“Hence the term, dive.” Meg glanced around. “Even the jukebox isn’t turned up enough to drown out the burps from the bar.”

Lucas cleaned the table on his next turn, putting Judy to shame. Once he sank the eight ball, she handed him the forty bucks and shook his hand. “And that will be the last twenty you get from me.”

“Fair enough,” he said as he slid the forty bucks in the back pocket of his skin-tight jeans.

“There’s a dance club up a block. Wanna blow out of here?”

From anyone else, Judy might be a little concerned, but Lucas and Dan were obviously into each other and about as safe as anyone could be outside of her brother.

Meg nodded when Judy made eye contact. Ten minutes later, Lucas was using the money he won from their match to pay the cover charge.

Judy wasn’t sure if walking into the club with two good-looking guys kept men away, or if there just weren’t that many single guys in the room, but she and Meg didn’t have to brush off one hand all night.

Lucas was a wannabe actor who waited tables as a day job, and Dan worked in research with a small newspaper. They’d dated each other for nearly a year and had just moved in together to make life easier.

“So how come you girls don’t have dates?”

“We just moved here,” Meg told Dan.

“And I really don’t need to complicate my life right now.”

“Is that why you keep blowing Rick off?” Meg asked.

Before Judy could open her mouth, Meg leaned into their new friends and said, “Rick is seriously hot, and boy is he ever trying to get her to go out with him.”

Lucas leaned forward. “What’s wrong with Rick?”

His never-ending smile, his huge arms and thick everything? His alpha self was just too mind-numbing to actually ever consider in a real relationship. Getting wrapped up in Rick would distract her from her goals. If she was ever going to prove her independence in the architectural world and prove how wrong her father was about her second major in school, Judy needed to concentrate. Placing Rick in her life . . . or, she sighed, her bed, would shift her off course. He was too intense not to. Just thinking about him made her smile and her palms sweat. He’d even returned her favorite jacket. Which meant he’d gone back into the bar fight to retrieve it. In her perfect avoidance fashion, Judy hadn’t opened up a conversation with him to thank him. She figured she’d see him sooner or later and thank him then.

Meg waved a hand in front of Judy’s eyes. “Earth to Judy?”

“Sorry . . . what was the question?”

Meg shook her head and answered for her. “There’s nothing wrong with Rick.”

“He calls me babe! That annoys me,” she told them.

“He calls you babe to annoy you.”

The guys laughed and they changed the subject to how they met.

The dance club was packed, and more than one person was taking pictures with their cell phone. It wasn’t until a particularly close flash made Judy flinch that she turned around to see a long-lensed camera pointing their way. Her first thought was why? . . . then she remembered Rick’s and Karen’s warnings. “Must be a slow night,” she said to Meg and nodded behind her.

“If they’re searching you out, it must be.”

“What’s up with him?” Lucas asked while nodding toward the photographer.

“He must think you’re famous,” Judy told Lucas, who would love to have his face in a tabloid . . . any tabloid. She had to admit, the thought actually brought a smile to her face. Mike might have gotten over the attention he attracted, but as his sister, she hadn’t really experienced it all that much. Yeah, the photographers showed up at her graduation, but they weren’t searching her out. Her entire family had been plastered all over the papers shortly after Karen and Mike had announced their pending divorce. When news spread about her and Zach’s relationship, it seemed the entire Gardner family was under the media glare. It didn’t last long, however. According to Karen, the media had the attention span of a gnat.

“I don’t think a few buried commercials have made me anything but a wannabe,” Lucas said.

“Well you never know. Might as well smile and pretend you don’t see him. Then he’ll question who you are.”

“You think?” Lucas glanced over her shoulder and quickly looked away. Beside her, Meg laughed.

The flash went off several more times.

“Don’t most celebrities duck out a back door when they’re spotted?” Meg asked.

Judy took a last swig from her beer and pushed away from the table. “Let’s pretend we’re famous,” she told their new friends.

Dan and Lucas surrounded the two of them as they shoved through the bumping and grinding crowd on the dance floor.

A bouncer stood between them and what looked like a hall to the back of the building.

“Hey!” Meg smiled at the overly large man and gestured behind the four of them. “We need a discreet exit.”

The bouncer looked over them as a flash from a following camera blinded them. He leaned to the side and the four of them ran down the hall laughing. They burst out the back door and kept running toward the street. They slowed when they reached the pool hall.

“You guys are crazy!” Dan caught his side as he leaned against Judy’s car.

Judy opened the passenger side since Meg was driving and tossed her small purse inside. “This was fun. We’ll have to hang out again.” They’d already put their phone numbers in their cell phones earlier.

Meg hugged Lucas right as the photographer from the dance club found them.

Judy jumped in the car with a wave. “See you guys next weekend?”

“Sounds good.”

Meg sped out of the parking lot while Lucas and Dan scrambled to their car. The photographer didn’t give chase.

Judy met Meg’s eyes and they both burst out laughing.

Chapter Five

The sound of a crying baby met Rick’s ears as he stepped into Neil and Gwen’s home. Neil was all about security and seclusion, so he knew Rick had arrived long before he entered the house. A must when your best friend topped two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle and had a Marine background that would hold no issue with taking out a trespasser entering his home uninvited.

Neil was fiercely in love with his lady wife and had nearly lost her over two years ago. The experience had changed the man. Now he smiled more than Rick ever remembered while they were on active duty, and he talked more. Oh, he was as silent as ever when he was working on something in his head, but Gwen had made the man open up since he’d married her.