Mr. Wonderful Lies

by Kaitlin Maitland

He saw me coming, face easing into a warm smile that showed a peek of his irresistible dimples and made his blue eyes dance.

  I picked the first words that popped into my head. “I didn’t really get to thank you earlier.”

  “Thank me for what?” He wrapped his towel securely around his waist and turned toward the door.

  I fell into step beside him and nudged him lightly with my shoulder. “For watching out for me this morning. You and Anna were right. It was a good idea.”

  “Anna is always right, remember?”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of hard to forget.”

  “So how did it go?”

  “He was really…” I searched for the perfect word and found it strangely difficult. “Terrific, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  We paused at the bottom of the stairs and I was hyper-conscious of Hungry and Desperate’s evil stares on my back. “It was just like talking on the phone. He’s easy to talk to and we seem to be able to talk about anything. It’s great.”

  “But?”

  I glanced up, surprised. I hadn’t expected him to probe farther, but I’d forgotten how perceptive he was. “I still feel like I don’t know him as well as I’d like to.”

  Jared nodded slowly, running a restless hand through his damp hair. “Is it just that you get swept away exchanging comments and observations and don’t ever get to the gritty stuff, or are you withholding things from each other?”

  I’d come down to the pool to talk to Jared and make some kind of point I didn’t even understand to two barracuda women I didn’t care about. I hadn’t intended to have a heart to heart with him that would set me thinking about things I wasn’t ready to examine yet.

  A soft smile touched his handsome features. “You don’t have to answer that. It’s just something to think about, I guess.”

  Oh, he’d gotten me thinking all right. I bravely slapped a smile on my face and trotted up the stairs in front of him. I could hear him behind me, his bare feet treading softly.

  We entered the observation area right in front of the locker rooms under the watchful gazes of Hungry and Desperate. Jared nodded to them in an impersonal yet respectful way before turning back to me. “I’ve got a meeting later tonight with the partners, but call me later if you want to talk, all right?”

  My heart swelled and I forgot all about Hungry and Desperate. Reaching out, I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my face to his warm, bare chest. He smelled wonderful, a mixture of chlorine and his own personal spice. “Thanks, