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"That's good, it means it's healing."

"Maybe I'll see you when I come back to get the stitches taken out."

The hostess approached then to let them know that their table was ready.

He made a point of pulling out a five and placing it in the tip jar perched on the bar.

She gave him a wry look and thanked him.

The hostess picked their drinks up off the bar and they followed her to a two-top close to the restaurant's large, street facing windows. Even though he'd been here enough to have it memorized, he studied the menu so he wouldn't have to see the knowing look on his sister's face.

Finally, he got tired of memorizing the ingredients in Brady's homemade gnocchi and looked up.

Sure enough, Paulina stared at him, mouth pulled into a little smirk that irritated him as much at thirty-two as it had when he was sixteen.

"What?" he said tightly.

"You gonna ask her out?"

"Who?"

She didn't have to speak for him to hear "Oh, please," echoing in his ears. "You look at her the same way you looked at her back in high school. It's pathetic."

"Do not." Jesus, nice comeback he thought as he took another drink of his beer. "How would you know how I looked at her in high school? You weren't there." With Paulina five years younger than he was, they had never overlapped in high school, thank God.

"Maybe not at school, but I would see you at the family gatherings and holiday parties." The Osbornes and the Murphys were friends as well as neighbors, and over the years they'd gotten together for everything from backyard barbecues, birthdays, and of course the Osbornes' Christmas party held every year in the main lodge.

"And don't forget about the football games with Colleen there in her short little skirt and tight sweater, cheering her heart out—"

"That's enough," he said gruffly.

She took another sip of her rosé. "You know I like to bust your chops, but come on, why not just ask her out?"

She might as well have asked him why he didn't just run up Mount Everest on his lunch break. "She just got divorced."

"They split up like a year ago."

"I don't know, from what it sounds like, it was pretty bad. She probably has too much baggage to date right now."

"I think you're just making excuses. You should just go for it."

Bossy and relentless. Paulina should put that on her business cards.

"Also, she's the sister of one of my good friends."

"So?"

"So, what if it doesn't work out and Liam is pissed at me for breaking his little sister's heart?"

"You seem very confident that you would be doing the heartbreaking."

Chapter 5

JT hit his sister with a deadpan glare and was relieved when Janelle, one of the waitresses, appeared to take their order.

"That's pretty ambitious," Paulina remarked when JT went ahead and ordered both the rack of lamb and the pizza along with another beer.

"I was irrigating all day," he said. "Didn't make it back for lunch."