Mr. Wrong (A Homespun Romance)

by Geeta Kakade

  “It isn’t anything fancy,” she told him, thinking of Harold’s penchant for gourmet food.

  “It’s looks wonderful,” he said quietly and the words reassured her more than a speech would have. “Did you know that I would turn up at the school?”

  Mentally they were so attuned, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she said yes, but she negated the thought with a swift shake of the head.

  “How come you have so much food ready?” Had Harold stood her up? Was this meal supposed to have been for him? A shrimp enlarged in Brady’s throat till it blocked his esophagus.

  “No,” Kate said pausing with her spoon half way to her mouth. ”I made the salad now to stretch the meal. As for the chowder I always cook enough for two meals and freeze half. That way on the nights I have school or I’m too tired to cook it’s there for me.”

  “I see.” He remembered their first meeting and Katie telling her that she was normally very organized.

  “Katie, has Harold ever had dinner here?”

  “No,” she looked at him surprised.

  Harold had usually stopped by to pick her up for a date and that had been all. She had never invited him over for a meal knowing he would hate to sit at a card table and eat the plain food that was all she knew how to fix. She had never even asked him to come in after a date, aware of some of the wrestling matches girls her age had with their friends on these occasions. Harold, too, had been content with a goodnight kiss in the car. But now, contrarily, it bothered Kate that he had never wanted to spend time with her here.

  “Katie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Have you ever thought of changing your job?”

  Kate looked across her little table, surprised, “No. Why?”

  “A friend of mine is looking for someone intelligent, attractive, with good people skills for his front office. It’s a receptionist type of job, greeting people, making appointments, some light filing, that kind of thing.”

  Good people skills? Intelligent? Her? Kate couldn’t say a word.

  “The pay’s really good and you’d have a good benefit package,” said Brady persuasively.

  If money was all that mattered she would jump at the job.

  Kate rose, removed their salad plates, brought the soup to the table before she said, “Thanks, but no thanks, Brady. I like working with children too much to want to change.”

  Too good a tactician to comment further he concentrated on his creamy chowder.

  “Brady,” they were half way through it when she spoke again.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you like your work?”

  “Very much.”

  “Don’t you want to do anything else with your life?”

  “Nope.”

  The cheerfulness of his tone irritated her. The man was intelligent enough to do anything he chose to. Why was he content to earn minimum wage?

  A voice floated through her head. Her mother telling her about her father’s job, when he’d had one. `He didn’t make much. Just enough to get by and he was always happy with that. Never wanted to do anything else.’

  Was that how it was with Brady? Was he content just making enough to get by? Looking at his clothes and his car, Katie didn’t think he could save a dime out of his salary or that the fact bothered him in the slightest. The original Grasshopper Green, not mere kin, Kate thought sadly.

  “Cal Poly offers classes in almost everything. The tuition is really reasonable.....”

  “Stop it Kathryn,” The cold incisiveness of his voice, the way he used her full name, flooded her face with color, but she stuck to her guns.

  “You said we’re friends Brady. Well, I can’t stand by and see you throwing your life away when there’s so much you could do.”

  “Kathryn,” his eyes had darkened to the color of polished onyx, “friends accept you for what you are.”

  “Friends,” she flung at him, Zooloretto" tell you the truth about yourself.”

  “That being,” he said, "that you want me to turn my hand to improving myself? What you really mean is improving my salary don’t you? Why? So that some money grubbing bitch will marry me for what I have, not what I am?”

  “Maybe,” she wasn’t going to back down having come this far, “security is an important factor in anyone’s life.”

  “My love will be all the security my woman needs,” he said and a pulse exploded into a tango in Kate’s throat. “If she wants money she can go out and earn it herself, buy her own security. Just as you can. You don’t need to marry a Harold to be secure Katie. With a little careful planning, you can achieve all the security you desire, but no matter what you do, you can’t buy love, remember that.”

  “Love will last longer on the secure foundation that money provides,” Kate said stubbornly.

