by Meg Maguire
Jenna waved him over, rolling out a chair so he could eat with them.
“Good day for chowder,” she said as he lifted the lid of his container.
“Tell me about it. Have you heard the forecast? Feels like snow.”
She nodded. “Three to six inches, they said.”
Maybe it would turn into a storm by the early evening, and he’d wind up taking refuge at Steph’s again, once her second date with the hot doctor got snowed out... Hey, a man could hope.
“How’s the back room coming?” Jenna asked.
“Right on track. Way easier job than the basement. You should see the wiring down there.”
“Excellent. We need to get that space in shape—we’re way overdue to hire another matchmaker, but we’ve got no place to put one at the moment.”
“So, Patrick,” Lindsey piped up from her desk.
“Yeah?”
“Since we’ve got you in our lair, I can only imagine it’s appropriate to ask if you’re single.”
He smiled tightly. “I’m divorced, yeah.”
“In the market for a nice young lady?” Lindsey asked, bobbing her eyebrows. Her boss shot her a stern look that she ignored.
“I am, yeah. But I can’t afford you guys, I’m afraid. Plus I’m not exactly Spark material. Steph said you guys found her some fancy doctor.”
“Any well-adjusted, professional guy without a serious criminal record is Spark material,” Lindsey said.
“Well, if I happen to win a membership in a raffle or something, I’ll be sure to sign up. I could use all the help I can get.”
“Oh?”
He nodded, stirring his soup. “Dating feels completely different after being off the market for half a decade. The technology aspect alone.”
Jenna lit up like he’d said the magic word. “I am so with you there.”
“Steph said you guys don’t encourage texting with the people you get set up with.”
She shook her head, chewing, and Lindsey said slyly, “You and Steph talk a lot.”
He was spared having to reply when Jenna spoke. “We like our clients to approach their love lives as seriously as they would an important job interview. And you wouldn’t text your prospective boss to set up a meeting.”
“No, definitely not.” And a woman who signed up for this service would surely be serious about finding a partner, then.
He set his spoon down. “Can I ask you a dating-conundrum-type question?”
“Always,” Jenna said.
“So I’m like, broke.”
“Okay.”
“Do I even have any business trying to date right now? Or should I wait until I have more to offer? Does a guy have to come standard with a good job to be dateable?”
“Not if the woman’s rich,” Lindsey offered, and was shot another look by her boss.
“I’d say a job, period, should be standard,” Jenna said. “Or at least the education or training that would help a person find one. Stability is important. Not just to a potential mate, either. It should be important to you, trying to get yourself to a better place with your finances.”
“Of course.”
“I can tell you from experience, I grew up pretty poor, until my mom met my stepdad. He wasn’t rich or anything, and he had to know what he was signing up for, getting involved with a struggling single mom and her kid. But he didn’t make that choice based on what was the smartest move for himself.”
“And it worked out?”
Jenna nodded. “We ended up pretty comfortable by the time I went to college. And if not for his support while my mom went back to school, she never would have gotten that chance.”
“Gotcha.” So in this equation, Patrick was Jenna’s mom...just with a beast of a mortgage instead of a kid. It seemed a bit of a tough sell, this scenario, with the genders reversed. “So there’s hope, is what you’re saying.”
“Sure. Love makes people illogical in the best way,” she concluded with a smile. “And sometimes our least logical decisions wind up being in our best interest.”
Love. That was a hell of a lot to wish for in the Steph department. But hope—hope was good.
Patrick felt hopeful about the future in general. What choice did a guy have, aside from hoping things would get better? Assuming they would, and doing the work to move in that direction? He didn’t understand people who just rolled over and gave up. He’d take any job—bartending, sanitation, cold-calling strangers to sell them stuff they didn’t need—before he’d ever give up. Maybe he’d get foreclosed on someday, but at least if he did, he wouldn’t suffer any regrets, worrying maybe he hadn’t done everything he could to fight it.
“I’m hopeful,” he concluded.
“Good. That’s all you need,” Jenna said. “Hope and determination.”
“Plus no one is ever in perfect shape in every aspect of their life,” Lindsey added. “No one goes into a search for a mate a hundred percent ready. As long as you’re not like, crippled by the weight of your issues, or motivated by the wrong intentions, you’re as ready as anyone could hope to be.”
“Huh.” That was probably true enough.
Not wanting to take too generous a lunch break, Patrick polished off his chowder and sandwich and thanked the women for their company, then got back to work.
Hope and determination, his head echoed. And the best of intentions.
That was his outlook to a T. He trusted it would sort out his debt in time. Why not believe maybe it could work for his love life, too? What were his intentions? What did he hope to gain, and how could he point himself in that direction?
A minor shock jolted down his arm as he tweaked the wiring, and he swore under his breath, shaking out his hand. But in its wake, he had his answer. Hope plus determination, and a plan... Yeah. He could do that.
8
THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY dawned icy cold. Where was global warming when you needed it?
Steph was running late for the noontime jujitsu session she was due to lead, and a jog to work might be her only chance at feeling even remotely warmed up. She crunched her way across the bridge and aimed herself toward Chinatown, gym bag flopping at her butt.
