Going for Four: Counting on Love, Book 4 (5 page)

“What happens after Cliff’s?” Emma asked.

Olivia shrugged. “We’re going to play it by ear.”

“You’re not going anywhere with him in his car,” Amanda said, rummaging through Olivia’s shoes. “You have to promise you’ll drive your own car.”

“I think you need to stay at Cliff’s. Talk, get to know each other, whatever, but then call it a night,” Emma said. “If it works out and you want to see more of each other, there’s always another night.”

Olivia met Amanda’s eyes and they both burst out laughing at the same time.

“What?” Emma sat up straighter.

“
You
, Miss Up All Night, New Guy Every Weekend, you’re giving advice to stay put, clothes on and just talk?” Amanda asked. “Wow.”

Emma looked offended. “First of all, I was never up all night with a guy I just met and had never heard of. And second of all—” her expression gentled, “—keeping the same guy around for several weekends in a row isn’t all bad.”

Olivia went to her and hugged her tight. She didn’t know if it was the falling in love with Nate or the pregnancy hormones or what, but Emma was softening up. “I’m going to be fine. I’m not going to go anywhere with him. It’s drinks. That’s it.”

“But he’s a ninety-seven-percent match,” Amanda said.

Olivia turned to her. “You think this whole thing is silly.”

“I think there are a lot of nice guys you could go out with without needing a computer to tell you that you’ll get along.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been a long time since a guy actually asked me out,” she said, frowning as she thought about it. “But the guys I meet are either firefighters—and off limits because we work together.” Yeah, that made sense. “Or they’re guys that I meet at Trudy’s, which means they either play for the Hawks or they work at St. Anthony’s.”

Trudy’s Tavern was the popular bar across from the hospital where Conner and Ryan, Amanda’s fiancé, were paramedics. The entire clientele was made up of St. Anthony’s employees, their friends and family, or fans of the Hawks.

“So? At least you know who they are, or you know someone who knows who they are,” Amanda pointed out.

It was mostly okay that she didn’t get asked out much—or at all for several months, now that she was trying to remember the last time—but it would still be nice for there to be a guy who was interested once in a while.

“And they have all kinds of assumptions about me.” Or they had. Back when guys actually asked her out.

Her frown deepened as she realized she couldn’t remember a guy asking her out since sometime last April. And he hadn’t called again after their one date.

“Assumptions like what?” Emma asked.

“They either assume I’m a party girl like you and Isabelle,” Olivia said, “or they assume I’m the sweet, innocent girl Conner claims I am.”

Amanda was watching her closely. “And you don’t like either of those assumptions?”

“Neither is true,” Olivia said. “Em, I love you, but I’m not like you. I don’t want to party and meet new guys all the time and win drinking challenges.” Emma was—or had been—well-known as the wild child of the Dixon clan. “But I’m not as innocent as Conner would like to think. I want…” She sighed. This was why she didn’t mind not getting asked out more often. She was waiting for something specific…and special. And she knew that it wasn’t easy to find. But she was going to sound like a teenage girl who had watched too many romantic comedies. “I want romance. I want someone to treat me like a princess. I want to feel my heart pound and my stomach flip…and I want…” She looked at her sisters. “Can I tell you something corny?”

“Cornier than the stomach-flipping thing?” Emma asked.

Olivia could tell by her expression that Emma was touched by what she’d said though.

“Yeah. Really corny.”

“Sure, honey,” Amanda said, sitting down next to Emma.

“I want a guy who’s a combination of all of your guys. I want a guy to respect me like Ryan respects you,” she said to Amanda. “Someone who will see the strongest parts of me and support them fully. And I want a guy who’s sweet and crazy like Shane is with Isabelle. Someone who will go over the top to show me how he feels. And—” she looked at Emma, “—I want a guy who makes me feel wanted and sexy like Nate does with you. The way he looks at you could start the place on fire if you’re not careful.”

Both of her sisters were blushing. And smiling.

Her sisters had found love. The true, no-matter-what kind of love. She wanted that. And it wasn’t going to happen with the guys at Trudy’s. She could feel it.

Amanda cleared her throat. “And you think Mr. Ninety-Seven-Percent might be that guy?” she asked.

“I hope so,” Olivia said with a shrug. Heck, at this point it might be good just to remind herself what going on a real date was like. “But it’s what I asked for, and he was the one at the top of the list of matches.”

Emma looked like she was fighting tears. The hormones were making her nuts.

“I don’t know if Nate and I would even match at ninety-seven percent,” she said. “Go for it.”

“I hope this date is with Prince Charming,” Amanda said, reaching for Olivia’s hand. “But if it’s not, keep looking. You deserve to have exactly what you want.”

Olivia nodded. “I agree. And I think he’s out there somewhere.”

The thing was, she had a feeling that this perfect guy—whoever he was—was going to remind her a lot of Cody Madsen.

He’d never been stood up before.

Cody swirled the liquor in the bottom of his glass and thought about that. Most of the women he’d spent time with in the past two years had approached him just as Olivia had said. So getting stood up was impossible. The woman initiated the conversation, he bought the drinks and they ended up back at his place.

No chance of being stood up.

He preferred that.

Sitting at a bar waiting for a date to show up—fifteen minutes past the time they’d agree upon—sucked.

“Another?” the bartender asked.

Cody checked his watch. “Nah. Guess I’m driving home.”

Perfect Pick his ass.

He put more than enough money down to cover his tab, then swiveled on the barstool, prepared to head for the door. But his gaze landed on a beautiful blond in a purple dress. A beautiful blond he’d recognize anywhere.

“Olivia?”

She was too far away to hear him. She was sitting at one of the small tables across the bar area, nursing a drink—Amaretto and Coke, he’d guess—and messing with her phone. Probably checking her e-mail or Facebook.

