“No?” The twinkle in Kayla’s eyes confirms she has picked up on the overly familiar interaction between Vince and me. “You’re not going to ask me if great sex can solve world peace?” she asks Vince.
“What?” Vince’s smile slips and I feel my face turning pink.
“Jackie and I were talking about really great sex and how it can overcome the biggest obstacles.”
Vince is frozen in place. He hasn’t looked over at me since Kayla said the word “sex.”
“Thanks for keeping that to yourself,” I tell Kayla flatly.
“Oh, it’s just Vince.” She throws a hand in dismissal. “He’s not going to tell the entire office about your sex-ploits with a hot, available man.” She tips her head, giving him a slow, knowing blink. “Are you, Vince?”
“Absolutely not.” His laugh is forced, but he recovers a millisecond later and fixes me with blue eyes that know way too much. Like the color of my underwear at this very moment. He commented about how black lace was his favorite when I slipped into them this morning. “You should keep doing what you’re doing with whomever you’re doing it, Butler. It’s working in your favor. You look incredible.”
Kayla’s grin matches his. I slink from the room and back to my own office.
Vince
Miller Grove is in full bloom. Flowers in every color dot bushes along the trails leading to the woods, to the butterfly house, and back the way we came: to the visitors’ center. A fat bumblebee hovers near Jackie for a second before she scares the shit out of it by swatting the air like a drugged break-dancer.
My chuckling stops short when she slaps me on the arm. “Ow!”
“I could have died!”
“They don’t sting, Butler. He’s probably sweating his way through a panic attack as we speak. You were the one who wanted to come out here. It’s not my fault you don’t like the great out of doors.”
She may not have followed through with jogging, but she decided that she liked to walk. Where prettier to walk than the park? she asked me while naked and towel-drying her hair after our shared shower. She’s been spending more time at my house than her own, and I don’t mind. Or at least I didn’t think I minded. Today when I walked into my master bath to flip off the light she’d left on, I picked up her wet towel off the floor.
I stood there for I don’t know how long, wondering why my heart was hammering double time and my mind was blaring a warning siren that, if real, could’ve been heard for miles.
I didn’t figure out what caused that blare until this very second. Now it hits me.
Jackie and I are starting to feel awfully…couple-y. The wet towel on my floor, or her lecturing me to rinse my coffee cup while she did it for me this morning, weren’t enough to make me nervous on their own, but combined with other couple-y things, they’re making me twitch. Other things like, say, walking through Miller Grove en route to the butterfly house.
I stop short of entering the domed greenhouse where winged insects that don’t scare Butler into spasms are housed.
“Kayla knows,” I say aloud for the first time.
Jackie’s wearing a T-shirt from a coffee shop and a pair of shorts that expose her long, tanned legs. Her ponytail shifts as she shakes her head. “I didn’t mean for her to know. She assumed I was talking about J.T.”
She walks to me, tipping her face to take me in. I assume, anyway. I take her in—all of her. How cute she looks squinting in the sunshine. The memory of those plush pink lips moaning my name as I drove deep this morning. The way she giggled when she dropped the soap and I gripped her hips with both hands and dared her to bend over.
I swipe my brow, suddenly hot and uncomfortable, and not from the summer day.
“She won’t tell anyone,” Jackie says, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried,” I snap.
“Then what’s the problem?” She genuinely wants to know, but it doesn’t stop my brain from thinking about how she just asked a couple-y question during our couple-y outing.
“Nothing. I don’t want to see the butterflies. You go on.”
Her lips pull into a frown. “I don’t have to see them.”
“Jackie, you can do whatever you want. We don’t have to do exactly the same things at the same time. You don’t have to pick up your wet towel and I don’t have to rinse my coffee mug.”
Shit. That was a bit of a tirade.
“You’re mad because I forgot to pick up my towel this morning?”
