who is your friend Shawn? That I danced with.”
Uh-oh. Eve recognized that look on Rhett’s face. She saw it on Nolan every night when he climbed into bed with her. Lust, plain and simple.
“I don’t think so,” she told Rhett. “You are not pumping me for information, because I have no idea if Shawn would be okay with that or not.” Though the truth of the matter was he was going to figure out who Shawn was soon enough, given that he was set to start racing at her track come spring.
Nonetheless, how and when Shawn wanted to encounter Rhett was up to her, not Eve. She would warn her, then Shawn could proceed however she chose.