He looked at her. “You don’t know?”
She snapped back to attention. “I couldn’t seem to stop once we got started. It’s kinda sick, though. I mean, I got really upset sometimes.”
He inclined his head. “We might’ve let it get out of hand. I tried to make amends when I realized I hurt your feelings. Anyway, in hindsight, me giving you a hard time was because I was drawn to you when I didn’t want to be. I wasn’t being clear about my intentions. Clarissa helped me look more deeply at myself. You know, become more aware of my subconscious and how it manifests in real life.”
She tsked. Clarissa. “Don’t you know not to talk about your ex when you’re on a date with someone else?”
He went back to cooking, muttering, “Didn’t know there were rules.”
“Of course there’s rules. Your focus should be on the present moment with the person you’re with. Did you cook for her?”
He glanced at her. “I thought you just said—”
“Forget it. I don’t want to know.”
Feeling unreasonably irritated, she left her wine on the table and walked over to the living room to check on Rose. She was curled up on Josh’s sofa, hugging her new fire hose toy, sound asleep. Didn’t take much for Rose to be content, and hadn’t she warmed to Josh quickly after all that growling and barking? She still didn’t know what had changed Rose’s mind about Josh. It started at that dinner they’d had with their parents. Maybe Rose picked up on Hailey’s moods, and when she was cross with Josh, Rose was too. And when she was calm, Rose was calm too. Huh. What a smart empathetic dog.
She returned to the kitchen and took a seat. Josh was fussing with the steaks. She sipped her wine, watching him cook, going through great effort for her, more than any man ever had. Not that she had a ton of experience after letting her friends-with-benefits situation take the place of any real relationships for so long. Being here like this with Josh, she almost felt like she’d stepped into an alternate universe. Nice Josh, romantic Josh, someone who actually tried to connect with her instead of antagonize her. It made her feel unbalanced like she wasn’t sure who she was dealing with anymore. How much did she know about him anyway?
A short while later, Josh lit the candles and set their plates of food down. “Bon appétit.” He seemed relaxed now that he was done cooking. Maybe it wasn’t pent-up lust that had made him seem tense. Dammit.
“This is amazing. Thank you.”
“Yup. Let me know if your steak’s cooked the way you like.”
She sliced into it, perfectly medium well with just a touch of pink. “It’s great.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes. She couldn’t bring herself to make small talk about the weather or the food, they were past small talk with their history, but she couldn’t think of any common ground besides their mutual friends and their parents, which was a minefield all in itself.
She sighed. “Josh?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me something about yourself. Now that we’re not fighting, I realize I don’t actually know you that well.”
“Sure you do. You know my family, my honorary brothers, you know where I work, and you know I’m a foodie. Nothing else to know.”
She was sure there was more to him. He was complex and didn’t like to show his hand. Mad had said more than once that Josh was a long-term strategist. But what exactly was he strategizing about? Her mind quickly wound through her history with him, looking to fill in gaps in her knowledge. “Remember when you took out women platonically as part of my business plan?” That was another of their arrangements. First he’d been her wedding escort, and then, when she’d seen what a gentleman he was (during his paid hours anyway), she’d farmed him out to single women she hoped to find happy endings. He was just supposed to take them on one date to restore their faith in men by being his gentleman self. Hailey took it from there. Part of her business plan was to bring people together. The more happy couples there were, the more weddings she could plan. In retrospect, she wasn’t sure why he’d gone along with it.
He sliced off a piece of steak. “Yup.”
“Why did you agree to that?”
“The money.” He went back to eating.
“But if you could afford Mad’s tuition and you still had enough to buy Garner’s and do new construction, I find it hard to believe you needed the small amount I paid you.”
“It was fun.”
Curiosity got the better of her. “Where did you take the women I sent your way? What did you do?” Honestly, some of the women she’d helped were so shell-shocked by the wretched men they’d dated, they’d about given up hope. After Josh, they were ready to get back in the dating game.
He chewed and swallowed. “Simple cheap stuff like a walking tour of Clover Park, window-shopping, got them an ice cream, took a walk on the boardwalk down by the shore and won a prize at one of those games.”
“Why did you really do it?”
He set his fork down and met her eyes. “Honestly, to make you jealous.”
Her eyes widened. “Why would I be jealous of a platonic date?”
“I hoped you’d worry it would be more. Admittedly, a real sideways way to go about it. That was before I was in tune to my subconscious stuff.”
She pursed her lips. “Before Clarissa.”
“Yeah.”
“What subconscious stuff?”
“Part of me wanted you and at the same time didn’t want to want you.”
She sucked in air, her heart thumping hard. He wanted her way back then? That was more than two years ago! She kinda wanted him this whole time too—he was hot—but she didn’t want to want him because he fought with her so much. “Why didn’t you want to want me? Because of all of our fighting?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I know better now.”
“Because you thought I was a princess?” she guessed.
He stared at her. “Is there any way we can not talk about this and just eat?”
“No.”
