The Dating Intervention: Book 1 in the Intervention Series (6 page)

“So…” Josie said. “Our principal is leaving.”
 

“No! Scott Smith is leaving?! Whatever could be important enough to draw him away from Juniper Elementary School?” Delaney asked, genuinely shocked. “Hasn’t it been his dream to be principal there since he was in the fifth grade?”
 

Josie giggled. “It has, yes. He talks about it at every single staff meeting, as you know. But I guess he got this new Director of Curriculum position at the district. So he’ll be moving on.”
 

“What does this mean for you? You can finally stop wearing those stupid polo shirts? And nylons?” Delaney said.
 

Josie shuddered. “Both of those are pretty bad. But actually, I was thinking about applying for his position.”
 

Summer raised her glass. “Cheers! I think you’d be great!”
 

“But I thought you loved working with the kids,” Delaney said.
 

“I do,” Josie answered. “And I’d miss them, for sure. But at the same time, if I could make the school even better, inspire the teachers even more, imagine how many kids I could reach. Right now, I help maybe twenty-five kids a year. But as principal, I could help hundreds.”
 

“I hadn’t considered that,” Delaney said. “That sounds great, actually. I’m really happy for you. What do you have to do?”
 

“Oh, you know, the usual. I already have my administrator’s degree, so I just have to apply and then interview and stuff. There’ll be a panel, I think.”
 

Josie picked up a bar napkin and began shredding it into little pieces, which she put in a tidy pile off to one side. It looked like a miniature Matterhorn.
 

“Are you nervous, Josie?” Delaney asked. She looked at Summer. “She’s nervous!”
 

Summer put a hand over Josie’s.
 

“You’ll be great. What does Paul think of all this?”
 

“Oh, you know. Whatever I want to do. He’s about as interested in it as he would be if I took up knitting or checkers.”
 

“Yikes,” Summer said. “How are things going in the Garcia-Comstock household these days?”
 

“They’re going okay,” Josie said. “It’s just that Paul is, like, married to his job. Ever since he took that undercover detective position. He works horrible hours, he’s never home and when he
is
home, he’s sleeping or watching TV.”
 

“Yikes,” Delaney said.
 

“I know. But it’s all new to him,” Josie said. “I’m sure he’ll throttle back a little, return to reality, once he gets used to it. Anyway.”
 

She shrugged and took a sudden deep interest in a tiny smudge on her glass.

“Ooh, we can practice the interview questions with you!” Delaney said. “I love doing that stuff. I did that with a customer the other night. He came in because he was nervous about a job interview the next day. So I gave him a beer on the house and ran through some questions. It was really fun!”
 

Josie shook her head. Finished shredding her napkin, she starting making patterns out of the torn-up pieces. “Perfect. Well, I’ll keep you guys posted.”
 

“What about you, Summer? What’s going on in your world?”
 

“Well, I haven’t really got anything. You know, it’s wake up, feed the baby, feed kids, take kids to school, feed the baby, fold laundry, do dishes, feed the baby, work, pick up kids, feed the baby, make dinner, bathe kids, feed the baby, put everyone to bed. And then fall into an exhausted heap in my own bed, only to be woken ten times per night remembering stuff I forgot to do, remembering stuff I don’t want to forget to do, feed the baby and then get up and do it all over again the next day. And I’m lucky if I ever speak to my husband, much less have sex with him.”
 

In a display of said exhaustion, she put her arms on the table and put her forehead on them. Her long blonde hair, pulled into a messy ponytail, fanned out and tangled with Josie’s shredded-napkin designs.

“Wow,” Josie said. “This is coming out of left field. I’ve never heard you talk like this.” She paused. “And to think, this is what I have to look forward to when I finally convince Paul to have kids.”
 

“Yeah,” Summer said from under her hair. “You’re a newlywed now, but you just wait. You think you’re happy now. Wait ’til you’re carting four kids around and ironing your husband’s work clothes. That’s paradise, my sisters.”

