For her part, Bridget had turned bright red and become deeply interested in a months-old Entertainment Weekly.
Bridget’s mother had continued gulping down champagne like it was going out of style and stealing sidelong glances at her daughter. Later, when they were alone—God willing—he’d find out more about why Bridget and her mother seemed so distant. He’d spent the summer working in the state’s attorney’s office just so he could get a little acceptable distance from his mother, so he could identify with her.
He wondered when he’d gotten so interested in more than just something casual with Bridget. He really wanted to know her, and it would behoove him to pump the brakes on pondering her family shit and deep, dark secrets.
Especially since he was calling to thank his mom for making sure he could get the penthouse. He’d promised to check in, and he needed to lock down his feelings about Bridget before talking to her. She would know if he sounded too emotional, and he didn’t want her prying about Bridget. He didn’t want her interfering in another one of his relationships. It wasn’t like he was this extravagant all the time, so it would definitely awaken her Spidey senses.
She picked up before the phone rang on his end. “Matthew.” He knew by the tone of her voice that she’d been expecting the call much earlier.
“Mom.” He’d wait her out to see if she was pissed. If it was minor, she would cut straight to the point and then probably get back to work and make more money in the next five minutes than he’d spent all summer.
“Vegas.” The word dripped with disdain. She waited a single beat for him to explain, then continued. The call about the plane was not going to close the issue for her. “Is this about a girl, or do you have a gambling problem?”
“One time in Macau, and it was Dad who lost the most money.”
“But he’s not in Vegas right now.”
“It’s about a girl, Mom.” He’d probably live to regret sharing this, but it was better than his mom locking down his credit card because she was afraid for the family fortune. “Her brother’s getting married and she invited me to the bachelor/bachelorette party.”
“Do I know her?”
He thought about the kind of woman his mother wanted him to marry. She’d never pushed him to date a Japanese American woman or even another woman from her business or social circles, but he couldn’t imagine how she would react to someone as earthy as Bridget.
Although the two women were similar in a lot of ways—supersmart, no bullshit, and hard as nails—they couldn’t come from more different backgrounds. It was clear that Bridget’s family didn’t hurt for money, but she hadn’t been virtually raised in the halls of Congress the way his mother had. Hadn’t had decorum and propriety stamped into her soul so hard that even her college rebellion—joining a punk band composed of fellow business students at Stanford—had played into her future success. It was a nice story she liked to trot out to show that she wasn’t a total snob.
Everything about his mother was careful. At first, he’d thought that Bridget was the same. But now he knew that she had all this passion and fire that she kept locked up until she couldn’t. He wanted nothing more than for her to let it loose all over him.
No, his mother didn’t know Bridget Nolan. And he wasn’t sure if they should ever meet. He definitely wanted to explore the chemistry that Bridget was on the verge of giving in to, but this might never turn into anything serious.
After all, they wouldn’t see each other after this weekend.
“Nah, Mom.” He paused. “Not that kind of girl. Bridget was my boss this summer, and this is strictly to help her out.”
That’s when he felt the topic of conversation’s presence behind him.
* * *
• • •
STRICTLY TO HELP HER out. It didn’t sound like this weekend was going to result in any orgasms she didn’t produce herself after all.
Had it really been so long since she’d been in the dating game that she couldn’t tell anymore whether a guy was into her? That’s what she thought until Matt turned and winked at her, mouthing, “My mom.”
Oh, so maybe he was actually into her but didn’t want to tell his mom he was into her. So it was like that? He was thinking that this could be a weekend fling, too? Just a way to let off the steam that had built up over the summer. That’s all this could be.
She knew she was assuming a lot based on very little. On an almost kiss and some looks. Perhaps they should be adults about things and have an actual conversation before anything happened between them. She could do that, right? Be an adult and tell another adult, who was not her intern anymore, that she wanted to get very naked and very sweaty with him while hopped up on champagne.
She hadn’t had to have that conversation with anyone new for years. And whenever she’d asked for something sexual from Chris, he’d given her this look. A look that said, C’mon, Bridge, you’re a good girl. Why would you ask for that?
Matt hung up after a few moments. His brow wrinkled when he looked at her. “What’s wrong?” Like he really cared about what was going on with her.
“What are we doing here, Matt?”
“Going to dinner?” He seemed genuinely confused. “Hopefully having a good time.”
“I mean . . . a few times you’ve looked at me like you want to kiss me.” She hesitated. “And then on the plane . . .”
He looked down, and a smile played across his face. Then he did that thing where he looked up at her in this playful way that made all her insides melty. “Am I that obvious?”
“I wouldn’t have noticed if I weren’t looking for it.”
“You were looking for it?” He bit his bottom lip the way she wanted to bite it. And then he stepped closer to her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body through her little black dress. “Does that mean you want to kiss me, too?”