He stabbed a potato. “You’re going to take it the wrong way. Then you’re gonna be pissed at me, and all the work I did for a perfect first date will fly out the window.”
“Just tell me. I can handle it.”
He blew out a breath. “I hated that you were a beauty queen. You seemed haughty, nose in the air with all your designer clothes and your perfect hair and makeup.”
“Judgmental, got it.”
“It was more like a visceral repulsion for everything I thought you were.” She gaped at him, and he rushed on. “Like I said, I was wrong. I hated that pageant stuff and that’s on me. I judged you based on my own bad experiences with my mom and ex.”
“Your ex? You mean Clarissa?”
“No.” He ate some more steak, so she did too. “I’m sure a psychologist would have a field day with this one, but I dated Miss Massachusetts in college. I was in love with her. She was in love with herself. Anyway she ran off and married some rich guy she met at a charity ball. She didn’t invite me to the ball; I didn’t even know about it. I found out much later from someone else who read about it in the society pages of the paper.”
“She just never came back to campus?”
“Nope. Someone on her sugar daddy’s staff emptied her dorm room for her a month later.”
She gave him a sympathetic look. “You’re right. That’s a psychologist’s session in the making.” His beauty-queen mom had also run off with a sugar daddy.
“Thanks. Glad I shared.”
She smiled to herself and went back to her meal, thinking over what he’d told her. He had beauty-queen baggage and she’d unwittingly played into that. “I only did pageants to earn scholarship money to college. It was the only way for me to go.”
He reached across the table and gave her hand a squeeze. “You did what you needed to do, and you know what? I respect that.”
She swallowed over the lump in her throat. Serious heartfelt Josh was more intense than she was used to i
n a man. “Thanks.”
“Now tell me all your dirty secrets. College, love life, psychologist’s dream experiences.”
They laughed.
She wasn’t keen to share just yet, enjoying hearing him open up for the first time. “So after Miss Massachusetts, anyone serious?”
He shot her a look for the deflection, but he still answered. “Mostly I dated and moved along. But, ya know, I was in the army for a while. Too many tours to stick with anyone, not that I wanted to. Came back home, recovered for a while, and finally settled in at Garner’s, where it was easy to meet women who walked into the bar.”
“Until the magnificent Clarissa, who made you a better man.” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice. He talked about his ex way too much.
His dark eyes sparked with amusement, but he said nothing.
“Did you really break up over a shoebox of money?”
He took a sip of wine, his dark gaze locked on hers. “We broke up because she knew I really wanted you, even though I hadn’t admitted it to myself yet.”
Mind blown. She flushed hot and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Maybe she should be thanking Clarissa for opening Josh’s eyes.
He jerked his chin at her. “Your turn. Spill your secrets.”
She pushed some potatoes around on her plate. “I don’t have any secrets. You make it sound so sinister.”
“Don’t wimp out.”
She scowled. “I’m not a wimp.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“There’s nothing to tell, really. My love life…” She finished her wine in one long swallow. “I, uh, dated, nothing serious. In high school, guys wanted bragging rights they’d been with me and, once I was made aware of this by a friend, I was careful to keep my distance for my own safety.”
He sat ramrod straight, his brows furrowed in concern. “Hailey, that’s terrible. Did you tell anyone? Wasn’t there anyone looking out for you?”
“Well, I didn’t have an overprotective big brother around, if that’s what you mean. My mom said that was how men were and she advised me to flirt and be the unobtainable one. She wasn’t wrong. I was definitely better off for it. No one wants to be used or abused like that.”
“What about your friends?”
“Looking back, hindsight, right? They weren’t true friends. I was the most popular girl in school, homecoming queen, prom queen, head cheerleader, that whole deal, a lot of pretty friends, but I think my girl friends all secretly wanted to bring me down a peg. They were jealous of my clothes—most of which my mom got at a steep discount from the boutique she worked at—my beauty-pageant wins, and the attention I got from the news.”
His lips formed a flat line, his expression grim. “Were things better in college?”
She nodded. “That’s when I met Liam, late in my freshman year. I had decided college was when I’d start dating for real, figuring guys were more mature then and I wouldn’t be part of some macho contest, you know, who nailed the beauty queen. So I dated a bit and I got disappointed a lot, thinking something might be developing only to find once they got to know me better, they weren’t all that interested. Probably didn’t help that I wasn’t comfortable getting physical right away. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested or curious, it was just that I needed some emotion to go with it. I guess I just wanted to feel loved.”
“So Liam gave you that.”
She exhaled sharply. “Liam was a nice guy. He was up front that he liked my looks and only wanted something casual. He felt familiar, safe, probably because we resembled each other in looks—same color hair, blue eyes, fair skin—there’s your psychologist dream session right there. Ha! My standards for men were low and I was tired of being a virgin. So…we hooked up. It wasn’t love, but it was a relationship of sorts. We were on and off again for years through college and until very recently. We get along really well, he’s very cultured and sophisticated, and part of me thought one day it would turn to love, but…it didn’t. I finally ended it a little over six months ago because I realized I wanted something more.”