  He stared at her for so long she wondered if he could hear the bang of her heart as it clamored to speak for itself, decry the unfeeling words tripping off her tongue like hurtful hailstones in a storm.

  “You’ve locked yourself into a room without windows haven’t you Katie? You don’t want to give yourself a chance to try love, do you? You’re poorer now, with your tunnel vision than you’ve ever been in your life. Well, just don’t try to convert me again, do you hear?”

  Brady’s voice had risen to a shout and Kate’s heart suddenly picked up an old rhythm of fear as her mind lifted the curtain she tried to keep drawn over her past and slipped back into the past.

  There was another man shouting in the room and soon he would fling something or get up and slap her mother. Kate whimpered.

  “Katie?” his outstretched arm seemed like a blow and she lifted her hand to ward it off, cowering behind it.

  “Katie! What’s wrong?”

  Her vision cleared and she looked across at Brady and then down at the table as if she couldn’t focus on the remains of their meal properly. A violent trembling seized her legs as shudders began to rack her and two fat tears escaped her tightly shut eyes.

  “Katie. I’m sorry. My God, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Brady reached for her and drew her into his arms amazed at the tremors rocking her. She had stiffened up to stop them and felt icy cold to his touch.

  “Shhh,” he crooned into her hair, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. Don’t cry, sweetheart. Please don’t cry.”

  Shaking himself, he held her to him, going over the scene in his head rapidly. What had happened? One minute they had been discussing love and the next she had fallen apart. What had he said?

  The next instant he knew. It wasn’t what he had said but the way he had said it.

  Pete Brown, his partner, had mentioned last week how the little girl with the alcoholic father had jumped a foot at the sound of a raised voice and burst into hysterical tears in his office. It had taken a while to calm her down, persuade her that the men working on the addition to the office meant no harm.

  'Oh, my God, Katie,' he thought sadly, rubbing his hand up and down her back, realizing the torment he had resurrected for her, `What am I doing to you with my high falutting ideals? You were right. I haven’t been there and I will never really know what it was like for you. All I know is that I love you more than I ever thought it possible to love another human being, without reason or rhyme, and I want you to believe in love as well.”

  “Shh,” he soothed aloud, his chin resting on her hair, “Don’t cry Katie, please. I’ll sign up for every class in Cal Poly. I’ll do it tonight. I’ll drive over there now and make someone open up the admissions office and when they ask me which courses I want to take I’ll say every single one. You’ll see. I’ll do them all for you.”

  A laugh crossed with a sob and came out a hiccup against his chest.

  Relieved his stupid talk was getting through to her, Brady went on, “By the time I’m through there, I’ll get into the Guinness Book of World Records as the man who has the largest calling card in the world. It will have to be, won’t it, to hold all my credentials?” He
went on in the same vein and soon she gave him a watery smile and pushed away from his chest.

  “I’m sorry Brady,” she said clearly and he had never wanted her more, tear blotched face, red nose and all.

  Oh Katie, let me love you. His jaw tightened painfully with the effort not to say the words out loud.

  “I didn’t mean to go to pieces on you. You scared me when you began to yell.”

  “I’m sorry too. I’ll never yell at you again as long as I live. Even if I have to have my larynx removed to help me remember.”

  That elicited another watery smile.

  “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I have no business telling you how to run your life in the first place. I’m sorry.”

  They did the dishes together and then Brady left, going straight back to his apartment in Irvine.

  For the first time since he had met her, Brady acknowledged the dark dreary forebodings that had kept him company on the way back. Maybe winning Katie was not possible after all.

  As soon as she awoke Saturday, Kate made herself a mug of tea and decided to do some studying. Ten minutes later, she knew mulling over a textbook was no good, if one’s mind wasn’t going to collaborate.

  Hers was off, wandering down avenues of forbidden pleasure, resurrecting explicit, will destroying pictures. Brady cocooning her in the silken chrysalis of his arms, holding her as if she were precious, her own unmistakable flare of response to him. Gray eyes, storm cloud dark, angry, upset, then gentling lover like to the incandescent sheen of a dove’s wings, telling her he was sorry. Kate’s breath stumbled over the thought and snagged in her throat. Brady as her lover? Midsummer madness was nothing compared to this train of thought.