“I’m not mad.” It’s the truth. I’m not. If I’m being honest, I resent feeling mired. It’s too soon to feel mired. To feel like I have to run things by someone else before I do them. Like now. “I’m hungry. Let’s grab lunch.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“You pick.” I shake my head. You can’t get more couple-y than this conversation.
I start away from her, walking toward the visitors’ center by the parking lot. She catches up with me and we continue to have a conversation every couple on this planet has every damn day.
What sounds good?
It doesn’t matter. Just pick somewhere.
I picked last time. You pick this time.
Wherever is fine. Just tell me so I know where to go.
Go anywhere you like. I can eat anything.
Fine. We’ll have pizza.
We ate pizza last night.
“Dammit, Leslie!” It’s out of my mouth so quickly, I hear it at the same time Jackie does. I stomp on the brakes at a red light, the entire car jerking to a halt.
A thumping car full of teenagers pulls up next to us, laughing and whooping like their whole goddamn lives are in front of them.
“Just you wait!” I shout out the window. One of the guys, in a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses, tells me to fuck off before they floor it and squeal through the light as it turns green.
“Great. I’m my dad,” I grumble.
I’m aware of Jackie’s eyes on me as I swing into the nearest restaurant—a Dairy Queen. I shut off the engine, resting my head back on the seat, and wait for Jackie to lay into me. She’s silent so long, I begin to wonder if she’s still sitting there. I turn my head. Yup. Still there.
“Hungry?” she asks.
“A little.” My stomach has been a barren plain for about an hour. It’s not the only thing wrong, and I suspect she knows that. But she lets me off the hook, which is decidedly not couple-y. Could I have overreacted more?
“Let’s go in and get chicken baskets and Blizzards.” She unhooks her seatbelt and climbs out, leaning back in to say, “I’m not sharing my fries.”
—
An hour later I deposit Jackie at her doorstep.
“Sorry, Butler. I was…” There’s no good excuse, so I don’t finish that sentence. The only truth I could offer would be to say that I was an asshole—as big of an asshole as any other guy who gets in too deep too fast and can’t deal with his emotions. We really are a bunch of apes sometimes.
“Thanks for lunch,” she says, her Reese’s Pieces Blizzard with peanut butter and chocolate swirls in hand.
“I’ll text you.”
I wait until she steps into her apartment to put my car in drive. As I pull away, I notice two things. One, J.T. is shuffling through a stack of mail in front of his apartment, and two, I didn’t kiss Jackie goodbye.
Chapter 26
Jacqueline
Things are fine. And that’s not just a mantra I’m repeating to myself so I can sleep at night. Things really are fine.
Since the day at the park over a week ago, Vince and I have been working together and seeing each other and eating lunch together. Granted, no one has spent the night at anyone’s house lately. I made an excuse that I had to get home and do laundry and he let me go without argument.
Which is fine.
I think.
It should be. We’re not a couple who has to spend every single second together. We’re not a couple at all, technically. When he sugg
ested we should try things out, it didn’t include us having a label.
So. We’re fine.
“And then”—Vince is practically shouting, nostrils flared as he stands over my desk—“the asshole told me the problem with his shitty marketing plan was our execution. You know as well as I do that he wouldn’t budge when our design team suggested he try a different tagline. ‘Joe’s Stables.’ ” he drawls. “ ‘Ride ’er hard.’ ”
I can’t help tittering out a tiny laugh.
His eyebrows rise. “Bestiality funny to you?”
“No. It’s not. You, on the other hand…” I smile. “You’re funny to me.”
The anger whooshes out of him with his next exhale. Palms flat on my desk, a hint of a smile plays at the corner of his lips. “Is that so?”
I tip my head, encroaching on dangerous territory. Flirting at work could draw attention. Him being in here with the door shut, especially. But he doesn’t kiss me.
“I’ve been weird lately.” His voice is low, his eyes on mine.
“A little,” I admit.
“I don’t want to be weird with you, Butler. Normal weird, yes, but not weird weird. That doesn’t work for us.”
