“There are days I feel like I do, Matt. Work can be draining, all-consuming,” Tyler said, feeling much more advanced in years than he should.
“If you’d let your hair down once in a while, old boy, maybe you wouldn’t be so damn miserable. All work and no play makes you incredibly dull.”
“I can’t win, can I? If I go out on the town too much, the papers label me a damn playboy. If I stay out of the tabloids and work, then I’m a hermit. You can all piss off,” Tyler said, holding up his hand for a refill. The freaking bartender should certainly be more on top of his job.
“No one has ever said that life is easy,” Matt told him with a laugh. “Why don’t you find a girl and take her to your room and fu…oops, I mean make love till the morning light is breaking through the windows?”
“Make love? And they say that I’m the romantic one in my clan,” Tyler snickered.
“I’m trying to be sophisticated,” Matt replied. “After all, we’re in a higher-class bar right now.”
“And whose damn idea was that?” Tyler said, scanning the room with distaste. A good rowdy pub was far more his style or at least it had been his style until last year, when he’d decided to try growing up a little bit more. Or to look as if he’d grown up a bit.
Maybe he did need to get laid. It had been a while — way too long. When was the last time he’d had a woman moaning beneath him? That he even had to search his memory told him it was past time to do something He needed a good lay, and he wasn’t thinking of poetry. Nothing flowery at all. Hell, pin the broad to the mattress and do what nature intended the two of them to do.
He fought with his brothers on a constant basis, telling them that love was real, that it could be achieved, but his last relationship had ended in disaster. Utter disaster. He’d been willing to give the woman a six-carat diamond along with his heart. And then he’d found her in the broom closet at his oldest brother’s wedding — with the bellhop.
Byron had pointed out to him that night that women couldn’t be trusted. Tyler wasn’t ready to go that far, but as far as looking for happily-ever-after… Well, maybe he’d just look for Ms. Right Now.
But here was the problem. No one was catching his eye, and he was growing bored with this bar, so he decided to write this night off as a bust. Get real. It was time to hoist himself up off this bar stool and get the eff out of Dodge. But just then he heard the sound of laugher, and something about it caught his attention.
He looked off to the side and couldn’t help but noticing right there before him an appealing backside, exposed by a low-slung silky red tank top. Whoa.
“Hmm, maybe tonight will be more interesting than I’d originally thought,” Tyler told Matt.
“What makes you think she’ll have anything to do with you?” Matt replied, zeroing in on the woman with that fabulous ass, but whose face they couldn’t yet see.
“If I want her, she’ll be more than willing to have something — more than something — to do with me.”
“If only I could be one of the infamous Knight brothers for a day,” Matt muttered.
“Shut up, Matt. Don’t even pretend you’re humble,” Tyler told his friend, still gazing at the woman, not wanting to miss the moment when she turned around. After all, she could be a dog.
“Compared to you and your brothers, I’m a damn saint,” Matt said, the smile obvious in his voice.
“Maybe so, but I’m the nice guy of the three of us young Knights,” Tyler told him.
“The sad thing about that statement is that it’s true,” Matt muttered with a laugh.
“When you’re raised by narcissistic parents — to use a fancy psychological term — parents who then get murdered before your eyes, it tends to make you a little bit…shall we say, aloof,” Tyler replied.
“Then how have you always been able to stay so positive?”
“I don’t know. I was so young when it happened. My brothers got the worst end of that stick. I guess I just feel that life is too short to dwell in the past. My philosophy is that a night in the arms of the right woman can heal the most wounded of souls.”
“Then why haven’t you bedded anyone lately?” Matt asked.
“How the hell do you know that I haven’t?” Tyler grumbled.
“You’ve been complaining about it for a while,” Matt pointed out.
“Yeah, I need to learn to keep my damn mouth shut.”
“So why not settle down?”
“ I was ready to and I failed epically in choosing the right woman. I don’t know, man. I think it’s harder than people realize to find that one woman you can’t live without. I love women, love how they feel, how they smell, how they…taste. Then their true colors come out, and their claws sharpen. If I could find that girl without a hidden agenda or a tendency to fuck strangers in a closet, then maybe, just maybe, I would do exactly that.
“Damn, Tyler. Should I call up Oprah now?” Matt asked with a laugh.
“Go to hell, Matt. Maybe my future wife is right over there in a very appealing red tank top,” Tyler said as he stood up.
“Well, then, go and get her, tiger.” Matt signaled for the bill.
The woman finally turned, and when she looked up, her eyes met with Tyler’s across the room, and he felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach.
“Who in the hell is she?” he whispered, though he wasn’t looking for a response.
“Holy shit, she’s gorgeous,” Matt muttered. “There’s no way that woman is available.”