Laws of Attraction Read online

  “WHAT ABOUT HIM?”

  Becky turned to face the guy Dakota was full-on gawking at. Not very subtle, but subtle was her normal approach, and fulfilling Dakota’s plan called for abnormal behavior.

  He was standing in the doorway, giving her dirty lumberjack in a flannel and jeans that made her want to go over there and squeeze his tush. He was giving her Henry Cavill as pre-Superman pulling clothes off a washline in the rain. He was giving her all-man, all-hairy forearms and dark hair and looking strong enough to climb.

  And then he was giving her a look, and those eyes shot right into her gut as he matched her ogle with a curious heat of his own.

  Dang, she should come to sports bars more often.

  “Quit drooling,” Dakota whispered to her.

  “No.”

  “Well then, go talk to him. Quick, before the two of you undress each other with your eyes.” Dakota fanned herself. “Lucky girl, go on.”

  Also by Sarah Title

  Kentucky Home

  Kentucky Christmas

  Home Sweet Home

  Snowed In

  Two Family Home

  Practice Makes Perfect

  The Undateable

  Falling for Trouble

  And read more Sarah Title in

  Delicious

  The Most Wonderful Time

  Laws of Attraction

  SARAH TITLE

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  “WHAT ABOUT HIM?”

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Teaser chapter

  FALLING FOR TROUBLE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 by Susan Maguire

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4201-4187-0

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-4188-7

  eISBN-10: 1-4201-4188-0

  To Dana,

  who showed me that fostering is perfect for

  the commitment-phobic dog lover.

  And for Trish,

  who let me pretend I was just fostering Starr.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many, many thanks to Anne Lucke and Sarah Glassmeyer for entertaining my questions about law librarianship, and I’m terribly sorry if I didn’t accurately capture the amount of smoochin’ you all encounter on a daily basis. Thanks to Kelly, Brian, and everyone else who unwittingly supplied me with dog names. Also, thanks for having real cute dogs. Brock Savage, thank you for talking me through many iterations of the ending of this story. Dang, plots. Thank you forever to Alicia Condon at Kensington for believing in my stories, and to Louise Fury for playing it cool when I cannot.

  And an extra special librarian thank you to folks who read and share because that fosters our community of obsessive connoisseurs of the happy ending. Plus, stories of women getting what they want, of being empowered and sexually satisfied, make people uncomfortable and scared that the secret will get out and that we will take over the world. We need each other.

  Chapter One

  “What about that one?”

  Becky followed her best friend’s not-very-subtle pointing toward a guy in a Broncos hat with his eyes glued to one of the seven big-screen TVs in the bar.

  “Never mind, he’s too into the sportsball,” Dakota said.

  “Dakota, I’m not—”

  “Hush. Hey, he’s kind of cute.” She nodded toward a tall, dark-haired man in a suit who had just stepped up to the bar, loosening his tie. “The suit makes me think he’s probably boring, so you’ll like that.”

  Becky shook her head. “I thought the point was for me to have a one-night stand with someone who isn’t my type.”

  “Oh yeah. Maybe I’ll go talk to him. Dang.”

  Dakota’s distraction wasn’t distracting enough, unfortunately, and she continued to scan the bar for men Becky could have random sex with.

  It was all a very fun game they were playing because Becky had been dumped, once again. And Dakota had a bee in her bonnet that Becky chose the wrong kind of guy to date, and then came up with the brilliant idea that they needed to reset Becky’s sex drive by getting her laid by someone who was totally not her type. Which wasn’t fair. Becky didn’t have a type. She just wanted to settle down with a nice, normal guy like Paul, the kind of guy who had a job and a normal family and—fine, his apartment was kind of a sty and he’d just bought these really weird paisley curtains she’d laughed at and he got offended . . .

  “Stop thinking about him.”

  “I’m not!” Becky insisted. She was thinking about his curtains.

  “You’re a terrible liar,” Dakota said.

  That was true.

  “The only thing you’re worse at than lying is picking boyfriends.”

  “There was nothing wrong with Paul.” He didn’t want to date her anymore, sure, but he wasn’t a bad person. “Just because he’s not your type.”

  “Becky,” Dakota insisted, “you are way too nice. There was a lot wrong with that dude.”

  “Like what?”

  “Uh-uh. No. We’re not talking about this anymore. Tonight was supposed to be the night we doused the pain of your heartbreak.”

  “I’m not heartbroken!” Becky insisted. She was just . . . well, she was sad, that was all. Not the same as heartbroken. She was sad, and a little tipsy, and that was why her eyes were pricking with tears.

