Luke’s smile was sheepish. “I have a tendency to put on weight.” He patted his stomach. “I only have to look at something sugary, and I gain a few pounds.”
“You sound like my friend Henri. I’ll tell you what I’m always telling him.”
“Go on.”
“If a man isn’t interested in you just because you’re carrying a few extra pounds, then he isn’t worth having, and you would be better off turning your attention elsewhere.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“I am.”
My words seemed to do some good, Luke accepting a dessert menu when the waiter offered it. Once we ordered, I resolved, now we’d cleared up the whole dating thing, to make the rest of the evening pleasurable. “So… what do you do in your spare time, Luke?”
“I run a lot.”
There was no holding my smile back, the image of Luke as a Springer Spaniel once more coming to the fore. “Of course you do.”
Chapter Two
“No more dates.”
Finn responded to my demand by pretending he hadn’t heard and walking away. I paused in my pursuit of him to offer Cillian a glare, because… Well, because he was Cillian and it was the way the two of us operated. Finn might have forgiven him for treating him like dirt during their first ill-fated attempt at a relationship, but I hadn’t. I’d promised I’d keep my eye on him and I would.
Unusually for Cillian, the phone call held his attention, and he neither returned the glare nor shrugged it off. I scooped Quasimodo up on my way, Finn’s adopted cat with its missing ear and tail having grown on me. For an ex-street cat, it had a surprisingly sweet temperament. He lived up to it by nestling into my arms and purring loudly.
I found Finn in the bedroom, stripping the bed. “So this is where the magic happens,” I drawled.
He jerked his chin toward a pile of clean sheets. “You can help.”
“I can’t. I’m holding Quasimodo. Putting him down after such a short amount of time will insult him. He will believe that it is something to do with his less than pedigree looks, and you will find yourself in need of an animal psychologist to undo the mental damage.”
Finn paused in his movements. “Is that a thing? Like, how would that work without being able to converse with them?”
“Behavior and body language.”
He resumed fitting a sheet over the mattress. “Interesting.”
“Isn’t it?” I sat myself in a chair against the wall, Quasimodo curling up on my lap and making himself comfortable. “I bet you’d like to talk at length about it, wouldn’t you? And then you can carry on pretending you didn’t hear what I said.”
“Didn’t hear you about what?”
“No. More. Dates. I’ve tried it. It hasn’t worked. I am not interested.”
Finn sighed, giving up on making the bed to sit on the mattress facing me. “Go on then. What was wrong with Luke?”
“Apart from his age?”
Finn shrugged. “I’m younger than Cillian. I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.”
“Oh, so you two are the model couple now, are you? Is everyone supposed to forget how badly you screwed things up on your first attempt?”
Finn crossed his arms over his chest and regarded me without blinking. “That was a long time ago.”
“Not that long.”
“Over a year.”
I stroked Quasimodo’s head, and he purred louder, Finn rolling his eyes at the fickleness of his cat. “No more Lukes.” If I kept saying it, perhaps it would eventually sink in.
