“What’s wrong?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth.
She glanced at him. “Seriously?”
Rick shrugged, ignoring someone in the crowd who spoke his name as they passed.
She shook her head, turning her face away. “Do you know what your father and that—” She paused to huff. “That man were just talking about?”
Rick frowned, then spotted his father near the bar. “Not really,” he admitted.
Mac shook her head again. “Unreal.”
“Mac,” Rick said, “that guy was totally trashed. Whatever he said, don’t take it personally.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Wait.” Rick pulled them to a stop once they passed the last round table. “Are you angry?”
She opened her mouth but didn’t speak right away. “Not at you,” she finally said, obviously trying to control some unwanted emotion. “I just… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be here.”
“So let’s go.”
Mac looked up at him and blinked. “Really? We can leave?”
His heart melted at her relieved expression, never stopping to wonder why concern for this woman came to him so naturally. “I’ve seen everyone I need to.”
She lowered her eyes and Rick heard her release a long exhale. “Thank you, Rick,” she said, lifting her chin to look at him. “I really appreciate it.”
The gratitude in her voice and expression made a whole new list of questions pop into his mind, but Rick’s instinct told him that now was not the time to ask. And besides, he was just as ready to be out of that ballroom as she was.
As they started walking again, Mac continued. “You have that community thing next Wednesday, right?” She was smiling now, playing her part, and nodding hello to people as they passed.
“No,” Rick replied, doing the same smiling/nodding thing. “I’ve got to cover a story out of town, so someone else is going. You can have the night off.” He’d added that last part as a joke, but Mac didn’t laugh.
“You mean Brandy can have the night off,” she corrected.
“Who?”
“Seriously, Rick? Should I save it in your BlackBerry? Brandy.”
Rick slowed their pace as they neared the ballroom’s exit. “Right. Sorry. Your cousin. Are you sure you don’t—”
“You know I don’t fit in here,” she said quietly. “Wasn’t that obvious tonight?”
“Not to me.”
“Rick…” She started playing with a strand of blond hair. “You need pedigreed arm candy to parade around at all these events, now that you’re becoming such a bigwig.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Arm candy?” He felt her hand squeeze his arm. “Bigwig?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, Mackenzie,” he conceded as they neared the coatroom. “I need arm candy. So do you. That was our arrangement. Simple and clean.”
“Well,” she said, dropping his arm, “I’m totally out of my element here, and I’m definitely not pedigreed.” Her tone was kind but decisive. “And I don’t like hanging out at these things.” She sighed and looked off. “Obviously.”
Rick stared at her, not knowing what to say to that. True, a stuffy chamber of commerce dinner wasn’t anyone’s idea of a swinging time, but he didn’t realize how miserable she’d been. Or that she just plain didn’t want to hang out with him anymore. It was difficult to admit to himself how much that stung.
“Brandy is the perfect woman for you, I know it.”
Rick was about to say he didn’t want a perfect woman, but decided to keep his mouth shut on that topic.
“Tell me more about her,” he asked instead, happy that Mac was at least communicating with him.
A genuine smile finally returned to Mac’s lips. Until it was there, Rick hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it. If he had his way, he would do anything to keep that smile in place.
“She lives on this side of Indianapolis, right?” he prompted, knowing this topic was making her happy.
“Right,” she said, her smile growing. “Not far from here. Get this: she’s a year younger than me, five inches taller, and a former beauty queen.”
“Single?” Rick asked, walking to the back of the coatroom in search of Mac’s black trench.
“She just broke up with someone.”
“Ahh, so she’s on the rebound.” Rick grinned.
Mac grinned back as Rick handed over her coat. “I told you it was a perfect set-up. Just you wait.”
Chapter Three
When she’d first brought it up, how easily Rick had agreed to meet Brandy. Almost too easily. And just now, she’d noticed that look in his eyes when she’d mentioned the beauty queen thing. Men were so predictable, she almost laughed.