  “Oh, Beck,” Dakota said and enveloped her in a full-body hug. “He was so not worth it.”

  “I know!” she insisted, because she did. Paul wasn’t a bad guy, but he was a crappy boyfriend. He was so crappy that he wouldn’t even admit he was her boyfriend, even after six months of monogamy.

  “But we’re not talking about it, because if we’re talking about it, you’re thinking about it, and you need to stop thinking about the completely forgettable, totally-not-worth-it Paul. How about him?”

  She pointed to a guy in very nicely fitted
jeans who had his arm around a petite woman in similarly nice-fitting jeans.

  “Um, I think he’s taken.”

  “You don’t know that! It could be his sister.”

  Mr. Jeans leaned down and planted a sloppy kiss on Ms. Jeans’s mouth.

  “Eh, fine,” Dakota gracefully conceded. “Maybe it’s the venue. I just thought a sports bar would be full of dudes.”

  “I still don’t understand how it’s possible you’ve never been to a sports bar before.”

  “I hate TV.” That was true. Dakota was the only woman Becky knew for whom Netflix and chill was a deal breaker. She wouldn’t even watch TV for the sake of the euphemism. “If a guy wants to have sex, he should just invite me over for sex,” Dakota was fond of saying.

  Becky preferred the euphemism. At least, she thought she did. But it wasn’t getting her very far in the romance department.

  What Dakota didn’t understand was that sports bars were full of bros, those suburban white guys who grew up with natural athletic prowess, good-enough intellect, and never had to deal with bullying or, like, actual problems. Paul was a bro. He wore rugby shirts but didn’t play rugby. He still talked to all his frat brothers. He didn’t understand the misogyny inherent in the system. Becky shouldn’t date bros. Bros didn’t usually date girls like her either—bookish girls with too much imagination and sunny dispositions that belied the huge chips on their shoulders for people who grew up having it easy. She shouldn’t have dated Paul, that was for sure, because look where that got her?

  Dumped, buzzed on beer, and surrounded by the kind of guy she wasn’t supposed to be dating anymore.

  She wasn’t supposed to be dating anymore, period.

  “You look glum,” Dakota told her. “You don’t want to sleep with the kind of guy who wants to sleep with a girl who looks glum.”

  “I’m not glum.”

  “You need more beer. It’s your round.”

  Becky sighed and picked up her purse. The bar was three-dudes deep and she was going to have to jostle and push her way through, which was annoying.

  Dakota grabbed her purse from her. “I should make you try to get someone to buy us a round.”

  Becky grabbed her purse back. “Baby steps.”

  “OK, baby steps. First, a little physical interaction. Then, sex!”

  Becky widened her eyes in embarrassment, trying to channel a look that said, I know you’re my best friend, but please shut up. It didn’t work.

  “Hey, a girl’s gotta get her rocks off, too, you know. You should try it some time, Beck.”

  “I did get my rocks off.”

  “Don’t say it—”

  “With Paul.”

  “Girl, you barely got your rocks tumbled with that guy.”

  Becky immediately regretted the less-than-steamy details of her sex life that she’d spilled over the last bottle of wine they’d shared.

  “You shouldn’t settle for that.”

  “I didn’t think I was settling!”

  “Please. That’s your problem, Beck. You don’t want to get your rocks off unless it comes with a spare key and half of the closet.”

  “What? No! I can . . . ugh, I can’t keep saying ‘get my rocks off.’”

  “I’m just saying, you’re young—”

  Becky raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re hot—”

  Becky raised the other one.

  “Now is not the time to be settling down. Now is the time to sow your wild oats!”

  Dakota’s enthusiasm was starting to draw the attention of other bar patrons. Only Dakota could tear a man’s gaze away from a dozen sportsball games.

  “‘Sow your wild oats’? Why are we talking like old-timers?”

  “You durned whippersnapper, ain’t you kids ever heard of casual sex?”

  “Hey, I can have casual sex!”

  Dakota got a determined gleam in her eye. Becky knew what was going to come out of her mouth before she even said it.

  “Prove it.”

  Becky went for a mouthful of beer, only to find there were no mouthfuls left. Maybe Dakota would go get this round. Maybe she would go away and never come back.

  “I bet you can’t,” Dakota goaded.

  “I’m not taking a bet about casual sex!”

  “Why not?”

  “This is how all those romcoms start. I’ll take the bet and go home with the rando and he’ll be the love of my life. Except then he’ll turn out to be a commitment-phobic narcissist with bad taste in curtains and I’ll end up shouting over the crowds in a loud sports bar drinking beer and waking up with a hangover and what’s the point?”

