Sugar and Spice: 3 Contemporary Romances

by Jenny Jacobs

  She took a distracted sip of coffee. “She invited you to join in? You’re sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure,” he shot back. “I didn’t misunderstand a thing like that.”

  “Okay.” The worried expression on her face did not leave. That was not reassuring. He had a sudden image of Greta’s face last night after she’d kissed him: serious, even a little scared. What had happened to all the cheerful brunettes he used to hang out with? He’d never had to worry about them. “Then what?” she asked.

  “Then what?”

  “What happened after you kissed her back? Specifically? I mean, if she just said, ‘Good night,’ that’s one thing but if she called a security guard to escort her to her car, that’s another.” She eyed him suspiciously. “Or are you saying you kissed her back when you really mean something else?”

  “I’m a gentleman,” he said, outraged at her insinuation. He knew she was protective of everyone she cared about, but she didn’t really think he’d lie about a thing like that, did she?

  “Okay,” she said, sounding skeptical as she swallowed the last of her coffee. She glanced up at the clock above the door. “I’ve got to go in a minute. Tell me what happened.”

  He sighed. “She took a step back, pushed me away, and said, ‘That wasn’t fun.’”

  “She said it wasn’t fun?” Tess asked, clearly puzzled. “Greta hasn’t ever insisted that anything be fun.”

  Ian shifted in his chair, which had suddenly grown even more uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “Uh. See, we agreed that we were both just going to have fun. Nothing serious, you know?”

  “You agreed to have fun?” She sat back in her chair, folded her arms across her chest, and stared at him. “Ian, how can I help you if you don’t tell me the whole story?”

  “I am telling you the whole story.”

  “Not very coherently.”

  “If I were in full possession of my faculties, would I be sitting here discussing my love life with you?”

  “That’s a good point,” she said. She sighed and turned her attention to a man on the sidewalk just outside the window, walking a Jack Russell terrier on a leash. The sudden smile on Tess’s face was for the dog. Michael wasn’t ever going to have to worry about Tess finding other men attractive. He was, however, going to have to deal with her dog fixation for the rest of his life, which made Ian feel somewhat better about his own situation. After the dog and his owner turned the corner, Tess returned her attention to Ian and said, “So you agreed that you were both in it for fun and then you kissed her.”

  He didn’t like the way she said that. “Look,” he protested. “There was nothing wrong with the kiss. The kiss was fine. It was just fine.” At her skeptical glance, he said. “It was better than fine! It was terrific. Will you stop criticizing the kiss? I know how to kiss a woman.” He knew that wasn’t quite fair because Tess wasn’t exactly criticizing his kissing skills, but it certainly felt like it. He took a deep breath. This had not been one of his smarter ideas.

  “If you’re so smooth, tell me again, why is Greta avoiding you?” Tess asked impudently.

  He cracked. “If you want to know why the Chiefs went for the two point conversion in the first half against the Raiders last week, I can give you a couple of perfectly good explanations. But no man can say why a woman does anything.”

  Tess snorted inelegantly. “And it is with this attitude you want to persuade Greta to have more fun with you?”

  “I don’t want to have fun with Greta,” he said, in what was almost a shout. He controlled himself. If Greta didn’t think kissing qualified as fun, then he didn’t want fun, he wanted — well, what did he want? That was exactly the question Tess posed next:

  “Then what do you want?”

  He didn’t know how to answer it. What he wanted was to kiss Greta and not make her run away. Oh, boy. He was in trouble.

  A vision of her standing at his side, welcoming guests to a party he was hosting, wearing that blue dress he liked so well, the one she’d worn to Tess’s wedding, the one she’d made out of fabric he’d brought home from India. He tried to think if he’d ever had a favorite dress before.

  Oh, boy. He was in deep, deep trouble.

  Surely there was a cheerful brunette in this town somewhere, one who wouldn’t have to have the concept of fun explained to her, who actually thought kissing was fun —

  An image of Greta, hands on hips, glaring at him, calling him insufferable at Michael’s wedding. Another image of her, the wind pulling tendrils of hair loose from the pile on her head, daintily eating a hot dog and getting sticky fingers, pulling his hat over his eyes, smiling up at him —

  Greta giving him a hug when she got home from work. Now he’d entered the realm of fantasy. He’d be outside grilling steaks. She’d make the salad or whatever kind of food she’d insist on making in order to maintain a healthy diet. Or maybe she’d grill the steaks while he set the table and poured the root beer. Nothing wrong with a fair division of labor. Now he just had to get her to agree with the program —

  He shook his head sharply to clear it. Tess was giving him a sympathetic look. Maybe he didn’t need Tess. Maybe he could figure out how he could get Greta to pick up the phone when he called without Tess’s help. Maybe he should just go over to her house. Bring flowers, ring the doorbell, hope she wasn’t packing heat. Throw rocks at her bedroom window. Well, she’d probably call the cops and he’d have to explain himself.

  “I want to be with her,” he said.

  “Not just for fun,” Tess said.

  “Nope.” He swallowed more coffee. “Not just for fun.”

  Tess considered him for a moment. “Her usual workout time is nine A.M.”

