Hate to Date You (Dating #4) - Monica Murphy Page 0,58

eyes are my weakness…

Oh God. Okay, maybe I lied. I am definitely not thinking of him as a friend. I’m thinking of him like a boyfriend—or at least dating material. This is why I never bring guys to the family dinner. I get all of these weird, traditional feelings coursing through my veins and now I’m feeling horny for husband material.

Is that even a thing? Am I making sense? I only had one glass of wine at dinner. That’s all my parents will allow me when I visit.

See? They treat me like a child. They’re just waiting for the moment when they can turn me over to some man, marry me off, and then I become someone else’s responsibility. Meanwhile, they try their damnedest to tell me what to do and like a good little daughter, I find myself caught up in it.

This is why I rebel. Why I fucked around with a variety of men. Why I stayed out late and argued with my father throughout my teenage years. I couldn’t handle the restraints they put on me.

I was always pushing to break free.

“Did you know my parents sent me off to Italy when I was nineteen?” I need to talk about something else so I stop making dreamy eyes at Carter Abbott.

“No, I didn’t,” he answers. “Was it for a vacation?”

“I wish. No, they sent me there to go husband hunting.”

A car passes, its headlights cutting across Carter’s face at the exact moment he grimaces. “At nineteen? Isn’t that a little young?”

“I told them I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to travel, and at first, they said no. It was either school or I needed to marry someone.” I don’t tell many people about this time in my life. It was embarrassing. That my parents could be so old fashioned, wanting to marry me off when I was still a teenager for the love of God…

It’s not normal. At least, it wasn’t to my former friends at the time. My friends now wouldn’t understand it either.

“So what happened?”

“One day they came to me and said I could go to Italy, so I went. At first, I thought they were being cool. Generous. And I didn’t mind that they were dictating my trip—at least I got to go somewhere on my own, right? But I wasn’t on my own. I traveled all over the country with my cousin for the entire summer. Josie is seven years older than me, and was considered an old maid by my family. She’s very shy, a total introvert, and they figured she would be the perfect companion for me to go there and spend time with our Italian relatives. Those relatives were told to introduce me to young men who came from good homes in the hopes that I’d fall in love with one of them and want to marry him.”

“And I’m thinking that’s not how it played out?”

I start laughing when I think about what happened. “Nope. I completely corrupted Josie. We went out drinking every night and slept most of the day away, we were so hungover. My family would set up these special meetings—breakfast with one guy, lunch with another, an espresso break with yet another. I didn’t like any of them. Most of them were almost thirty—which is way too old for a nineteen-year-old girl who just wants to party and make out with a cute guy—and they were desperate for a young American wife. Oh God, it was so awful.”

“Sounds downright archaic,” Carter mused.

“It so was. You want to know the funniest part?”

“Give it to me.” Ugh, he makes it so easy to talk to him. He listens—he actually listens to me, and seems interested. It’s like talking to one of my girlfriends.

Only better, because I feel so much more when I’m with Carter. It’s like I want to cuddle up close with him, have deep conversations and then when we’re done talking, then we can have wild sex for the rest of the night.

Doesn’t that sound like fun?

“Josie was the one who found a husband! They’d given up all hope on her years ago, making her my companion like I was some innocent debutante from a Regency romance novel, and she’s the one who ended up with the hot duke!”

“Stella, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Carter says, sounding adorably confused.

I wave a hand. “I’m talking in historical romance novel speak, something Eleanor does all the time. I think I picked it