Driven to Distraction & Winging It

by Tina Wainscott

  “Or what about skip and go naked?” Angie asked, holding out drink number two.

  Mackenzie looked from one drink to the other, then back at Angie who flopped down in the chair beside her at their small table in the bar. “My, what original choices,” Mackenzie mused. “I can either skip and go naked or try sex on the beach.”

  “Sounds like a great idea to me.”

  “If you’re looking for a one-night stand, maybe,” Mackenzie threw in. “Which I’m not.”

  “I had a one-night Stan once,” Angie said, staring off for a second in fond remembrance. “He was wonderful.”

  Mackenzie laughed. “I said stand and you know it.”

  “All I know,” Angie argued, “is that you’ve been complaining about not having a decent date in months. Not to mention that professional bridesmaid role you’ve been playing lately. How many weddings have you already attended this year? Three?”

  “Four to date,” Mackenzie admitted with a groan. “And my mother just called last night to rub it in that cousin Julie, whom I’ve always despised by the way, just landed the absolute catch of the century.”

  “And what disgusting color will you have to wear this time?” Angie wanted to know.

  “Thank God Julie doesn’t care for me, either,” Mackenzie said. “I’m off the hook this time.”

  “Oh no, you’re not,” Angie corrected. “We came here so we could possibly meet someone new tonight, and we just happen to be two of the hottest looking chicks in the room. Now, take one of these drinks and try to look available.”

  Mackenzie opted for a sex on the beach, then let her gaze drift slowly around the singles bar. Faces, according to Angie, was Charleston, South Carolina’s most popular place to be. If you were looking to rub elbows with the brightest and most successful young professionals in the city, that is.

  The bar was filled to capacity with other singles who had stopped at the trendy gathering place after work for happy hour, and possibly to make a love connection for the upcoming weekend. A weekend Mackenzie would probably spend the way she’d been spending most weekends over the last few months, with a stack of movies from Blockbuster and enough popcorn and ice cream to feed a small army.

  When she noticed an extremely pretty redhead moving in on an unsuspecting victim, Mackenzie wasn’t sure if she and Angie were two of the hottest looking women in the bar, but they could at least lay claim to the successful part. It had been a difficult uphill climb, but after six long years their interior design business had finally become one of the most sought-after design firms in the city. Mainly, Mackenzie knew, because she and Angie made perfect business partners.

  She glanced at her best friend again and mentally smiled. A true Southern belle in every sense of the word, Scarlett O’Hara would have found a kindred spirit in Miss Angie Crane. Angie could charm the pants off every man she met when it suited her. Yet, like Miss Scarlett, Angie didn’t hesitate to be a bit ruthless in order to get her way.

  Mackenzie, on the other hand, felt totally comfortable in her role as the peacemaker. To date, their good-cop, bad-cop routine had worked like a charm in a business world that was mainly controlled by men like the architects, the builders and the developers they were forced to deal with on a daily basis.

  “Look over there,” Angie said, inclining her head toward a group of suits and ties gathered at the bar. “The tall one. Standing at the end of the bar. He’s one of the most successful stockbrokers in Charleston. What do you think?”

  “I was trying to imagine him with a full head of hair.”

  Angie shrugged, then tossed her own shoulder-length blond hair for effect. “Sorry, kiddo, but a receding hairline is just a fact of life when you’re hovering around thirty like we are. At least he’s not trying to disguise the inevitable with one of those disgusting comb-overs. Besides, I think he’s rather sexy.”

  “Him? Or his portfolio?” Mackenzie challenged. Angie ignored the question, letting her dark eyes skip around the room. “Then take a look at bachelor number two,” she whispered behind her hand. “Third table on your left. He sells pharmaceuticals. Has his own beach house not far from mine. Drives a Porsche.”

  “Needs a good orthodontist,” Mackenzie mused.

  Angie made a face. “Since when have you started paying attention to physical appearances? You? Jaded by the age of ten because your mother convinced you after your parents divorced that attractive men were the equivalent of the dreaded Ebola virus?”