She put her right elbow on the armrest and stared out her window at the dark street moving past.
“What have you got going on this week?” she asked Rick. “You’ll be around?”
“Not until Thursday.” He was loosening his tie as he drove with one hand. “Why?”
“Brandy is coming late Thursday night. Friday is a teachers’ in-service day, so I’ll be done at noon.”
“Lunch Friday is the plan, right?”
Mac couldn’t help noticing the eager look on Rick’s face. It made the space behind her eyes feel twitchy.
But she had no business getting twitchy about setting Rick up with Brandy, so she better go back to not feeling anything at all. She was liable to get into trouble if she kept hanging out with Rick.
Or worse, get her heart broken.
That had happened before, only once, but it was enough to turn her off the whole “love” thing. Three years ago, Mac had decided it was better to stay away from the relationship-y stuff and just have fun. Save the heavy emotional entanglements for the rest of the planet.
“Cozy Diner at one?”
“Sounds great,” Rick said. Then he pursed his lips, like he was thinking hard. Mac remembered touching those lips once, first with her index finger and then with her own lips. The memory was so vivid…
“What’s the matter?” Rick asked, probably hearing her accidental gasp. “Don’t you feel well?”
“No,” she answered automatically. “I mean, I’m fine, it’s just that my stomach is a little…” She jolted to the side when Rick suddenly made a neat U-turn, then pulled into the parking lot of a 7-11.
“Your usual?” he asked, unbuckling his seat belt.
“Yes, thanks,” she said with a grateful smile.
He opened the door and sprang from the seat, leaving her alone with the motor running. The car was nice and had a rich, leathery smell. As she ran her left hand over the smooth faux-wood of the gear shift, she couldn’t help wondering how many millions of bags of Puppy Chow the price of a car like this would provide one of the animal shelters she volunteered at. Or even just its monthly insurance premiums. She pulled her hand back like she had been electrocuted.
But this was a free country. If Rick felt the need to parade around in an impractical two-seater like this, it was his business and not hers.
She knew Brandy wouldn’t mind things like that. In fact, her cousin could sometimes be a bit more superficial than most. Maybe this was an even better match than Mac originally thought.
She looked up when she saw Rick waving to her from inside the store, close to the window. He was holding up a small bag of Cheetos and mouthing something. Mac nodded and Rick gave her the thumbs-up.
Brandy probably wouldn’t share a bag of chips with Rick, however, Mac thought, chewing her thumbnail. She was too concerned about her weight. But it probably wouldn’t matter, since all Rick was after was steady arm candy.
“Here,” Rick said as he slid into his seat, handing Mac a half-liter bottle of Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper and the bag of Cheetos.
“Thank you,” Mac said, carefully unscrewing the bottle top. She would wait till they got to her house to open the chips. She may not ethically approve of the Mercedes or the other luxury a
utomobiles she knew he owned, but she didn’t want to cover the upholstery with bright orange fingerprints.
He shifted into reverse. “It’s the least I could do.”
“Least?” she asked after taking a long drink, shivering as the cold liquid hit her stomach.
“Yeah.” He didn’t go on, but messed with the radio while they sat at a red light. “My parents,” he finally continued. “They can come off a little…strong.”
“Oh? I hadn’t noticed,” Mac said in a sing-song voice. She felt grateful, though. She had wondered if Rick noticed that at all, how uncomfortable his parents had made her, his father especially. “Anyway,” she added, “I don’t think I’ll run into them in town or when I’m scooping out a dog kennel.”
Rick chuckled. “Uh, no. The Duffys aren’t big on cleaning up after other living things.”
“Right,” Mac said, feeling a little stab at the reminder of just how different they were. “Well, I’ll never have to see them again, so…” She let her voice trail off and turned to look out the window.
They drove in relative silence the rest of the way to her house. Mac was the first to open her car door. When she looked at Rick, he hadn’t moved. He was still sitting behind the steering wheel, buckled in, his hands in his lap, staring straight ahead.
