by Elaine Fox
“A ‘date diet’?” Lily’s brows descended, and she looked at him skeptically, unsure what to make of this finish. She’d been admiring his struggle, his desire to make things right, but this…this just didn’t sound true. It sounded like an excuse you gave someone you didn’t want to have to ask out just because you’d kissed them.
“I’ve made too many stupid decisions,” he continued, “or nondecisions, based on nothing but knee-jerk physical reactions. And I can’t do it anymore. I’m getting too old. I don’t want to just play around.”
“Okay.” Lily nodded slowly. The last thing she would have pegged Brady for was a man in search of…psychological clarity. Although she’d seen Tricia, and she was pretty sure the woman was nuts. That might put the fear of God into someone who was not ordinarily afraid of anything.
She took a deep breath. “Well, that’s good, Brady. Very mature.”
Brady laughed. “I don’t know about that. It’s still about getting what I want. It’s just that what I want has changed.” He lifted his glass and drained it.
“So, what you want is…?”
“Friendship. With a woman.” He shrugged his eyebrows and gave a despairing little laugh. “A connection that isn’t sexual.”
Lily nodded, wondering how you undid a connection that was already sexual. It was something she was eager to do herself, however, so she supposed that boded well for the endeavor’s success.
“Now you’ve heard my whole sordid story.” He shook his head with a smile, his cheeks definitely pink. “So what do you say, Lily Tyler? Think we can be friends?”
“Friends? Sure,” she said, but the words didn’t exactly ring with conviction. She couldn’t help thinking something was missing. This outgoing, charismatic guy wasn’t the type to just swear off women altogether. Besides, you didn’t have to swear off women altogether just to avoid jumping into bed with someone. That was absurd.
No, it had to be her. It had to be that he didn’t want any involvement with her and was going out of his way to make sure she understood that.
The question was: Why did she care?
He held up both hands. “I promise I won’t jump you again. Scout’s honor.” He crossed his heart, then held up three fingers and grinned, tilting his head. “As long as you promise not to answer the door in nothing but your bathrobe again.”
She made herself smile. “It’s a deal.”
They looked at each other for a long moment, then both shifted their eyes away.
“So tell me about this guy you’re seeing,” Brady said, and cleared his throat. “Is it the one who was over the other night? That Jerry guy?” He leaned back in the stool and regarded her, his expression more relaxed now, his hazel eyes smiling.
He was relieved, she thought. Was that insulting, or was this feeling she had something else? Something disturbing, like disappointment?
“Yes, Gerald. He’s—he works with my father,” she said, turning her mind to Gerald with some effort. It was hard with Brady right in front of her, suddenly seeming like a good guy. A good guy with no interest in her.
Oh brother, was she that fickle? Liking the boy who was in front of her, the one she couldn’t have? She didn’t want Brady, she wanted Gerald, she reminded herself. The man of her dreams. Her Mr. Knightley, for goodness’ sake. Brady was simply the distracting Mr. Churchill, the self-avowed rogue.
She lifted her chin and assumed an expression of confidence. “Gerald is a brilliant lawyer. He even impressed my father, which is hard to do. I’ve had kind of a crush on him since the day I first met him, in my father’s office.”
“A crush, huh?” Brady’s eyes narrowed. “That’s hard to imagine. You don’t seem like the crush type. How long has that been going on?”
She fingered her glass, running a fingernail along its sweaty exterior. “I guess I met him about two years ago. Two and a half.”
“Wow, and it’s taken him this long to ask you out?” Brady got up and headed for the refrigerator. He opened it and took out the pitcher of tea. “I mean, I know you’re intimidating and all, but come on, buddy. Show some guts.”
Lily cocked her head. “You think I’m intimidating?”
He chuckled. “You have your moments. At least with me.”
She couldn’t help a small smile. “I intimidate you?”
He shot her a sideways glance. “I’m going to plead the fifth on that.” He took up his glass and poured himself more tea, then paused, looking at her sheepishly. “I’m sorry, is it okay if I help myself?”
Lily laughed. So he had some charm, she could resist that.
“It’s fine,” she said. “In fact I prefer it. That way I don’t have to remember to be a good hostess.”
“Hey, don’t ever stand on ceremony with me.”
As he stood there next to her at the counter, Lily couldn’t help being aware of how big he was, in the same way she had the night of the kiss. Not big in the bulky sense, but in a masculine way. His presence took up more room than his body. She felt like she was being touched even when he stood three feet away.
At the same time there was something comforting about his nearness, as if he were some kind of predatory animal who was dangerous to everyone but her. To her, he was protective.
Okay, she thought. Yes. I can be friends with him.
She took up the pitcher of iced tea, poured herself another glass, and turned her thoughts inward. She had to remember what she loved about Gerald, and how that had come to be. And she had to make herself tell Brady Cole all about it.
“Gerald caught my eye first of all because he’s tall,” she said, remembering back to that long-ago day she’d gone to have lunch with her father. That day when Gerald had stepped out of his office and captured her heart with his deep, dark, sensual eyes. Something about those eyes, framed with luscious black lashes, had drawn her in right away and had not let her go.
