Something About You (Just Me & You)

by Lelaina Landis

  “You should think about running for public office one day, Sabrina,” Eva commented. “God knows you have enough experience — at least Carlton seems to think so. He has good judgment, big mouth and all.”

  Her? Run for office? Eva had to be joking.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Sabrina said sincerely. “But Theo’s quite the handful at the moment. I can’t even think past the next legislative session, much less long term.”

  “Yup. I imagine that Henry VIII’s wranglers had an easier time keeping him out of trouble.” Eva’s tone had turned dry.

  That week, Sabrina had discovered how her boss’ career could easily unravel by a single loose thread. On Monday, she had come in after her coffee break only to bump smack into an attractive, red-haired young woman who was storming out of Theo’s office in a tearful rage. She had a bad case of bedhead, and her mascara was running. And then just that morning, a grim-faced Theo had strode into the Think Tank, tossed Sabrina his cell phone, and instructed her to have the number changed.

  She knew what it meant when a married man gave his mistress his super-secret, known-to-no-one-but-staff phone number. The Hon. Rep. was getting sloppy. That he was making his mistresses — at least one of them — promises he had no intention of keeping. If he didn’t end up blowing his own cover, someone like Eva would. And then Theo would take Sabrina down with him.

  Interpreting the concern on Sabrina’s face as doubt, Eva assured her, “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you don’t have the experience. You’re thinking you don’t have the political backing that Ward does. But hell, you can go out and get that. All you’re lacking is confidence. You could harness that might and make it right.”

  Sabrina glanced at the other woman out of the corner of her eye and gave a discreet nod. Now she knew how the Duke of Buckingham’s lesser royals felt like when he was humming a victory song in their ears. What Eva was hinting around at was practically treasonous.

  “That’s a really nice thing for you to say, Eva,” she said.

  Eva harrumphed. “Look, I’m nice, but I’m not that nice. No, the real reason I’m telling you this is because women like us need to band together and support each other. God knows no one else will.” She studied the soup again briefly before she tossed another package of spicy chicken ramen into her basket.

  “Women like us?” Sabrina repeated.

  “Yeah, Career Singles Not-So-Anonymous,” Eva said with a wicked little smile. As she headed toward the checkout area, she looked back over her shoulder and added, “The only thing we’ll ever be married to is our careers.”

  Fortunately, Eva made her exit before Gage showed up. If Carlton caught wind of who her new boarder was, Sabrina knew she’d never hear the end of it. That is, if Gage had any intention of showing up. She checked her cell phone again. It was now eight-thirty. The Grab & Go closed in thirty minutes. She had better things to do than stand around in front of the soup.

  Just as Sabrina was about to leave, he surprised her by blowing through the front entrance. Wherever he’d been, it had obviously been quite the occasion. He was wearing jeans that weren’t quite as faded as the others, she noticed. And his shirt was buttoned up and tucked in. When he spotted her, his mouth spread into a sheepish grin. Sabrina just shook her head.

  “Don’t worry,” she assured him blithely. “I had no intention of starting without you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m unfashionably late. I got hung up,” he explained.

  “Doing what?”

  “I was kinda on a date.” His face turned wan. “It turned out pretty terrible, actually.”

  “Now, that’s a pity,” Sabrina struggled to keep the venom out of her voice. Why would she possibly care what he did in his spare time? He was just the warm body who wrote her a check at the beginning of each month, for god’s sake. So Gage had gone out on a date with a woman. A bad date.

  Good, she thought triumphantly. Served him right for almost standing her up.

  “Let’s get this party started before the store closes,” she said, plucking a green plastic shopping basket from the pile next to the sliding glass doors.

  “Contrary to what the sign outside says, darlin’, we are not here to ‘grab and go’,” he said as he loosened the basket from her grip and returned it to the top of the pile. “Our house needs a serious stocking up,” he told her as he pulled a shopping cart from a string of others. “I’ll drive. You read.” He handed her his shopping list.

  “My house, you mean,” she corrected him as he steered the cart in the direction of the nonperishables.