“Do you want to come in?”
“I can’t,” he said, not looking at her. A moment later he seemed to come back to life and undid his seat belt. “But I’ll walk you to your door.”
Mac’s feminist, independent side would normally protest, but there had been a couple of crimes in her little neighborhood lately, so she didn’t mind the escort. “Thanks,” she said when he stepped up on the curb next to her.
Under the porch light, Mac noticed that Rick looked a little emotionally weary about something. No wonder he had been quiet on the drive home. “You sure you won’t come in?” she asked, her hand on the knob. “You can sit in my massaging La-Z-Boy?”
“Tempting.”
Even though they had plans to meet for lunch on Friday with Brandy and whoever Mac decided to bring along as a fourth, she had a sinking suspicion this was the last time Rick would ever be at her house. And something about that did not sit well.
“I’ve got frozen egg rolls, too,” she added.
“Very tempting.” Rick ran a hand through the top of his hair, tousling it, making it look like it usually did during the week, when he was playing newspaper reporter and not newspaper owner.
Oh, boy. Brandy was going to absolutely love him.
“Okay,” Mac said, holding back one last sigh. “Well, then, good night. And thanks again for this.” She held up her drink. “It was just what I needed.”
Rick dipped his chin and smiled. “You’re welcome.” He started backing up slowly. “Feel better, kiddo.”
…
Kiddo? Why the hell had he said that?
Rick started the car and shifted angrily into first gear.
The way she’d looked at him after he’d said it—she obviously thought he was a lunatic. Maybe he was. Wasn’t one of the signs of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? He was done trying to understand Mac; tonight had officially solidified that. They would never be anything more than friends.
He turned the music up loud as he sped away from her neighborhood. He debated going back to the chamber dinner, but really, he hated those things. And he’d gotten used to Mac being there with him, making jokes and charming everyone. Everyone but his parents. He’d tried to apologize to her for that, but she didn’t seem to care. She had sounded so relieved about never having to see them again.
Well, he couldn’t blame her. But it made him feel rotten.
He glanced over at his phone, thinking about calling her to explain why he hadn’t come inside when she’d invited him. As he was about to turn toward the freeway, he wondered if he should just hang a U-turn and go back, explain things in person. He’d bought that bag of Cheetos to share with her, as per their sometimes-tradition after one of their events. But then she’d said that about his parents. It had sounded like a good-bye.
Maybe a little too forcefully, he ran his hands through his hair, pulling his fingers to the ends, over and over.
What was the matter with Mac tonight? The way she was pushing the idea of setting him up with another woman again. What was he supposed to say to that? No, Mac, I really have no interest in going out with anyone else, especially your cousin.
Of course he couldn’t say that to her. He wasn’t a complete idiot. Women could be catty about other women, but they could also be overly protective of their family and friends. Rick knew this was particularly true with Mac. The few times he’d tried to ask about her family, she would usually throw out some joke then force a change of subject.
If Mac wouldn’t open up, there was nothing Rick could do about that. As an occupational hazard, there was no way he could be with someone who never shared, never got close enough to trust. There were few relationships that Rick admired. His friend Jack had one of those, and so did his brother.
Without another thought, Rick grabbed his cell and hit speed dial. It rang twice.
“Hello?”
“Mitch. Sorry it’s late. You got a minute?”
Rick heard his brother talking away from the phone. “It’s Rick,” he was saying to someone, probably his wife, Emily. “No. I don’t know. I’ll meet you upstairs.” Rick cringed a little when he heard his brother growl then make a kissing sound.
“Hey, Rick. What’s up?”
“Bad time?” Rick asked, grinning now.
“No, no,” Mitch said. “Just…I can’t be too long. Em went shopping today. She bought an outfit she said I’ll love to see on her, then see on the floor.”
“Wow.” Rick chuckled dryly. “I think that’s what the kids call TMI, man.”
