“You thought I’d forgotten to mention something?”
“Like being a father?” I offered a sheepish grin. “Sort of.”
“It’s all right.” Ollie sighed. “I know I’m going to have to earn your trust, Megan. And I can do that. You’ve got a right to wonder. You’ve not exactly had the best experiences with the men you date.”
“I’d like you to change that,” I admitted softly.
He grinned. “I can’t wait to get started.”
“Call me.”
“Oh I will,” he said, his voice sinking a little lower.
I looked up and up, meeting his eyes. “You’re so tall!”
“I hope that’s a good thing.”
I took a breath to answer but he placed a finger over my lips.
“I think you’re the perfect size.” Ollie leaned down and gently brushed his lips over mine.
It was over before I had time to be nervous, and I felt strangely unsatisfied. I wanted more. I didn’t know what or how much, but I knew what he’d just given me wasn’t enough.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” he told me.
“I’d like that.”
He got into his SUV, and I stepped back. Moments later he was driving away, waving out the open window. I watched the blue Dodge until Ollie turned a corner. I felt strange watching him go. It was sort of like a day-after-Christmas feeling.
Shaking off my melancholy, I crossed the parking lot in the direction I’d left my car. Half a dozen paces away near the front of the café, Jared emerged through the glass doors into the sunlight.
At that moment I was unbelievably glad it’d been him and not Anna who’d come with me. Anna would have been glued to my side, pumping me for information. That wasn’t Jared’s style.
“Thanks for looking out for me.” I felt strangely shy considering the weird circumstances.
The light burnished his blonde hair, turning darker sections to gold and giving him the appearance of a Greek god. He smiled, and his even white teeth flashed in his tanned face. “I’m glad I could help out.”
I was going to tease him about being assaulted with napkins, but my phone was doing the Ollie Marimba in my pocket.
“Guess he can’t get enough of you.” Jared offered a soft smile. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Jared’s words left me with an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach, but there wasn’t time to dissect it just then. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I slid the touchscreen and answered it.
“I’m already missing you, baby.” Ollie’s husky voice tickled my ear. “How am I supposed to function every day between seeing and talking to you?”
I laughed. “You were supposed to be the responsible one.”
“Remind me why that is?”
“Hmm.” I headed up the sidewalk to where I’d left my car. “Let me count the reasons.”
* * *
“Are you just going to sit there and let the timer run on that thing?” Anna poked me in the back before leaping onto the elliptical machine beside me and starting her rigorous cardio routine.
I forced the goofy grin off my face and got back to my workout, trying to put some energy into it. If I was going to be in a relationship, now was not the time to let my looks go to hell in a handbasket.
“So,” Anna prompted without breaking stride, “Jared won’t say anything about this morning. How did it go?”
“Obviously I’m still alive, so he’s not an axe-murdering fiend.”
“I sincerely doubt they admit that on a first date.”
I rolled my eyes. “He was really wonderful. He even realized Jared was there looking out for me, and it was okay with him.”
“I would hope so. Any guy who disagrees with that kind of common sense approach to Internet dating is a rapist waiting to happen.”
I frowned, making a face at her willowy form. She was dressed in perfectly fitting designer yoga pants and a matching camisole. Even with her hair tied back in a high ponytail, she looked like she’d just been salon styled. On the other hand, I looked like a homeless vagabond in my cut off sweats and an oversized tank top over my strangulating sports bra.
I picked up my pace. “You’re not going to cut him any slack, are you?”
“You’re my best friend, Megan. It’ll take a lot more than one date for me to welcome him with open arms.”
I couldn’t be mad at her for taking that attitude. If our positions were reversed, I would have been reserving judgment too. In fact, our positions had been reversed. Anna had dated her fair share of jerks over the years, and I’d given her my honest opinion on every last one of them. So why was her attitude irritating me to no end?
I pushed myself harder on the elliptical, feeling my heart racing and the blood pounding in my ears. Sweat trickled down my face and back, stinging my eyes and soaking into the waistband of my sweats. Why did I care so much what Anna thought about Ollie? Was I trying to get her approval or something? Did I need it?
I immediately discarded that theory. I did not want to be that person, that woman who lived her entire life trying to prove herself to everyone else. That wasn’t me. Megan Myers was a grown woman who could make choices for herself.
The machine bleeped loudly, signaling the end of my programmed workout. I hadn’t really finished the whole thing. I’d spent some of it daydreaming about Ollie and a few minutes more arguing with Anna, but I climbed down from the elliptical machine anyway. It was sort of uncomfortable there beside Anna when she was more or less not speaking to me.
The showers beckoned with their hot water and soothing spray. I pulled my water bottle from the holder on the machine and turned to walk away. I only got about four steps.
“I called you earlier.” Anna’s loud voice forced me to turn around.
I didn’t have to look to know she was giving me that penetrating brown stare of hers. So I kept my eyes on the water bottle I held in my hands. “Sorry about that, I was on the other line.”
“I called you six times over a two and half hour period.”