  “Let’s compromise by dropping the possessive,” Gage proposed. “The house. Agreed?”

  “Fine,” Sabrina said, feeling more exasperated by the second. She squinted at the piece of paper he had handed her. “First item is — I can barely read your writing, by the way — a six-pack of Guinness?” She hiked a brow dubiously. “I thought we came here for absolute necessities.”

  “Beer is an absolute necessity in my world. No worries. I intend to pick up my share of the tab whenever I buy incidentals.” Gage tried to pacify her with a congenial smile.

  He guided the cart to the cleaning and paper goods aisle, where they stocked up on laundry detergent, household disinfectants and trash bags in a variety of sizes to accommodate all the bins in the house. Sabrina read off the items on the shopping list. She had to admit that he had paid close attention to their household needs. She would have never thought to buy simple tide-me-over snacks like peanut butter, jelly and bread.

  She paused in front of the feminine hygiene aisle and felt her cheeks pinken. She had never bought … really personal stuff in front of any man. Not even Jackson.

  “Get whatever you need,” Gage told her. When she hesitated, he went on, “I’ve lived with and around women before. I’m perfectly aware that they have different bodily functions than men. Therefore, they need to buy, ah, women-specific stuff.”

  “No worries. I have every intention of getting what I need,” she said. She hastily reached for a box of tampons and placed it in the cart. Then she hesitated and directed a cautious look his way before quickly grabbing two more. She was about to lob them into the cart but stopped mid-toss, distracted by a rack of condoms. The Magnum Extra-Large logo bleated out at her from the shelf. A hot flush spread from her cheeks up to her temples.

  “Forgetting anything?” Gage prompted her.

  “Nope, nothing.” She hastily dropped the boxes into the cart and pushed it forward. “We’re all done here.”

  “Look, honey, just in case you’re wondering, I’ve been dispatched to the aisle of pink boxes more times than you can imagine,” he said. “I’d have to say that making an emergency run for a pregnancy test was my most delicate mission to date.”

  Sabrina shook her head and closed her eyes, not believing her ears.

  “Dear god. Are we really talking about this?” she asked no one in particular.

  “Hey, at least we’re talking.”

  “Look, Fitzgerald, you don’t have to make idle chit-chat on my behalf.”

  “I don’t, but I want to,” he told her. “Look, we don’t have to order pizza together at the end of the day. We don’t have to become each other’s best buds. But—”

  “But what?”

  “—it would be nice if we could have an intimate conversation for a change.”

  She brought the cart to a squeaking halt and stared at him frankly. “Look, you moved in last week, and we’ve already talked about my little pink boxes,” she said gruffly. “That’s intimate enough, don’t you think?”

  She pushed the cart forward with forceful determination, popping the wheels of the cart around the aisle so quickly he was forced to catch up with her. Sabrina felt cranky. She had been going nonstop since five in the morning, fueled only by caffeine. Because the choice hors d’oeuvres had already been ravaged by the time she got to the lobbyists’ party, she had picked at the remnants of the crudi
té tray, and now she was famished. The sharp edges of her alligator pumps were cutting into her heels. By now, she could have been showered, dressed in her most comfortable pajamas, and cozied up in her bed with her laptop watching Lifetime Television for Women on streaming video.

  If only Gage Fitzgerald hadn’t gone on a damned date.

  “So exactly how terrible was it?” Sabrina asked, slowing her pace.

  He slid her a sly smile. “D’you mean my date? I knew you were probably burning up with curiosity.”

  “That’s a bit of an exaggeration,” she said disinterestedly, batting a roll of paper towels into the cart. What type of woman did Gage “Fitz” Fitzgerald go for, anyway? “I’m just trying to converse.”

  “Because you really want to know?” He eyed her skeptically.

  Sabrina sighed wearily. “I asked, didn’t I?”

  “She didn’t want to get to know the real me. No big surprise there. I used to think it was an occupational hazard.” Gage shook his head ruefully, studying the rows of jams and jellies before reaching for a jar of orange marmalade. “But I’ll be damned if I’ve ever met a woman who knows what she really wants. Or who’s actually good for her.”