“Am I making you blush?”
“How you found a nice girl like Emily is beyond me.”
Mitch laughed. “It’s a miracle to me, too. So, what are you up to tonight?”
“I was at a chamber dinner.”
“With our parents?”
“Yeah,” Rick said, idling at a red light.
His brother sighed. “I don’t know how you can stand those things. Good old Jonas certainly set you up.”
Rick chuckled under his breath. His brother couldn’t have been more right. Their crackpot grandfather had named Rick in his will to take over the newspaper. And his brother seemed to relish in reminding him of that whenever he could.
“I’m perfectly content with the lowly life of the real-estate lawyer,” Mitch added. “I would go insane having to attend all those civic events.”
“They’re a beating,” Rick agreed. “But at least you would have had Emily with you.” Rick ran his fist across his mouth. “Believe me, having someone at your side, someone you enjoy being with, makes it bearable.”
“Oh,” Mitch said, sounding surprised. “Are you speaking from experience?” There was a pause before he continued. “Are you saying you found someone…bearable?”
“That’s why I’m calling, actually.” Rick didn’t know where to begin, so he just dove in head first. “There’s this girl and…things didn’t go well tonight. In fact, they haven’t been going well from the beginning.”
“You’re talking about the woman you started seeing a few weeks ago?”
“Mac,” Rick confirmed, picking up speed as he entered the freeway’s on ramp. “I told you about her.”
“The teacher with the mouth?”
Rick laughed. “That’s the one. We get along for the most part, so what do you think it means that she suddenly wants to set me up with her cousin?”
There was silence. Rick wondered if the call had dropped.
“Are you serious?” Mitch finally said.
“Yeah.” Rick switched his phone to the other ear, ready to listen.
“Well, it means she’s not interested.”
Rick squint
ed when his brother didn’t go on. “That’s it?” he asked.
“Don’t tell Emily this, but women aren’t that complicated. Sure, they like to put on mystery and drama, but really, they’re easy to read once you’ve got a true connection.”
“So you think she’s not interested—period? There isn’t any other reasonable explanation?”
Mitch chuckled. “Well, sure, Rick. Maybe she’s in love with you but she’s also allergic to you.”
“Hilarious.”
“Or maybe she’s becoming a nun but doesn’t have the guts to tell you. That’s a reasonable explanation.”
“Not helping.”
“Cut her loose,” Mitch said. “Don’t waste energy trying to figure her out if she’s pushing you toward someone else. You’re a reasonably handsome fellow, not as handsome as me, of course, but I can see how some women might find you appealing.”
Rick chuckled. “Thanks a lot.”
“This cousin she’s setting you up with, is she good looking?”
“No idea.” Rick ran a hand over his face. “But if she’s got the same genetic code as Mac, she’ll be a knock-out.”
“Then go for it,” Mitch said. “Have some fun, take a chance, you never know.”
“Yeah,” Rick said, nearing the exit for his house. “Maybe I will. Hey, Mitch, you’re happy, right? With Em, I mean?”
Mitch’s reply came without hesitation. “Every day,” he said. Rick could hear the smile in his voice. “Look, I gotta go, the Don Juan DeMarco soundtrack just started playing upstairs.”
“Are you kidding? Bryan Adams?” Wow. Talk about sappy.
“Hey now, I know you’re not mocking my wife’s choice of mood music.”
“Of course not. I won’t keep you.”
“Call me later,” Mitch said. Rick could hear music in the background getting louder: Have you ever really, really, really ever loved a woman… Mitch must’ve been walking up the stairs toward his bedroom. “But, um, not for a couple of hours at least,” he added.
Rick laughed. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
After he ended the call, Rick experienced the same sort of twinge he’d been feeling lately whenever he talked to his brother. Mitch and Emily had married five years ago, after they’d both finished law school. He didn’t know their secret, but they seemed so happy.
Speaking of Love Page 3