“Not,” he said, tossing it into the sink in front of him. “You’re not taking her to dinner. She’s going to use you as a tester for her men’s colognes.” He scanned himself in the bathroom mirror. He was definitely trying too hard with the slacks.
He stripped them off and stepped into a pair of clean jeans. “Better,” he muttered. He’d changed his shirt, and he wondered if that was trying too hard too. He reasoned that any man would come in from a long day of working and shower, thus requiring a change of clothes.
Would a man just sniffing colognes need to wear the cowboy hat he wore to church? Or the boots that had never licked up dust on the ranch?
He had no idea, and he didn’t have someone like Ginny to call and ask. He thought of Blaine, who had dated much more often than Spur ever had…
He pulled out his phone and sent a quick text. Two minutes later, he was still standing in the bathroom, trying to make impossible decisions, when his brother knocked and came into the room.
“Spur?”
“In the bathroom,” he called, and Blaine appeared in the doorway several seconds later.
Their eyes met in the mirror, and Spur was going to have to admit some things out loud. “I like Olivia Hudson,” he blurted. “She asked me to be her fake boyfriend for an investor she has to impress in a couple of weeks, and I suggested we go out to get to know one another and get our story straight.”
Blaine folded his arms, his face a perfect mask of I-knew-it. “You want to take fake to feasible.”
“Yes,” Spur admitted. “Can you tell by what I’m wearing?” He turned toward Blaine. “I don’t want to be ultra-obvious.”
“Why not?” Blaine asked, scanning Spur from head to toe. “What do you have to hide?”
“I don’t know,” Spur said. “Is that what people do now? Just come out and say, ‘I like you and I don’t want this to be fake’?”
“I don’t know about people, Spur,” Blaine said. “You’ve never been normal people.”
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not.” He pointed to the cowboy hat on the counter. “If I wear that, am I being too obvious?”
“No,” Blaine said. “You don’t want to wear a smelly, sweaty hat you’ve been working in all day.”
“Okay.” Spur settled the hat he wore to church on his head. “Last night, I wore new boots. Tonight?” He looked at Blaine. “We’re just going to her perfumery. She wants me to help her with the men’s line she’s developing.”
“Uh huh,” Blaine said. “I’m sure she does.”
“She does,” Spur said. “That’s what she said.”
“Is there any indication this woman likes you too? That it might not be fake for her either?”
“I don’t—maybe?” Spur hated guessing, but he had been out of the dating arena for a while, and he wasn’t exactly sure what he’d seen in Olli’s gaze. “Read her text. You tell me.” He indicated the phone on the counter, second-and-third-guessing everything he’d thought he’d seen in her expression that morning. “I’m going to get the new boots. Might as well.”
He left Blaine in the bathroom and went into the closet to get the boots. He took them to the bed and sat down to pull them on.
“I think it’s a good call with the clean boots,” Blaine said. “This text is super flirty, Spur.”
“Is it?”
“Definitely.” Blaine handed him his phone. “Maybe you should take flowers too, and just lead with the ‘I like you’ statement.”
Spur read Olli’s text again. He hadn’t answered, because he’d read it while he sat at her kitchen counter, her back to him after he’d basically called her out for saying their date last night was important to her. She’d said she wanted to look amazing…maybe this text was super flirty.
“We should ask Duke,” Spur said. “He’d know.”
“I know,” Blaine said. “Ask him if you want, but if you think you were annoyed when Trey, Cayden, and I were teasing you, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
“You’re right,” Spur murmured. He couldn’t involve Duke, even if he was thirteen years younger than Spur and right on the cusp of the cool single adult culture. Spur wasn’t interested in being cool.
“Hey,” Blaine said, and Spur looked away from his phone. Blaine was the middle brother, and Spur had always gotten along really well with him. Right now, he wore an intense look in his eyes, which weren’t quite as dark as Spur’s.
“You like her,” he said gently. “So what? It’s normal to like a woman.”