No Time for Apologies: No Brides Club, Book 5

by Gordon, Jean C.

  The delivery person took a sidestep away from her.

  “She’s Lewis,” Jon verified, holding his hand out for the pizza box.

  “Just let me run upstairs for your tip,” Kate said, disentangling her hand from Jon’s.

  “I’ll cover it.” He had his wallet out before she could answer and handed the guy a twenty.

  The guy handed over the pizza. Jon’s stomach growled at the spicy aroma rising from the box into the humid night air.

  “I’d better get you upstairs and feed you.”

  “Good evening, Ms. Lewis.” The doorman opened the door.

  “Thank you, Michael.”

  As soon as Kate’s back was to them, the doorman gave Jon a thorough inspection. The warning look the older man gave Jon was something he’d expect a father to give a daughter’s first date. The itch the guy’s look caused in that unreachable spot between Jon’s shoulder blades almost prompted him say, We’re only having pizza.

  “Thank you,” he said instead before striding across the lobby to join Kate at the elevator.

  The elevator tinged its way down and they stepped in, the doors closing behind them. Kate pushed two.

  “You have a great location, here,” Jon said.

  “Yes, I can walk to work, stores and the gym, and the building is great, too. We have a laundry, rooftop patio, a doorman, and a resident super, as well as parking—not that I have a car—and pets—not that I have time for one. I’m thinking of taking an offer I have to buy my place.”

  Jon glanced down at Kate, who stood shoulder-to-shoulder—or more precisely, shoulder to bicep—with him. Yeah, the building was great. Except the unusually cramped elevator. He moved his foot slightly to the left and hit the wall. Small and slow moving and lacking ventilation. He sucked in a breath, but couldn’t fill his lungs.

  Kate lifted her face to him and parted her lips.

  If he leaned down …

  “Are you okay?” She asked. “You looked flushed.”

  He jerked back. “Fine.” Just almost indulging in a teenage fantasy. “Hungry, from my swim. “That’s all.” And not necessarily for pizza.

  * * *

  “Well, then,” Kate said as the elevator doors opened. “I’d better get you inside and feed you.” And put some distance between us before my imagination gets away from me.

  Jon held the elevator door for her, an ordinary smile curving his lips. As if anything was ordinary about him. Had she really thought he was going to kiss her in the elevator?

  “This way.” She pointed down the hall. “I’m in 211.”

  “So, you said before you ran down the pizza deliverer,” Jon said with a chuckle.

  “I shouldn’t have shouted it.” Kate shrugged. “What is that saying, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl? Although, I’ve given it a good shot.”

  “And I’ve given in and embraced the country.”

  Kate unlocked her apartment. Was Jon purposely pointing out their differences? She opened the door and quickly inventoried the condition of the room, her gaze halting at the overflowing basket of clean laundry. Nothing visible that she wouldn’t want Jon to see on top of the basket. Or anywhere, she corrected herself, giving herself a mental slap for letting her thoughts go in that direction. She was feeling the loss of support she’d gotten from the No Brides Club when it had been more active.

  “Okay if I come in?” Jon asked.

  “Yes, of course.” She stepped in further so Jon could walk through the doorway. “You can put the pizza on the bar and pull up a stool.

  He took his time walking across the living room. “This is a really nice place.” He set the pizza box on the bar. “One bedroom?”

  “Yes. Do you want a beer? Ice water? I could make coffee.” She was babbling. But sadly, she could barely remember the last time she’d had a guy up to her apartment. Your choice, her professional self reminded her.

  “Beer sounds good.” He opened the pizza box.

  Kate grabbed two bottles from the refrigerator and placed them on the end of the bar before taking two plates from the cupboard. “A fork?” She turned around to see Jon sitting at the bar, a folded piece of pizza cradled in a napkin headed for his mouth.

  “Scratch that.”

  He stopped. “Sorry. I should have waited for you. I’ve been hanging out with guys too long.”

