Perfectly Unmatched (A Youngblood Book)

by Reinhardt, Liz

  Men are beasts. We are. That’s life, that’s biology.

  I resist the urge to clap my hands over my ears, as if I can stop the bark of his words in my head.

  I rush to the bathroom, Akos right on my heels, and manage to slam the door in his face and press my back to the heavy wood while I take a few shuddering breaths.

  When my heart and lungs have stopped their frantic riot, I head to the sink and turn on the cold water. I soak a paper towel, ring it out, and press the damp chill to my overheated skin. My hair has been straightened until it shines, my makeup is heavy and perfect, my dress so tight, I wouldn’t have been able to finish dinner if I wanted to.

  I do want to.

  Just not with Akos.

  And not in this dress or with this makeup on.

  I’m sick of feeling so damn trapped. I want to just be me. Myself. Not some precious woman-doll who needs to be protected.

  I wad the paper towel up and toss it, then push through the door and smash into Akos’s wide chest. I almost totter off balance on my new leopard print stilettos, but he holds me firmly by the shoulders and steadies me.

  “Are you okay? Let’s go back and finish dinner. I’m sorry we talked about…all that. It was uncalled for. I should have gone with my instincts and not let the conversation go that way but you were so—”

  “Shut up,” I interrupt, my voice even but punctured with the fierce anger I can barely contain. “I needed to know. That’s it. Now I know, and I can use the information to make a better decision. Thank you for a lovely evening. I have to get home.”

  His hand slides down from my shoulder to my upper arm, and his squeeze becomes a hard pinch.

  “You’re not leaving without me. We’ll finish dinner, then I’ll take you home. I’m responsible for you, Benelli. I don’t take that lightly.” His calm voice is at odds with the bite of his fingers on my skin.

  I twist, he increases the pressure. My eyes well with tears, and I’m furious. At him, at myself, at all of this.

  “Let me go. This instant. Let me go.” My voice scratches out of my dry throat.

  He loosens his grip very slightly and rubs a thumb over the skin he most likely bruised. “I’m sorry. I know you think I’m being a jerk, Benelli, but I want to protect you. If you storm out of here without me, I have no way of knowing if you got home safely or not. It’s my job to make sure you’re safe, and I take it seriously, okay? Even if it means that I have to protect you from yourself. Does that make sense?”

  He lifts a hand and cups the side of my face, then brushes a few strands of hair off my shoulder.

  My teeth chatter from pure, undeniable rage.

  “I’m ready to go. Now. And I don’t need your permission to leave.” My purse is back at the table. I need it for cab fare, my cell, my pepper spray. I stalk towards the table, and he rushes behind, dropping some bills between our barely-touched plates and trying to put an arm around my shoulders as we brush past confused, fawning managers and hosts.

  I squirm away from his touch and head into the balmy summer night. I hail the first cab I see, but, before I can close the door fully, Akos slides in next to me. I lean forward and give my aunt’s address and my sweetest smile, just to ensure that the cabbie will be on my side in case Akos decides to contradict me again.

  He doesn’t.

  I tilt my head and watch the lights and pedestrians in the city as they whiz by, working very hard to ignore the guy I’m on a date with as he squirms next to me in the seat.

  “We shouldn’t have discussed all that crass stuff,” he begins, not that I’m looking at him or paying him any attention. “How did your other dates answer? Did they lie? Because if they said anything other than what I said, it was a lie.”

  I initially planned to not say a single word to him, but I decide to jump on this as a unique learning experience I can use to find the man I should actually marry.

  “I didn’t ask anyone before you.”

  He sighs and rubs his temples. “So this was a shock because you didn’t talk to anyone else about it?”

  “Um, this was a shock because you told me that you’d cheat on me for my own good on our first date, Akos.” I roll my eyes when he presses his hands palm-to-palm, ready to plead with me for…what?

  “Benelli, beautiful girl, listen to me,” he begs. His voice is giving me a headache. “You and I both understand that our getting married wouldn’t be about puppy love. It would be about a making a relationship that would last. For years. And that requires honesty and understanding. The reason you want to marry me is because I’ll be a great partner for your father.”

