“Oh my God, the Lyndons and the Kopps have arrived,” Arwen said. “Damn. I hate it when people from work show up on Wednesdays. Maybe I’ll take my name off the list.” Arwen curled into herself, trying to become as inconspicuous as possible.
Courtney continued to watch the two men as they moved toward the bar at the side of the dining room. Matthew and Brandon were a pair—the Hook-up Artist and the Nice Guy Not, who had dumped his fiancée at the altar. A Nice Guy Not looked like a perfect mate until you realized that he expected adoration for common courtesies like saying please and thank you.
The men settled on a pair of barstools right next to Ryan Pierce, the epitome of the Emotionally Unavailable Man—a man type that needed no real explanation. It was sort of like a rogue’s gallery of guys on Courtney’s list.
“Has Brandon left his job on Capitol Hill?” Courtney asked, turning back toward Arwen. Last autumn, Brandon Kopp was supposed to have joined his father’s law firm, Lyndon, Lyndon & Kopp, but instead he’d dumped his bride at the altar and taken a job in DC.
Arwen shook her head. “Not Brandon, Matt. He joined the firm. Today. They made Andrew Lyndon a partner and then brought Matt in as an associate. So now Lyndon, Lyndon, and Kopp is more like Lyndon, Lyndon, Lyndon, Lyndon, and Kopp. At least they’re all easy on the eye.”
Arwen’s day job as a paralegal at LL&K was in every respect more important to her than the songs she wrote and performed as a hobby. She worked on all the firm’s pro bono cases and tried to right the world’s wrongs.
Courtney leaned forward. “Arwen, promise me you will stay as far away from Matt Lyndon as you can. The guy’s a Hook-up Artist.”
“No worries. Even if he wasn’t a player, I’d have to be careful. It’s just not a good idea to hook up with anyone you work with, especially in a law firm. And besides, I don’t think a guy like Matt Lyndon would look at me twice.” She paused a moment, her gaze riding over the men at the bar. “But he’s sure looking at you.”
“No, he’s not,” Courtney insisted even as Matt Lyndon’s three-hundred-watt gaze rode over her body, stirring up awareness. What was it about that man? He gave off heat like an industrial furnace.
“Yes, he is,” Arwen said. “And to be honest, Ryan’s throwing shade at you too.”
Courtney turned her head a little for a quick glimpse of Ryan. Oh boy, he was giving her the look. There was nothing sexy about this. The ex-marine with the giant biceps and the military buzz cut was a member of the Shenandoah Falls Police Force. In addition to being emotionally unavailable, he masqueraded as Dudley Do-Right.
Ryan had potential, but whoever unlocked him would have to be ready to deal with his emotional baggage, whatever it was. That made Ryan ten times more dangerous than Matt in some ways. Ryan could fool a girl into thinking he cared. And even worse, a girl could delude herself into thinking she could change him, or heal him, or whatever. Not a good risk all the way around.
“Oh my God, he’s coming over here.”
“Who? Matt?” A three-alarm fire ignited in Courtney’s core.
Arwen shook her head just as Ryan appeared at Courtney’s elbow.
“May I?” His voice came from the depths of his chest. He could probably do a great Barry White imitation if he wanted to.
He didn’t wait for a formal invitation. He simply slipped into a seat and said, “Hey,” in that monosyllabic way that proved without question that he was emotionally unavailable.
Arwen helped herself to another loaded potato skin and sat back in her chair, watching Courtney as if she was making mental notes for her next song. Arwen had captured quite a few of Courtney’s romantic mistakes and turned them into imaginative hook lines like “he broke my heart and I broke his car.”
“I saw you looking at Brandon Kopp,” Ryan said.
Oh, the dear man was so wrong; she hadn’t spared one minute looking at that loser. But she didn’t disabuse Ryan of his mistake. “So? It’s a free country.”
“His Camaro is out in the parking lot, and if you do anything to it—I mean anything—I’ll take you in for destruction of property. Is that clear? This vendetta has got to stop.”
“Anything?” she asked, giving him a wide-eyed innocent stare. “What if I put a bumper sticker on his fender that says ‘Humanitarian Onboard’ or something like that?”
Ryan scowled. “No bumper stickers. Not even nice ones. And do not unscrew his license plates again, please.”
“You’re no fun, you know that?” She let go of a long sigh. Harassing Brandon by sabotaging his car was fair game in her book, even though Brandon had gotten his comeuppance when Laurie Wilson dumped him for Brandon’s best friend. But she just couldn’t let it go. Any guy who dumped his fiancée at the altar deserved to have his life disrupted in small but annoying ways.
“It’s not my job to be fun, Courtney. It’s my job to keep the peace.”
And he took that so seriously, didn’t he? “All right. I guess that’s fair. I mean Laurie is marrying Andrew in a couple of weeks.”
Ryan nodded and took a sip of his Coke. “Good. And I don’t want you raiding the cradle either.” He managed a crooked smile.
“Whatever does that mean?” she asked, even though she had a good idea what he was trying to say.
“Courtney, you were just ogling Matt Lyndon like he’s a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Karamel Sutra ice cream.”
“And this is your business because?”
“Because I actually care about you. Because Matt Lyndon is too young for you. Because we both know he’s a player. But mostly because I just overheard Brandon Kopp express the opinion that you are an ice queen, and Matt countered that he could seduce you in less than two dates.”