  “No need to apologize. If you went directly from the Briarwood to the Equinox, you must have been swimming well over an hour. You’ve got to be starving.”

  “I could have waited a minute for you. Sit, please.”

  Kate placed a plate in front of Jon and the other by the high-backed stool next to him. She boosted herself up onto the stool, reached in the pizza box, and lifted out a piece. She folded the thin crust like Jon had, something she’d learned to do the first week she’d been at NYU.

  “This is good,” Jon said.

  Kate swallowed her bite. “My favorite place.”

  “So how’d your meeting go?” Jon took a swig of his beer and leaned back.

  Meeting? Kate ran her mind back over her day. She hadn’t had any meetings at work today.

  “Your No Brides meeting.”

  “Julie left right after you did.” She narrowed her eyes. “What did Ava tell you?”

  “That you and five or six of your professional friends get together once a week and plot your takeover of corporate America.”

  Kate laughed, partially out of relief. That was a lot better than what she thought Ava might have said.

  Jon placed his beer on the bar. “And that you all arm yourselves against the wicked men who might impede your professional progress by luring you into a relationship, or worse, marriage.” He wiggled his eyebrows in a villainous way that would have made her laugh if it didn’t make her so sad her sister saw her ambition that way.

  “Ava told you that?”

  “More or less.” He smiled.

  “She doesn’t have it exactly right. We’re not anti-marriage or anti-men.”

  “That’s good.”

  Kate couldn’t decipher the relief that replaced the hurt of Ava’s take on her and the No Brides Club that she’d given Jon. But she welcomed it.

  “We each have certain career goals we want to achieve and until we do, we’re putting our careers first.” Except four of the group seemed to have forgotten their joint vow. And the jury was out on Julie’s suspicious need to leave tonight before they’d even gotten started. Change that “before they’d even gotten started” to before she could let loose with her past two weeks since Jon had started at DeBakker.

  “I used to be like that, and I can still say that I’ve never let a woman interfere with my career.”

  Kate finished her pizza. “Then you understand. Ava is so starry-eyed in love with Trey that she can’t fathom why I don’t want the same with someone.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Not now. I thought you got that when you said you never let a woman get in the way of your career.”

  “True, but you might say I let my grandfather interfere.”

  “That’s different. He’s family, and he was sick. Besides you already were a manager.”

  “Who says I didn’t want more?”

  “Did you?”

  Jon polished off his beer. “No, I was ready for something else.”

  Without thinking, Kate playfully punched him in the shoulder and pulled her arm back quickly when she realized what she’d done.

  “So you were doing what you wanted with your career.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “That’s what my friends and I want to do.”

  “Be sure.” Jon reached for another slice of pizza.

  “I am. Sure. Do you want another beer?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  Kate slid off the stool, walked around Jon’s end of the bar and got herself another beer, feeling Jon’s gaze on her back nearly the whole way. Or was it that she wanted his
gaze on her. She swung the refrigerator door closed and stared at its chrome finish. She was not getting this close to her dream and letting whatever her attraction to Jon was get in the way.

  She spun around and, while walking the few steps back to her stool, came up with a way to push Jon back into his coworker, subordinate compartment. “I told you about my No Brides Club, tell me about your competitive swimming. Is that how you came out of your shell?”

  Jon shrugged. “I always liked swimming, and when I was at Columbia-Greene Community College, the athletics department was trying to get a team going. Anyone who tried out made the team.”

  “Wait. I’m confused. You’re at Columbia-Greene now.”

  “When I was a student there.”

  Kate went still, the beer bottle halfway to her lips. “You went to community college? I know Genesee is a small high school, but you were valedictorian. Weren’t you accepted at every university that had a math program?”

  Jon held her gaze without answering until she had to look down.

  “Yes. But my parents refused to help me with college if I didn’t go pre-med. If I had, they would have paid for everything. So I moved in with Grandpa and used money I’d saved as a kid from birthday and Christmas gifts from my other grandparents to go to CGCC for the first two years.”