Of course she got shy then and couldn’t hold his gaze. She was never this way with anyone else, and it should worry her. Being with Chris had made her feel small, until the only place she felt like herself was at work. That had been the only thing stopping her from kissing Matt before, to be honest. Because kissing him felt big. And she was afraid of big. But playing scared had gotten her a dozen years with Chris and a whole lot of no action. And she wanted action with Matt. She wanted him. And she wouldn’t get him unless she took a leap into this thing that felt big. “I do want to kiss you.”
A split second later, he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, under her hair. The skin-to-skin contact seared her from the inside out. Her blood was pumping so hard and fast she swore she could hear it rushing through her veins. He smelled delicious—like amber and citrus and a light musk.
But he still hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I’ve been of anything in years.” That was a lie. She wasn’t sure that the ground underneath her was still there or if she was floating off somewhere.
When his mouth touched hers, her heart jumped into her throat and she knew she was still earthbound. All the things that she’d liked about working with him—his attention to detail and complete focus—she extra liked when he kissed her. He left no part of her mouth unexplored when she let him in.
He wrapped his other arm around her and pulled her close, so she could feel the planes of his body and the press of him getting hard against her.
She ran her hands up his arms and pressed her fingertips into the short hair at the back of his neck. It was so silky and soft that she sighed into his mouth. Kissing him was a sensory feast, and she didn’t even want to take a break to breathe.
But she had to if she wanted to live. And if she didn’t want to get teased for months about being late for dinner because she couldn’t keep her hands off her intern.
So, she did the seemingly impossible and pulled back. He bit his bottom lip, and that almost made her want to kiss him again
. Instead she sighed and said, “We don’t want to be late.”
He winked at her again and nearly ruined her resolve. “Wouldn’t want that.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BRIDGET HAD ALWAYS HAD her father’s temper—slow to boil, but then quick to boil over. When her mom had moved out of the house, on that last day before she left, she was packing up everything so that she wouldn’t have to come back, she’d forgotten the cat’s litter box. Because of course she was taking Bridget’s cat.
All of a sudden, a hit of rage so strong flowed through her that she couldn’t think straight. She no longer cared about what the neighbors thought or about being strong for her dad and brothers. She just wanted to hit out at something or someone.
She’d grabbed the litter box that held Stanley’s litter and hauled it into the drive.
“You forgot something!” she’d yelled as her mother put the cat carrier into the back seat.
“Oh no, honey, I’ll get fresh cat litter at my new place.” Her mother hadn’t realized how angry she was yet. That she was throwing away her whole family for something new. Her mother was leaving them behind like they were nothing more than dirty cat litter.
Not thinking about the fact that her mother wouldn’t be around to clean it up, she poured the dirty litter out of the box all over the driveway. If she was going to leave them, she was going to have to see what she was leaving.
Her dad had not been pleased to have to hose cat litter off the driveway, but he’d given her the temper so he understood.
Bridget felt close to boiling over as soon as she set eyes on Chris at dinner with a strange woman in his lap—undoubtedly someone he’d met here after he realized that she wasn’t alone. Bridget wasn’t going to judge Thandie the winsome “redhead,” but sitting on a virtual stranger’s lap at a three-star Michelin restaurant in front of someone’s parents was a little gauche to say the least.
Everyone seemed to be in good spirits, though—probably due to the fact that they were ignoring Chris.
Matt sat next to her at an appropriate distance, in between her and her mother. He struck up a conversation about his parents’ recent donations to the MCA collection, which made her mother light up. Which meant that he must have done some research on Bridget and her family.
Bridget tried not to roll her eyes. She couldn’t care less about her mom’s career. To her, it was the thing that had taken her away. She didn’t know why her mother had to up and leave—disappear for years—so she could find herself. Some women really didn’t need to become mothers, and that was something that Bridget and ol’ Molly had in common.
She tried to focus on Hannah and Sasha and their after-dinner plans—and eat some extremely delicious food. Crispy, crunchy fried pork tonkatsu made everything better. Her effort to ice out Chris was helped by Hannah repeatedly filling her sake glass from the carafe they shared.
It was all fine until her ex’s gaze caught her hand on Matt’s knee. She was just asking how his nigiri was and making sure that her mother wasn’t being too annoying or trying to butter him up for donations.
But then all three of them were just looking at one another—Matt was looking at her, Chris was looking at her, and she was looking between them.
“What?” she asked Chris. They’d broken up two years ago. He was with another woman right now. Did he honestly expect her to be alone forever just because she hadn’t wanted what he’d wanted to give her?
Chris’s gaze was hazy, and he’d had plenty to drink before and over the course of dinner. But never in her whole life did she expect him to say, “Just wondering if you were going to kill his baby, too.”
She froze.
