Free A Forever Kind of Family by Brenda Harlen Page B

free time, so the free time I do have I’d rather not waste making small talk with a guy who’s silently assessing whether sex with me would be worth the effort of dinner and conversation.”
    “I don’t have a high opinion of your real estate agent,” he said. “But even I don’t think his invitation warrants such a harsh indictment of the whole gender.”
    “My conclusion isn’t without foundation,” she assured him.
    “Give me one example,” he said.
    Unfortunately, his request wasn’t even a challenge. “Last summer I let my assistant talk me into going out with her, her boyfriend and his brother. It was a disaster from the first. Tim—the brother—insisted on selecting the restaurant. He chose a new sushi restaurant downtown—and I don’t like sushi.
    “But Tim promised that I would like this sushi. And then he insisted on ordering for the whole group, bypassing the tamer options in favor of octopus, sea urchin and eel.
    “Diya, obviously not having realized that her boyfriend’s brother was such a Neanderthal, insisted that we stop at The Corner Deli on the way back because she knew I hadn’t eaten anything. By that point, I wanted to go home more than I wanted food, but I went along so that she would stop fussing. And while I was waiting at the counter to place my order, Tim made a point of saying that he’d already forked over the cash for one meal and wasn’t going to pay for my chicken wrap.”
    “Charming,” Ryan noted drily.
    She nodded. “And then, after we parted ways with Diya and her boyfriend, Tim actually thought I would invite him up to my condo for a drink.
    “I said I was sorry—although the only thing I was sorry about was ever agreeing to meet the guy—but I didn’t have anything to offer him to drink.”
    “How did he respond to that?” he asked.
    “He shrugged and said, ‘I don’t mind skipping the drink and moving straight to the bedroom.’”
    “You’re kidding.”
    She shook her head. “I wish I was. And when I managed to overcome my bafflement and ask if he honestly expected me to sleep with him, he responded with, ‘Why would you agree to go out with me if you didn’t plan on having sex with me?’
    “I explained that I thought the date was an opportunity for us to get to know one another, to decide if we wanted to go on a second date, and he said he was ‘too busy to play those kind of games’ and if I wasn’t interested, I should say so.”
    “I hope you told him you weren’t interested.”
    “Very bluntly and succinctly.”
    “Never to see him again?”
    “Never to see him again,” she confirmed.
    “We’re not all like that,” Ryan felt compelled to point out to her.
    “I know. But the reality is that I don’t have the time or energy for any romantic BS right now.”
    Her tone so perfectly matched her words, he couldn’t help but smile. “That’s no reason not to let a guy buy you dinner.”
    “You think I should have accepted Simon’s invitation?”
    “No,” he admitted. “Because I think he’s a weasel for trying to pick up a commission at a funeral. But if you’d said yes and left me on my own with Oliver tonight, then I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about abandoning you when I go to the baseball game in Durham with my brother tomorrow afternoon.”
    “Why should you feel guilty?”
    “Truthfully, I don’t—because they’re playing Charlotte and nothing could entice me to give those tickets away. But I feel like I should feel guilty.”
    She shook her head at that, but she was smiling. “No need,” she assured him. “I think I can handle Oliver on my own for a few hours.”
    * * *
    She was wrong.
    Oliver was great when Ryan left—he stood at the door happily waving bye-bye and then toddled into the living room to play with his blocks. So Harper settled on the sofa with her tablet to review the schedule for the upcoming week. And as soon as Oliver saw that she was doing something other than paying attention to him,