  “I hate it when romcoms end like that.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t even think you know what you mean.”

  The truth was, Becky wanted to meet the love of her life. She wanted marriage and kids and all those boring, traditional things her feminist heart felt a little guilty about wanting. She wanted equal pay for equal work, too. She just also wanted someone to go home to at the end of the day, someone to cook dinner with and talk about how great it was to be earning the same amount of money.

  Not that picking up a stranger in a bar would net her any of that.

  “I’m just saying that I don’t see how going home with a stranger is going to get me any closer to the love of my life.”

  “No. No love stuff. You’re too focused on it,” Dakota said, just when Becky was starting to warm to the idea of taking home a stranger who turned out to be her one true love. “You’re obsessed with love and you keep trying to make it work with guys who don’t deserve you. You need just pure, straight-up, no-strings-attached sex.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. Hot, sweaty, dirty sex with someone who makes you see stars and who you never have to see again.”

  That didn’t sound terrible. It had been a really long time since she’d had hot, sweaty, dirty sex. Paul was more of a lights-off, man-on-top kind of guy.

  “But what if I fall in love with the dirty-sex guy?”

  Dakota shook her head. “No. You can’t. You can’t even think about that, because if you think it’s a possibility, you’ll start putting your eggs in his basket and, knowing your taste in men, his basket will have a hole in the bottom. Or a wife,” she added, and they took a moment to remember the guy before Paul, the one who worked late hours during the week, or so he said. Turned out, he wasn’t busy at work. He was busy with his wife.

  “Seriously, Beck, the guy didn’t even deny it,” she said. “He was just stringing you along for his own ego. You don’t deserve shit like that. No, you deserve—” Dakota made a gesture that had some of the bros looking over at them curiously.

  “I don’t know if I can handle that,” Becky said.

  “Becky Schrader! You are a liberated woman in control of your own sexuality!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Beck, you could have any guy in this room and you’re settling! You have marriage blinders on. You’re seeing the trees of quote-unquote good matches and you’re missing out on a whole forest of dazzling sexual experiences.”

  “A whole forest?”

  “Babe, there are forests out there you haven’t even imagined. Or at least haven’t imagined in a while.”

  Becky instantly and again regretted ever sharing every detail of her sex life with her best friend. But Dakota wasn’t wrong. Becky wanted a normal life, that was true. That wasn’t going to change. But . . . she was bored. And maybe Dakota was right. Becky was so focused on the right way to achieve her normal life—meet, date, commit—but it wasn’t working. No matter how many Pauls or Russes or Phils she met, she wasn’t finding the one who would stick. Maybe she needed a break.

  She could definitely do with a break from her normal life.

  Oh God, she was starting to agree with Dakota.

  “I can see you’re starting to agree with me.” Ha, so Dakota could read her looks. She just ignored them when it suited her.
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  Dakota handed her back her purse. “Let’s discuss this over another round.”

  Becky rolled her eyes and started toward the bar.

  There was a big play—sportsball!—and a cheer went up and she almost got elbowed in the nose, but the distraction enabled her to sneak through the crowd and make eye contact with the bartender. He was cute. She’d never slept with a bartender before. But if she wanted to sleep with him, she’d have to stick around until after his shift was over, and she didn’t think she could stay up that late.

  Wow, was she a thrill seeker or what?

  No wonder she dated boring guys like Paul. Hell, she half-expected Paul to walk into this bar at any moment. Except Paul was away for the weekend, at a cousin’s wedding. To which she hadn’t been invited. Because she wasn’t his girlfriend.

  Not that she particularly wanted to go to a family wedding, but it would have been nice to have been asked.

  That first part wasn’t true. She’d never been to a big family wedding before. She didn’t have a big extended family; her family was . . . well, they weren’t much on traditional celebrations. And Becky may have said as much to Paul when he mentioned the cousin’s impending nuptials.

  Hmph.

  She took the beer and her change but left the bartender a nice tip because she wasn’t going to have sex with him and headed back to Dakota.

  Dakota, of course, was no longer alone.

  She had been joined by two guys—oh, great, a setup. One was about Dakota’s height, which wasn’t tall, wearing a Broncos sweatshirt and a game day scarf, which Dakota was clearly pointing at and mocking. It looked like the guy thought Dakota was flirting. Poor guy, Becky thought. The other guy was wearing a similar sweatshirt, no scarf, and . . . a wedding ring.