  • • •

  It was nine A.M. Ian was at the gym, on the treadmill, hoping Greta would show up, feeling sort of like he was in high school again. Surely there were easier women to get to know. He glanced around. The gym was full of women. One of them would probably be susceptible to him. The world was large, and full of potential.

  What if she didn’t show up? Or what if she left the minute she saw him? Focus on the treadmill, he told himself, increasing the speed until he was sweating as hard as he was breathing. Good. For a few minutes, all he could think about was not falling off the treadmill. Good. Perfect. Okay, a little too fast. Nothing wrong with going a little slower. Besides, he’d gotten his warm-up in. Time to lift some weights. The guys lifting in the weight room would talk about football. They could argue over the Chiefs’ two point conversion attempt.

  He slowed the treadmill, climbed off, wiped it down, then slung his towel across his neck and went to get a drink of water. The front door to the club opened and in came a passel of kids, probably from the university, and then … Greta. He had just successfully managed to put her out of his mind for a full two minutes. Of course she would show up now.

  He straightened. She caught sight of him, her eyes going wide. Then her mouth set in a grim line and she looked away from him. She signed in at the desk, showed her membership card, then walked over to the bank of treadmills, giving him a wide berth.

  “Hi, Greta,” he said, catching up with her, feeling ridiculously happy to see her, even if she was frowning at him.

  “Hello, Mr. Blake,” she said in freezing tones. He should have known they’d end up back at “Mr. Blake.” Like that could prevent the sparky thing between them from taking root and becoming something real. He couldn’t help the way the smile deepened on his face. She was adorable. Although he knew it was more than his life was worth to say a thing like that to her. But she was.

  He watched her stiff back for a moment as she climbed onto one of the treadmills, then caught himself. She and the stairclimbing woman would probably call the manager over and have him thrown out if he stayed here staring at Greta.

  Fine. H
e just needed to stick with his original plan. He walked to the weight room and talked to a personal trainer he knew for a minute as he stretched before starting to lift. Then the trainer’s client came in and Ian contented himself with finding a comfortable bench and starting on some biceps curls.

  A few minutes later, warmed up and gleaming slightly from the exertion, Greta came into the room. She studiously ignored him. He grinned again. There were only three other people in the room, so it wasn’t like she just hadn’t seen him in the crowd.

  She went to the leg press, moved the pin, adjusted the seat. Taking his time putting the weights back on the rack, he covertly watched her actions. Obviously she’d done this often enough not to need anyone’s help with the equipment, so there went his idea of striking up a conversation with her by offering to give her a hand. He considered his options. Well, maybe he could offer to help her anyway and if that didn’t work, ask her to help him. Then he could subtly move the conversation onto the subject of when their next date should be. He could be smooth. He knew it.

  “Hey, Greta,” he said, approaching her at a slow saunter. Nothing messed up a man’s mojo like appearing to be in too much of a hurry. She glanced up, concentrating on inhaling and exhaling in time with her moves, her face a little tense from the effort. Or maybe it was him that was making her tense. Nah, it had to be the leg presses.

  “Be happy to spot for you,” he said, remembering his carefully planned course of action.

  “I don’t use free weights.” The words were perfectly polite but the subtext of Go away, you bother me was perfectly clear.

  But he wasn’t that easy to dismiss. Luck — in the guise of Tess giving him a couple of strong hints — had offered him an opportunity to talk to Greta, and he fully intended to seize the opportunity.

  “Free weights are great,” he said. “They work all of the — ”

  “Mr. Blake.” Here came those freezing tones again. He was so far gone that he liked the freezing tones. He’d bet good money that she didn’t bother using freezing tones on men like the lawyer. That meant Ian was special to her. He was also, obviously, insane.

  “I consult with a physical therapist who helps me decide on the appropriate course of physical activity,” she explained, enunciating so clearly that he would have understood the sentence even if the only language he knew was Farsi.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. He waited a respectful moment, then asked, “Would you mind spotting for me?”

  “Yes, I would mind.” That was one thing you could trust about Greta. She was always clear and direct. A man couldn’t misinterpret her if he tried. “I would like to get my workout finished as soon as possible,” she added, so either she was softening towards him or she’d just remembered that he was still a client and she couldn’t be quite as rude as she undoubtedly wanted to be. “I injured my knee earlier this year, and want to keep it strong. I simply do what needs to be done and then go home.”

  Impulsively, Ian reached out and touched her bare shoulder. “You’ve got beautiful definition in your deltoids,” he said, then wanted to smack himself on the forehead. Beautiful deltoids? Yeah, that was smooth. He tried to recover. “So you must do an upper body workout too.”

  “On Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she snapped. Then, as she remembered the whole he-was-still-a-client consideration, she added more graciously, “Working only part of your body creates a lack of balance.”

  “Well, congratulations on creating such a good balance,” he said and refrained from complimenting her on her triceps.

  “Thank you,” she replied. “I’m not going down without a fight.”

  She finished the last press and leaned back against the seat, taking a deep breath. He looked into her bottomless blue eyes and forgot what he was going to say, which was something along the lines of “me, either.”