  At the mention of my dad, I tense up and listen despite my resolve to ignore his stupid ass.

  He seizes on my momentary interest and runs with it. “And that’s the honest truth, Benelli. The honest truth. We need each other. We can respect each other, and even, eventually, love each other. But there will have to be compromises in our relationship. I’ll leave Hungary and my family and only come back to visit. Okay. I’ll take a second-in-command position under your father. Okay. I’ll put in unbelievable hours and work harder than I’ve ever worked for anything before. Okay. All okay. Because we’ll have a family and we’ll build something together.”

  “And by family, you mean me, you, our kids, and any mistresses you might keep?” I ask, my eyebrows high.

  “If I ever keep a mistress, and that’s a huge ‘if,’ all of that would be conducted away from you. And it wouldn’t be for love, Benelli. It would be so I didn’t burden you with keeping me…content. In that way.” He presses his palms down on his knees and spreads his fingers wide. “I know people don’t talk about it. This is why, Benelli. It’s a part of life that no one’s proud of or excited about. But it is a reality, and I think we’d be a stronger couple if we laid it all out upfront, no illusions.”

  “No romance,” I snap.

  “Yes, romance.” He turns toward me, his hands flexing to grab at me again. I shrink away, plastering myself to the door of the cab. He draws his hands back to his sides. “Romance will be a part of our marriage, Benelli. Flowers, candy, jewelry, date nights, vacations. You can have it all. I’ll provide for you exactly the way your father provides for your mother.”

  Everything my father ever gave my mother.

  Except my father didn’t keep a mistress.

  And I’m about to drive this point home to Akos when something stops me.

  Because it occurs to me that Akos was pretty comfortable saying that most men have mistresses. It was almost like he expected me to agree. Like he assumed that it was a fact of life I was familiar with.

  I don’t think my father ever cheated on my mother.

  But I’ve never really thought about it.

  And I don’t want to. I don’t want to think about any of this or anything else for that matter. I want out of this car, away from this asshole, and back to the innocence of my youth, when I really believed that, even if a prince didn’t ride up to rescue me, he and I would bump into each other somewhere along the way and…fall in love.

  Why does it make me so embarrassed?

  It shouldn’t.

  The cab lurches to a halt, and I attempt to pay the driver, but Akos has already handled it and is asking him to wait, so I vault out and rush to my aunt’s cozy little house.

  “Benelli! Benelli!” he yells, but I don’t want to listen to him. I slam the door harder than I mean and breath in the familiar aromas of vinegar, cinnamon, and oil paints that distinguish my aunt’s home.

  “Nénike!” I call, but the comforting silence that bounces back lets me know my aunt is out, probably riding her bike half-drunk to some crazy artist friend’s house where they’ll smoke pot and talk politics and art and life on someone’s candlelit, overgrown, back porch.

  I luxuriate in all the quiet. In a few more days, my family will descend on this quiet little place. My parents will ask me about all the dates I’ve been on, my siblings will run wild with our cousins and the
locals, and I’ll be expected to play the part I’ve been assigned since I was a little girl: caretaker to the Youngbloods.

  I walk up the steps to the small, high-windowed room that I’ve stayed in every summer since I turned thirteen and Aunt Abony declared me ‘a woman after her own heart.’ Maybe I was back then, when I ran wild and didn’t worry about a single thing other than how many hours I could stay outside, how many books I could finish curled up by the window, and how much I could enjoy my summer with her before the first tinges of yellow on the edges of the leaves announced that it was time to travel back to the States.

  She and I connected, twined, surged with a bond that was deep and unspoken. It lasted right up until the summer I was sixteen. That was the summer I met Lala and she pointed out that I would look so much better with two eyebrows rather than one. And clucked her tongue at my ratty, long hair and knobby, unshaved legs. Mama was relieved because I went from being a tomboy to a nice girl in the matter of a few makeover weekends. I was proud of the fact that I could put on false eyelashes like a pro and walk in heels equally as well as I could roller-skate.