Not that she had any shame about what happened a few weeks after they broke up. It hadn’t been as though it was going to change anything. She hadn’t been about to get back together with him. She didn’t think she could have counted on him for child support without taking him to court. Chris wouldn’t have helped with diapers and all that, because he could barely take care of himself. He wasn’t about to be any help. She worked in public service, and six weeks of maternity leave was nowhere near enough. And she didn’t know if she ever wanted a kid, but she knew she didn’t want one on her own.
Besides, her parents had had three children in five years to try to save their marriage, and that hadn’t turned out well.
No—her only regret about the whole thing was that she’d told Chris. He hadn’t reacted at all at the time, but the scythe of this secret had been hanging over her head for two years. Of course he chose this moment to let it fall.
She didn’t look down; she wasn’t about to let Chris see her flinch. But she felt Matt grab her hand and squeeze it.
It was weird. They’d only ever kissed once, but it felt right to have him touch her right now when her very skin bristled over her muscles like an animal under attack.
How dare Chris do this now? How dare he do it ever?
“I didn’t kill a baby, Christopher Thomas Dooley.” She paused, taking a deep breath and not looking at either of her parents, her brothers, or her friends. “I had a few cells scraped out of my uterus so that I wouldn’t be tied to you for the rest of my natural life.”
Chris opened his mouth to say something, but her father stopped him with a fist on the table that made all the plates jump. “You ever talk to my daughter like that again, and I’ll make you wish that you’d rolled down the crack of your sainted mother’s ass.”
Bridget looked around the table and realized everyone was looking concerned for her. They were on her side—although she had no shame or regret about her abortion; it was just something she had done. She’d had a problem, and she had solved it her damned self—just the way she’d done since she was a preteen.
She didn’t look at Chris but saw him get up and leave with his date.
“I’m going to go to the bathroom.” When Hannah looked like she was going to make this a group trip, Bridget stayed her with a hand. “Alone.”
The restaurant was huge, and it seemed to take forever for her to make it into one of the several single stalls—never had she been so grateful for a single stall. She ran cool water over her wrists and refreshed her lipstick before a knock sounded at the door. To her surprise, her brother Jack’s voice was attached to the knock. “Open the door, Bridge.”
She opened the door with a pasted-on smile. “What? I’m fine.”
Jack gave her a sidelong glance and pushed into the tiny room. “C’mon. You’re better than that. Tell me what’s going on.”
Bridget had been very careful not to talk about her and Chris’s breakup and the fallout with her older brothers. They were way too close with the Dooley boys for it not to be a mess. And if it became a mess, she just hadn’t trusted that her brothers would have been on her side. And she wasn’t going to make them choose between her and their best friends.
“You know what’s going on now.”
“Pull the other one, Bridge.” Jack was way too smart for his own good. It made him a perceptive journalist, and it also made him a huge pain in the ass.
“We broke up because we realized that we didn’t want the same life. A few weeks later, I found out through personal experience that the failure rate for the pull-out method is no joke.” It might make her an asshole, but she enjoyed watching Jack flinch just then. “And then I took care of it.”
“We would have helped you.”
She knew that. Now. She did. But the time had not been right for her to have a kid. The other parent hadn’t been right, either. So, she made the correct decision without bringing them into it. “I know that, but I meant what I said about not wanting to be tied to Chris.”
Jack rubbed a hand over his face. He really looked like their dad when he did that, but she didn’t think right now would be the right time to tell him that. “I always knew he was a dick, but I had no idea. I just can’t b
elieve he said that to you.”
Bridget could only imagine what Hannah had to say about Chris. She’d never liked him and liked him even less as she’d become friends with Bridget. Hannah might have a temper almost as prodigious as Sean and Bridget Nolan’s, but she was the most loyal person Bridget had ever met. She was perfect for her sweet softie of a brother. “Is Hannah plotting his untimely death?”
That got Jack to smile. “Yeah. He’s definitely out of the fucking wedding.”
“Thank goodness.” Bridget lifted her hands to the sky and gave her brother a not-fake smile. “Can we leave the bathroom now?”
Jack opened the door and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She let herself lean into him. “And can we get drunk after dinner? Like real drunk?”
“You got it, Bridge to Terabithia.”
She hit him in the side because she hated that nickname. “You’re buying the drinks.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHAT DO YOU WANT to do first?” Matt asked.
Bridget was surprised that he didn’t have more questions after what had transpired in the restaurant. “You don’t want to talk about what happened in there?”
Matt shrugged. “I figure that you’ll tell me what you want me to know.”
“You really are a unicorn.”
He gave her the lopsided smile that had made it really hard not to kiss him the whole summer. “Not a unicorn. I’m just not an asshole.”
What a revelation.
Hannah and Jack walked out of the restaurant and onto the casino floor then. “After that, I think we should drink a lot,” Hannah said.
“Jack and I had already agreed to that when he fetched me from the bathroom,” Bridget said.
Hannah turned to her betrothed. “I knew there was a reason why I agreed to marry you.”
Not That Kind of Guy Page 9
