Page 12 of Mr. Flirt

“Listen. To be fair, my best friend just gave birth. I only stopped at the bar to give my sister her birthday present, so if I happened to ignore you, I’m sorry. It wasn’t personal.”

“It’s always personal.”

“Only to men who think they’re God’s gift to women,” I muttered.

“Wow. Been scorned recently?”

I laughed, feeling this man’s confidence oozing through the phone. “No, but my best friend’s husband just cheated on her, and he didn’t even have the decency to show for the birth of his own daughter.”

Shep’s tone turned serious. “Wow. That’s really, really horrible.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It is, and I’m so sorry to be making light of everything.”

“You didn’t know,” I assured him.

“Yeah, but still.” He cleared his throat. “You probably think I’m a complete—”

I laughed, interrupting him. “It’s not just you, but I’m pretty much not the woman you’d want to take out on a date.”

“Yeah?” his voice softened. “Why’s that?”

“I’m a divorce lawyer.”

Shep’s laughter rolled over the phone, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“You don’t scare me,” he offered.

“That’s too bad.”

I could feel his smile over the phone.

“So, how about it? Will you have dinner with me?”

Chapter Five

Mr. Coffee

Shep

Did it hurt that I got downgraded from dinner with Lucy to coffee? Yeah, it hurt a bit. I clutched my chest at the thought as I stared intently at the door of the coffee shop, willing it to swing open any second, except that it didn’t.

I glanced at my phone. Lucy was ten minutes late, and I didn’t know if I should save face and book or wait it out for another ten. Had she figured out who I was?

Perry from the dating disaster?

Or Shep Jensen, Seattle’s most eligible bachelor?

Tapping my finger on the table, I glanced around the place. It was a coffee shop that Lucy picked out, which I’d never been to before. There were rows of books at the far end where a gas fireplace made for a perfect reading nook.

Several people were reading papers and drinking their coffees out of porcelain mugs. I was surprised some of them weren’t wearing ascots and plaid.

God forbid she’d pick a coffee shop that served the brown liquid in a paper cup. It intrigued me, and I knew it shouldn’t, but this place screamed intellectual snob, and Lucy didn’t strike me like that at all.

I thought back to her demeanor on the phone and couldn’t help but hear her glorious giggles. She did laugh at my jokes, so maybe I wasn’t being stood up. As her giggles wrapped around me, I realized they weren’t coming from my head.

Lucy had somehow swept into the coffee shop without me noticing and was legit flirting with the male barista behind the counter.

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