“Wow, Summer,” Delaney said, catching Josie’s eye. “Sarcasm just doesn’t look good on you. What’s going on with you? I thought you loved being a mom.”
 

“Bad day, I guess,” Summer said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
 

She pushed her still-full glass of wine to the middle of the table, slid off her stool and walked over to the bathroom, all without looking at them.

“Geez,” Delaney said in a loud whisper. “What’s wrong with her? She never has a bad day.”
 

“No idea,” Josie said. “But you know how she gets moody sometimes. Remember that time freshman year when we thought she was mad at us for, like, a week, but it was really just that she’d started her period and didn’t want us to know? So she was avoiding us?”
 

Delaney smirked. “Yeah. How could I forget? Well, let’s hope it’s something like that.”
 

“Or let’s hope it’s not,” Josie said.

Friday night at Rowdy’s: Delaney’s favorite. No, tending bar didn’t put to use all her years in college or vet school. Memorizing orders, mixing drinks, sliding glasses down the shiny wooden bar … none of it had anything to do with the skeletal structure of a dog or the anatomy of a horse.
 

But she seriously rocked it. It was
fun
.

And
, a teeny voice whispered from somewhere in the depths of her subconscious,
it’s comfortable.

“I need a six-pack of Coors for the six-pack of hunks who just took table fifteen,” Ivy Simone, Delaney’s spunky co-worker, said, sliding behind the bar to join her. “And can you mix me a couple of house specials for the ladies at seven?”
 

“Sure thing,” Delaney answered.
 

The hunks were obviously out-of-towners – and here for women. Wearing name brand jeans and t-shirts with brand new cowboy hats and stiff boots, they reeked of cologne and emanated pheromones. The ladies at table seven were regular Happy Hour visitors and entrenched in deep conversation. Mary and Carrie – work-from-home employees of the same online company who met up weekly for live face time.
 

“What about the couple at table two?”
 

“They’re not sure yet.” Ivy opened the beers, placed them on a tray. “I can’t tell if they’re five minutes from breaking up or five minutes from running to the bathroom to have hot, sweaty sex.”
 

Delaney scooped ice into glasses and used a stealthy sideways glance to check them out. “I’d say the latter.”
 

The man leaned in close to the woman and was running a finger up her arm. Ivy shrugged. Delaney set the two house specials – Cactus Coolers with prickly pear juice and vodka – on the tray with the beers and Ivy hefted it and sashayed off to make her delivery.
 

It was nearly eight and Rowdy’s was just heating up. Delaney felt the beginnings of the rhythm of a good night. The way she saw it, she thought as she handed two Budweisers to a dirt-caked man in construction boots, there was nothing better than this: an upscale cowboy bar in the middle of this cowboy town. It attracted a huge following of regulars, plus college kids and visitors – all big drinkers. Delaney was always busy, always moving, always meeting new people.
 

“You’re quiet tonight,” Ivy said, pouring two glasses of red for the couple who’d obviously opted for romance.
 

Delaney shrugged and slid a couple of beers across the bar to two college guys who’d just come in. She’d been deep in thought for the past twenty-four hours, since Happy Hour with Summer and Josie.
 

Deep in thought about Jake Rhoades – what did he do on Friday nights, why hadn’t she ever seen him at Rowdy’s and why hadn’t she asked for his number before this nonsense with Summer and Josie? – and deep in thought about The Dating Intervention.
 

Dread had clung, sticky like honey, since she’d walked into Rowdy’s at six. Dread about the rules the girls had imposed, dread about all the time she was going to spend with herself during the next six weeks and dread about quitting this job.
 

She’d done a lot of soul-searching during that time. Making a huge effort to be objective, she examined her life from the girls’ point of view.
 

She was thirty-four, eternally single (even when she was dating at least three guys at a time) and working at a bar. She ate takeout, alone (or with her cat) every night. The most she did in the kitchen was brew coffee and throw together a PB and J. Maybe she really should be doing more with her life.
 

A couple of girls came in and ordered vodka tonics. Delaney squeezed a bit of lime juice into each, slid them across the bar and watched as the girls walked onto the dance floor, drinks in hand.