  Mackenzie frowned. “Well, I certainly haven’t had any success going for those strictly cerebral types, now have I?”

  “Well, hallelujah!” Angie exclaimed. “What finally made you see the light?”

  Mackenzie twirled the paper umbrella sticking out of her drink several times, thinking about her most recent ex. Who would have ever believed a devoted microbiologist with an impressive PhD would dump a reasonably intellectual businesswoman like herself for his flighty lab assistant with surgery-enhanced boobs?

  “I guess my ego’s still a little bruised after Doctor Germ-buster lost his head over a fake set of ta-tas,” Mackenzie admitted and took her first taste of sex on the beach.

  Angie’s face softened for a moment before she said, “I’m sorry, Mackie, but I never could imagine you and that geek in bed together anyway. All I could picture was him begging you to slide your butt under the microscope so he could inspect you for any signs of a new amoeba strain.”

  Mackenzie and Angie both laughed so hard Mackenzie finally took the napkin from beneath her glass and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “I hate to admit it, but we never got as far as the bedroom,” Mackenzie said with another laugh. “The poor guy was so terrified I’d contaminate him, I could have been standing before him completely nude and he would have been looking around for a spray can of disinfectant.”

  Another fit of laughter overtook them before Angie gasped, “I guess his lab assistant had an advantage with those big double-D hooters of hers. She probably shoved one in each eye and refused to let the poor man see what kind of nasty stuff she was planning to do to him.”

  When they finally stopped laughing, Mackenzie let out a long sigh and said, “Well, at least I wasn’t serious about him.”

  Angie raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Like you’ve ever been serious about anyone you’ve dated?”

  Mackenzie opened her mouth to protest, but Angie cut her off. “Take that mathematics professor, for instance, whose glasses were so thick he actually needed a seeing-eye dog but couldn’t have one because the poor guy was allergic to animals? Or that computer nerd you stopped seeing when he asked you to engage in a little cybersex? Or….”

  “Okay, okay,” Mackenzie interrupted. “So I don’t have a long list of perfect men in my past like you do.”

  “Which is exactly why I brought you here tonight,” Angie reminded her, then reached across the table and grabbed Mackenzie’s hand. “Another potential candidate just walked through the door.”

  Mackenzie turned and looked across the room. “Get serious, Angie, he barely comes up to my shoulder.” And it was true. Mackenzie stood five-feet-eight in her stocking feet. She’d had a problem since puberty finding a date she didn’t tower over like an Amazon at a pigmy convention.

  “So?” Angie grumbled. “I admit he’s a bit vertically challenged, Mackie, but he’s also a very prominent podiatrist.”

  Mackenzie laughed. “Great. That’s just what I need. A midget with a foot fetish.”

  Angie shook her head disgustedly, then leaned back in her chair and folded her arms stubbornly across her chest. “You know what I think is really wrong with you?”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “You’d never admit it, but I think you secretly have the hots for that new neighbor of yours.”

  “Alec Southerland? Ha!” Mackenzie said, but her protest sounded phony even to herself.

  Maybe because in her best friend type of wisdom, Angie had hit the proverbial nail directly on the head. The
re was certainly no one in the bar who could measure up to the raven-haired hunk who lived across the hall in her singles complex. But would she ever allow herself to stand in line with the constant stream of women who were already competing for the handsome pilot’s attention?

  Not a chance.

  Alec Southerland was exactly the type of man her mother had warned her about from the moment her father walked out on them. And though her father had remained devoted to Mackenzie in spite of his philandering ways, Mackenzie preferred skinny-dipping in a vat of acid to having her heart broken by a man who attracted women as easily as a black wool blazer attracted lint.

  “You can forget about the pilot. You’re way off base on that one,” Mackenzie lied.

  “Am I?” Angie challenged.

  “Yes!” Mackenzie insisted. “We’re talking about the same guy I allowed to hide in my living room last week until one of his sex-starved vultures finally gave up and stopped circling our building. Remember?”

  “But you said you really liked the guy.”

