I was a bartender who lived in a boho-decorated crackerbox house.

This alone wasn’t conducive to us being buds.

Therefore, I looked at her in surprise, because being nice and all never included anything personal.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“That’s too bad. Jay just filed for divorce. I was thinking of fixing you two up.”

I stopped and stared at her.

Jay was her hot brother-in-law.

And that was life. A dry spell for years after hooking my star to a psychopath, I finally get someone—someone awesome, someone perfect—and some bitch suddenly wants to fix me up with a hot guy.

“Kinda taken,” I muttered.

“If that doesn’t work out, you’ve got his number. He saw you picking up Brendon a couple of weeks back and asked about you. He doesn’t do that kind of thing and not just because he recently filed for divorce. He never did that kind of thing, before her or the last year they’ve been separated. This means he’s interested. So my take, he wouldn’t mind hearing from you.”

I looked down her wide hall with its gleaming wood floors to the tall guy at the end of it wearing khaki cargo pants, a pullover army-green fleece with a half-zipper at his throat, three days of thick stubble, and a seriously attractive smile on his face that he was aiming down at Ethan’s bud Teddy.

He might be fun.

And that was life.

Because I hoped I’d never know if he was or not.

I looked back at Brendon’s mom. “Nice to know. But things are kinda serious with my guy.”

She shrugged and smiled. “Just in case.”

Whatever.

I returned her smile and took off.

I drove back to Merry’s, parked by his Excursion, and hoofed it up to his condo. And I used the key he’d given me the same night he’d given one to Ethan (something he didn’t make a big deal out of, but it was another warm and squishy moment, a huge one) to let myself in.

The condo was dark.

I considered making coffee and taking a cup to Merry with the donuts on a plate so we could scarf them down, doing this to give us both energy to do other things on a lazy Saturday when neither my man nor I had to work and my kid was off in the woods and wouldn’t be home until late tomorrow afternoon.

I went to the bar, dropped the bag of donuts on it, and decided we could come out and make coffee and snarf down donuts later to carb up for a second round.

This meant I peeled off clothes on my way to Merry’s room. By the time I got there, I had my jacket off. My sweater, boots, and socks, all gone.

So I opened the door wearing nothing but jeans and a bra.

What I saw was an empty bed and I could see that clearly because of the light coming from the bathroom.

I moved that way and felt my mouth water when I caught sight of Merry in his navy flannel pajama bottoms and nothing else leaning into a hand on the basin. His hair was a sleepy mess. His stubble was dark against his jaw. And he had a toothbrush in his mouth.