  The three staccato raps on the door startled her so much she spilled some of the tea before going to the door. Luckily, her daydreaming had let it grow cold so at least she wasn’t scalded.

  “Brady! What are you doing here?”

  He looked as if he had been jogging. Sweat stained his red singlet and flowed in tiny rivulets down his brow and the side of his face.

  “That’s a fine question to ask a man who’s almost killed himself getting to your door,” he gasped.

  An unwilling smile on her mouth Kate opened the door and he hobbled past her and sank into one of the folding chairs by her card table.

  “Jogging is not for me,” he panted, massaging his heart. “Definitely not for me.”

  Kate looked at him with narrowed eyes. Suppose he wasn’t playing the fool? Last week the evening news had focused on a young man who’d had a fatal heart attack because he’d overdone the exercise, embarking on it without his doctor’s approval.

  “Brady are you alright? Do you jog normally? Does your chest hurt? Should I ...?”

  “Whoa! Don’t kill me with the questions Katie. One at a time. Of course I’m not alright. Do I normally look like this?”

  Kate looked at his face and followed a single trail of sweat down to his neck. His bunched shoulder muscles glistened as well and she wanted to stretch her hand out and touch his sweat slick body. Follow through with her lips.

  “No you don’t,” she said, opening the linen closet opposite her bathroom and handing him a hand towel.

  “Thanks,” Brady mopped his face, and then continued with an assumed hauteur that had Kate biting her lower lip, “Of course I don’t jog normally. What kind of fool do you take me for? I swim every day. Now there’s a nice way to exer...”

  He had put the towel down and was massaging his chest again.

  “Brady, stop playing the fool and tell me if you’re alright,” The pitch of her tone brought a pleased grin to Brady’s face but at the look in her eyes he said quickly, “I’m fine.”

  “Why do you keep rubbing your chest then?” Kate asked suspiciously.

  “Oh, that,” Brady moved his hand away, “I walked into a cabinet yesterday and the edge caught me there. I’ve got a real beauty of a bruise. Want to see?”

  Kate moved back and said sharply, “No. Of course not.”

  Her mind was playing hookey again. It was back to the day on the beach, reminding her of the feel of Brady’s skin under her hands, the kiss she had pressed on his collarbone, the whimsy of it all.

  “Would you like some tea or coffee? A cold drink?”

  He didn’t seem in a hurry to answer. His eyes were roving over her appreciatively not missing a bit of her in the old blue shorts she had put on that morning.

  Kate wanted to grab a bed sheet and wrap herself in it, tell Brady to stop looking at her as if she were his favorite flavor of ice cream in a sugar cone, stop melting her very bones with the warmth of his laser vision.

  “Tea, please,” Brady said slowly and Kate moved away, glad to be able to turn her back on him.

  Hadn’t anyone told the man knees weren’t edible?

  She waited for the water to boil, fussing around with the mugs and tea bags, anything to avoid turning back to the hypnotist.

  “Been studying?”

  Even his voice could touch her, make her tremble.

  “Yes.”

  Maybe he would take the hint and leave. Didn’t he have to work today?

  “I’ve got the day off today.” As usual his words were an extension of her thoughts. “Would you like to go out on a boat?”

  “You’ve got a boat?”

  It wouldn’t surprise her. The man probably owed the next ten years of his life to creditors. Carefully she poured the boiling water over the tea bags and set the kettle down.

  “A friend lets me use his.” Brady crossed his fingers behind his back.

  “I don’t know a thing about boats. I’ve never been on one. I might get seasick.”

  I might fall in love with you Brady and then what would I do?

  Carefully, she set Brady’s mug in front of them and sat down cradling hers, willing the warmth to reach into her shivering confusion and still it.