Her second date with Dr. Dylan the previous week had proved a complete fizzle. Again, he was perfectly charming, but the buzz of anticipation she’d felt during their first dinner was gone. She knew how Patrick made her feel now, and no amount of hoping could replicate it with Dylan. It simply wasn’t there.
She’d cut him off before the good-night kiss with “This has been really lovely...but I’m just not feeling it. I’m sorry.” And he’d stiffened, thanked her for the second date, and said good-night. He hadn’t walked her to her door this time, but she couldn’t blame him.
She’d had two more first dates earlier this week, orchestrated by Jenna; one with a PhD candidate and one with a man who did something-or-other in finance. Nice enough guys, but again, no physical connection. A couple of chaste good-night kisses had told her all she’d needed to know. Patrick had set the bar perilously high on the chemistry front, and she wasn’t willing to waste the time of any man who couldn’t clear it, no matter how great he looked on paper.
Her chances at scoring a polished and pedigreed emergency wedding date were looking bleak. It’d take a miracle at this point. But who knew—perhaps that miracle would be one of the twenty bachelors Jenna had selected for the Spark mixer happening the following evening.
The preceding weekend had been fun at least, eaten up by a two-day beginners’ seminar for new and prospective Wilinski’s members. Steph had been pleased to see three young women in attendance. By the end of the Sunday session, all of them seemed eager to join, once the women’s facilities were finalized. Wilinski’s would be joining the twenty-first century in no time. She smiled at the thought, breath puffing white clouds into the icy morning air.
Worries over her tardiness dissolved as she mounted the building’s front steps. Jenna had a client waiting—a male client. He was sittin
g on the foyer’s loveseat before a fancy floral arrangement, flipping through a magazine. Steph’s curiosity was piqued. Too bad she looked like such a harried mess. But as she hauled the heavy glass door open—
Patrick Doherty. Again. But dressed in a chocolate-brown sweater and cleaner jeans than she was used to seeing him in. His shoes had been shined.
Oh no. He’d joined Spark.
She wasn’t sure which possibility pickled her stomach worse—that he’d joined, thinking it’d gain him access to her, or that she might have to imagine him kissing other women. Stylish women. Spark-worthy women, her competition at tomorrow night’s mixer.
Patrick spotted her as the door eased shut and hopped to his feet, tossing the magazine aside. “Steph, hey!”
“Hi, Patrick.” She clutched her bag’s strap, wary. He wasn’t equipped to endanger her safety, for once, but his presence after an entire week’s radio silence was...confusing.
More confusing still, he picked up the vase of flowers and held it out. Their Technicolor shades turned his irises blue as a postcard ocean.
She eyed the arrangement, pulling off her mittens. “Are those for me?”
“You um, you said it was your birthday this week. When I gave you a lift.”
“It’s my birthday today.” She’d forgotten until just now, so preoccupied with the time
“Hey, perfect! Happy birthday.”
So if he wasn’t here for a Spark appointment, then why? Though his clothes already answered the question, she asked it anyway. “Are you doing another job for Jenna?” She looked to the office windows, finding the blinds mercifully shut, no matchmaker eyes recording this exchange.
“Nope. I just came to give you these.”
“Why?”
His smile wilted some and he lowered the vase. “Because I like you.”
Her eyes told him volumes. Did you not hear any of the things I made perfectly clear last Thursday evening? She’d thought he had. Yet here he was.
“I haven’t had a crush on anybody in ages,” he said quietly. “I know I’m probably never getting anyplace serious with you, but can’t I bring you flowers for your birthday? I swear I’m not a stalker. I just had the day off, and figured...” He trailed off, deflated.
She pursed her lips.
“They can be friendly flowers, if you want. It just feels good, liking somebody again. That’s all. I’ve been looking forward to giving you these all week.”
She shoved her mittens in her pockets and accepted the flowers. They were gorgeous—bright tropical colors, the arrangement bursting with calla and tiger lilies. This was no ten-dollar drugstore bouquet, and Patrick wasn’t in a position to be splashing out on flowers. “You shouldn’t have. But you did, and they’re beautiful. Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure. My neighbor snuck some money into my mailbox for snowblowing her driveway, so I figured, hey—unexpected windfall, may as well use it for an unexpected gift for Steph.”
She pictured him dashing from his truck to the building, dodging ice, coat hugged around the arrangement to shield it from the frigid wind. “I’ll have to keep them at work. They’ll never survive the walk home.”
“I could drive you later.”
She gave him a stern look, making it clear there was a line that separated endearing from pushy. And clarity was in short supply where her feelings for Patrick were concerned.
“Or not.”
“Thank you, really. I don’t doubt your intentions.” Oh Lord, she had a suitor with honorable intentions. What century was she living in? “But please...let me decide whether or not to call you, okay?”
He smiled tightly. “Sure.”
“I have to lead a session now.”
“That’s cool. Have a great birthday, Steph.”
“Thanks.” She cradled the vase to her side with one arm, and gave his shoulder an apologetic squeeze. “Take care.”
She left him in the foyer, heading down the steps to the gym without a backward glance.
