by Shirley Jump
Alex fingered one of the silky petals and inhaled the delicate fragrance. “I do. I wonder how he knew that.”
Steve shrugged. “I guess he pays attention.”
He had? Mack, of all guys. She’d known Mack forever, but never expected him to remember a detail as minute as her favorite flower.
From her position on the sofa, Renee gave Alex a smile of Grade-A approval. “This is my friend, Renee,” Alex said. “Why don’t you two chat for a minute while I put these in some water? I’m sure she’s dying to get to know you.”
Steve good-naturedly sat down across from Renee and submitted to a rapid-fire inquisition, while Alex trimmed the roses and set them in a vase, pouring in the little packet of preservative. What he did for a living—accounting, just like Renee. Where he lived—Newton. How old he was—thirty. If he had ever been married before—once, for two years. No kids, one dog that the wife got in the divorce. He drove a Toyota. Loved the Red Sox and hated country music. Allergic to shellfish, wouldn’t eat broccoli if you paid him.
“Can I have him back now?” Alex asked. “Or do you want to hook him up to a lie detector?”
“We’ll save that for the second date.” Renee grinned, then waved them on their way.
A half hour later, Alex and Steve were seated in a quiet restaurant. Elegant surroundings, with a hum of instrumental music playing in the background. Waiters who whispered in and out like smoke to whisk away crumbs and empty dishes.
Steve was attentive. Nice. Charming, even. He was good at conversation, interested in Alex’s job, her opinions on everything from politics to books. He had every quality she should have looked for in a man.
Including the fact that he didn’t have a wife on the side.
But she didn’t feel any electricity. That little internal roar of desire, that trigger that told her this was the one.
Nothing. No click. No hum. No sexual buzz.
He was nice. Just nice.
She found her mind wandering, to thoughts of Mack. Now there was a man that a woman—not her, of course, but other women—would feel a jolt of electricity with on a first date. He had something about him. That grin, maybe, or that sparkle in his eyes, that drew a woman in, captivated her, and made her feel like no one else existed.
Like earlier today with the sweeping. For a moment there, she’d been caught in a web with Mack, forgetting he was her friend. She’d seen him as—
A man.
A man who rarely stayed alone for long. A man whose bed was rarely without female company. A man who was probably on a date right now, too.
The thought of Mack out with another woman, giving somebody else that grin, laughing at her jokes, just as Steve was doing here, sent a prickle of something—Alex knew it couldn’t be jealousy—roaring through her.
How crazy was that?
She simply wasn’t paying enough attention to Steve. She had a polite, charming guy doing his level best to get to know her. She’d be insane to think of anything else right now.
She shook off thoughts of Mack and refocused on Steve, fighting the urge to yawn. It had to be all the extra work on the house that had her so tired. Not her date.
For the rest of the meal, Alex smiled and engaged in the conversation, talking to him like a work colleague, forcing herself to stay interested and awake by pretending he was someone she was interviewing—and feeling oddly like this was an interview, not a date. In the end she insisted on picking up half the tab for dinner, then begged off early, telling Steve she had to work in the morning.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I know this great jazz bar off of Washington that has the best martinis.”
“Any other night, really, I’d love to, but martinis and trying to get that interview with the new dress shop on Newbury Street and then writing the story by deadline tomorrow…” She put out her hands, then shrugged. “Not the best mix. I had a great time tonight, though.”
She’d already said that three times. Any more, and he’d begin to think she was lying. She smiled at him. Attractive man, really. Dark hair, green-blue eyes. A chiseled chin, fit body, not too tall. He’d worn a tie—ten points in his favor—and hadn’t had a single bad habit or annoying trait. All around, he’d been—
Nice.
Ugh. She was beginning to hate that word. And hate Mack for sending her a man who had so many good points, she couldn’t even think of a reason to tell him to go home.
They were standing on the stoop of Renee’s apartment building, the soft light from above bathing Steve’s features in a golden glow. Alex had briefly considered having him drop her off at the house from hell—as she’d started affectionately calling her “project”—just to see if that would scare him off, then realized Steve was such a gentleman, he’d probably offer to hang her wallpaper.