Why couldn’t I meet her eyes? I had nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide. I’d been talking to Ollie while I ran through my regular billing cycles. It’s not like my job is all that hard. It runs like clockwork. Anna should know that. I’d spent hours on the phone with her while doing my weekly work schedule. Why was Ollie any different?
“People can be just as addictive as heroine, Megan.”
I couldn’t decide if I were more embarrassed or angry about Anna’s accusation. She hadn’t phrased it that way, but that’s what it was.
I stumbled blindly toward the showers, leaving Anna behind. I kept telling myself that it didn’t matter what Anna thought. If Ollie thought I was being obsessive, he’d never said anything. Our relationship was new. We were still getting to know each other. Just because Anna didn’t like him and hadn’t approved him before we started dating, she was being a big wet blanket about the whole thing.
It made me angry. Sure, the way I’d met Ollie was unconventional, but I was unconventional. What was the better answer? Meeting someone new in bar? Most of those guys were worse than the sickos that posted personal ads on Craig’s List.
I pushed through the heavy door into the locker room. My fingers automatically spun the combination on my locker and I flung the door open. Grabbing up my personal items, I headed for the showers and a chance to think.
Water sluiced down my shoulders and back, the curls in my long hair stretching until the whole tangled mass hung almost to my waist. It felt good. I took deep breaths, trying to center myself and let all of the stresses and worries wash down the drain with the dirt and sweat. Once I’d shampooed and conditioned my hair I felt ready to examine a few of the things that were bothering me so deeply.
Anna was right in one thing. I was hopelessly wrapped up in Ollie. But where she thought of that as a negative thing, I figured it to be positive. I was looking for a long term, committed relationship. People in long term, committed r
elationships spent a lot of time together. They talked on the phone constantly, they met for lunch, had dinner together, did all that other couple stuff.
I didn’t pause to wonder exactly what kind of couple stuff I expected to do with Ollie. I wasn’t there yet.
Was Anna jealous?
I mulled the idea over in my head for a while. It seemed possible. She was still single and showing no interest in committing to anything long term. That was just Anna. Was she worried that if I took that step into a long term relationship with Ollie that she’d lose me as a friend?
I sighed deeply. That explanation made a lot of sense. But it also meant I was going to have to try and be understanding with Anna. I loved her. We’d been friends for too long throw it all away for nothing. I needed to be careful not to forget about her. And if that meant forgiving her for being mean about Ollie, then I guessed I’d have to do that too.
I shut the water off and reached for one of two towels I’d hung near the door. I flipped my head over and wound the smaller one around my hair, trying to wring as much water as possible from the long, tangled mass. Wrapping the fluffy white bath sheet around my body, I padded out of the shower and across the sand-colored tile floor to my locker.
Jared and his partners had done a big renovation of the locker rooms to modernize the old building’s facilities nearly two years before. Anna helped them to pick out the furnishings for the women’s locker room and, true to her trendy nature, the result was pretty fabulous.
Painted black, the overhead beams were visible, making the room less oppressive than the original low ceilings. Radiant heat flooring kept our bare feet warm and the walls were painted in shades of goldenrod and mocha. The lockers lining three walls were modern and neutral, a big change from the puke green prep school rejects of the old days. In the center of the room there were a series of benches covered in faux leather that could be easily wiped down but didn’t stick to your bare legs when you sat. A long vanity stretched the length of one wall with well-lit mirrors and plenty of places to sit and primp if you were so inclined.
After grabbing my clothes, I disappeared into one of the dressing rooms adjoining the private shower stalls. Anna had no problem dropping her towel in the middle of the locker room and standing buck naked for any and all to see while she pulled on her panties and figured out the clasp on her designer bra. Not me. Megan Myers doesn’t get naked for just anyone. I prefer to dress in privacy, thank you.
Early evening is the best time to be at the gym. Most people are eating dinner and the hard core crowd has gone home to their protein shakes. I like it like that for a lot of reasons. Number one: although I enjoy oogling an attractive guy, I do not like watching body builders do their grunting and heaving while their muscles look like an overblown action figure. And number two: barracuda women piss me off.
Those are the women who pay their membership fees and come regularly but never seem to work out. They dress in designer workout clothes, sit on the machines and put their heads together to whisper about how so-and-so should lay off the cupcakes and work out more often. Or, when they tire of taking potshots at other women, they hang around and check out any decent looking male in sight while taking it upon themselves to discuss his hypothetical sex life.
There are quite a few barracuda women at our gym. I once told Jared that if he’d quit sleeping with them, they’d go away. He didn’t think that was funny.
I stowed my shower stuff in my locker and exited the big double doors feeling a lot better. I’m a planner. I always feel better when I can identify a problem and plan a solution. In this case, the problem was Anna feeling insecure about our friendship and the solution was going to be my patience.
I said I liked to plan, not that I was any good at carrying them out.
Jared’s gym is located in really old building in the Soulard area. The building is almost an entire block, and the gym is the whole first floor. Jared has one of the four apartments on the second floor. The others are rented to tenants. His partners live in other areas of the city. He’s the managing partner and the one who handles most of the personal training. It used to be primarily amateur boxers until they expanded their services to try and get a bigger clientele.