She must seem so cold. But if she let him know how torn she felt, how badly she wanted him deep down... Hope seemed a cruel gift to give Patrick, when she couldn’t say for sure if it was her heart or her libido that found him magnetic. He offered his emotions so freely. It’d be unfair to lead him on when she had no clue what she was after anymore.
“Oh ho,” Rich said as she entered the gym, spotting her flowers.
She pushed her sneakers off at the door. “Who you calling a ho, Estrada?”
He abandoned the spray bottle he’d been using on the mats to follow her to the lounge. “Well done, mystery doctor.”
“They’re not from the doctor. Me and the doctor didn’t pan out. None of my Spark dates have panned out yet.”
“Bummer. Who’re they from, then?”
“They’re just birthday flowers.” She made Rich hold them as she unfolded a card table beside the recliners. The recliners where she and Patrick had first kissed. Facing the TV he’d installed, in this room where he’d nearly broken her nose the second they met.
Rich set the vase on the table. “Pretty fancy birthday flowers.”
Steph dropped her bag by the wall and ditched her hat and coat. “They’re from an admirer, if you must know.”
“Oh? Not a gym member, I hope.”
She hopped on one foot, stripping her sock. “Just this guy I keep running into.”
“You think it’ll turn into anything serious?”
She sighed and eyed the clock on the DVD player, finding she still had a few minutes before the session officially started. “I don’t even know what we are.”
His brow rose. “I see.”
“No, you don’t. Even I don’t see what’s going on, so you sure as heck don’t.”
“Do you like this guy?” Rich asked.
“I do... But he’s not exactly relationship material.”
“In what way?”
She dropped onto a recliner and tugged off the other sock. “I grew up kinda broke, and I don’t exactly make a ton as a trainer.”
“Tell me about it.”
“If I keep doing what I love, what I’m supposed to be doing, I’m never going to be especially comfortable, financially.”
He nodded, looking uncharacteristically serious.
“And this guy’s struggling to even pay his mortgage. I do like him. He’s a really good guy. And our chemistry is like, ridiculous. At first I thought he was too much like all the dudes I dated in my twenties, but now...I don’t really care about that. Dating a doctor was a flop, in the end. But what I do care about is not signing up to struggle for the rest of my life. Is that awful?”
Rich shook his head. “I used to feel the same way. I was determined not to settle down until I knew all my family shit was squared away, finances-wise.”
“Surely it is now.” Rich had to be in the upper quarter of professional fighters as far as paydays and promo ops went.
“More or less. But when Lindsey and I started up, I wasn’t there yet. And I was determined not to fall for her, not until I had everything nailed down. But we kept colliding...”
He eyed Steph’s recliner in a way that made her wonder if she wasn’t the first trainer to compromise the honor of this room. Probably best not to think too hard about that.
“And you just knew, at a certain point, that your logical plans could shove it?”
He sank into the other chair. “Kind of. Or I realized that even though she complicated my plans, she also offered me way more stuff in return—enough to cancel out the fact that I’d have to rearrange everything to make room for her. Hell, to abandon a bunch of really amazing opportunities out west, to come back here for good.”
“How’d you know?”
“I was just unhappy away from her. She has this weird way of like, venting all the ugly, dark shit that weighs me down sometimes. I didn’t even make it a week, when I moved out to California. It was like moving into a cave, all cold and gloomy.”
“Awww.” Ste
ph reached out to give his shoulder a teasing punch. “You’ve gone soft.”
“I’m okay with that.”
“Did you think you were in love with her by the time you made that decision?”
“I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t been in love before. But I knew it was something special.”
Something special. Her and Patrick’s physical connection certainly felt special. He seemed tailor-made for her sexually.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Obviously, if you’re asking me for advice.”
“He really likes me. And I do like him. I’m just scared of what a future with him would look like. And I don’t want to lead him on, keeping one foot in the door.” She groaned, rubbing her face.
“Would you rather be poor and happy, or rich and dissatisfied?”
“I want to be rich and happy.”
He grinned. “Touché.”
“And struggling can suck the happiness right out of even the strongest relationship.”
Rich nodded. “I’m not drunk, so I won’t get all sloppy and tell you exactly why I’m totally with you on the not-wanting-to-be-poor front. I’ll just say that there’s something to be said for financial stability, but there’s also something to be said for the emotional stability that the right person can offer. But at the end of the day, only your gut can tell you which is more important.”
“It’s hard to hear my gut with my brain and my libido arguing so loudly.”
“Give it a while. Date some more of those fancy dudes Jenna trades in. And if they all leave you cold, and it’s meant to be with the mystery pauper... He’ll still be around in a few weeks.”
She nodded. It was solid advice. And a game plan dished out by a trainer—she could trust that process, at least. “Thanks. This was helpful.”
Rich stood. “Consider it your birthday present. Hey, you up for after-sparring drinks, or you got a hot date already? Maybe I could get drunk and sloppy after all.”
“No, no dates. No drinks, either, though. I’m getting burned out on the bar scene. Need to conserve my stamina for this Spark mixer tomorrow night.”