Steve stepped forward, one arm slipping around her waist. Alex waited, thinking that now, now she would feel that charge, that burst of anticipation—but no, nothing, not so much as a flicker of want. Surely, though, plenty of relationships had been built on great conversations with attraction coming later.
But the disappointment in her gut weighed heavy and again her thoughts strayed to Mack. Was he, too, standing on some woman’s porch? Holding her in his arms? And was she thrilling at his touch? Anticipating his kiss? And more…
Was he anticipating kissing her? That surge of not-jealousy rushed through Alex a second time. What was wrong with her?
“I had a really great time, too,” Steve said.
His voice had dropped into the lower-decibel ranges. Men were so obvious. They laid out all the road signs. The I’M GOING TO KISS YOU NOW signals that were as obvious as the old Burma-Shave roadside signs. Step closer. Arm around waist. Deep voice.
The trouble? Alex had no desire to kiss Steve Rowen. Instead, she found herself thinking one very insane thought for a flash of a second—
She wanted to be kissing Mack. To be in his arms. To feel his chest against hers. His lips pressing down, taking her—
Now that was crazy. Completely insane. Mack was a friend. Nothing more. An annoying friend, at that.
She did not want to kiss Mack Douglas.
Steve moved in for the kill—that’s what Alex got for mentally debating for so long—and Alex was caught. Either wriggle out and be completely obvious about her lack of desire or just stay there and hope he was quick. She opted for the latter, turning her face so that he ended up with a half-mouth, half-cheek kiss.
Steve drew back. A mixture of confusion and disappointment showed in his eyes. “Well, good night then.”
“Good night.” Alex gave him a smile, then turned away. “Thank you, Steve. I really did have a great evening.”
Oh, God. She’d said it again. Now she was encouraging him. That’s what she got for trying to be polite.
“Would you like to go to a concert on Saturday? There’s one of those music-in-the-park events in Mansfield. If you like jazz and picnics.”
Alex hesitated. Maybe tonight had just been an anomaly. She’d been tired—bone tired—from all the work on the house. And Steve wasn’t terrible. Hadn’t she had plenty of friends who had started out with no sparks, then found those sparks the more they dated?
Of course, she couldn’t think of a single example right now, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist.
“Sure. That sounds great.”
Immediately, Steve’s features went from dim to 100-watt. He beamed at her, released her from his waist-grip with a second quick kiss on her cheek, then said good-bye and hurried down the stairs and off to his sensible, so very accountantlike Toyota.
Alex let herself into Renee’s apartment, sidestepping toys and Barbie dolls. A single light burned on the end table in the living room. Despite her promise, Renee had gone to bed. A note on the kitchen table said they’d catch up later over a latte.
Once again, Renee had managed to avoid discussing what had gone wrong with her troubled marriage. Maybe Alex should stop worrying. Let Renee and Tony figur
e it out on their own.
But as Alex left to get into her car and head back to her own house—and to a blow-up bed in a drafty room—she cast one more worried glance in the rearview mirror at Renee’s building. And suspected more secrets were hidden behind that shut door than just a marriage on rocky ground.
Chapter Seven
Renee went to work on Monday morning in the City Times office, carpooling with Alex, and trying her damnedest to feign interest in Alex’s rehashing of her date. But it was like slogging through one more episode of Dora the Explorer and holding back a scream that the friggin’ backpack was right under the stupid monkey’s nose. Not that she didn’t care about Alex, but she had bigger problems on her mind.
Problems she couldn’t share.
Because if she did, Alex would hate her. Hell, she hated herself. And she needed to find a way out, one that wouldn’t destroy everyone’s lives. And yet, wouldn’t leave her still stuck in this thick mud of unhappiness.
“He sounds great, Alex,” Renee said, forcing her own issues out of her mind.
