Write It Up!: Rapid Transit / The Ex Factor / Brewing Up Trouble. Elizabeth Bevarly

deflating some. He’d never said he wanted to be exclusive with Julia. She’d never said that, either. She’d just figured he felt the same way she did about the way things were progressing between the two of them. She’d assumed he wasn’t seeing anyone else because he liked her well enough that he didn’t want to see anyone else. The same way she didn’t want to see anyone else, either. Because she liked him well enough, too.

      She was such an idiot.

      He was such a jerk.

      The tarty redhead said something to him that made him laugh, and Julia’s stomach knotted tighter. Before she even realized what she was doing, she was palming her purse and walking slowly across the room. But he left the tart’s table before Julia reached them, so she turned to follow him.

      She kept her distance as he went to the bar—was he getting the tarty redhead a drink, the way he’d gotten one for Julia that night?—then ducked behind a chatting couple when he turned to look behind himself. But he didn’t look back at the redhead, Julia noted. Instead, he seemed to be scanning the crowd, looking for someone else.

      Jeez, just how many women was he hoping to meet tonight?

      He picked up his order from the bar—one drink, the color of Scotch, she saw with some meager reassurance—and started to make his way back across the room. He was looking over his list of dates as he came toward her, so he didn’t see her standing where she was…still cowering behind the same two people who were now looking at her as if she were a complete moron. When someone accidentally bumped him, making him drop his list barely two feet from where she was standing—oh, all right, where she was cowering—Julia took her chance. Stepping forward, she scooped up the list just before he would have grabbed it himself, and stood.

      He straightened, too, saying as he did, “Oh, thanks for getting that for me. I really appreci—”

      And that was when his gaze connected with Julia’s and he realized who he was talking to.

      “Julia,” he said softly.

      “Daniel,” she replied tersely.

      “I…” he began vaguely.

      “You,” she remarked pointedly.

      He smiled, that boyish, self-deprecating smile he’d used so successfully the first night they’d met.