“He’s six-foot-four,” she continued. “Well, you saw him. And he dresses impeccably. And…there’s this way he moves, with a kind of aristocratic grace. Maybe that’s it, the aristocratic thing. It’s like he’s from a different era, in a way. He’s unfailingly polite, courteous, a perfect gentleman. A classic gentleman.”
“Huh,” Brady said, sitting once again at the island. “Sounds like something of a throwback.”
“Kind of,” she said. “I have thought of him as a character from Emma, my favorite Jane Austen novel. From the early nineteenth century.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it.”
“Really?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I was nearly dragged to the movie by a date. You know how it is with guys and chick flicks.”
She smiled and reached back to the counter behind her. See? she thought with some smugness. He wasn’t even literary. Gerald had actually read the book. She grabbed another slice of lemon and turned back toward Brady to squeeze it into her glass of tea. When she was done, Brady held out his hand and she gave it to him. He squeezed the rest into his glass.
“But what really captured my attention,” she continued, “at least at first, was how respectfully he was treated by my father. My father, who treats friends, associates, even family, as if we’re only there to serve the needs of whatever moment he’s in, he actually asked Gerald’s opinion. Then he made a point of introducing him to me. At which point Gerald makes this totally lame joke, and my father slaps him on the back like it’s the cleverest thing he’s ever heard and walks off, saying something about letting us ‘young people’ get to know each other better.”
Lily shook her head in wonder.
“Well, I guess you’d have to know my father to know how strange that is,” she added. “But it was as good as if he’d put his stamp of approval on Gerald’s forehead and handed him over to me. What sold me on Gerald, though, was the fact that after his lame joke and my father’s unwarranted laughter, he looked at me with this ironic, amused expression, and we both laughed. Like we were instant conspirators.”
&nb
sp; She smiled, remembering the feeling.
“Ever since that moment,” she continued, “Gerald has treated me like I was one of his very good friends. He always made a point of talking to me when I stopped by, he’d get off the phone if I strolled by his office, or break off a conversation with a colleague to show me some attention. And when he looked at me, as clichéd as it sounds, he made me feel as if I were the only woman in the world.”
She was silent a moment, thinking about how special that had made her feel for so long.
“That’s got to be a pretty good feeling,” Brady said after a while.
She glanced at him. He was studying his glass of tea, spinning it in the condensation on the countertop.
She sighed. “Yes. It was that quality that kept me believing, despite the fact that he continuously turned down invitations from me for dinner or drinks, that he privately was interested in me, but was held back by some…external reason.”
He lifted a brow and looked up at her without raising his head. “And was he?”
She laughed lightly. How relieved she’d been when Gerald had finally told her the truth!
“Yes. I found out because one day I gathered all my courage and asked him, point-blank, if I should stop asking him out.” She paused, recalling the disastrously expensive Phantom of the Opera tickets she’d bought that precipitated this course of action. “And he told me he was waiting to make partner. That he found me ‘completely desirable and charming,’” she smiled wistfully, “but that he did not want to get ahead by dating the boss’s daughter. Not only did he not want my father to get the idea he was using me, and not only did he not want his colleagues thinking he was taking advantage, but most of all—and he said this while giving me this intense look and taking my hands in his—that he didn’t want me to get that idea. When he asked me out, he said, he wanted me to know that he was asking because he wanted to be with me and for no other reason.”
Brady was silent a moment, nodding. Then he said, “So I guess he made partner.”
Lily sighed and moved around the island to sit on the stool next to Brady. She turned it around so that it faced the rest of the room and leaned back, wondering if the whole world saw that discrepancy immediately except her. Though she hated to admit it, she had to consider that maybe Georgia was right—that Gerald hadn’t tired of waiting for her so much as waiting to make partner. Because though Lily had chalked it up to romantic fervor at the time he’d asked her out, their dates had since proved so tepid in the fervor department that she now had to rethink it.
But she wasn’t about to tell Brady any of that.
“No, he hasn’t. Not yet,” she said finally. “But he’s right on the verge. I think he just got tired of waiting. Like I did.”
She didn’t dare look in Brady’s direction, didn’t want to see the skeptical look he was probably wearing.
“I can certainly understand that,” he murmured.
Lily dropped her head, looking at the glass in her hands, and told herself to ignore the thrill the innuendo in his words produced in her. No doubt he didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but for Lily it brought back the same sensation she’d felt that night he’d stopped by, the night of the kiss. That sensation of desire, of nearly irresistible attraction.
Was she crazy? She had to let that go, she told herself firmly. Now that she knew how completely Brady agreed with her that the kiss had been a mistake—despite its being the most passionate kiss Lily had ever experienced—she knew she had to make clear to both of them that she had no expectations of him except friendship.
“I’m sure that now, after so much time,” she said, “Gerald figured out that my father wouldn’t be influenced by whether we were dating or not.”
Brady frowned and looked at the counter. “No, no you’re probably right.”