“Yeah, he was. Too great. Too nice.” Alex shifted the vase of white roses in her lap. Renee had brought them along today to give to Alex. No sense keeping them at Renee’s, where romance seemed to have died a long time ago.
“How can a guy be too nice?” Renee asked.
“I don’t know. There just weren’t any…sparks.”
“Trust me. Sparks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.” Renee clutched the steering wheel and stared at the red dominoes of brake lights ahead of her. Two more exits of this stop-and-go hell and they’d be at the office. Two more exits before she had to make a decision. A choice. “They make you rush into things you probably shouldn’t do.”
“Like get married too fast?” The question was a gentle one, but they both knew Alex meant Renee’s rush to the altar at seventeen.
“Yeah. Like that.” And like thinking about jumping into bed with the first man who seemed to understand a stressed mother and a forgotten wife. The first man who’d made Renee feel sexy and beautiful, not tired and old.
“Are you okay?” Alex asked. “You look pale.”
Damn. She clearly hadn’t taken enough time with her makeup this morning. “Um, after Tony brought the kids back, the three-year-old was up a lot last night. He has a summer cold. Couple that with being out late, and it all knocked the kids off their schedule. I didn’t get a lot of sleep.” That part was true. The why wasn’t.
A Volvo cut in front of Renee’s minivan. She laid on the horn and let out a curse.
“You want me to drive?” Alex asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Renee, I know you and you are totally not fine. I really wish you’d talk to me. I can’t be the only one living a soap opera here.” Alex let out a little laugh.
“It’s nothing, really. Normal mommy stress.” Renee forced a smile to her face and showed it to Alex. The see-I’m-totally-okay proof. “A preschooler, a nine-year-old, a preteen with raging hormones and a husband who can’t get motivated enough to change an empty roll of toilet paper entitles me to some road rage.”
Alex laid a hand over her friend’s and gave it a squeeze. The sign of empathy sent a slice of guilt running through Renee. Would Alex be so willing to support Renee if she knew the truth? Knew that Renee had been having lunch three times a week with Bill Rhinehart in accounting? That for the past three months, Renee had been flirting with the idea of an affair?
“I’m here,” Alex went on, “anytime you need me, either way. And I say we plan a girls’ night out soon. Get a sitter, or dump the kids at Mack’s house, and go out on the town. Go out for pedicures and margaritas.”
Renee laughed. “Dump the kids with Mack? If there’s one man who couldn’t handle a kid, much less three, it would be Mack. Didn’t you see him at our barbecue on Memorial Day weekend? You’d have thought my kids were the next Invasion of the Body Snatchers the way Mack was backing away.”
Alex chuckled. “He did look terrified. But he just needs experience. What better way to get experience than by babysitting?”
“My kids would be better off being raised by wolves than left with Mack.” Renee put on her directional and moved into the lane for the exit. Today was one of the few days she was grateful for the Boston traffic jam. She welcomed anything that delayed her arrival at work. Anything that put off making the decision ahead of her.
Cheat on her husband or remain true. Bill had made it easy. He’d arranged the hotel room. All the details. All she had to do was say yes.
How bad would it be, though, to have one afternoon with another man? A man who appreciated her, a man who would look at her with love in his eyes, who would pay attention when she talked?
A man who didn’t resent her for chaining him to a marriage he hadn’t wanted. A life he didn’t even enjoy.
The same man who had walked away from his marriage last week. Renee kneaded at her temples and tried to shove thoughts of Tony to the back of her mind. She’d end up starting her day with a headache she didn’t need.
“Speaking of wolves,” Alex said, “I have a meeting with Joe later this week, on Tuesday morning. I think I’ve finally got a story idea that will make him sit up and notice me as a feature reporter. I went in early in the morning and did a little research Saturday on the Web—thank God for Google—and it’s looking good.”
“Really?” Renee asked, forcing herself back to the conversation. “That’s great. You’ve wanted that position forever.”