He took a sip of wine, his eyes never leaving hers. “You’ve only slept with one man?”
“That’s what you got out of my story?” Hello? I want a real relationship. Something more is where you come in.
“One man?”
“Yes.”
Josh stared at her for a very long time. She fidgeted with her cloth napkin, folding it in neat creases one way and then refolding it in the opposite direction. He knew she was twenty-seven and he was judging her for her inexperience. He’d probably been with thirty women, no, forty, hundreds! He was a pig.
She crumpled her napkin in a tight fist. “How many women have you been with?”
He glanced at her fist and back to her eyes. “Are you telling me the romance-obsessed, self-proclaimed love junkie, matchmaking wedding planner has never been in love?”
Damn his sharp mind. Look at how quickly he put the pieces together from friends-with-benefits to her embarrassing flaw. She set her napkin in her lap and smoothed it out. He remained quietly judging her.
She lifted her head and tapped the table with both hands. “Let’s talk about something else.”
He took her hand and held it. “How was I so wrong about you?”
She let out a breath of quiet relief. Maybe he wasn’t judging her. “You saw what you wanted to see, I guess.”
“I saw what you let me see. And now you’re letting me in. I like this version of you.”
She let out a small nervous laugh. It felt like he was gazing at her soft underbelly, an uncomfortably vulnerable feeling.
He grinned. “And it’s sweet that you want me to be the second man you sleep with.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “I thought this was going to be slow burn.”
“It is. I just like knowing it.”
They finished dinner in charged silence. All she could think about was what came next. How slow was slow burn? Was she going to have to be satisfied with a chaste goodnight kiss, or could she tempt him for more without setting herself up for yet another rejection?
She pushed her plate away and blurted, “So now what?”
“You want dessert?”
“No, I’m stuffed. Dinner was great.”
“Glad you liked it. Now you can help me wash dishes.”
She hid her disappointment, pasting on a smile. “Sure.”
He shook his head. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Don’t fake smile at me. Just be yourself. Frown if you want. Do nothing. Just don’t be fake.”
“I was being polite.”
“Don’t do that either.”
She huffed. “Any more orders you’d like to send my way?”
He rubbed his jaw, his eyes glinting with mischief. “I’ll let you know.”
~ ~ ~
Later that night, Hailey was faced with the grim proposition of returning home having failed her mission to tempt Josh with her body-hugging dress, which she’d showed off to every advantage. She refused to make a blatant move after he’d turned her down, but she was getting very tense. It almost felt like they were an old married couple. Somehow they’d gone from frenemies to friends and skipped the lover part. After they’d washed dishes—she washed, he dried and put away—they took Rose for a walk, and then they’d watched a movie on TV. Okay, yes, he’d held her hand, but that was it. And he let her pick the movie. Of course, she had to introduce him to one of the most romantic movies in history, an oldie but a goodie, While You Were Sleeping.
She should’ve known the movie didn’t give him any great romantic ideas because when it ended, he said, “I don’t get it. How was that romantic? She loved a guy she didn’t know and then she went with his brother.”
“She followed her heart.”
“The guy was in a coma.”
“She saved him.”
He grabbed the remote
and turned off the TV. Rose lifted her head from where she was asleep on Josh’s lap and then settled back down. “You ever think you’d want to be with my brother?”
She gave him a wicked smile. “Which one?”
“Jake,” he bit out. “He’s just like me but with money.”
She blinked, surprised he was actually serious. He did have a chip on his shoulder about money. “You shouldn’t get worked up about his money. You just chose a less lucrative career path.”
He clenched his jaw. “I’m not worked up.”
She didn’t argue the point. So far they’d done really well getting along and she didn’t want to end on a bad note. On the other hand, it was clear he had a real, completely irrational concern over his twin. “Jake is…”
He leaned in. “What?”
“Don’t tell him I said this and don’t tell Claire.”
He gestured her on.
“Boring.”
Josh grinned. “Why is he boring?”
“I don’t know why. He just is.”
“And I’m exciting? Me working in a small-town bar living a quiet life is more exciting than a billionaire?”
“I didn’t say you were exciting just that he’s boring.”
He barked out a laugh, startling Rose, who stalked off his lap, jumped off the sofa, and walked over to Hailey’s doggie purse. “That’s honest. Looks like Rose is ready to go home.”
She stood, knowing a hint when she heard one. “Then we’ll go.” She grabbed her regular purse and tucked Rose into her doggie purse. “Thank you for dinner. Goodnight.”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a classic Josh smirk. She tensed, irritated beyond belief. Like he knew how much she wanted him and was teasing her by not doing anything about it.
“Night,” he said all casual-like.
She turned on her heel and headed for the door, trying not to show her irritation. She should focus on the positive—he’d cooked her dinner, watched a romantic movie not of his choosing, and treated her fur baby well.
An Inconvenient Plan (Happy Endings Book Club, Book 10) Page 13