  “Well, count yourself lucky, because you just met one who does,” Sabrina informed him confidently. She pointedly tossed a jar of cherry jam into the cart and stared at him point-blank. “First, I don’t like marmalade. You do. That’s no big deal, right? I don’t need a man who likes the very same things I do. That would be boring. But we both have to agree on the important things. We have to agree on our bigger goals in life. Secondly, there has to be trust.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “I’m talking about a different type of trust than you are.”

  “I didn’t know there was more than one.”

  “Oh, there are all kinds of trust,” Sabrina told him sagely. “Of course I want to know that his eyes won’t wander a few years down the line when the relationship starts to get predictable — that’s Trust 101. But I also have to really trust him. Say it’s fifty years from now and the gray matter starts to go.” She twirled a forefinger around her temple to illustrate her point. “Or I got hit by a Cap Metro bus while crossing the street.”

  “You really look on the bright side of life, don’t you, darlin’?”

  “Let’s just say,” she went on practically. “Say that I was unable to speak for myself, that I had lost my ability to reason. He should know me so well that he could make the same choices that I would make. That’s the kind of trust I’m talking about. No, don’t get that; you’d get better nutrition from a glue stick.” She took the white bread from his hands and replaced it with a loaf of whole wheat.

  “So far we have compatibility and trust. That’s pretty meat-and-potatoes,” Gage commented as he put the wheat bread in the cart. “What else do you want in a relationship — lastly?”

  Why, oh why did I go here? Sabrina asked herself woefully.

  “We’re both grown, experienced adults,” she said in a muted voice. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”

  “Nope,” he said with a shrug, but there was a teasing note in his voice. “Throw me a bone here.”

  “Oh, geez. Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Exquisitely intriguing, hair-raising, mind-blowing, totally spontaneous… ”

  Sex.

  The kind of sex she had never once had with Jackson.

  Sex that kept her up all night, stumbling into the office the next morning, fuzzy-headed and starry-eyed. Sex that involved emergency runs to the market for small boxes labeled “Extra Large.” Sex that made days like these worth it.

  She blinked and snapped out of it. “I shouldn’t be talking about things like this.”

  “Wanting great sex with your partner is nothing to be ashamed of,” he told her. “Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into creating Sabrina’s hierarchy of needs.”

  “What did you think I was going to say? Money, looks and a great sense of humor?” she asked facetiously.

  “A lot of women would rattle those off without thinking,” Gage pointed out.

  Sabrina gave him a superior smile. “Well, guess I just scored an ‘A’ in originality, didn’t I?”

  Just then, a voice came over the loud speaker to inform shoppers that the market closed in fifteen minutes.

  “We don’t have much time,” Sabrina fretted. She pulled the neglected shopping list from the bottom of the cart and frowned at it circumspectly. “Dill wickleafs? Meat bargers? I can’t make heads or tails of your chicken scratch, Fitzgerald.”

  “Screw the list.” Gage took the piece of paper from her, balled it up and shoved it in his shirt pocket. “Let’s split up, get whatever we need and catch up by the register.”

  Sabrina stared into the deli case, looking over aluminum tubs of chicken casserole, green bean salad, and cheese enchiladas that had gone brown around the edges after a day under warming lamps. She didn’t feel particularly hungry anymore. She was tired, and her feet were killing her. She hoped Gage had brought his car; she couldn’t bear the thought of walking back to the house in her heels.

  She ordered a container of hummus from the deli clerk and, after grabbing a package of pita bread, headed to the cash register. When she got to the counter, Gage had already placed all of the items in their cart on a conveyor belt.

  “How much is my share?” she asked, digging around in her wallet for some bills.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he told her. “We’ll sort it out when we get home.”

  Sabrina watched as he retrieved his checkbook from his coat pocket, put it on the counter and neatly tucked the strip of carbon protector under the next check.

  “Really, Fitzgerald,” she groaned and shook her head.

