Hiring Mr. Darcy - Valerie Bowman Page 0,8
around for a coaster so I could set my beer bottle on the table next to me. It gave me a minute to collect my thoughts. “First, I refuse to take advice about love from someone who doesn’t even believe in the word, and second, it’s perfectly acceptable to have goals. That doesn’t make me a bad person.” With my free hand, I pulled the pillow back from Luke and bopped him on the head with it. “How are you supposed to accomplish things in life if you don’t have them written down?”
“Well, my band is playing for one of the biggest talent scouts in Nashville in a couple of weeks, and I promise you I never wrote that down.”
I shook my head at his smug smile. I couldn’t explain to a non-writer-downer why writing things down was so important. Especially when adorable matching office supplies and journals and colored pens were involved. Believe me. I’d tried arguing such points before. It was like Napoleon at Waterloo, a losing battle. “The point is that now my entire schedule is ruined, and I’m going to have to start over.”
“It’s life, Meggie.” Luke drained his beer and gave me a hard look. “It’s not a schedule. You need to chill.”
I hugged my throw pillow again. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Chill. You know, sit around in your underwear and read books. Not textbooks and not history books, but the kind of books that you find fun. You know…fun?”
“History books are fun!” I insisted.
“To nerds. What about romance novels? You used to like to read those, didn’t you?”
I sucked in my breath. Luke remembered that I liked romance novels? Had he been snooping on my e-reader? I hadn’t admitted reading a romance novel to anyone except Ellie in over fifteen years. Anyway, Luke was just muddying the waters. He was missing the point. I shoved my finger accusingly toward the book he’d left on the coffee table. “You’re reading War and Peace and you’re calling me a nerd?”
“Touché.” He grinned at me.
I pushed my palms against my thighs, stood, retrieved the trash bag, and continued cleaning the room. Luke stood to help me, but I waved him away. “No. Let me. It’ll keep my mind off my failure.”
He shook his head. “It isn’t a failure, Meg.”
I barely glanced back at him. “Don’t you have a gig or something tonight? Leave me to mope and clean in peace.” Mope and Clean in Peace. That would be a great name for my future nonexistent autobiography.
“Nope. No gig tonight, but I am playing poker with the guys in about an hour.” He glanced at the clock on the microwave in the kitchen. He’d probably busted his cell phone again. Luke didn’t own a watch. He didn’t believe in them. Harrison had often mentioned it. He seemed flabbergasted by the notion.
“Good.” I grabbed another dirty napkin from the coffee table and shoved it into the bag. “Order pizza at your poker game. I’m cleaning this place up and don’t want to see another pizza box.”
Luke stopped in the middle of shoving his feet into his sneakers without untying the laces and did a double take. “Wait. You usually lecture me when I play poker.”
We both knew why I didn’t like him playing poker. We’d grown up in a house with a dad who didn’t know when to stop. It was one of the things that made me such a control freak. We’d had very little influence over our lives as children (or so a psychologist had explained to me in college). All I knew was that organizing things made me happy. Our father had spent years losing, however, while Luke almost always won. He had the math brain our poor father never would. “Yeah, well, tonight I’m fine with it,” I added stiffly.
“Okay. I’ll go get cleaned up and leave.” Luke disappeared into the hall bathroom, which he never kept clean enough for my standards. I’d be cleaning that later, too. Bleach was sure to be involved. And gloves.
I’d pushed the last of the beer bottles into the recycling bin in the kitchen, and was wiping my newly washed hands on a white towel, when Luke’s voice drifted out of the bathroom.
“Hey, Meggie, why don’t you find your own Mr. Darcy, go to the competition, and beat the hell out of Harrison and Lacey Lewis?”
Chapter 3
Why don’t you find your own Mr. Darcy? The words reverberated through my brain over and over again, like Big Ben