“No, I’m not okay. Can you get me another drink?”
Whatever.
Screw my diet.
When cops were literally arresting my dates, with four months left till my wedding, the extra calories were the least of my worries.
CHAPTER 15
DAVID
I wasn’t avoiding her.
Really.
It was a natural progression of the business. At some point I was always going to need to hire additional servers. It’s not like I could work at my bar twenty-four seven, all day every day—that wasn’t feasible.
Alright, so maybe my timing happened to exactly match the day after Avril sprung her wedding dilemma on me. But that didn’t change the fact that I needed to hire some new blood. That didn’t mean that I was hiding.
I needed to think. Just needed to wrap my mind around everything that was happening.
Avril was more than gorgeous—she was my dream girl.
From the first moment I saw her, I just knew. There was something about her. Something within Avril that resonated with me. And that little flame of recognition just grew every single time I saw her on another date with another awful guy. Inside myself, I couldn’t help it. I burned. There wasn’t any question about it. I needed her.
I knew that if I didn’t go chasing after her, I would spend the rest of my life comparing every single woman that I ever met toher. I couldn’t just let her be the one who got away. But this whole marriage thing? This was absolute lunacy. It was crazy. People didn’t just get married to people they barely knew. That was the recipe for divorce. That was the recipe for financial ruin. That was the recipe for my parents being beyond disappointed in me—if they found out about this, they would probably want to disown me, and I wouldn’t blame them for it. It was every single stupid thing I was told not to do growing up.
But that didn’t change the simple fact that Avril was everything I wanted—delivered in the ultimate worst package, with wedding bells ringing in a few short months. So what the fuck was I supposed to do?
My work phone rang, and I picked it up immediately.
“Hey boss,” Mateo said.
Mateo was my first new hire. He had an excellent resume, and I had a good feeling about him. The fact he was very gay, and not going to be added to Avril’s list of potential husbands, didn’t even have much to do with the hiring process.
“What’s up?” I went over all the logistics with Mateo the day before, and it wasn’t like he was a newbie. There must have been something that I forgot to mention. Good on him for being proactive and reaching out to—
“There was an incident at The Pearl…” Mateo’s voice trailed off, and his chipper voice was tinged with anxiety.
Damn it.
“Police were involved. I got more of the details after they dragged the suspect out.”
“There was a criminal in my bar? Did he steal something?” The one day I decided to take some time off, of course everything would blow up in my face.
“No, he wasn’t robbing us. The man came to the bar on a date.” Mateo’s voice somehow was getting even higher.
I pinched the space between my brows, clenching my eyes shut. An awful date… at my bar. There was only one person who could have asked him out.
Even though I felt like I already knew the answer, I had to ask.
“Was it Avril’s date?”
“I don’t remember her name.”
“Tall. Long wavy hair and crystal blue eyes that put sapphires to shame. Looks like she should be a model on the cover of magazines.” Confident and gorgeous. A girl who looked like she stepped straight out of my dreams… except that my dreams were boring. The other night I dreamed that I was late for work and the toaster grew lips and started chasing me around the kitchen screaming how it was my fault that all the bread was burned.
“Yeah, sounds like that could be her.”
