“Well?”
“Not giving that to you until you tell me where your head is at,” Bear replied calmly. “I came to you out of courtesy, in case you still have feelings for her. But if you’re just going after her because you want to tell her to leave town again then I’m going to go myself.”
“I’m not going to tell her to leave town,” Jed bit out. He wasn’t going into any more detail. But Bear seemed to get it.
“Thought it might be like that. Go gentle man, a lot of things can happen in ten years.”
Like he didn’t know that. His jaw tightened as he got the name of the bar where she was meeting this guy. That it was one of the roughest bars in the state didn’t help his temper. He ended the call with Bear, put his boots back on, then his jacket, and slammed the door on his way out.
He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do when he found Daisy. All he knew was that there would be no more blind dates.
And that he wasn’t as done with her as he’d thought.
* * *
The date sucked.
Boy, did it suck. She’d only been on the dating site for a few hours when she’d received a request for a date. The guy had sounded good. His name was Mike Lyle. He worked in IT, mostly from home. Seemed polite, nice-looking, and he wanted to go out for dinner.
She’d said yes.
What had she been thinking? Why hadn’t she listened to Ellie? Mike was supposed to be thirty-four, but he looked about fifty. Not that she was worried about his looks. But he was so bland and boring it was all she could do not to go into a coma. He talked. A lot. About himself. And his two ex-wives, who apparently had taken him to the cleaners.
Because that’s something she wanted to hear about.
Pretty much the first thing he’d said to her was that she had to pay for her own meal and drink. She hadn’t been intending to let him pay, but it still put the date off to a weird start.
They were halfway through the first course and he hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t talking. Not that she could get a word in anyway. She pushed her plate away even though it was still mostly full. How long until Ellie called? She was supposed to call half way through the date and see if Daisy needed an excuse to leave.
She really needed an excuse to leave.
“And do you know how much fucking lawyers cost nowadays? Should have fucking trained to be a lawyer, that’s what I should have done. Are you gonna eat that?”
She looked down at the steak she’d only taken a few bites of and before she’d finished shaking her head, he’d whipped it off her plate.
“Can’t let it go to waste. This is fucking good steak. That’s why I brought you here. Best fucking steak in the state.”
Seriously? This place was a dive. The lighting was dim, which she figured was a good thing as it no doubt hid a variety of sins. And it stunk of stale beer and cigarette smoke.
She needed to get out of here.
“I think this date is going great, don’t you? Wanna make a time for a second date?”
What? So, he could eat her steak and make her pay? And complain about his ex-wives all night? And chew with his mouth open so she could see everything?
“It’s refreshing not to have a woman chatter on all the time, you know? Nag, nag, nag, was all I ever got from my bitch ex-wives.”
“Maybe if you had refrained from calling them bitches and swearing at them constantly, they would have stuck around. And you could have tried listening to what they had to say instead of complaining about them nagging at you.”
The deep voice sent a shiver of goosebumps up her back. He wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here. He wasn’t. Seriously, that was someone else standing behind her, talking in that deep rumble that made her insides dance with happiness and her body clench with need.
Mike glared up at the stranger standing behind her who was, for some odd reason, interrupting their date to tell Mike what a jerk he was.
Thanks, kind stranger.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” the stranger replied. She was not turning around to look at him. She was not.