Page 22 of The Love Losers

“Uh, I don’t think so, man,” I hedge. “It just wasn’t a good fit. Nothing personal.”

He looks like he’s going to press me—he knows, same as I do, that Leigh is everything I asked him to find. But Lainey steps on his foot. It’s subtle and underneath the coffee table—old, big. Still, I witness it, and judging from his wince, he feels it. I’m not sure what it means, but I’m grateful when he drops the subject.

I feel someone staring at me, and I know without looking that it’s my mother, noticing everything I’d prefer for her not to. I definitely don’t return the glance.

“I’m going to help him,” Rosie says, swiveling for a better look at Jake. “This situation requires a woman’s touch.”

“You’re edging in on my job, aren’t you?” he asks with obvious amusement. Shifting his gaze to me, he adds, “Be careful, man. This one’s a shark. You definitely don’t want to make any deals with her—I made that mistake in poker last week, and I lost all of my Goldfish.”

Of courseshe’s a shark. She’s someone who knows how to move people like they’re chess pieces on a board. My father did too, but Rosie does it in such a way that you feel damn lucky she bothered to include you in her machinations.

My gaze finds her again, taking in the soft lines of her face and those big blue eyes, I feel that tugging in my chest again—like I’m being shaken awake after a long nap. “I’ve already lost one bargain with her. But I still feel like I got a good deal.”

“That’s what a good con artist can do.” Jake pantomimes pointing to his eyes and then her.

She rolls his eyes at him, then says, “You’re just jealous because I’m going to succeed where you failed.”

“Care to make it interesting?”

She looks like she’s humming with the desire to do just that, and even though it’s my fate they’re making a sport of, I smile when she says, “Do you even know me?”

“What does the winner get?” Jake gestures to me. “A date with Anthony?”

“Bragging rights,” Rosie says. “Andthe loser has to buy a round of drinks for everyone in this room.”

My mother finishes her first drink and lifts the second with a beleaguered sigh. “Well, let’s hope one of you comes through. It’ll be embarrassing for all of us if Anthony has to stand at the altar alone. Because I’d say this decides it—he will be getting married on New Year’s Eve, come hell or high water. We certainly can’t let this lunatic win.” Giving a careless waveof her hand, she says, “Elaine, you might as well fetch the extra wedding invitations. It sounds like we’ll be needing them.”

“Mom, she doesn’t work for you anymore,” I point out.

My mother sniffs dramatically. “My life is being threatened, along with your fortune. As far as I’m concerned, youallwork for me.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

ROSIE

No one invited me to Smith House, but if you wait until people ask you to do things, you’ll spend a lot of time alone and bored. So I’d invited myself.

And it would have been totally worth it just to see the look in Anthony’s gray eyes when he saw me—like he’d been waiting for me to decide to show up even though I totally sprang it on him. And I’d done plenty of looking in return. He’d made a fine picture, standing in the doorway in that fine button-down shirt, hugging his broad shoulders as if it had been made for his body.

Actually, it probablywasmade for his body.

Anthony is not for me. He can’t be.

It’s become a mantra of sorts. Sure, Imayhave watchedPride and Prejudicealone last night, and Imayhave been babysitting my phone since Wednesday, but I know better than to think anything can happen between us.

I can be his friend, though. At least I can do that.

Both of us need one right now.

Later that evening, the whole Smith House crew, minus Anthony and Mrs. Rosings, who are working on a list of possible suspects for Nicole and Damien, and Joy, who’s attending a crafting event at the teahouse she used to work at, crowd aroundthe dining room table in my brother’s cabin for pizza and delicacies from Claire’s bakery.

Claire is sad she missed out on the “excitement”—and even more disappointed that she and Declan have already made plans to visit her father and my other brother, Seamus, in New York City over New Year’s.

Declan looks more worried than he did this afternoon, and the furrow between his eyebrows deepens after he hears about the bet I made with Jake.

“She did what?” he asks, nearly dropping his beer.

“She officially challenged me to a wife-off,” Jake says.

---