One of the best things about the gym is that the building used to be an apartment complex and they managed to hang onto the pool in the lower level during reconstruction. I love to swim, so that was a huge deal for me when Anna first brought me to Jared’s gym three or four years ago. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one who likes a pool, though some people aren’t much into swimming.
I already mentioned that I hate barracuda women. I could have been more specific and said I just don’t like two who seem to have taken up permanent residence in our gym. I don’t know their names, so I just call them Hungry and Desperate.
Desperate and I have too much in common for my comfort. I’d like to think she’s a year or two older than I am, and that’s why she’s so desperate, but I’m probably dreaming. She’s blonde haired, blue-eyed, tall, and model thin with no boobs and even less of a butt. Her legs are like twigs and the workout clothes she usually chooses don’t seem to flatter them in the least.
Now, that’s my opinion. I’m a fuller-figured girl, so I’m sort of hard on the waif-thin set. The guys in the gym seem to find her attractive, but every time I see her, she’s still on the hunt. I’m continually surprised that she hasn’t found someone to marry, unless it’s her desperate vibe that chases them all away. I know from experience that you can’t let a guy know on the first date that you’re ready to go pick out wedding china.
Hungry is a divorcee. Don’t ask me how I know that. I’ve got connections. Besides, she’s been stalking Jared since day one. Hungry is a brunette with contacts that make her eyes brilliant blue. She’s also on the slender side, but had a boob job. Jared once told me that she scares him when she uses the weight machines because he’s afraid those things are going to burst wide open and make a mess he won’t have the stomach to clean up.
For some reason, Jared’s comment about bursting boobs is the one thing I think of every time I see Hungry and Desperate. Today was no exception. When I passed them as I exited the locker room, I had to swallow back a laugh. As it was, my chuckle came out as more of a strangled snicker.
My faux pas earned me a suspicious look from Hungry. She doesn’t like me. I think it has something to do with the friendship between me, Anna, and Jared. Hungry hates Anna with a passion. It’s not surprising, since Anna is so familiar with Jared that what passes for friendly banter between the two of them could be construed as serious flirtation by someone who doesn’t know any better.
The two barracudas were several feet away from me, noses pressed against the wall of windows surrounding the natatorium. They weren’t even bothering to pretend to be working out. They were dressed in street clothes, heads together and whispering at a frenetic pace.
Curious, I set my Lucky hobo bag on a bench several down from theirs and put my foot up to adjust the laces on my Doc. Glancing down at the pool area, it didn’t take me long to see what it was they were gawking at.
Jared. More specifically, Jared getting out of the pool.
My breath stuck in my throat and my palms grew clammy. He levered himself up from the water and gained his feet in one graceful move. Before he turned his back I got an eyeful of his washboard abs above the low-rise cut of his blue Speedo. Not that his back is any less awe-inspiring than the front view. Stretching across both shoulder blades is an artist’s rendering of a gryphon with wings spread. Because I’ve seen it close up, I know the gryphon has its claws open and ready to grab prey. The gryphon’s tufted tail snakes around Jared’s left side and ends right on the hipbone pretty much where the waistband of his Speedo was at that moment.
He tossed his head, shaking excess water from his wavy blonde hair. The simple motion made every last one of the muscles in his abdominal area ripple like God’s own artwork. My mouth went dry, and I had to clear my throat t
o catch my breath. Then something in Hungry’s muttered ramblings caught my attention.
“I think he’s starting to come around,” she murmured to Desperate. “He was asking me a lot of personal questions earlier. I know I’d talked to him about starting some personal training sessions a few weeks ago, but I don’t think that’s why he was asking.”
“You are so lucky,” Desperate purred. “I love a guy with just the right amount of body art. And that piercing…” she let the statement hang.
“Sexy, I know. I wonder why he has it?”
They don’t usually make me angry. I mean they do, but not like that. I don’t know what it was that ticked me off so thoroughly right then, but whatever it was made me pretty bold.
It’s funny. Jared’s body art has always worked against him on my list of datable guys. I don’t consider body art a grown-up thing. I know that sounds silly, but I have this mental image of what my future husband will look like and body art just doesn’t fit in. Not that I don’t think it’s sexy. Jared’s tattoo was done by one of the most talented guys in the city, and it’s gorgeous. And even though everyone thinks there’s some sexually charged reason for the nipple piercing, I know they’re wrong.
Jared and his younger brother both got the piercings at the same time on a dare. Jared did the left and Jackson did the right. Two weeks later Jackson was killed in a head on car collision. So even though Jared didn’t originally intend to keep the piercing, it reminds him of his brother.
My throat was tight as I pushed my way past Hungry and Desperate and into the pool area. I heard one of them, probably Hungry, call me a bitch, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure what I intended to do. It wasn’t like Jared needed me to rescue him from being oogled by a couple of barracudas.
Taking the steps at a quick pace, my Docs squished their way over the wet floor around to the back of the room where Jared was drying off. The air was thick and heavy. My hair began to curl wildly in the humidity and the chlorine smell was a familiar tickle in my nose.
Mr. Wonderful Lies Page 4
