Me: I can take care of myself, and I’m not exactly in high school anymore. I don’t ask my friends to beat up people I don’t like, but thanks for the offer. I think I’ll just find a way to suffer through the afternoon and evening.
I looked at the clock again and added to my text.
Me: I have to get going. I’ll be late if I don’t get moving.
Owen’s new home was on the other side of town, right on the water. My apartment was as far from the ocean as a person could get and still live within the city limits of Citrus Beach.
Dark: I say make the bastard wait. You’re helping him out. Every moment you spend talking to me is one less that you have to spend with him.
I smiled.
Me: I offered to help set up, so that would be a little rude, don’t you think?
Honestly, I might have dragged my feet getting to Owen’s place if it wasn’t for Andie.
She was pretty stressed about the whole meet-the-entire-Sinclair-family thing, and Andie rarely got anxious about anything.
Dark: You agreed to help a friend before you had all the facts. Does your friend even know that you’re uncomfortable with her new brother-in-law?
Me: No. I can’t exactly talk to her about disliking someone in her husband’s family. It’s something I’ll have to deal with myself.
Andie might suspect that things weren’t all that friendly between Owen and me, but I’d never told her about what had happened in high school, because I was afraid it might affect her friendship with Owen.
Now, the last thing I wanted to do was jeopardize her happiness in any way, and Owen was not only a close friend, but part of her family as well since she’d married Noah.
Dark: You don’t have to do everything alone, Dreamer. Talk to me if you need someone to listen.
Me: Isn’t that what I’ve been doing?
Really, I hadn’t given him many details, but I’d told him the basic situation without revealing too much about myself.
Dark: Just know if you really want to talk, I’m here. I don’t think this is just an uncomfortable situation for you. I think it’s more than that. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. My offer to hurt him is still on the table.
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. He didn’t have the name Dark Humor for nothing.
Me: You’re so twisted.
Dark: But you like me anyway.
I knew that was his sign-off statement. He always ended our conversations with some kind of cocky pronouncement.
I backed out of the app and put my phone in my purse.
Arrogant or not, I did like Dark. I was convinced that his occasional brashness was some sort of bravado to cover the fact that he actually had a kind heart. We’d had too many insightful conversations for me to buy into his smartass comments as being part of his true personality.
“It isn’t like it really matters who he is, or what his real personality is like,” I said out loud as I scooped up my keys and my purse. “It’s a beta test for an app. It’s not like I’m looking for love on a real dating program.”
I’d only agreed to work with the app to help Noah.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to find a good guy someday, but I kind of wanted to bump into Mr. Right in person. So far, that particular event had eluded me, but I wasn’t ready to put my faith into a guy I’d never met face-to-face. Sure, dating sites and apps worked out just fine for some women, but not for me. I’d tried meeting someone nice online once, right after I’d finished nursing school. I’d ended up getting catfished, which had been more than enough to put me off cyberdating for the rest of my life.
I’d been hesitant to even get involved in the beta testing for Not-Just-A-Hookup because of my previous bad experience, but I’d blown off any misgivings I’d had to help Noah out. He’d made Andie so happy, and it wasn’t like I had to take the dating-app thing seriously.
So far, I’d done my best to give the program a fair shot. I was still talking to Dark, even though I’d dumped all of my other conversations.
I slipped my feet into a casual pair of sandals by the door. I’d dressed pretty laid-back. The party was going to be big but relaxed, so I’d settled on a halter-type sundress that was colorful without being gaudy. Really, it was about the only thing I had other than jeans and shorts.
I spent a lot of my spare time in an animal shelter, and it wasn’t like Brutus, the English bulldog I adored, or any of the animals I loved, gave a damn what I looked like.
I grimaced as I locked up my apartment, wondering how many women would be drooling over Owen at the reception.
I was probably the only single woman in Citrus Beach who would actually turn down the chance to have dinner with him.
Yeah, Owen was seen as the most eligible bachelor in the area, even if I didn’t completely agree with that analysis.
He was a doctor, but there were plenty of single physicians in Southern California.
He was young and incredibly attractive. But hot guys in Southern California were a dime a dozen.
Okay, so maybe, if one were to put all of those things together, he was a doctor, young, and attractive, so that gave him several desirable qualities.
However, did that really mean that the entire single female population of Citrus Beach had to act like fools over him?
I rolled my eyes as I thought about how many of his female patients looked far from deathly ill when they walked into the clinic. In fact, their blatantly flirtatious behavior actually made me nauseous.
To give him credit, Owen had handled those situations well. He’d certainly done nothing to encourage them.
The unfortunate truth was, even with all of his desirable bachelor qualities, I knew it was the whole billionaire thing that was motivating every one of those women.
Owen had gone from a very poor, struggling medical resident to a billionaire literally overnight. He’d come into a large inheritance he definitely hadn’t expected, and it was dollar signs those females saw when they looked at him.
The sad part was . . . those women didn’t even know him. The only thing they knew about Owen was his staggering net worth.
They didn’t know that he could be incredibly protective of the people he cared about.
They didn’t know that he was a little shy about speaking to a big audience, even though his IQ was off the charts and he had a lot of knowledge to share.
They didn’t know that Owen was like a walking, talking encyclopedia, and that he retained a lot more information than most people did about things he’d read or heard.
They didn’t know that he had a habit of saying outrageous things at what seemed like the worst possible times, or that the tendency came from his desire to ease other people’s pain.
They didn’t know about the guilt he carried because he was the youngest and he thought his older brothers had needed to sacrifice way too much for him.
Nobody had a clue that he could be the sweetest guy on the planet without even knowing his actions were pretty exceptional.
Stop! That’s what I thought before he screwed me over. I don’t think about him that way anymore. I haven’t for a long time.
I put on a pair of shades to shield my eyes from the sun as I strolled to my vehicle, unwilling to admit, even to myself, that I hated the fact that all those women just wanted Owen for his money.
Even sadder, he had to know their attention was motivated by the billions of dollars at his disposal. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t have been pursued at all now because he was scorching hot, and he had a good career as a physician. Owen would be very good boyfriend or marriage material at this point in his life. But I highly doubted those things alone would have produced the frenzy of women hot on his trail right now.