Going for Four: Counting on Love, Book 4 (27 page)

“Doubting how we feel about each other is crazy.”

She tipped her head to the side, considering him. “How can I not doubt it? You say you’re in love with me, but you’ve been able to keep those feelings bottled up all this time.”

“Olivia…” But he didn’t know what to say. She was right. He had kept those feelings bottled up all this time. “You have too.”

She nodded. “And that makes me doubt too.”

Well, dammit.

“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible,” she said softly.

He groaned. Quoting
When Harry Met Sally
wasn’t fair.

Well, he’d watched a lot of movies by her side. “I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.”

She blinked at him, clearly impressed by the quote from
Dirty Dancing
. “Wow.”

“Yeah, you think about that when you’re on all these dates with all these new men.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Show me that you truly trust that we’re meant to be. Show me that you’re sure that nothing—and no one—will ever happen to make either of us feel differently.”

“By saying and doing nothing while you date other men,” he muttered.

“Yes. Because you said and did nothing about
your
feelings for me.”

Ouch.

Cody ran a hand over his face. He couldn’t keep her from going out, and continuing to scare the other guys off wasn’t going to work in his favor. He couldn’t force her to keep doing what they’d been doing. Things were going to change. And he had to trust that they were good changes.

But the process of getting there was going to
suck
.

Those damned romantic movies. And Leo. And Shane. And Conner.

He blamed all of them for this.

“Tell me you love me,” he said.

She nodded. “I love you.”

This might kill him. “Fine,” he sighed. “Date. Go for it. May the hunt for Mr. Perfect commence.” What kind of idiot said that to the woman he loved?

She swallowed and nodded. “Okay. I’ll…okay,” she said again.

After a moment when it was clear neither of them knew what else to say, she took a deep breath and stepped toward the door. “I’m going to go.”

He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted to grab her and hold her and beg her not to so much as smile for anyone else. “Okay.”

She turned to leave the kitchen, but paused in the doorway and looked back. “By the way,” she said. “While I’m dating all of these guys…”

Cody worked on not groaning with the pain that thought caused. “Yeah?”

“I don’t think you should date anyone else.”

He raised an eyebrow. He had no intention of dating anyone else. But she cared and wanted to keep him home. “Oh, really?”

“Well, I figure with the number of women you’ve already been with, if you haven’t found Ms. Right by now, she’s probably not out there.”

Yeah, because she was here, now. Walking out his door.

And he could have sworn she wore a tiny smile as she pulled the door shut behind her.

And Cody realized he was faced with the biggest problem of all—Olivia Dixon was even more beautiful now that he knew she was in love with him.

Chapter Nine

What the hell was she doing?

Date other men. Really? Especially now that she knew Cody was in love with her?

Olivia tipped her head and studied her date. Brent was good-looking from that angle too.

She sipped her wine and wondered if it was possible to find something they
didn’t
have in common. So far, they liked the same books, music and movies. He had a big family with five siblings, all of whom he got along with very well. He loved his mother. He had a great job as an accountant for a huge coffee shop chain. He was funny, polite, flirtatious—not too little, not too much. He also cooked. He braised and basted versus baking, but they clearly shared a love for the kitchen. He was a really nice guy. A good-looking, nice guy who was a ninety-four percent match with her.

And she still wanted the date to be over. Like forty minutes ago.

They’d been at the restaurant for forty-six.

Fifty-six minutes later, her date with the nicest guy she’d met in a long time—and that included Cody Madsen—finally ended. They said goodnight at the front doors of the restaurant.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” Brent asked.

“I, um…have plans.”

No, she didn’t. Not a single one.

“Well, I’d love to see you again.”

That was nice. Very nice. It should make her feel warm and fuzzy. Instead, it made her scramble for a way to let him down easy.

“That’s very nice. But I’m…dating. Casually. Looking to meet a lot of new people. I’m not looking for anything really lasting right now.”

He nodded and smiled. “Okay. Well, if you change your mind, let me know.” Then he shook her hand and sauntered off toward his car.

She watched him go.

Okay? That was all she got? He’d love to see her again, but when she gave some lame, half excuse that absolutely sounded like a lame, half excuse, he said “okay”?

Frustrated and not completely able to put the reason why into words, Olivia headed for her car.

Once she was behind the wheel, she was faced with another depressing fact. It was nine o’clock on a Friday night and she had nothing to do. Her date was over, her sisters were busy and—

Cody was sitting home alone.

At least, that was where he was
supposed
to be.

But she couldn’t go over there or call him to come to her place.

They would end up having sex. She was sure of it. Because
she
wanted to so badly. Something about sex with him, knowing that he was in love with her, was so damned tempting.

But it wouldn’t fix anything.

And they really needed to fix some things.

She thunked her forehead against the steering wheel and admitted something startling—and very problematic.

Dating other men wasn’t going to work.

Why she’d thought it would, she wasn’t sure. Everything she’d said about chocolate chip cookies and other desserts was true. But she knew, deep down, that she would always love chocolate chip cookies best. Always.

She was ticked at her chocolate chip cookies at the moment, though.

