LITMIR.BIZ

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Megan interjected before the volley of barbs got any more intense. “I totally appreciate you two looking out for me this way.” Okay, she was stretching the truth, but somehow her tongue let her get away with it. Honestly, she’d have rather been of such little interest they both got her name wrong all weekend and ignored her through dinner. But courtesy of her mother’s propensity to spill secrets, the family grapevine had guaranteed her Vegas arrival for cousin Gail’s wedding was met with a tempest of polarizing opinion regarding her decision to undergo artificial insemination in two months’ time. “Tina, I love—really love—this T-shirt, but the only place it’s going is into my scrapbook. And, Jodie, thank you for the support but—”

      Jodie’s hand came up, cutting her off. “I don’t, really. Support what you’ve decided to do. You ought to wait to find a husband like the rest of us.”

      Images of Barry and the two years they’d dated flashed through her mind, threatening to suck her into a vortex of churning emotions she wouldn’t allow herself to surrender to. Shame, embarrassment, anger and helpless frustration.

      “Megan, I swear I didn’t even realize it myself. Not until right that minute...and suddenly I knew. I’d never stopped loving her.”

      She wasn’t going there again, wasn’t wasting another precious second on the man who’d left for a conference talking about starting a family with her and then come home married to someone else.

      Spine stiffening, she reined herself in.

      She didn’t need Barry.

      She didn’t need any man to have the child she’d always wanted—well, at least not for more than five minutes of quality time with a plastic cup.

      Jodie sighed, a faraway look settling over her features. “Wait for your Prince Charming and you’ll have someone to share your special moment in the nursery, making it all the sweeter.”

      “Well, actually,” Megan started, but Jodie wasn’t finished.

      “You’re what’s wrong with our society. I mean, life isn’t about getting everything you want the instant you want it. Some things are worth waiting for. That said, in a toss-up between bedding down with the next patient zero or hitting the drive-thru for prescreened sperm...I’ll back the bank.”

      Megan felt the telling wash of heat rush through her cheeks, but thinking about Gail and what kind of wedding she’d have if all three of her bridesmaids were at each other’s throats, she tamped it down. “Okay. Well, thank you...for your thoughts on the issue.”

      Tina’s less-than-delicate snort sounded from beside her, and Megan craned her neck in search of their waitress. Only, rather than the leggy server with the no-nonsense attitude, she found her attention snared by the man walking past their table. Hand raised in casual greeting, mahogany eyes fixed on someone across the room, he was tall, dark and handsome in the most traditional sense. Broad and tapered, chiseled and cut. All clean lines and classic good looks. The balanced symmetry of him so flawless, it might have made him bland.

      If not for his mouth.

      This guy had one of those slanted smiles going on. The kind so lazy only half of it bothered to go to work. And yet, something about the ease of it suggested a near permanence on his face, while its stunted progress implied—well, she supposed that was part of the lure. It could really imply anything.

      That smile was the kind women got lost in while trying to unravel its mystery.

      Only, Megan was through trying to read signs and figure guys out. Which was why she pried her eyes loose from the table where this one had settled in with a friend or associate or whomever, and forced herself to refocus on Tina and Jodie...who were totally focused on her.

      In tandem they leaned forward, resting on their elbows.

      “Window-shopping the gene pool, Megan?” Tina asked with a knowing smirk as one pencil-thin brow pushed high. “See something you like?”

      Jodie’s eyes narrowed. “His suit is too perfectly cut to be anything but made-to-measure. The suit, the watch, the links. This guy has quality catch written all over him. Megan, quick, cross your legs higher and give up some thigh. Tina, get his attention.”

      Megan’s lips parted to protest, but Tina was a woman of action. “Wow, Megan, I knew you were a gymnast, but I didn’t think anyone’s legs could do that!”

      Tina’s face took on an expression of benevolence and she crossed her arms, leaning back in her seat. “You’re welcome.”

      Needles of tension prickled up and down her back as she struggled for her next breath. Eyes fixed on the tabletop in front of her, Megan held up her empty martini glass and prayed to the cocktail gods for a refill. When she thought she could manage more than a squeak, she cleared her throat and replied to anyone within listening distance, “I’m not a gymnast.”

      At which point Tina and Jodie burst out laughing.

      * * *

      “It may not seem like it now, but you’re better off without her...”

      Connor Reed shifted irritably in his chair, swirling the amber and ice of his scotch as he listened to Jeff Norton forfeit his status as one of the guys. “Noted.”

      And not exactly a news flash.

      “...You and Caro were together for almost a year... It’s okay to be hurt...”

      Hurt? Connor’s eye started to twitch.

      This wasn’t guy talk. It wasn’t the promised blowing off of steam with which he’d been lured to Sin City.

      It wasn’t cool.

      “...a blow to the ego, and for someone with an ego like yours...”

      Growling into his glass, he muttered, “We need to get your testosterone levels checked.”

      “Whatever,” Jeff answered, unfazed. He was as secure with his emotional “awareness” as he was with his position as Connor’s oldest and best friend. “All I’m saying is you were ready to marry Caro two weeks ago. I don’t believe you’re as indifferent as you make out to be.”

      “Yeah, but you never want to believe the truth about me,” Connor replied with an unrepentant grin. “Seriously, though, Jeff, like I told you before, I’m fine. Caro was a great girl, but hearing what she had to say...I’m more relieved than anything else.”

      The following grunt suggested Jeff wasn’t buying it.

      And to an extent, the guy might be right. Just not the way he figured.

      Connor wasn’t heartbroken over the end of the relationship because his heart had never played into the equation. Callous but true. And something Caro had understood from the first.

      Connor didn’t do love. All too well he understood the potential of its destructive power. He knew the distance of its reach, had experienced the devastation of its ripple effect. No thank you. He hadn’t been signing on for more.

      What he’d been after was a family. The kind he’d only ever seen from the outside looking in, but coveted just the same. The kind his father hadn’t wanted some bastard son to contaminate, and his mother had been too deep in her own grief to sustain. So he’d been determined to build his own.

      There were a lot of things he’d done without as a kid. Things he’d made it his purpose to secure as an adult. Money, respect, his own home...and the thriving business he ran with an iron fist that garnered them all. But a family...? For that, he needed a partner. One he’d thought he found in Caro. She fit the bill, fundraiser ready with the right name, education and background. Coolly composed and devoid of the emotional neediness he’d spent his adult life actively avoiding. Or so he’d thought, right up to that last day when she’d folded her napkin at the side of her plate and evenly explained she wanted a marriage based on more than what they had. She hadn’t expected to, but there it was.

      Fair enough. He gave her credit for having

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