  “Sure, I like him,” Mackenzie admitted. “What woman wouldn’t? He’s gorgeous. He’s funny. And he’s so blasted charming I’d have to be in a coma not to be attracted to him.”

  “And the problem is?”

  Mackenzie shook her head in disbelief. “Exactly what part did you not understand?”

  “Your implication that you couldn’t possibly be enough woman to hold him, maybe?”

  “Hold him? Me?” Mackenzie croaked in disbelief.

  “Yes, you,” Angie said. “I admire your innocent quality of not realizing you’re drop-dead gorgeous yourself, Mackie, but I’m tired of sitting by silently while you cut yourself down. You’re smart. You have a great sense of humor. And it doesn’t hurt that you could pass for Demi Moore’s twin sister. In fact, if I didn’t love you like a sister, I wouldn’t hang around with you at all. I personally don’t like the competition of being seen with another woman as attractive as I am.”

  Mackenzie didn’t have a comeback for that statement. She loved Angie like a sister as well, but like Miss Scarlett, modesty had never been one of Angie’s strong points.

  “Do yourself a favor,” Angie insisted. “If you’re truly mentally scarred over your parents’ divorce, get yourself a good therapist. But if you’re not, take a short walk across your hallway and knock on that guy’s front door. You’d be crazy if you didn’t.”

  No, I’d be crazy if I did, Mackenzie thought, yet just thinking about such an exciting, yet frightening proposition, prompted Mackenzie to toss the paper umbrella aside and drain the last drop of sex on the beach from her glass.

  MACKENZIE ARRIVED HOME that Friday evening alone. She had politely bowed out when Angie captured the attention of a good-looking attorney who was practically drooling all over the table after a single look from her friend. The guy had hurriedly brought over his buddy for Mackenzie, and though she liked attorney number two well enough, Mackenzie declined the invitation when Angie invited both attorneys and a few other people from the club to head off to her beach house for the remainder of the evening.

  Mackenzie had attended enough of Angie’s spontaneous beach parties to know they could run nonstop throughout the entire weekend. Which was the main reason Mackenzie had vetoed the idea of buying a beach house in Angie’s section of Charleston herself. She preferred instead a quieter, less social, and much more relaxed type of atmosphere. And the condo Mackenzie purchased at a singles complex known as Colony by the Shore had given her just that.

  Located on Charleston’s famous Battery, Colony by the Shore was also oceanfront, but it was located in an older, more reserved section of the city. At the Colony you could always find a party if you wanted one, but you also didn’t feel pressured to participate if you really weren’t in the mood.

  And tonight, after an exhausting week and finally landing the contract for a multistory office building she’d been working on for days, Mackenzie definitely wasn’t in the mood for an all-night party.

  Pulling into the driveway of her building, Mackenzie drove around to the back and parked her Mercedes in her reserved parking space. A new jade-green Jaguar convertible sat in the space next to hers. For a moment, Mackenzie remained sitting behind the wheel, staring at the classy car. She tried to imagine herself sailing down the highway with the very man she and Angie had argued about earlier in the evening. She pictured the wind whipping through her short dark hair, her carefree laughter echoing through the still night air, a full moon looming above them, casting a silvery glow on…the herd of women running right behind the car, quickly gaining ground.

  Sobered by her own reality check, Mackenzie promptly stuck her tongue out at the snazzy Jag, left her much more sedate sedan, then trudged toward the building with her friendly Blockbuster bag clutched tightly in her hand. The second she opened the back door to her building, however, shrill voices echoing down the hallway brought her to a dead stop.

  “I was here first.”

  “No, you weren’t. We arrived at the same time.”

  “Well, at least I’m prepared to cook tonight.”

  “I brought food.”

  “Take-out can’t compete with a home-cooked meal.”

  “What I have in mind for dessert certainly will!”

  “Now, ladies, let’s be rational about this,” a familiar voice pleaded, leaving Mackenzie no doubt who was at the center of all the confusion.

