Lush (A Delicious Novel) by Lauren Dane

Author:Lauren Dane
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-04-01T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

“She doesn’t seem bothered that we don’t see each other more. Isn’t that weird?” Damien kept an eye on the girls, who were in the pool with Vaughan and their grandparents. Paddy and Ezra’s dogs were involved as well.

Ezra turned the steaks. “Maybe she’s not into you?”

“That’s not it. I’d know. It’s not that she’s disinterested in me. It’s that, well, other women would have pushed to see me more. She seems content with it. When we’re together it’s smoking hot. We’re both into each other. We laugh. Things are easy. She makes me laugh, Ezra.”

Ezra laughed. “Well, good. But if you’re expecting her to be like other women, and your previous other women had not been the type you’d want to be with, then maybe you need to readjust your expectations.”

“Some of her friends think I’m a drunken man-whore.” There. He said it.

“You are a drunken man-whore.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side, Ezra.”

His brother looked up and into his eyes. Very few people saw to the heart of him like Ezra did. “I am on your side. But you tell me, you go search the Internet for yourself right now. Tell me what the first images are. Go on. I’ll be here.”

Damien snorted. “I know what they are.”

“No. I mean it. My laptop is on the kitchen table. Go. Look.”

He did, annoyed at his brother. But when he did the search he cringed. Hell, he was in those pictures, he couldn’t deny it. They weren’t a lie. But that’s not who he was. Not totally and certainly not anymore. The problem with the media, and with Google searches, is that they only seemed to catch moments of your whole life. They weren’t getting shots of him playing Barbies with his nieces. Or helping out in the orchards or fields.

Was this what she thought he did? He scrubbed his hands over his face before returning to the back deck some minutes later.

“Look, I know what it is to be a drunken man-whore, okay?” Ezra spoke before he did. “It’s fun and all. For a while. But the hangover is a motherfucker. You can fix this, but it’s going to take some energy. This woman isn’t a groupie. She’s not with you for a backstage pass. She’s a real person with real feelings. She’s got a business and a life. She’s not going to want any of that stuff in her life. Can you blame her?”

“She should know me enough to know I’m not that. Not anymore anyway. I’ve always treated her with respect. She’s different.”

Ezra grabbed a pull or two from his cream soda. “Sure. Which is why it suddenly matters. And probably also why she lets you keep coming around. But you’re going to have to work it to get her to see you’re more than a Google search.”

“Like what?”

“Court her. Woo her. Whatever you want to call it. She’s got brothers and a father and family, and they’re all around her. They’re not going to let some pretty boy come in and hurt her.

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