“Okay.” I’m not sure what we’re agreeing to, but anything to end the weird weird works for me.
“Think I could steal one kiss without getting caught?” he asks, leaning closer.
A sharp knock at my door, followed by the twisting of the knob, propels Vince into a ramrod-straight position. Kayla sweeps in, a stack of papers in hand. “For Joe’s Stables, as per your request,” she tells Vince. “His contract.”
“Thanks.” Vince takes the papers. “You could at least pretend not to know I’m in here.”
“I had to see Jackie about something. The spying is a bonus.” She grins.
“Fine. I’m going.” He sends me a heated look, then a cautionary one to Kayla.
I shake my head at her as we both watch him swagger away.
“I’ll hand it to you, Jackie,” she tells me, her voice quiet. “He has a great ass.”
Vince
Kayla’s comment about my ass has me smiling all afternoon. I’m not above a compliment from a happily married woman. It’s fun that she knows about Jackie and me.
It’s not like I get off on keeping things a big secret, but neither do I want to rock the proverbial boat. Relationships at work seem inevitable, but the cavemen who own our company subscribe to the old view of things. Men are better. Don’t diddle the women. That kind of thing. It’s unfair, but I’m honoring the rules and keeping Jackie out of the hot seat.
Day done, I’m home with the refrigerator door open as I inventory the paltry offerings. A packet of processed cheese food slices wrapped in cellophane, mustard, beer, and what may have been a head of lettuce at some point. There’s a questionable plastic container in the back that contains…I’m not sure. Pasta? Soup? The souls of my enemies?
A knock on the door keeps me from finding out. I shut the fridge and open the front door. And freeze into a solid block of “oh, fuck.”
“Leslie.”
“Hey, Vince.” My ex-wife wears a smile and a dress and carries a box. “I found some of your old CDs and thought you might want them. I was going to ship them but that seemed immature. So I drove over.” Her eyes sweep past me. “You have a new couch.”
“Well, you took mine. It was either buy one or sit on the floor.”
She twists her lips. “You always were funny.”
So we’re doing this, I guess. I step aside. “Not as clean as you prefer, but you’re welcome to come in.”
She does, setting aside the box of CDs as she strolls into the living room and drops her purse on the arm of the sofa. Seeing her purse there, and her in the house we used to share, unbricks a part of me I worked damn hard to wall up.
“I was about to eat a slice of cheese for dinner and drink a six-pack. Can I offer you a slice of cheese?”
“No, thanks.” She’s still smiling. “I’ll take a beer, though.”
“Sorry.” I pull in air through my teeth and deliver the bad news. “I plan on drinking all six.”
“You haven’t changed much.” She quirks her lips.
Oh, but I have.
“You either. You look great, by the way.” She does. It niggles at me that she looks this damn good when she’s not with me, but in no way do I want her back.
“Thanks.” She wrings her hands and we stand awkwardly, both unsure if we should hug or not touch at all.
Well. Shit. I can’t not be nice to her.
“I was kidding about the beer, Les. Do you really want one?”
“I would love one. Ray and I are meeting up with a couple from his work I’ve never met before, but not until eight.”
Ray. The guy she started dating shortly after our divorce. I wait for the surge of jealousy but nothing comes. Beers uncapped, I hand one over and invite her to sit on my new sofa. She sits, in Jackie’s place, and the thought makes me smile. Jackie has a place.
“What’s new with you?” Leslie asks. “Something’s different. You look happier.”
“Happier than when you walked out on me? Go figure.” Her smile slips and I know I’ve overstepped a line. “Ignore me.”
“No. I deserve that.”
We drink in silence for a few seconds. I have an opportunity to do a bit of healing, so what the hell? May as well get closure or whatever. “I don’t have an ax to grind, Les, but I would like to talk to you about something. I can order a pizza if you want to stick around.”
She nods hesitantly. “I’m going to let Ray know where I am. Not because he makes me,” she explains as she pecks a text into her phone, “but because I want to be honest and open about everything. You know?” Finished with the text, she glances up at me.