Lily glanced over at him. He was working hard not to say something, she could tell. The effort nearly made her laugh. Instead she said, “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
He looked up at her, surprised. “What do you mean?”
At that, she did laugh. “I can tell by your face. You think he got tired of waiting for the partnership and decided to use me after all.” She shook her head at him. “You should never play poker, Brady.”
He laughed with her. “Lily, come on. I don’t even know the guy. And like you said, he’s been working with your father for two years now. I’m sure he’s realized that your dad knows what he’s doing.”
“He certainly does.” She turned in her seat and knocked the side of one fist sternly on the counter. “And believe me when I say my father has never been one to be influenced by his family in any way. Not even about something as simple as coming home for dinner at night. So I don’t think he’ll be handing out any partnerships based on who’s dating me.”
“Why, Lily,” Brady said, a teasing glint in his eye. “Do we have some ‘issues’ with our father? Should I get my brother on the phone?”
She laughed. “It must be awful having a psychologist for a brother.”
“Oh he’s not a real one. He just plays one on TV.” He shook his head ruefully. “Which is a joke, but not all that far from the truth. He writes a sitcom about a shrink.”
“He does? That’s fascinating,” she said. “Which one? Would I have seen it?”
“I don’t know.” He pushed one hand through his hair and shrugged. “Some cable show. Called Sex at Midnight or something like that.”
Lily raised her eyebrows. She’d heard of that show, but she got the feeling Brady didn’t want to talk about his brother’s success.
“What about your parents? Where are they?” she asked.
Brady hesitated. “Well my dad…” He laughed curtly and held his hands palm up. “Who knows? I never met him. And my mom’s in a nursing home in New Jersey.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily murmured, amazed at the transformation in his face. From teasing and laughing one minute, to closed up and sober the next. He really shouldn’t ever play poker.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Holy cow, is that clock right?”
She looked up at it, too. “Yes. Why? Are you late for something?”
“Yep.” He placed both hands on the counter and pushed his chair back. “It was great talking to you, Lily,” he said, smiling again. “Thanks for understanding about…everything.”
She smiled back. “Sure. Thank you, too.”
“So…” He held out a hand to her. “Friends?”
She nodded once and took his hand. Her breath caught in her chest as he gently squeezed, his palm enveloping hers.
“Friends,” she said.
He didn’t let go immediately, instead looking into her eyes an extended moment, a half smile on his face. She’d never noticed before how like warm, glowing embers hazel eyes could be.
“Friends,” he said again, in the voice that sent trills up her spine. “I think I’m going to like this.”
He headed back out the hallway to the front door but paused by the hall table. Picking up the pillowcase, he said, “Is this mine?”
Lily, who’d followed him, felt herself color at the sight of it, as if he could read the thoughts she’d had about him when she’d held it earlier.
“Yes, Megan gave it back to me. I wish I’d seen you get Doug into that.”
He chuckled. “It was a trick, all right.” He wadded the fabric up in one hand and opened the door with the other. “See you later, Lily.”
“Yes, see you around.”
Lily kept her eyes on the material in his hand as he walked out the door and wished for no good reason she could think of that she’d put the pillowcase someplace else before he’d arrived.
“Hi, Brady, come on in,” Megan said.
He’d arrived at the Foley house to ride to the airport with Sutter, his bike seat being out of commission. Foley had offered to send the car for him but Brady didn’t want the limo to pull up in front of his house and make Lily feel worse than she already did abo
ut Doug’s destruction. Around Brady’s calves a yellow mutt sniffed and wagged happily, looking up as Brady reached down to ruffle its ears.
Megan Rose was the kind of woman Brady considered low-maintenance. Ironic, considering her boyfriend, his boss, was a man who could afford the highest-maintenance woman ever born. Pretty in a vivacious way, Megan also had a way of looking at you that made you think she was figuring out exactly who you were. There was no falseness in her, and no tolerance of falseness in others.
“Hello, Megan,” he said, entering the foyer of the house on Washington Avenue. He’d made the mistake of calling her Mrs. Foley the first time they’d met, only to be corrected by a peal of laughter. Seemed his boss was living in sin with this free-spirited woman. “Thanks again for yesterday. You saved me; I was afraid I’d killed that damn dog.”
Megan laughed. “Nobody would have held you accountable for that, Brady. That would have been death by sheer vindictiveness. Doug has a little problem with men, you know.”
“So I’ve learned.”
“Come on in,” she said, leading him through the house to the huge kitchen at the back. “I’m just feeding Belle. And Sutter ought to be ready in a few minutes. Can I get you a cup of coffee while you wait?”
Brady said sure, and sauntered over to where Belle, Sutter and Megan’s one-year-old daughter, sat fingering a flotilla of Cheerios on the tray in front of her high chair. When she saw him, she smiled and held one out.
Brady took it and pretended to eat it.
“Belle,” he said to Megan, “that’s a good Southern name.” He took another Cheerio from the child and made a show of pretending to eat that one, too.