  “That’s why you made such a big deal about the Mathletes scholarship. You weren’t just being spiteful.” Kate bit her tongue. If anyone had been spiteful, it had been her… lording her higher score over him.

  “I was so angry. I had the higher math average. I was the more dedicated student.”

  That wasn’t exactly true. She’d downplayed her scholastic diligence for popularity. Kate’s chest tightened. She’d had a good financial aid package. Maybe if she’d known Jon’s situation she wouldn’t have worked so hard to beat him out of the scholarship … Kate hung her head. No. She’d been such a fake and princess then.

  “With part-time work, an academic scholarship, and student loans, I finished my bachelor’s degree at Boston College and had a fellowship for my masters.”

  His voice had an underpinning of pride and of steel that she never would have expected from the old Jon.

  John crushed his napkin in his hand and dropped it on his plate. “But you asked about my competitive swimming.”

  His subject change was so definite that her apology for her high-school self died on her lips. “Yes,” she said too enthusiastically. “And the butterfly that emerged from it.” Had she really just called him a butterfly? She stuffed the last of her pizza in her mouth before anymore words could get out. But he was gorgeous.

  “If you mean, I lost weight and built muscle, yeah. I swam for Boston College, too, and swim with the Dolphins Masters club now.”

  “I’d like to see you swim sometime.”

  Jon’s eyes brightened. “How about this weekend. We have a home meet at Hyde Park. You can meet my grandfather.”

  She swallowed hard. She’d kind of been making small talk, subconsciously thinking that would flatter him. Maybe she hadn’t evolved as much since high school as she thought.

  “Sure.” She didn’t have any specific weekend plans and wasn’t about to lie.

  Jon rose. “I should get going.”

  Kate walked him to the door. “See you tomorrow. At work.”

  She stared at the closed door for a while before locking it behind Jon. She’d just agreed to spend the weekend watching Jon swim, after agreeing last Sunday to spend another weekend sometime visiting his grandfather’s farm. What had she been thinking?

  Kate turned the door lock and snapped the deadbolt into place. Her bigger problem was that despite not knowing for sure that he wasn’t after her promotion, she was looking forward to both.

  Chapter 7

  Had he really asked Kate, his boss, to come and watch him compete in a swim meet tomorrow? What was he, 17-years-old again? As soon as the invitation was out of his mouth, he knew that she’d just been making conversation, didn’t actually want to come to the meet. And all the stuff he’d spilled about putting himself through school. He didn’t tell anyone that.

  “Do you have the revised projection?” Gregg, the fund manager he was working with on the special project stood in the doorway to the small conference room Jon was working in.

  “I have a revised projection, based on what you asked for at the meeting this morning.” A meeting that as far as Jon could see, Gregg had required his attendance at simply because he could. The meeting had had nothing to do with the minor fixed income element he was working on, and Gregg had already asked him for the same revisions late yesterday afternoon. Jon scrutinized the numbers on his screen again. But, if he hadn’t had the early morning meeting, he wouldn’t have had pizza with Kate last night.

  “Email me the report.” Gregg turned to leave.

  “As soon as I run my assumptions by Kate or the fixed-income senior analyst. This is outside my area of expertise.”

  Gregg turned back and stepped into the conference room. “That’s what they get for having you train under a woman. Given your background, I expected you to be more decisive. Especially, if you want the open fund manager position.”

  Jon almost lost it, but it wouldn’t do anyone any good if he let his anger take over. “There you go. I don’t want the fund manager position. What I want is to learn as much and do the best I can as a junior analyst for the twelve weeks Bob hired me for. I’ll send you the report after I consult with Kate.”

  “Fine.” Gregg left.