  I can’t forget the look of total and complete disappointment that fogged Abony’s eyes when I stepped off the plane, and it irritated me. The new look was still raw and uncomfortable, and I wanted to be petted and praised for it by the women I trusted, because it didn’t feel quite right, and I needed their reassurance.

  I made this new version of me the skin I could slide into. And, eventually, it was the bruised knees and the tangled hair that was the old me and the highlights and full face of makeup was the new and improved Benelli. No matter how many times my aunt slashed her eyes in my direction and muttered about the death of feminism, I held tight to my new persona.

  Held tight and sailed right into Akos’s arms.

  That wasn’t exactly the plan.

  I get to my room and strip out of my binding dress. I scrub the makeup off my face and watch as it swirls down the drain. My cutoff shorts and cotton tank do exactly what I want my clothes to do right now; they fit perfectly and allow me to instantly forget them. I thrown on my flip flops and decide to head back to the lake.

  Where I met Cormac.

  Where we spent an amazingly comfortable afternoon and evening together.

  By the time he walked me back home late that night, I was kind of a little smitten.

  Which is nice because he’s safe to fall for. Even if I fell head over heels in love with him, which I won’t because he’s not my type, there’s no way I can bring a PhD student with a classics studies background and a penchant for romance and poetry home to my father.

  My family needs to be rebuilt, and my husband is going to lend a direct hand in the reconstruction.

  That said, looking for a husband is hard, emotionally-draining work, and I need a break. At least that’s what I tell myself when I grab my light zip-up hoodie from the hook by the back door. I’ve been on dates with so many guys in this tiny town, I can’t go out without getting recognized. I pop the hood over my head, push my hands deep in the pockets, and walk the streets, knowing that without my heels and hair and tight dress, I blend in with all the young teenage girls hanging on the cobblestoned side streets.

  I love the sweet whistle of the wind picking up now and then and dragging strands of hair out of my hood. I love the long, loose feel of my legs as I stretch them and the wiggle of my toes in my open shoes. I feel free, for the first time in I don’t know how long. Free and reckless.

  But I don’t go directly to the lake, like I intended. My feet take me down a vaguely familiar path that’s tugging at me like an eager puppy on a long leash.

  When I get to the young professor’s hovel of an apartment, I pick up a few pieces of loose gravel and toss them at his window. I guess I could just as easily walk up to his door and knock, but something about tossing the rocks feels a little crazier, and I’m so in the mood for anything not quite sensible right now.

  The light shines from his window, and I can make out the shape of him moving in the shadowy interior, so I pick up another handful of pebbles and throw with a little more effort. This time one of the window panes sounds like it may have cracked, and the window swings open. Cormac sticks his head out, a pair of dark, square glasses on his face.

  He looks nerdy.

  But kind of adorable.

  His dark hair sticks up at weird angles and he’s a few shades short of sleepy, like I woke him up before he dozed over his latest batch of translations.

  “Benelli?” He pulls his glasses off fast, like he’s embarrassed that I caught him in them. “I…I thought you said you had a date tonight? Construction foreman, associates in business, nice calves?” He says the last words in that dry, completely unimpressed way that makes a laugh start low in my throat and bubble out of my mouth.

  “It winds up his calves weren’t all that impressive. Do you want to go walking? Maybe grab a bite?”

  I probably wouldn’t have been able to eat all that much in the dress I wore tonight even if Akos didn’t piss me off, but, as it was, I wound up eating next to nothing, and my stomach is lurching and growling.

  “Of course. That would be…yes, that would be brilliant. Could you wait just a minute? My research clothing isn’t fit for the civilized public.” He pulls his head back into the room, then pops back out. “I was thinking of wearing shorts tonight. I warn you; I have fantastic calves. Truly awesome, amazing calves.”

  “Really?” I do my best not to smile at him, but it’s easier attempted than done. “So are you a jogger?”