  • • •

  “So how was your workout today?” Tess asked. Greta gave her sister a sharp glance. Tess’s round face seemed innocent of malice or complicity but she never asked Greta how her workouts went. She knew exactly how Greta felt about working out because Greta had on previous occasions expressed herself forcibly on the subject. Besides, wasn’t asking about one’s workout sort of like asking, “So how was the oil change?”

  “Ian was there,” she said, studying her sister’s face.

  “Oh?”

  Much too innocent, Greta decided. People who wore their emotions so close to the surface shouldn’t try to dissemble. She dropped the gym bag on the bed and unzipped it, pulling out the sweaty clothes and tossing them into the wicker hamper. She’d already had her shower at the gym, and was dressed for the afternoon’s work. But Tess was waiting for something.

  “What?” she asked warily, plumping a pillow, then sitting down and stretching her legs out on the mattress. She relaxed into the pillows. This was much better than leg presses.

  “Ian,” Tess said. “How was he?”

  Tess had sent him. That was the only explanation for her curiosity. When Greta regained her strength from the exertion of working out, she’d have a thing or two to say about that. In the meantime, she merely commented, “He was his usual annoying self,” and, opening her laptop, booted it up.

  “Oh?” Tess said again. Did she look disappointed? What was she up to? That was a silly question. It was clear what she was up to. The real question was, Why? “He’s not so bad,” Tess added.

  “He’s arrogant and opinionated.”

  “You forgot insufferable and obnoxious.”

  Greta ignored her. She frowned at her followup schedule, updating it with notes she’d made in her day planner and in her brain. Whenever she worked out, she ended up with tons of great ideas and she had to write them down before she forgot them. Tess had suggested that she get a smartphone or a pad so she could write them down as she had them, but she had seen people trying to multitask while working out, and when they did, they ended up doing none of the tasks well. Look at Ian. Perfect example. He should not have tried flirting with her — or whatever it was he’d been attempting to do — while working out. He should have —

  He shouldn’t have done anything. Good heavens, why was she even sparing a single thought about him? She was putting him out of her mind. When he had kissed her, she had felt herself falling into him, falling for him. She had wanted to throw caution to the wind and hand herself over, just like that. Take me, I’m yours. It was unsettling. No. Not unsettling. It was terrifying.

  “Ian likes you,” Tess persisted.

  “Many people like me,” Greta said, not looking up from her laptop because she didn’t really want to have this conversation, and if she made eye contact with her sister, then she’d have to.

  “But not like he does.”

  “Just because a man likes me, romantically speaking, doesn’t mean I have to date him.”

  “That’s very true. But if he likes you, romantically speaking, and you like him, romantically speaking, which you do, that seems promising. If you’d let it be.”

  “I do not like him,” Greta said, feeling as if she’d suddenly been transported back to high school. Next she’d be passing notes and giggling behind her locker door. No. She’d never giggled behind a locker door in her life and she wasn’t going to start now.

  “Do, too,” Tess said with a smile. “You just wish you didn’t.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Greta said with asperity. She indicated her laptop. “I’m trying to get some work done.”

  “He really does like you,” Tess said.

  “I know,” Greta said, softening a little. “I’m just not — he’s not my type.”

  Tess turned away as if she might be hiding a smile.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Greta gave Renee a friendly smile and a polite wave — the shop assistant was on the phone and mouthed a �
��hello” to her — then made her way to the back of the showroom. She pushed through the double doors and walked into Michael’s workshop. It was unusually quiet and she saw that no one was in the main work area, not even Jimmy, Michael’s erstwhile carpenter’s assistant.

  She took a moment to look at some of the pieces Michael was working on, then went to see if he was in his office. He wasn’t, but she finally tracked him down in the finish room, where he was attaching hardware to a cabinet door. She recognized the design at once and she said delightedly, “Michael, that’s beautiful.”

  The cabinet was a large, free-standing unit, an unexpected juxtaposition of ebony in a traditional country design. When Michael had first proposed it in response to her problem — “They want exotic country, whatever that means” — she hadn’t been entirely convinced he could pull it off. But Tess had been sure he could, and talked Greta into agreeing to it. And he had pulled it off. Why had she ever doubted?

  Michael looked up and said, “Hey, Greta. How’s it going?” He set aside his tools and wiped his hands on the cloth he always kept in his back pocket. She’d never had the heart to point out that half the time the cloth was dirtier than his hands.

  “The Mansfields are going to love this,” she said, running her fingers along the side of the cabinet. “It’s incredible. I hate that entire house but it’s going to be an amazing place when we’re done.”

  “You hate it? I think it’s going to be one of your signature designs.”

  “It’s not my taste,” she said. “You know I’m a European antiques junkie.”

  “You go for the romantic look,” Michael agreed, opening a drawer in a metal organizer behind him and picking through it, probably looking for the rest of the hardware he’d purchased for the cabinet.

  Romantic? She considered the command center. It was attractively furnished, of course, but —

  “Which is funny,” Michael went on, lifting out a silver knob and its matching screw and closing the drawer. “Because you’re not really a romantic person.”