“Yeah, I know.” We both made mistakes. I grab my phone from the coffee table. “Papa Joe’s? Deep dish. Mushroom only.”
“That’s it.” She smiles. Some things don’t change at all. Order called in, I grab two more beers from the fridge and put them on the coffee table between us. She’ll drink two. I know she will.
“So what did you want to talk about?” she asks.
“Us,” I answer frankly. “Past tense.”
“I’m going to need that second beer.” She takes a hearty guzzle of the one in her hand.
“Yeah,” I agree, following suit. “So am I.”
Jacqueline
I slow down as I approach Vince’s driveway. There’s a car parked in front of his garage that I don’t recognize. Then his front door opens and out steps…a woman I don’t recognize.
Vince isn’t expecting me and hasn’t noticed my car, so I drive up his street, turn around, and park along the curb behind a big blue Cadillac that perfectly hides my silver compact. Whoever just came out of his house has her back to me and Vince is smiling at her. She pushes a lock of her hair behind her ear and tosses her head back and laughs.
“He wouldn’t cheat on you,” I say aloud to my car. Although this isn’t similar to the way I found out Lex was having sex with Ashleigh, I can’t help but feel a stab of betrayal. “But why wouldn’t he tell you?”
Tonight when I asked what he was up to, Vince said he was going to go home and finish a project he’d started last weekend. “Building shelves for the garage,” he explained.
Now that I’m watching him with the leggy brunette, I’m starting to wonder if he knew she was coming. And what their relationship is.
And why he didn’t tell me about her.
“That’s his wife,” comes a voice from my passenger-side window.
Startled, I jerk my head toward the open window to find Vince’s neighbor Riley, cleavage spilling from her shirt, leaning on the frame.
“We used to be friends. Or, well, we used to be friendly,” she says. “Her name’s Leslie.”
“I know his ex-wife’s name.”
Riley doesn’t visibly react to my clipped tone. “I’ve seen lots of women
at Vince’s place since the divorce, but never once have I seen the woman he divorced,” she says. “Wonder what she’s doing there?”
You and me both.
My heart shrinks into a deep, dark part of my chest cavity. Vince kept a picture of Leslie on his desk when they were married, but she was wearing her wedding gown. It’s no surprise I didn’t recognize her.
“You’re his current squeeze, right?” Riley asks. “The girl he was running with that afternoon.”
I nod.
“Thought so. I’ve spotted you over at his house a lot more than I’ve seen any of the others.”
“For some reason that’s not very comforting right now.”
“I know.” She pats my car door. “Come in, sugar. I’ll get you a glass of iced tea.”
The inside of Riley’s house is like a greenhouse. It’s filled with plants of all kinds. Maybe she really was outside to water her outdoor blooms that day Vince and I went jogging by. The sunroom would be too warm but it’s tempered by an oscillating fan. I sit on a wicker couch with a clear view of the front of Vince’s house.
He leans forward and puts a kiss on Leslie’s cheek, then pulls her in for a hug. My fingers clutch the couch’s frame as I watch, horrified.
“You’re in my seat,” Riley announces, a Mason jar in one hand and two short glasses in the other. “I’m outta iced tea, so I brought moonshine.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t—”
“Your guy is kissing another woman in his driveway,” she tells me gently. “You should.” I offer to vacate her seat but she waves me off, pouring the red liquid into the glasses. “This one’s apple cinnamon. Tastes like a red hot, if a red hot could kick your ass and steal your wallet.” Riley lets out a husky chuckle. “She gone yet?”
Vince walks his ex-wife to her car, shoving his hands in his front pockets and squinting in my direction. I duck, but Riley tells me he can’t see anything through the tinted windows. He turns back to Leslie, lingering too long for my taste. A glass of red apple-cinnamon moonshine lands in my hand and I take a sweet, spicy sip. Yum.
Eye Candy Page 18
