Love Bug (The Prescotts Book 3), Tara Wyatt [best mobile ebook reader .txt] 📗

7

“Would you put your phone away? I’m starting to think I’m boring you. You’re going to give me a complex,” Max’s brother Lucian said dryly from across the table. Max glanced up from his phone to find Lucian staring at him with one eyebrow arched. Shooting his brother an apologetic smile, he slipped his phone back in his pocket.

He was having his usual weekly dinner with Lucian at one of Lucian’s many restaurants. He’d been in the mood for steak, so Lucian had booked them a table at The Stonewall Chophouse, a steakhouse he owned in Hell’s Kitchen. In the past, the four Prescott brothers had always had dinner together, but with Theo and Sebastian both out on the west coast, the dinners had become smaller with just Max and Lucian.

The interior of the restaurant was dim and expensive-looking, all wood and leather with jazz playing through the hidden speakers. Every table was adorned with a pristine white tablecloth and nestled between wood and brass dividers, giving everyone privacy. It was swanky and elegant and masculine, all at the same time.

“Sorry,” he said, picking up his scotch and taking a sip. It cut a warming path right down the center of his chest and he savored it for a minute.

“Who were you talking to?” asked Lucian, his tone casual but his posture alert.

Max shook his head. “No one, really. We’re beta testing this app.”

Lucian took a bite of his baked potato. “The dating one?” he asked, raising his eyebrow again.

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

Lucian grinned. “That makes more sense. You’re waiting for a woman to message you.”

Heat curled through Max’s system, coupled with a healthy—or unhealthy, depending on your viewpoint—dose of shame. Yeah, he was talking to a woman. Yeah, he was enjoying it. Yeah, he felt like he was doing something wrong because he was still completely hung up on Willa.

But Lucian was right. Max had been waiting for Fresh Princess to message him back. Over the past three days, they’d already managed to take their connection meter from light pink to a much darker pink with all of the messages they’d exchanged. They’d talked about their favorite movies and music, divulged that they both rehearsed phone calls before making them, were both video game nerds, and found out that they agreed that the most underrated spot in Central Park was Wagner Cove. She’d told him a little bit about her brother, that she’d grown up in Woodbury, NY and moved to the city for school and had stayed.

He’d told her tiny bits and pieces about his life, but he didn’t like talking about himself or his past. He probably wouldn’t have told her about being an overweight kid the first night they’d talked if he hadn’t been deep into his second whiskey. He kept everything about himself so tightly contained that he worried that if cracked it open even just a tiny bit, it would be messy and ugly. So he hadn’t told her about the fact that his parents had had a disaster of a marriage that had ended in a horribly acrimonious divorce. He hadn’t told her about how hard he’d worked to build Tapp from the ground up because that would’ve given away his identity.

And he sure as fuck hadn’t told her about Sophia.

A part of him knew he should pull back on all of this chatting, but earlier that afternoon, she’d messaged him asking him what his perfect day was and he’d taken the time to really think about it before answering. He was waiting to hear what she thought of his answer. Waiting to hear what her perfect day was because even though she was a total stranger, he wanted to know. She’d been offline since he’d sent his answer and he couldn’t seem to stop himself from checking his phone regularly.

Talking to someone like this was completely out of character for him. He wasn’t a sharer. He wasn’t good with people. But with her…he couldn’t explain it. He just liked talking to her. There was something about the ease of it that was comforting and fun. It felt really good to actually connect with someone.

The other side of the coin, though, was Willa. Every single time he saw her, guilt sliced through him, and not just because of how he’d hurt her. Now, talking to someone online, he felt like he was doing something wrong. Like he was cheating on her. Which was stupid, given that they weren’t together and she was still doing everything she could to avoid him. But still, he felt like he was giving this complete stranger something he should be giving to Willa. The anonymity of it all made it easier to open up, true, but it was probably just more proof of how broken he was that he’d rather talk to a stranger than the gorgeous woman down the hall who’d told him she wanted him.

“I’m not looking to get involved with anyone,” he said, tension radiating through his jaw. “You know that.”

Lucian studied him, a pensive look on his face. The second he opened his mouth, Max shook his head.

“Don’t.”

“Someone’s touchy,” said Lucian, shaking his head. “I was only going to ask if you’d talked to Bastian recently.”

Max shook his head, not believing Lucian for a second. “The last time I talked to him was the day after he and Kayla landed in Tahoe. Why?” His eyebrows furrowed as he leaned forward, his elbows braced on the table. “Do you think he’s still in trouble?” Worry for his brother pulled at him. Bastian had made a mess of his life, but he’d turned over a new leaf, finding ways to move past his gambling addiction. And now that he had Kayla, he seemed like he was finally in a good place with everything, and Max wanted it to stay that way for him.

The home invasion that Kayla and Willa had endured felt like both ancient history and as though it had happened yesterday. Thank