  Jon closed his laptop and headed toward Kate’s cubicle. He was 99% sure he’d used the correct assumptions, but Gregg had rubbed him the wrong way from the start of the project Monday afternoon. The closer he got to Kate’s cubicle, the more hesitant he felt. He wouldn’t want her to see him as indecisive professionally. He could consult the fixed income senior analyst. It wouldn’t matter what he might think.

  “Jon.”

  “Kate.” He almost walked right into her. Not only was he indecisive, he was getting downright spacey.

  “Done with the project?”

  “Almost. I’m working on 30-, 90-, and 180-day projections for fixed income instruments and want an expert’s validation of my core assumptions.”

  “Kim’s analyst is on vacation, so you’ll have to make do with me.”

  “Just the expert I was thinking of. Give me a time.”

  “Now’s fine. Grab your chair and set up your laptop in my cubicle. I’m going to get a refill on my coffee, but I’ll be right back.”

  Jon pulled his chair in next to Kate’s, opened his laptop on her desk and punched in his password. His spreadsheet flashed onto the screen. As far as he could tell, it was perfect. Maybe Gregg was right. He didn’t need a second opinion. But it was Kate he’d primarily be working with while he was here. Jon ignored the uptick in his pulse that anticipation evoked. He half smiled at the exasperated but determined look on her face last night when she corrected any misinformation her sister might have given him about her No Brides Club. He never knew what to expect from her.

  “Is the screensaver that riveting?” Kate placed her coffee mug on the desk.

  “I was lost in thought.”

  “I know, a mathematical challenge can do that to me, too.”

  His challenge wasn’t numbers. It was the woman sitting next to him. Jon tapped the spacebar, and his spreadsheet was back. He summarized his task and waited.

  Kate reviewed the spreadsheet, using her financial calculator to double check his results. “I would have set up the spreadsheet a little differently, but gotten the same results.”

  “How would you have set it up?” he asked.

  Kate explained, ending with “totally a personal preference.”

  He’d thought his results were spot on, but didn’t begrudge the time spent with Kate, having her confirm them. In fact he kind of liked times like this, working closely with her as a team. He’d miss them when his summer stint was over.

 
; “But if Gregg doesn’t need your input immediately,” Kate continued, “I have new data on short-term interest rates that you might want to substitute for the data you have here.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll email it to you.”

  Jon took that as his cue to leave. He closed his laptop and stood.

  “And Jon.” Kate looked up.

  He waited.

  “Good luck with the project.”

  He had no idea why her words deflated rather than boosted him. What had he expected? Jon stepped across the walkway to his cubicle, sat, and opened his laptop. He hadn’t firmed up his invitation to the swim meet tomorrow. There was only one way to find out if she’d been making idle conversation when she’d said she’d like to see him compete. Ask.

  He swiveled his chair around to see Kate hustle out of her cubicle, laptop in hand. Probably a meeting. At the private equity firm, they joked that their jobs were 50% work and 50% meetings. He’d catch her later, or let her check with him about the swim meet. If she didn’t by the end of the work day, he’d know she’d had no intention of coming.

  His stomach muscles clenched. Begging for a second opinion on his work was bad enough. This was worse. He was falling back into those old patterns, sliding into the insecure adolescent who’d hidden behind his nerdiness. He was letting his old puppy love cloud his adult reality. Kate was just a friend, a coworker. Who knew if they’d even stay in contact after his work here was done? Jon slapped the desktop. As soon as she was back, he’d take the initiative. He’d tell her he was fine with her not coming to his swim meet.

  His insides went from clenched to knotted, and the two of them in the elevator of her building flashed in his mind.

  He wanted her to come.

  * * *

  “Kate, Anthony, I need you both to stay a minute,” Bob said at the end of the weekly analyst meeting

  “Certainly.” Her colleagues shot her alternately pitying and jealous looks as they left the conference room. She glanced at the clock on the wall. 11:35. She had a noon appointment with a mortgage broker about financing the purchase of her apartment. She’d made it at lunchtime so she wouldn’t have to take any time off work.