Maybe that was part of the problem with Darren. His age. Maddie could remember him being a sweet kid because she actually went through high school with Darren not that long ago. Devlin opened his mouth to say so when a shadow crossed their table.
“Maddie.” An older gentleman Devlin recognized as a member of the city council paused at their table. “Just the girl I was hoping to find.” The man then smoothly transitioned his attention to Devlin and stuck out his hand. “Hi there. Larry Courtland. And you’re Devlin. Correct? How’s the physical therapy coming along?”
Devlin had never met this guy in person but figured he must have read about Devlin’s injuries in the newspaper a while back. “I’m fine, sir.” He shook the guy’s hand. “I should be back at the firehouse in a couple of weeks.”
“Good. Very good.” Larry slipped his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “The council was speaking with your brother very recently about increasing the budget for the fire department. One of the hardships Chief Morgan cited was when his paid staff gets injured and puts you all down a man.”
“It’s tough, sir.” Aidan was not only Devlin’s brother, but also his boss. “We could use a couple more full-time people at the house.”
Maddie touched Larry Courtland’s elbow and deftly brought his attention back to her. “Did you need me for something, Mr. Courtland?”
“I went by the garage and that new guy told me you were here.” With his hands still in his pockets, Larry leaned close to Maddie, as if imparting a state secret. “My baby has a funny hum, and you’re the only one I trust to treat her right.”
“Ahh.” Maddie nodded, and her eyes lit up as she tapped her fingers against her lips. “Do you have her with you right now?”
“Right there.” Mr. Courtland pointed, and Devlin followed the line of his finger through the window to a cherry-red classic corvette in the parking lot.
“How’s your schedule?” Maddie asked, clearly comfortable as hell, and making Devlin all kinds of proud. His sister was one hell of a mechanic. “Do you have time for me to go take a quick listen right now?” She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and slid out of the booth before the man answered.
“That’s why I came in.” Mr. Cortland put his hand at the small of her back and gestured toward the exit. “Ladies first.”
“Be right back, Dev.” Maddie squeezed his shoulder as she walked past. “Knock on the window if our food arrives.”
“No problem,” he told her, but she was already out the door.
As Devlin watched Maddie cross the parking lot to the corvette, he let his mind wander back to his date with Darren. Compact and wiry, with sandy-colored hair, a mouth that ran a mile a minute, and hands that gestured just as fast, Darren brought to Devlin’s mind pictures of chipmunks gathering nuts for winter at a furious rate. That image had popped into Dev’s head over pasta during their first date, and once there, he could not shake it.
Darren. Darren. Darren. Why don’t I want you?
The guy was harmless. He really did seem nice enough. God knew he had pretty blue eyes and a full lower lip that should have Devlin wanting to pull it between his teeth and find his way into that mouth for a deep kiss. Devlin just knew Darren’s body kicked ass too; he didn’t have to see it naked to get a real good sense of its rock-solid shape beneath the too-snug shirts and jeans he often wore.
Everything about Darren should be right, even for just a no-strings tryst, but Devlin couldn’t forget another fling, one that left all others pale in comparison before they even happened...
*
...Oh God. This is not me. I shouldn’t be here.
Devlin kept his head down and nursed his watered-down beer while techno music blasted in the background and a dozen or so young men gyrated some twenty feet away on a dance floor. An equally small group of guys littered the long line of the bar, although most of them had their backs to the wood. They openly admired the view of dancers swaying so closely together Devlin wondered if a group orgy might break out right in front of him. Then he figured the club likely paid the hot dancing men to do exactly what they were doing, and that soon a whole lot more customers would trickle in and spend too much money on cheap drinks so they could stare, hope, and maybe even join in the fun, just like Devlin was supposed to be doing himself.
Except, it all felt so impersonal, and Devlin suddenly didn’t think he had anything to prove. He was gay. He had wet dreams about random and not-so-random men on a nightly basis and had been noticing masculine bodies and male smells since he hit puberty. Just because he’d recently turned twenty-three and still hadn’t experienced actual full-on sex with another man didn’t mean he had to put-up or shut-up and go straight.
Devlin groaned into his drink. Nearly a thousand bucks on a round-trip plane ticket, spending money, and a motel for a long weekend in San Francisco, and now he had the realization that he should have just stayed home?
Real smart, Dev. You’re building yourself a nice track record of leaping before you look.
At least now he knew anonymous sex wasn’t his thing. And he felt less guilty for booking the cheap motel rather than the expensive hotel. If it was just going to be him, he didn’t need anything fancy. Devlin went ahead and decided he wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time in the room anyway. This city had plenty of sights to see that didn’t have a damned thing to do with hooking up with men. The trip wouldn’t be a waste of his hard-earned money. He could do a hundred touristy things before he had to head home to Maine.
Might as
