Hot Under His Collar - Andie J. Christopher Page 0,69
he’d just stayed home, even if he had known Bridget his whole life.
When she felt his eyes on her, it just made her laugh louder and flirt more with everyone else. Maybe then he’d get the message that she’d moved on, even though she was really only trying and failing to move on.
He was even more handsome when he was brooding. Leaning back in an antique upholstered chair at one of the tables at the edge of the room, he looked disreputable—more like an old-timey gangster than a man of the cloth.
Hannah, who was still moving very quickly and silently for someone who was starting to pop an impressive belly, sidled up to her without her noticing. “Stop looking at him like that.”
“I thought you didn’t care that I was looking at him like that.”
“I wouldn’t care if you were looking at him like that if you were actually going to do anything about it, but both of you are too up your own asses to make a move. This is just torturing you both.”
That’s right, Hannah had gone to see Patrick because Sasha was too much of a chicken to be in a room with him after the kiss/scissors incident. “He seems tortured?”
“The man is a mess.” Oddly, her best friend sounded delighted by that fact. “He’s so forlorn that he doesn’t know which way is up.”
Sasha let herself glance at him then and met his gaze. It held for long moments, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. And he looked like he was trying to fill himself up with her, too.
“If he’s so forlorn—if he wants me that much—why doesn’t he come and get me?”
“Why don’t you go and get him?”
“Because I’m a lady.” Her automatic reply came out of conditioning rather than any real belief. When she thought about going after Patrick and telling him how she felt about him, her mother’s voice cropped up in her head: If a man wants you more than any of his other options, he’ll let you know. If he doesn’t, you know he doesn’t want you.
Efficiency was the name of the game when it came to her mother and courting rituals. Not quality.
“I seriously had no idea how fucked up you were before this.” Hannah’s words made Sasha finally break Patrick’s gaze. “To think, I thought you had it all figured out when it came to dating.”
“To be fair, I am very good at dating. I can always get a man to ask me on another date.”
“I seem to remember a couple of proposals in there, too.”
None of those had been from serious prospects—and one of them hadn’t remembered proposing the next day. They didn’t count.
Also, she hadn’t been in love any of those times. “I might be good at dating, but I’m terrible at finding love.”
“It still looks to me like you found it.”
“I can’t ask him to leave the priesthood.”
“Why not?” Hannah put her hands on her hips. She was relentless when she sank her teeth into something, and Sasha had never been one of those things before. She wasn’t the kind of friend who needed to be picked up and put back together. She was the kind of friend who did the picking up and putting back together. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the reversal.
“I don’t know that I love him.” Sasha laughed, and she sounded jaded, even in her own ears. “And I don’t know that he loves me. How am I supposed to know if I can compete with God?”
“So you’re refusing to even try?”
“What about him?” Sasha kept herself from pointing. “I think becoming a priest is making a pretty clear statement about how much he values romantic relationships.”
“Come to think of it, becoming a priest is really the ultimate fuckboy move,” Hannah said, sarcasm dripping from her voice. “Really says that he can’t make a commitment.”
“I think being pregnant has made you mean,” Sasha said.
“Not being able to have champagne will do that to a girl.”
Sasha threw up her hands and walked to the ladies’ room. She didn’t know what her hair was doing at any given moment now that it was short, and she had to make sure it wasn’t standing on end after her frustrating conversation with Hannah.
It actually looked kind of cute, and it was easier to stay cool. She dawdled, though, washing her hands and buying time where she didn’t have to be in the same room as Patrick.