  “What?” He paused with pen in hand to glance at the empty store around them. “It’s not exactly like I’m holding up the line.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Monday morning came, and Sabrina sat at the receptionist’s desk double-checking the facts in the “sustainable building” bill the Tide Brothers had sold Theo on. She looked skeptically from her analysis to the closed door that led to Theo’s inner sanctum. Didn’t the Hon. Rep. know a bum steer when he saw one? There was no good way to pitch this bill. There wasn’t a big sell. It would be a push to even get it on the calendar.

  Resigned, she shook her head and got back to work on the tedious bill. Theo would have to learn the hard way. She was jolted out of her boredom by the sound of his office door opening.

  “Sabrina, I didn’t get your RSVP for my little soiree.” Theo poked his head out. “You are going.” He hadn’t exactly posed it as a question, she noticed.

  “It’s a ball, Theo,” she reminded him.

  “And?”

  Surely he couldn’t be that obtuse. “The purpose of a ball is to dance. With an escort. I don’t have one.”

  “Well, hell. Why didn’t you say something?” He scratched his chin. “You know, Jill’s younger brother just broke off his engagement. You just got div—”

  “—Oh, Theo. Please stop,” Sabrina interrupted quickly. “No blind dates. I know that when it comes to my selection of beaux, you’d prefer I keep it in the family, so to speak. But being set up with your brother-in-law feels practically incestuous.”

  “Yee-ah,” Theo conceded slowly. “Don’t you worry your beautiful noggin’ about going to the gala wallflower or whatever you women call it. I’ll keep my ear to the ground and see if I hear of anybody who’s scrounging for a date.” Then he retreated back into his office.

  Sabrina pressed her palms to her cheeks. Was she really that much of a lost cause? That much of a fixer-upper? The ball was only two weeks away. No one remotely appropriate registered on her mental list of escort candidates.

  Carlton whooshed through the doorway, looking dashing in a new Yamamoto suit and a tan.

  “Unbelievable,” she muttered. “You have to be the only person I know who loses weight during the holiday season.
”

  “Survival of the fittest,” he said breezily. “Besides, I’ve got to fit into my tuxedo before next Friday.”

  “Are you going to the ball alone?”

  Carlton snorted. “Only because I have no other choice. Going to one of these blowouts is like being invited to the royal wedding when you’re the guy driving the carriage.”

  Sabrina sized him up surreptitiously. He wasn’t overwhelmingly tall. What, five-foot-eleven? If she wore two-inch heels …

  “Say, Carlton?” she asked innocently.

  He looked up from his plate and immediately translated the hopeful look on her face. “I know what those fluttery ‘Shy Di’ eyes mean. Don’t even think about it. No,” he said firmly.

  “Oh, c’mon,” Sabrina cajoled, twirling her pen. “Like you said, it’s only for a couple of hours. We both have to show up, like you say, and … well, you have amazing taste in clothes.”

  He gave her an amused look. “Sabrina, I’ll gladly dance with you at the ball. I’ll refresh your drink and summon over the guys holding the canapé trays and do all of the attentive things a man in my position does for the lady Chief of Staff he adores, but—” He leaned over and spoke into her ear. “—I refuse to be your beard,” he whispered gleefully.

  Sabrina’s shoulders slumped with disappointment.

  “I guess I’ll go alone to the ball alone,” Sabrina said forlornly. “I can’t think of anyone else to ask.” She imagined herself standing next to Moira in the drinks line.

  “I can.” Carlton’s smile turned mysterious. “I’ll bet a certain local celebrity is hankering to hear from you.”

  Sabrina looked at him in disbelief. Was he really suggesting what she thought? All it took was a single soliloquy from Gage Fitzgerald, and everyone leapt to foregone conclusions.

  “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard your utter, Carlton Hayes.”

  “Why?” He looked at her, bemused. “I’ve seen Fitz at Waterloo Records once or twice doing station events. He’s a big bruiser. You’re a wispy little petal. You’d look darling together — sort of like Moose and Midge.” His expression turned devious. “Not to mention that he obviously has a hard-on with your name tagged to it. Oh, close your mouth unless you want to catch flies, Sabrina. I’m just pointing out the obvious.”