  Irritated that she’d spent even one second fantasizing about a man who obviously needed a personal bodyguard for his own protection, Mackenzie reluctantly started up the hallway, knowing there was no way, short of sleeping in her car, to avoid the quarrelsome trio. The door to her own condo was, after all, directly across the hall from his. And though Mackenzie pretended to ignore them when she arrived at her own door, she did manage a quick peek at the potential ménage à trois as she dug through her purse searching for her keys.

  A buxom blonde with a surly look on her face was standing in the hallway holding a grocery sack that had a large loaf of French bread protruding from the top. Facing the blonde with a scowl of her own, was a leggy redhead with a death-grip hold on what appeared to be a container of Chinese takeout. And blocking the entry to his condo like a sentry on duty, stood Mr. Wonderful himself, his hair damp and disheveled, and his magnificent bare chest still glistening with droplets of water from his interrupted shower.

  Mackenzie’s eyes dropped to the towel he was clutching tightly around his narrow waist, then back to the panicked look on his too-handsome face. She was only one second away from making her escape when he called out her name.

  “Girls, girls,” he said with confidence when Mackenzie turned back around to face him. “I really appreciate your thoughtfulness, but I already have a date tonight. In fact, she just got home this very minute, didn’t you Mackenzie?”

  The blonde and the redhead immediately turned and glared in Mackenzie’s direction.

  Oh, no you don’t! Not this time, Mackenzie decided on the spot. You can get yourself out of this mess.

  Purposely sending him a mirror image of his own glowing smile, Mackenzie said in the sweetest voice she could muster, “Gee, Alec, I hope you haven’t been waiting on me. Our date’s for tomorrow. Remember?”

  He groaned in desperation, but he never had the chance to argue with her statement. The blonde tried to sneak past him, but the redhead grabbed the blonde’s arm and pulled her back into the hallway.

  “Now, cut that out, you two,” Alec warned and reached out to push the two enraged lovelies apart before they ended up in a wrestling match in front of his door.

  Unfortunately, the second he let go of the towel, Mackenzie knew it was the wrong thing to do. The towel instantly crumpled to the floor. And then, there it was! In the flesh, so to speak, displayed like a prize-winning trophy before three startled women who were all now staring openly at his crotch.

  Had he not looked so helpless, Mackenzie would have laughed.

  She never go
t the chance.

  Instead of scrambling for the towel to cover himself, Alec kicked the towel aside and then he slammed his front door with such force Mackenzie jumped in spite of herself.

  “Now see what you’ve done?” the blonde accused.

  “Me?” the redhead wailed. “You’re the one who almost knocked him down trying to get through the door.”

  “Because I was here first!” the blonde insisted. “And this is where I came in,” Mackenzie mumbled to herself, then turned her key in the lock and stepped quietly into the safety of her own condo.

  She stood there for a moment, listening to the angry voices as they faded down the hallway, and trying to convince herself the incredible specimen of manhood she had just seen stark naked hadn’t affected her in the least.

  It didn’t work.

  Even in her wildest fantasy, he had looked ten times better than she ever imagined.

  She let out a wistful sigh, then dumped her purse and the bag of videos on the table by the door, thinking that even the leading men she had brought home with her that evening paled in comparison with the bronzed god who was currently living directly across the hall. In fact, had Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe both walked up beside her only a few seconds earlier, Mackenzie would have knocked their heads together and tossed them both aside just to get a better look at her neighbor.

  And who could blame her?

  Alec Southerland was every woman’s version of tall, dark and handsome multiplied by about ten billion. No, make that twenty billion, Mackenzie decided, judging from the number of women who had been parading up and down the hallway of their complex from the moment he’d moved in.

  She should have been pleased with herself for not allowing him to drag her into his ongoing saga with his groupies again, but instead, Mackenzie felt a bit guilty about not playing along as his alibi. Though she personally had a hard time seeing Alec as a victim in the situation, there had been a lot of truth in the statement he’d made on the night he’d taken refuge in her living room. Many women today were bold and aggressive. Just like the blonde and the redhead, who apparently had no qualms about pursuing a man to the point they were willing to slug it out in the hall.