She had to be meeting a date here.

Had she chosen someone from Perfect Pick?

He’d specifically not asked her about how many matches she’d been given or if she’d been out with anyone. They’d worked together all week without him asking.

But it had been killing him.

She hadn’t seemed abnormally happy—though Olivia was a perpetually happy, upbeat person, so it would be hard to tell if she was unusually so. She wasn’t glowing from true love—or great sex—either, so he’d told himself that she hadn’t found her perfect pick. Yet.

There was no date sitting with her, so Cody headed over.

If nothing else, he needed a close-up of this dress.

He was only halfway to her when she lifted her head and saw him.

Her mouth curled into a huge smile and he felt the warmth that always hit when he saw her. She was always happy to see him. Always. And it was clear in how she looked at him. He loved that.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he greeted her, stopping by her table and slipping a hand into his pants pocket. He was going to be—or at least act—nonchalant about her date.

“Hey, yourself. Wow, a jacket, huh?” Her gaze traveled over him, taking in the dark gray slacks, the white dress shirt, the jacket and the gray-and-black tie. “Very nice.”

He liked having her eyes on him.

“Thanks. Trying to make a good first impression.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For taking this seriously.”

He hadn’t felt like he had a lot of choice in the matter when he’d been at her house and she’d been putting his info into the Perfect Pick site. But as he’d thought on it later, he could admit that it made some sense. They were in a holding pattern. Could he happily go along for a few more years as nothing more than Olivia’s best friend? Maybe. They were good together. But the urges to kiss her were becoming stronger and more frequent. And it wasn’t fair to her.

She wasn’t dating. He’d selfishly loved that for nearly two years. But he couldn’t keep telling himself that it was okay, that somewhere down the road—far down a very long road—she’d meet the right guy and fall in love. Olivia was a romantic at heart. She wanted an amazing love story, and she had high standards for relationships. And as long as Cody was firmly by her side at every party, event or night out—and glaring at guys who looked like they were thinking about asking her to dance or to buy her a drink, or flat-out telling them to get lost—she wasn’t going to find the guy. It was pretty hard to imagine a guy who could meet all of her criteria, but Cody rarely let them close enough to even try.

And he couldn’t be the guy.

If he gave her an ultimatum—him or Conner—she’d pick Conner. He knew that.

It made him a little crazy. Yes, he felt a loyalty to Conner and knew that Conner wasn’t entirely wrong—Cody wasn’t good enough for Olivia—but in a him-or-me ultimatum from Olivia, Cody would dump Conner in a heartbeat.

In fact, if he were absolutely positive that he could be the guy that she had built up in her mind as the one guy she should be with forever, he might risk whisking her off to some faraway place where they could be together in spite of her brother.

But he wasn’t absolutely positive he could be that guy.

He would, of course, do everything he could to be the right guy and to make her happy, but he also knew Olivia’s ideal was…intimidating. He knew what she found attractive, what she found romantic. He’d watched more than enough movies and TV with her, read magazine articles she showed him and listened to the stories she collected from people she met about real-life love stories to know that she had the dream guy built up pretty big. Any girl would fall for that guy. He was awesome.

Far more awesome than Cody.

He couldn’t convince her to take a chance with him and then fall short. He’d fallen short once before with a wonderful girl who’d thought he was amazing. He couldn’t do it again.

Looking at Olivia now, he wanted her so damned much while at the same time being sure that she deserved the very best—and that wasn’t him.

He cleared his throat and gave her a smile. “Does the tie make me seem like I’m taking this
too
seriously?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. You look like a guy who wants his date to think this is important to him. And Cliff’s? I’m impressed

“I’m not the only one looking good tonight. New dress?”

She glanced down. “Yes. It was the only thing that Amanda and Emma agreed on.”

He forced a laugh. “Your sisters were trying to dress you for this?” His chest hurt at the idea of Olivia’s whole family getting excited about her date.

One huge thing the perfect guy would need would be to get along with Olivia’s family. They were tight. They had each other’s backs.

Cody got along with every single one of them.

“They gave their opinions,” Olivia said of Amanda and Emma. “Of course.”

He continued to smile but it felt more and more stiff. “Well, I’d better leave you alone. Don’t want Romeo to come in and see you with another guy.”

Except that he did kind of want that.

Her smile faded. “Actually, I don’t—”

Cody immediately straightened. “What?”

She huffed out a breath. “I don’t think he’s coming.”

“What?” What kind of idiot wouldn’t show up for Olivia?

She glanced at her phone, then looked up at Cody. “How long has to go by before you’re officially stood up?”

He wanted to kick the guy’s ass, but he made himself shrug casually. “I figured I was stood up after about fifteen.”

Her eyebrows rose. “
You
were stood up?”

“You didn’t let me put a picture on there, remember?” he teased. “Clearly I’m not as appealing as you thought I would be without a photo.”

Her expression darkened and he knew he’d said the wrong thing. She shoved her chair back and stood. “That’s ridiculous. You’re totally appealing. You have everything going for you,” she said emphatically. “You don’t need a photo. You’re charming and funny and interesting and a gentleman and—”

He took her hand and tugged her toward the bar, chuckling. “Okay, okay, you’re right. I’m amazing. She’s passing up the date of a lifetime.”

Olivia was tense, still clearly offended on his behalf as he nudged her onto a barstool.

“Well, you are amazing,” she said.

Cody took the stool next to her. Usually when she said stuff like that, he let it sink in and puff up his ego a bit. A woman like Olivia thinking he was awesome was hard to ignore. But tonight, with thoughts of her looking for someone else amazing and Ashley, who had also thought Cody was amazing—and had been wrong—well, his ego wasn’t gaining any girth tonight.