Going for Four: Counting on Love, Book 4 (3 page)

“I treat the women I spend time with very well.”

“I know that.” She was the primary woman he spent time with. He was sweet, considerate, funny and charming. He made sure she was having a good time, no matter what they did. He offered his jacket when she was cold, made sure her glass was never empty long, pulled out her chair, put an arm around her as they walked. He was the perfect date.

As he would be for
another
woman. Soon.

Olivia swallowed and turned her attention back to the computer screen. “You’ll be fine once you’re on the date,” she said, tucking her foot up underneath her on the cushion. “Getting you to the date stage is where you’ll be a little out of your element.”

Cody didn’t ask women out. They asked him. Or rather, they showed up and it became a date. Or something like a date.

“I’ve asked women on dates before.”

He sounded irritated, but she didn’t look over at him.

“High school homecoming dances don’t count.”

“I’ve asked women out since high school,” he protested.

“Name three.” She kept her eyes on the screen. She was clicking on the boxes next to all the sports and activities Cody enjoyed. It was nearly everything on the list.

“Katie,” he said.

Olivia didn’t know a Katie that Cody had dated. She couldn’t keep track of all the women who’d bought him drinks, told him they never missed a Hawks game or swooned over his heroics at a fire scene, but he had definitely never asked a woman named Katie out in the past two years.

“Did you actually call her? Invite her to dinner? Pick her up at her house?”

He shifted on the seat. “That’s what it takes to be considered a date?”

She finally looked at him. “You meet a woman, you find her attractive but you also talk to her for at least ten minutes and decide she seems interesting as well. You ask if she’d be interested in going out
sometime
and you get her number. Then, after a day or so, you call her. You invite her out. You take her somewhere that she’d like to go and that shows you’ve put some thought into it. You take time to get to know a few things about her as a person. Then you take her home, maybe kiss her—but chastely—and you go home. Alone. Then you repeat the entire thing at least a few times before you see her naked.” She waited as he processed all of that. “Does
any
of this sound familiar?”

There was a long pause before he said, “Vaguely.”

“Uh-huh.” She tried to focus on the online questionnaire again.

“How do you think it usually goes for me?”

She took a deep breath. These were the things she specifically worked on
not
thinking about, but that she’d subconsciously stored up. She didn’t look at him though. “I think that usually the woman approaches you. Probably at Trudy’s, but sometimes at the field after a game or practice. Maybe occasionally they meet you at a scene and later show up at the station with cookies or something to say thanks for how heroic you were doing whatever you did.” She breathed again, running her thumb along the edge of her computer as she talked. “You notice she’s attractive, you ask if you can buy her a drink, she says yes. You take her to Trudy’s—if you’re not already there. You talk but it’s really flirting. You dance. Maybe shoot some pool. Whatever. You find out she’s a Randy Travis fan, and that she saw your big touchdown in the game. But she doesn’t even know what position you actually play, and you have no idea what she does for a living. Still, you end up back at your place, you have hot, sweaty sex, she leaves and you jump in the shower. Rinse. Repeat.”

The clock above the TV ticked several times before he spoke again.

“Tracie.”

Olivia glanced at him. She knew her cheeks were pink. She’d never let herself think about Cody’s women so specifically before. Emotions were churning inside her and she was trying to hold it together. “What?”

“Tracie was another girl I actually dated.”

Olivia nodded. She remembered Tracie. “Is there a third?” There was a Kari. She’d really disliked Kari. Because Cody had seemingly really liked Kari.

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “You.”

Not Kari.
You
. Dammit. Her breath lodged in her chest painfully.

“And now I’ve finally seen you naked.”

The air whooshed out of her lungs. “We’re not just going to forget about that?”

“Don’t see how that’s even remotely possible.”

Her gaze caught on his, she said, “All the more reason we need to do this dating profile asap.”

She had to make him do this. They both had to do this.

She wanted to be his girlfriend. He wanted to sleep with her. Maybe they should go for it. But Conner…

Olivia sighed. People didn’t understand her commitment to making her brother happy. Even her sisters didn’t totally get it. Amanda had been the only other one to honestly worry about what Conner would think when she’d fallen for Conner’s friend Ryan. Isabelle hadn’t had much choice in the matter—her guy, Shane, wasn’t the down-low, keep-it-under-wraps kind of guy, so Conner had known almost from minute one that Shane and Isabelle were together. Like it or not.

And then there was Emma. Emma had kept her budding relationship with Conner’s friend Nate from her brother for about three weeks. Mostly because she honestly hadn’t thought it would be more than a fling, if that. Emma wasn’t any more low-key than Shane though. And she was absolutely the type to tell Conner to get over it. Then she’d gotten pregnant and, well, Conner had to find out.

But while her sisters loved Conner and understood that it was uncomfortable for a brother to imagine his friends hooking up with his sisters, they hadn’t let it stop them.

It had been stopping Olivia for a long time.

She was a grown woman. She got that this was her life and that she couldn’t depend on her brother forever. But there were two good reasons she wasn’t going to go against Conner’s wishes: Garrett and Jeff. Her two biggest regrets.

Not that there hadn’t been other jerks, but Garrett and Jeff were the ones who had made her completely doubt her judgment when it came to following her heart. And men. They had definitely made her doubt men. Other than Conner, of course.

Conner had taken over as the male head of the house when Olivia was eleven and he was seventeen. Their father had died suddenly, leaving a wife and five kids brokenhearted and lost. Conner had stepped up and taken over.

From day-to-day things like home maintenance and rides to practices and appointments, to help with homework and lectures about staying out too late and being careful, Conner had been there. And, in Olivia’s case, stepped in when she couldn’t see that the first man she ever fell truly in love with was stealing from her or that the second man she ever fell truly in love with was cheating on her. Repeatedly.

