Page 12 of Ghosted By Texas

“Here on a date,” I answered for Clea.

“Oh! The two of you are together?” I was certain that did not detract from Jeff’s interest one little bit. The new sparkle in the bastard’s eyes seemed to indicate I was right.

“No. I was supposed to meet a blind date here,” Clea insisted. Dammit. A blind date could be ditched and judging from the smug smirk on the asshole’s face, he would test the theory.

“Oh, well his loss is my gain.”

“Wait!” I yelled. “He didn’t lose, he’s here somewhere.”

“No,” Jeff responded, looking the tiniest bit annoyed with me. “He lost because there’s no way I’m letting this beautiful woman out of my sight now.”

I huffed out a breath of frustration. “Do not go anywhere!” I growled the words through gritted teeth, hating the idea of separating from Clea, but knowing I needed to find Austin and his brother immediately or Houston would lose out on his blind date. Then, my boyfriend was bound to be angry with me for causing the situation, since I insisted that his brother and my best friend were perfect for one another.

It took me ten freaking minutes to track down Austin, and when I did, he was a sweaty mess who looked like he had single-handedly been running the show. Clea’s supposed date for the night stood with him, looking just as harried.

“Hey, where have you been?” I asked when I got close enough to be heard over the music.

“Cleaning up messes our other brother made.”

“Dallas is here, too?” I hadn’t met the younger brother yet, but I heard he was a handful and then some.

“That would be the one.” Austin glanced around me, as if looking for someone before he asked, “Where is Clea?”

“Shit!” I grabbed his hand. “Hurry, some frat douche was hitting on her when I left to go find you.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound good,” he admitted, and I had to agree with him, though I refused to do so out loud. We moved over toward the corner bar where I’d left Clea and the jerk only to find that neither of them were there.

“Oh no!” I spun on my heels and glanced at every corner of the room. There were no black dresses in sight. “Oh no!” I groaned again.

“What?”

“I don’t see her,” I whined.

“Hey man, I’m wiped out from dealing with Dallas’s shit. Did that chick show up or not?” I turned to see Houston, who looked just enough like Austin that they could be mistaken for one another, if you weren’t paying attention to the differences, like the fact that Austin had darker hair and was the tiniest bit taller than his brother.

“Where’s Clea?” Austin asked.

“I think she might have left. I don’t see her anywhere,” I admitted reluctantly.

“Figures,” Houston groused dejectedly.

“Houston, man, I’m sorry. Don’t take it personally.”

“How can you not take being stood up on Valentine’s Day personally?” He asked, though he laughed as he did.

“Fuck!” Austin growled.

“I need to go find her and make sure she’s safe. We came here together. It isn’t like Clea to leave a party without me.”

“You go find her, make sure she’s safe, and meet me back at my place in an hour, okay?”

I nodded my head. “I’ll see you then.” I turned to Houston after that. “I’m so sorry about this. Some asshole knocked her down before I went to find you guys and…”

He cut me off. “Don’t worry about it.” Houston turned and took off in the opposite direction and my boyfriend shot a glare back at me after watching his brother walk away. “You promised this shit wouldn’t happen,” he said.

“You promised to be at the front door,” I countered.

“We’ll talk about everything later. Right now, I need to go make sure you and your friend didn’t do too much damage to my brother.” The way he said friend made me worry. Austin had been growing impatient lately with the fact that I hadn’t introduced him to Clea yet, despite the fact that I was open with him about why I hadn’t.

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