“It’ll be a hell of a lot better than covering fashion and food. Real journalism is what I went to college for. What I’ve dreamed of.” Alex laid out her fingers, picturing an imaginary newspaper page. “Above the fold, front page, first section, with my byline.”
“Local writer solves Jimmy Hoffa mystery, huh?”
“Something like that.” Alex grinned. “But I don’t want to say anything about it yet, in case I jinx things.”
“Doesn’t features pay a lot more, too?”
“About double. And the bump in pay couldn’t come at a better time.”
“That reminds me, Noah, how is it going with that ark?”
When Alex had told Renee the other day about the house she had inherited, Renee had thought her friend was insane for taking on such a monumental project. When she’d shown Renee pictures of the house she’d taken with her digital camera, Renee had considered admitting Alex to an asylum. The place wasn’t just awful—it was beyond repair. Sort of like Renee’s marriage, only there weren’t any nails and hammers to shore up what had gone wrong between Renee and Tony.
Hadn’t she already tried a hundred times over to fix her marriage, only to see it crumble again and again? At a certain point, she just needed to face facts and realize it was over, and no matter how hard she searched, she’d never find that thread that had brought them together in the first place.
Renee tried to listen as Alex told her about the repairs she’d been making to the house with Mack’s help, but her mind kept returning to her marriage, then to Bill, then back to her marriage, like a stuck record.
They’d reached the parking garage for the City Times. The shadow of the building seemed to engulf the car as Renee pulled into the concrete structure. Dread filled Renee’s stomach, churning with the toast she’d eaten earlier. She prayed a space would be hard to find, that she could delay arriving at work for another ten minutes, but no, there was an open one near the elevators. Renee parked, then she and Alex got out of the car and headed over to the elevators.
She forced herself to concentrate on her friend as they rode to the tenth floor. “So your grandmother thinks this will be some kind of therapy?”
Alex nodded. “Even if she’s right, I’m renovating, without the side order of psychoanalysis, then I’ll sell the place. Grandma will be disappointed, but there is no way I can hold on to that house.”
“Too many memories?”
“Not so many, but…enough.” Alex let out a breath and
leaned against the faux wood wall of the elevator.
Renee knew the basics about Alex’s childhood, but little more. About the father she had never known, the too-young single mother who had never quite given up her partying ways until it was too late—and she’d died, leaving Alex to live with her grandmother. When it came to the first few years of her life, Alex rarely talked about what she’d gone through. Either way, Renee could tell just by the way Alex avoided the subject and kept her heart carefully guarded that growing up that way had left emotional scars.
Knowing her friend had gone through that because of a distant mother only doubled Renee’s frustration with Tony, who had never seemed to plug in to their marriage. To being a dad. She didn’t want any of the three kids to turn around as adults and wonder why Dad hadn’t been there. But every time she tried to talk to Tony, the argument fell on deaf ears—or he walked away.
“Anyway,” Alex went on, her voice visibly brighter, “all those flipping-houses shows said the biggest profits come when you do it yourself, and Lord knows I could use a profit. I won’t even tell you my bank account balance. It’s embarrassing for someone my age. I should have listened to my guidance counselor and become a doctor.”
“Except you’re squeamish around the sight of blood.”
“There is that.” Alex chuckled. “Good thing there are books on home repair.”
Renee rolled her eyes. “Lord save us from the people who think they can build the Eiffel Tower with a little help from Borders.”
“You are so off my Christmas list.”
The elevator doors whooshed open and Alex and Renee got off, stepping into the chaotic reporters’ section of the City Times. The noise from two dozen sets of typing hands and simultaneous conversations, along with three televisions tuned to the major networks, hummed through the room. It was like being surrounded by a hundred beehives.
“So this Steve guy,” Renee asked when they reached Alex’s desk, “do you think he might be the one?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t feel anything when I met him. Not so much as a blip of attraction.” Alex dropped her purse on her desk, on the few inches of free space among the fashion magazines and manufacturers’ samples, all vying to get their mascaras or stilettos onto the pages of the City Times. She cleared a few more inches of space and set the vase of roses down, too.