Ivy had become a good friend, but she was only twenty-two. Benjamin – who always delivered their drinks during Happy Hour – was barely twenty-one. And it was true that the men she met at Rowdy’s weren’t that great. Wasn’t it time to face the facts?
 

Mark Cortez. Steamy, dreamy, totally sexy. They’d met when he’d come into Rowdy’s and asked her to explain the horse photo to him. After the initial flirtation, he spent that entire evening staring sadly into his whiskey on the rocks. He’d been depressed and clingy, lifting a hand every time she passed his spot at the bar. She’d slept with him that very night, reveling in his hunger for her, all while her intuition screamed at her that he was too needy. She’d ignored it because she liked being needed. Now she realized he’d just been lonely. Yes, he was a passionate lover. And he said he’d like to marry her. But she suspected it wasn’t
her
he’d wanted. It was the idea of someone to be with. Chemistry had kept them together for several months, but that was it. He’d grown to care about her, but she never felt like he was all that
interested
. She’d felt the same way: the sex was great, the company was good, but she didn’t really care to hear about Mark’s day at work, or his mother in Guatemala. Didn’t they both deserve more than that?
 

Zachary. Brainy and adorable in his wire-rimmed glasses. They met during his first – and last – visit to Rowdy’s. He brought his brother, Eli, into the bar when Eli came from California to watch Zachary’s first poetry reading. Zachary kept telling Delaney Rowdy’s wasn’t his type of hangout. She’d been inspired to convince him it could be. To prove intellectuals could work at country western bars, she engaged in a deep, if halting, conversation every time she returned to their table to deliver their pineapple juice and Malibu rum (
and what man drinks that girly shit, anyway?
). Finally, he’d asked her to come home with him, challenged her to a game of chess. And again, her intuition whispered that he wasn’t quite right for her. It told her, in a bossy voice, that she was sticking around only because she liked the challenge of proving she was up to his level. And she suspected he stuck around because he felt intellectually superior. Not a good foundation for a long-lasting, healthy relationship.

Finally, Xander walked in alone one night, in the mood for a cold one after a long day of kayaking. She was attracted to his adventurous side and quick wit.
 

“Want an adventure?” she asked coyly and he followed her back to the storeroom where they had a quickie.
 

That was one of about five times they’d had sex during the six months they adventure-dated. They never talked about much of anything, but enjoyed rock climbing, kayaking and hiking together. It was fun, but there was no passion. And her intuition told her she wanted passion. She ignored it for months.

Summer and Josie were right. She needed a big change. In fact, she needed a few big changes. And Summer and Josie would probably choose people for her that she wouldn’t choose for herself.

If nothing else, it would be an experience. What could it hurt?
 

Then Jake Rhodes walked into Rowdy’s.
 

Well, The Dating Intervention could hurt my autonomy.

***

The setting sun outlined Jake’s unmistakably divine muscular figure in the doorway. Delaney’s mouth dropped open. Her breathing hitched. Her heart stopped. At least for a brief second. Was this the Universe’s doing? Maybe Summer and Josie were right about serendipity.

“Thank you, Universe,” she whispered as he walked in.
 

She wished as hard as she could for dating autonomy. If it were up to her, she’d be running him down this very minute, dragging him to the back room, stripping off his clothes and having her way with him. She pictured herself raking her fingers through his hair, wrapping her legs around his waist and riding him, fast and hard.

Jake’s eyes focused on her from the moment he walked through the door until he was standing in front of her. By the time he strode up, she was practically panting and could taste coppery adrenaline at the back of her throat.
 

“Delaney Collins,” he said. He looked at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
 

She thought she might drool when he leaned his elbows on the bar, showing off his sculpted, tan forearms and his rugged hands.
 

“A cold beer,” she said, dragging her eyes up to meet his. “Rolling Rock.”
 

“That’ll do it. How’d you know?”
 

“It’s my specialty,” she said.
 

“You’re good, Delaney Collins,” he drawled.