Girl Gone Viral (Modern Love #2)(6)

You’re good at talking to people, at evaluating them. She’d never been a shy person, even if life had made her wary.

She slid her hand into her pocket and caressed her fidget stone. “Do you live around here?”

Ross put his book on the table. The spine was cracked.

That’s not a deal-breaker for a meet-cute. Still, she protectively cupped her own carefully intact book spine.

“No, it’s my first time in Santa Barbara.”

“Oh, you’re a tourist.” Her shoulders lowered, some of the pressure relieved. Meet-cutes didn’t happen when someone was on vacation.

Her inner romantic, that bitch, squinted at her, and quickly filled her brain with the fifty-seven and a half romantic comedies that started exactly that way.

“Kind of. My mom just moved here. Thought I would make sure she and her golden retriever are settling in well.”

Most people might be more touched at the man’s care for his mom, but she perked up for another reason. “Golden retriever?”

“Yeah.” He unlocked his phone, scrolled, and turned it around to face her. “That’s her. Well, my mom and Sandy.”

She ignored the mom, and zeroed in on the dog. “Oh my God. She’s so cute.”

“She knows.” He swiped right, and a helpless noise of adoration escaped Katrina’s mouth. “Yeah, she’s even cuter dressed up.”

She grinned at the pup in a tutu. “What a beautiful creature.”

“Inside and out. Her sister was my dog, actually. She passed away last year.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged, though sadness tinged his eyes, turning them a darker gray. She swayed toward him, eager to ease the upset. Katrina pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned it on. “Here’s my cat. Her name’s Zeus.”

He visibly cheered as she showed him a few pictures of her tuxedo cat. Jas had found the cat for her at the humane society, so she wasn’t actually sure what breed she was, but Zeus had a nice hold on her heart. “Gorgeous.”

“She is. Very cuddly. A dog is next on my list.”

“I got Sandy and her sister at a shelter a few years back. You can find the sweetest dogs there.”

“That’s my plan. Sometimes I scroll through the adoption websites.”

“I heard someone say that pet adoption websites and real estate sites are like dating apps for married people.” His gaze dipped to her left hand.

She resisted the urge to touch her bare ring finger. She’d taken off her wedding ring ages ago. “I’m not married.”

“Cool.” He cocked his head. “Significant other?”

Her cheeks heated. She might be na?ve, but she couldn’t tell herself he wasn’t interested now. “No.”

His eyes warmed. “Me neither. What do you do? For a living?”

She hesitated. The phrasing was odd, because she had the privilege of not needing to really do anything for a living.

It was a circumstance that filled her with a vague sense of guilt. She’d been a regular middle-class kid growing up, with a regular divorced single mom, and would have stayed middle-class had it not been for a freak series of events: her mother’s death, her father taking custody, an agent discovering her in a mall, being catapulted into the kind of circle that would lead her to marry a rich, childless jeweler, his death, her own interest in investing and growing the nest egg he’d left her.

That wasn’t to say she didn’t work. She worked on herself, her businesses, her charitable donations, her cooking, and an ever-changing selection of art, crafts, research, and books. She picked one at random. “I make jewelry.” Her latest interest, one she’d picked up a little over a year ago in a nostalgic mood for her late husband.

“Oh. Wow, that’s so cool. An artist, huh?”

She lifted a shoulder. A therapist had suggested she try painting a few years ago, and she’d cycled through a million different forms of art since then. She parroted his question back at him. “What about you?”

“I used to coach rugby. Now I’m a nutritional coach.”

Rugby. That explained the thighs.

“Hey, do you mind watching my stuff for a minute? I need to use the restroom.”

“Sure.”

He rose from his chair and she tried to avoid checking out his aforementioned (in her head) massive thighs as he walked away.

She snuck one peek, though. Okay, well. It wasn’t news that she could feel lust over a pair of well-formed legs. It didn’t rise to the level of a zing, though.

She waited a second or two and got up as well. Katrina caught the eye of the blond ponytailed woman at the table next to her, no easy feat, since she and her companion were sitting silently together, furiously typing something on their phones.

Writers, she bet. “Do you mind watching our table for a second?” There was no real need, Katrina wouldn’t go far, but she didn’t want someone to poach it.

The woman nodded. “Of course.”

She walked to the counter and grabbed an extra couple of napkins. A large shadow fell over her. Jas leaned on the counter and signaled to the waitress for a refill for his empty cup.

“Everything’s fine,” she said. “He had no other place to sit. He’s not bothering me.”

She got a barely audible grunt in return. Grunts were one of Jas’s favorite methods of communication, and she’d learned to decipher them the same way someone else might learn to decipher Morse code. This grunt was a satisfied grunt.