She trusted Conner before she trusted anyone. Including herself.

Which was the reason she was still a virgin at age twenty-six.

Most people didn’t know that. Most wouldn’t have believed it anyway. But while she loved kissing, had enjoyed some heavy petting and had a great thing going with her plastic boyfriend in her bedside table, she hadn’t let a real guy that close.

After realizing that she couldn’t trust her heart, she knew that she absolutely could not trust simple chemistry.

Not that she’d been truly tempted again since Jeff. Until Cody.

The heat between them was undeniable. And she liked and trusted him.

But she knew him.

He made her hot, she sincerely liked him, and she was sure he could make her first time worth it. But Cody didn’t do serious relationships. He didn’t even really do romance. He was naturally attentive and charming and funny and sweet, which made it easy for him to get women and keep them from hating him after they broke up. But he didn’t have a lot of…follow-through. He didn’t go out of his way. He definitely didn’t make big, grand gestures—or even small gestures.

And she definitely wanted big, grand gestures from whoever she fell in love with. And she definitely wanted to be in love with the man she first slept with. Old-fashioned and naive maybe, but still true.

In spite of her mistakes with men, her romantic hopes were still alive and well. She wanted a guy like the men her sisters had fallen for, a guy like in the movies, a guy who would move heaven and earth to be with her.

She wasn’t sure path-of-least-resistance Cody Madsen was that guy.

And maybe that was Conner’s concern too. The guys had a history. It was confusing, because Conner respected and trusted Cody in everything else. Something major had happened. Something the guys didn’t talk about. Something that hadn’t ended their friendship but that made Conner distrustful of Cody when it came to women. She hadn’t asked more about it, and she hadn’t argued. Conner had never given her bad advice or not been there when she needed him. If he asked her not to do something, she wouldn’t.

Even if it meant turning to a computer matching service to find a guy who could keep her honest.

“You’re really going to make me watch you have a real relationship with another guy?” Cody asked after she’d typed for a few minutes.

She made herself not react to the fact that he was obviously jealous. It didn’t matter.

“You’re going to be so busy with Miss Perfect, you won’t even notice.”

He sighed. “Fine, then let’s find this perfect woman. I’d prefer to be happily head over heels before you are, if you don’t mind.”

There was certainly an underlying sweetness in his words, but she couldn’t get past the idea of him being head over heels to truly appreciate it. Yep. This was going to be great.

“Here.” She passed him the computer. “Make sure I got everything on your profile right.”

He skimmed through the screens, then looked up at her. “You got all of it exactly right.”

She shrugged. “It’s stuff like what kind of movies you like and if you’re a morning person or a night person.”

He clicked on a few screens and read quietly for a few minutes. “And you nailed it on all the answers about what I’m looking for in a date.”

And if he compared those answers to the ones she’d put on her own profile, he’d see they matched almost perfectly.

She grabbed the laptop back from him. “Now all we need is to pick a photo and choose a username.”

“You have me in as hotguy1981. I like it.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s a placeholder. I had to put something so I could answer all the questions.”

“Let’s keep it.”

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and started clicking through the photos she had stored in her pictures file. She found her favorite—the night of the costume party. She’d talked him into going, but only after she agreed to his stipulation—he got to choose her costume and she got to choose his.

That night, he’d shown up grinning like an idiot.

That grin had grown even wider when he realized what she’d picked out for him.

They’d ended up at the party as Captain Hook and Red Riding Hood—the sexy versions from the TV show
Once Upon a Time
that they’d watched in marathon mode and enjoyed the hell out of together.

That photo was her favorite because of the memories it brought back. Yes, Cody looked hot and happy. But Cody often looked hot and happy. In this photo, Olivia could see his humor, his mischief. The fact that they’d both gone to the same memory for their costumes had struck her as remarkable.

She wasn’t sharing
this
photo with some girl online who would only see the hot part.

Olivia clicked past the photo and found another of Cody at an Omaha Royals baseball game. He still looked hot and happy, but she also saw the guy who had overheard two little kids talking about how much they wanted an autograph from the shortstop and who had used his connections with the team’s trainer to get the kids into the locker room after the game for autographs from the whole team.

She couldn’t put that photo online either.

There was one of Cody at a friend’s birthday party. That one brought back memories as well.

There was one of him at Christmas, but he looked too goofy—and lovable—in the Santa hat.

There was one of him holding a puppy. No way could she put that online. Hot guys with cute baby animals? He’d have a million hits in an hour. She couldn’t watch that happen.

But as she clicked through all of her photos, she realized she was never going to find one she felt like sharing with strange women who were looking for love. The one of him in his fire uniform was hot and gave her a rush of pride. The one of him in jeans and a T-shirt was hot and gave her a rush of affection for the friend who was so easy to be around, always making her laugh and taking care of her. The one of him in a suit and tie for a friend’s wedding was hot and gave her a rush of desire.

This was impossible.

She must have sighed out loud because Cody asked, “Did you find a picture that will work?”

“No,” she said honestly. “There aren’t any good ones on here,” she said dishonestly.

“Give me that.” He took the computer and clicked through her picture folder. “This one will work.”

It looked like a normal photo. He was standing against the wall in Ryan’s apartment, holding a beer and grinning at something the camera didn’t show. She remembered that photo too. It had been shortly after Amanda had fallen for Ryan but was still in denial. They’d gone over for a game night. It had been a crazy night—Isabelle and Shane had fought, Conner and Shane had fought, Emma and Nate had bickered and Olivia, Isabelle and Emma had been in a car accident.