She’d initially thought she was upset with Cody over the fact that he’d kept other guys from getting too close but hadn’t been willing to step up and be the right guy himself. But really, even though he shouldn’t have interfered in her love life, the other guys hadn’t fought very damned hard to stick around either.

One
of them could have told Cody to fuck off and mind his own business.
One
of them could have thought,
I don’t know her very well yet but she definitely seems worth the risk of a black eye
.
One
of them could have not cared what Cody thought or threatened.

Clearly Cody wasn’t the only one who found fighting his feelings for her not such a difficult thing.

Which was depressing as hell.

Even Brent hadn’t tried very hard to persuade her to go out with him again. He’d asked, she’d kind of said no and he’d said okay.

She needed…a bar.

Mostly she needed a place that had butterscotch schnapps, and it seemed like an overreaction to go to a liquor store for a whole bottle.

A bar would also offer the opportunity for there to be a cute guy to flirt with, who would dance with her and say sexy things and then
insist
on seeing her again. Which would do as much, maybe more, for her ego and romantic heart as the schnapps.

A place like Trudy’s. But not Trudy’s.

For one thing, she already knew all the guys that hung out there. Her soul mate was not at Trudy’s. Unless Cody was there…

She shut that thought down and forced herself to concentrate. She couldn’t go to Trudy’s. She knew those guys already, her family would probably be there—including Conner, which was
not
conducive to finding romance—and Cody would very likely be there too. Not only would he interrupt anything promising between her and another guy, but
she
would be too distracted by him to really pay attention to another guy. That wasn’t fair to the other guy or to her.

So, someplace else. Another bar.

But she didn’t know any other bars. Trudy’s was the only place she ever hung out.

Did she even know the name of another bar? She thought about it.

She’d heard her sisters talking about a club awhile back. Emma and Amanda had gone and then Amanda had taken Ryan there. That would work. A
club
might be even nicer than a typical bar.

She pulled up her Web browser on her phone and typed in the name so she could get directions.

Frigid.

She’d started looking for her soul mate there.

Twenty minutes later, she realized that her sisters hadn’t told her
everything
about Frigid.

It was a sex club.

There was a bar and there was a dance floor. But there were also couches around the dance floor where people were making out without inhibition, couches farther back in the darker corners where people were making out without inhibitions and without most of their clothing, and an upper level that Olivia was pretty sure she didn’t need to see.

Frankly, some of the stuff happening on the dance floor was enough.

She took another shot of the butterscotch schnapps, Irish cream and Southern Comfort mixture the bartender had talked her into when she’d first ordered a shot of schnapps. She was glad he had. They were called cowboy cocksuckers. Hell, yeah.

“This your first time here?” he asked, swiping a rag over the bar near her elbow.

She swallowed and nodded. “That obvious?”

“The fact that you haven’t blinked since you walked in was my first hint,” he told her with a grin.

“This place is amazing.” It was sexy and raw and thrilling, if she was honest. It wasn’t the amount of skin she was seeing—and there was a lot of that—or the touching and kissing—though there was a lot of that too—it was how much
fun
everyone seemed to be having. There were all shapes and sizes and ages represented, and it seemed that the theme was
if it feels good, do it.

“You can get a little of whatever you want here. Or a lot,” the bartender told her.

“It all makes me want to jump into the middle of it and see what happens.” Olivia blinked at him. She couldn’t believe she’d said that. She couldn’t believe she
felt
that.

She was a romantic. She’d always believed in connecting with someone, in being swept away, in feeling magic when someone kissed her. When she didn’t feel that, she ended things before they got more physical. And she’d never
really
felt them. There had been sparks here and there. There had been guys she liked enough that she’d
hoped
for some magic. She’d been
almost
swept away.

But it had never clicked with anyone but Cody.

The last time she’d almost had sex with someone other than Cody had been in college. And she’d never been totally naked with anyone but Cody. She’d never had anyone’s mouth where Cody’s had been. She’d never put her mouth where hers had been on Cody. She had always been waiting to feel that mystical spark that told her it was right, that the guy was
the one
.

Every look and touch and kiss had been like a test in the past. Like in chemistry class. She was always waiting for someone to cause the perfect reaction in her.

She glanced at the dance floor. And look what she’d been missing.

“I want to just go with it,” she said, almost to herself.

“You can do that too,” the bartender told her. But he pulled the third shot glass away from her as she reached for it. The special had been three shots for twenty bucks. “But you’re here alone?”

She nodded.

“You know anyone here?”

She shook her head. There were a few people she wouldn’t mind meeting out on that dance floor though. She’d been a virgin until a few days ago. She’d
heard
about a lot of stuff from her sisters and her brother and his buddies, but she hadn’t
done
much. Maybe that was her whole problem. She was too hung up on the fireworks, too hung up on the idea of that one perfect person being the best and only, too hung up on the idea that there was only one person out there for her anyway.

Looking around tonight, feeling her skin prickle with the sheer decadence of the place, watching these people pleasuring each other—and more than one other in many cases—she had to admit that she might have been naive. There were some people in here who could maybe give her fireworks. And not one or two. She could point to six without even getting off her barstool.

That was it. It had to be. She’d put way too much pressure on the whole perfect person thing, the one and only thing, the chemistry and heat. Yeah, Cody made her feel good. But he wasn’t the only one.