  “There’s only one way of finding out isn’t there? I bet you won’t be seasick but we can always come back if you are. Look,” reluctantly Kate met his eyes and felt herself being caught up and swept along , “You can even take your books and study if you want to, while you get a tan.”

  Kate sipped her tea and didn’t answer Brady for so long he could taste the sharp edge of her refusal in his mouth. Her green eyes looked at him finally over the rim of her mug reminding him of a rabbit trapped by a dog, wondering what to do next. And that hurt.

  “For just one day can’t you forget everything?” What was it about her that made pleading worthwhile? “Can’t we just be a man and a woman spending a day together?” A flush tinted Kate’s cheeks and he said hurriedly, “No, scratch that man and woman bit. Make it friends spending the day together? Please?”

  “I’ll come.” The words rushed out of her, in a hurry to get away from the sternness of rationale.

  “You will?” For a minute Brady looked so surprised Kate almost laughed aloud. He recovered quickly though, “Great. I’ll pick you up in an hour. Don’t change. Those blue shorts are perfect. Bring a swimsuit too.”

  “I’ll pack a picnic,” Kate began only to be interrupted.

  “No, don’t do that. My mother had a party yesterday and has plenty of leftovers,” Brady crossed his fingers behind his back, “I’ve got everything else ready.”

  “Alright.”

  “Be back in an hour then?” Brady said standing up.

  “Yes.”

  Her spirits bubbling with anticipation Kate showered and got ready for the day. She put on a black maillot swimsuit, it’s color relieved at the waist with three bands of color; green, white, and her favorite, aqua. Slipping into a cover up sleeveless cotton jumpsuit in aqua, with tiny brass buttons fastening innumerable pockets, that had cost her more weekends babysitting money than she cared to remember, she put underthings, a toilet bag and a towel into a large straw bag.

  The flicker of disappointment on Brady’s face when he saw her was unmistakable but he said nothing. Irrationally
Kate felt irritated. Why did he have to make her feel she was acting like someone in the Dark Ages? Kate knew it was the show-it-if-you’ve-got-it age, especially in Southern California, where there were a plethora of beautiful bare bodies but couldn’t one be different without being classed as priggish? Her lips tightened and she stared out of the window. She ought to have remained behind and spent her time with Pestalozzi instead.

  Brady cursed himself silently in English because he didn’t know any other language to curse himself in. Then he invited his Irish grandfather to curse him as well. The set of Katie’s shoulders told him she had noticed his reaction. Picking up the sunglasses he had removed to say hello he jammed them on his nose.

  You, Brady, are an unmitigated ass. Which opinion didn’t do anything to make him feel better.

  Last night, he had carefully assembled every fact he knew about Katie and gone over the whole, trying to figure out a way to breach her defenses. The thought he wouldn’t be able to hadn’t stayed with him long. He had been brought up to believe he could do anything he set his mind to and his mind was set on winning Katie. Not just winning her but getting her to change her views on love, open her arms to it and let it surround her the rest of her life. As a replacement for a wall made of stone and mortar that shut out emotion and dealt only in cold hard facts, love held no equal. His parents were living proof of that.

  They were at the marina very quickly. Or it might have been his speeding thoughts that made the drive seem so short.

  The breeze ruffled Kate’s curls and the sun seemed to sneak in a caress. She filled her lungs with the clean ocean air, turned her head and smiled at him, differences forgotten, “It’s a lovely day.”

  Brady’s heart lifted and soared across the ocean in eager anticipation as he nodded, “It is isn’t it?”

  Kate stared at the boat. It was bigger than anything she had imagined, much much bigger and very different. It’s green and white paint looked spanking new and the reflection from the trim dazzled the eye. Brady went ahead and turned to hold a hand out and help her up the two step ladder to the cockpit. As large as her kitchen it had two soft leather seats along either side, an open space in the middle, ideal for a couple to stretch out in. He pointed to the stainless steel ladder directly opposite them leading upwards, to a covered area, “The bridge. We’ll go up there later. Let’s go in here first.”