  “Cyclist,” he corrects. “Unicyclist. And sometimes snowboarder. Maybe, actually, only once on the snowboarder thing. But I can’t stand for you to picture me on a unicycle without a cooler image of me to compete for space in your brain. Right. Um, I’ll be down in a second.”

  I bounce on the balls of my feet, ready to see him, ready to walk around with him and tell him about Akos and the other guys and get his take on all of this craziness.

  Or, better yet, maybe we won’t talk about any guys or any dates. Maybe we’ll just talk about Greek myths and desserts and the moon and stories from when we were kids. Hopefully.

  He bursts out the door, throwing his hood up over his head as he walks to me.

  And I’m shocked to feel this tiny little flutter low down in my gut, where only the best and sweetest flutters ever wave their wings.

  He’s not drop-dead gorgeous like Akos, who’s all chiseled lines and dark, brooding strength.

  Cormac is more cute. In that scruffy, mad-professor way. He does have wildly gorgeous eyes, though. To die for eyes. They’re a kind of light green with darker green right around the pupil, and they crinkle on the sides from all the smiling he does. And he has a good mouth, with firm, kissably-shaped lips. I have a hard time picturing his mouth being still, because he’s always talking or laughing or grinning at me. Never kissing me though.

  Sadly.

  Also, he laughs all the time, rattly and deep from inside his chest. That may be my absolute favorite thing about him.

  “So, I’m sorry about the calf let-down.” His voice is brisk, which is so nice after a long series of dates with slow-talking attempted-seducers. He loops an arm around my shoulders gently and leads me down the street. “But, I have to say, I’m a little glad. I found this Hungarian-Thai fusion place…don’t laugh now. All my sources say it’s absolutely amazing, and I was dying of hunger, but didn’t want to be the sad professor eating all alone at the bar, and I was too lazy to look up and see if they delivered. And then, there you were like an angel of dinner under my window.”

  He smells like the pages of books, ink, and tea leaves. And, under all those comforting smells, he also smells like guy. It’s a salty, clean smell mixed with the tingling pang of aftershave that makes my girly hormones spin in excited pirouettes, and I turn my head in my hood so I can discreetly press my nose closer to his shoulder and inhale that perfect aroma.

  “I’m glad you were around
,” I admit. “I know we just talked the other night, but I missed you.”

  “Stop,” he demands, frowning. “You’re going to lead me on and make me fall completely in love with you, even if I know for a fact that it’s absolutely hopeless.”

  I punch his arm softly, surprised by the tough bulge of muscle under the thin sleeve of his jacket.

  “Flattery will get you nowhere. But hand me your phone,” I order, and I totally ignore my slightly sweaty palm and jittery fingers when I type my number in. “Now call me.”

  He fumbles for a second, but makes the call, and I program his name in as he peers over my shoulder.

  “Sir Sexy Calves? I like it.” That deep laugh jangles around me and sends a shiver of pleasure up and down my spine. “I’m relieved to have your number now. This town can be a dangerous place for a dreamy grad student who knows very little Hungarian. I wish you’d been there to help me post a letter this morning. I’m afraid my grandmother will not be getting a card with several oily naked men on it. She so would have loved ogling it, so it’s a particular shame it will never reach her greedy hands.”

  “Did you really send your grandma a card like that?” My eyes bulge from shock, and I picture my own grandmother with her severe, permanent frown, who would not think a card like that would be appropriate or funny. I always send her something sappy with lots of embossed flowers on the front for her birthday.

  “My grandmother would box my ears if I tried to send her a card with a cat or a bouquet on it. And I only think I sent it, after all. The postmaster was pretty irritated by the time we were through, so those handsome men with all their oily muscles may have been deposited into the incinerator when I left.”

  He stops in front of a small, questionable-looking facade that leads into a dark restaurant. An eager-looking man with a huge smile and dark, shiny hair leaps up and asks us to have a seat in broken Hungarian. He brings us menus, takes our drink order, and smiles like his face will crack in half.