“I know. Thanks.” She gave him an appropriate smile. “So why did Savannah decide you needed to be fixed up at all? Surely you can get any date you want.”
“Oh.” He rolled his eyes. “For the past few months, I’ve been bombarded with fix-ups. It’s like all my friends got together and decided I’m so pathetic I need to be saved.”
“Why would they think you’re pathetic?”
He shrugged and glanced away.
“Why?” If she’d had more manners or sensitivity, she would have let the topic drop since Carter obviously didn’t want to talk about it. But stubbornness and nosiness were also on Ruth’s lists of characteristics, and she wanted to know the answer to her question. “Tell me why.”
He sighed and met her eyes, almost defiantly. “Because they think I have a broken heart, and they’re trying to make it better.”
“You have a broken heart?” She searched her memory but couldn’t remember any gossip she’d heard about Carter being in an angsty relationship. “I hadn’t heard about you dating anyone recently. What happened?”
“I don’t have a broken heart.” His tone was a little rougher than normal. “I’m fine. For a while I thought... I was interested in someone. But she wasn’t interested in me. And it’s fine. I’m fine. I don’t need all these pity fix-ups.”
Savannah’s flutters were entirely gone now. Dissolved into a heavy weight of understanding. Because she’d been right from the beginning. Guys like Carter would never fall for her. He was hung up on someone else. Still. She could hear it in his voice. His very insistence that he wasn’t in love made it clear he was.
“I’m sorry. That sounds terrible.” Her sympathy was genuine. Just because Carter wasn’t the man for her didn’t mean she didn’t really like him. “It’s hard to hope in the wrong direction and then have everyone not accept that you’re over it.”
“Has that happened to you before?” He sounded relieved to shift the topic, so she let him.
“Of course it has. No guy I’ve ever fallen for has fallen for me.”
His eyes widened. “What? Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. I’ve dated, of course. I’ve had some relationships that lasted a few months. But nothing longer than that. I’ve fallen for guys. Plenty of them. But they never want me back. And the guys who want me...” She shrugged. “I think some people just aren’t fated for epic love. And I’m one of them.”
“You and me both.” He extended a hand to her over the table, closing his fingers for a fist bump. His eyes held hers and his mouth turned up in a small smile of genuine empathy.
She completed the fist bump, returning the smile and getting one of those odd moments of true connection. A sharing of self. Even in the midst of a loud and crowded bar. “Anyway,” she said, after clearing her throat and shaking away the tangles of pleasure at the brief intimacy. “I’m trying to focus on my career right now and not on dating, so I don’t let it bother me too much.”
“Makes sense. Me too.”
Carter’s father had died less than a year ago. It had been big news in Green Valley. The family business—a chain of luxury hotels—should have been passed on to Carter, who was the one who’d spent his life working with his father to grow the company. Instead, Mr. Wilson had left everything to Lincoln in what was obviously a slap to Carter’s face.
Mr. Wilson had been a real asshole. Ruth despised him although he was dead and she’d never met him. And fortunately the brothers had worked things out so that Carter had taken control of the business after all.
But still... The whole thing had to have hurt Carter a lot.
In a rare moment of restraint, Ruth didn’t say anything about it. They were having a good conversation, and there was no reason to ruin it with memories that must be painful to Carter. Instead, she said, “You should tell your friends not to fix you up anymore.”
“I have told them. They don’t listen. They keep doing it.”
“Well, tell them you don’t need fixing up anymore. You’ve already gotten yourself a girlfriend.”
“And what should I do when they want to meet this fictitious girlfriend?” Carter always came across as such a nice guy that she’d assumed he was sweet and open and earnest. But he wasn’t really. The edge to his tone was bone dry. Not sweet at all.
Ruth being Ruth, it made her like him better. “Then you get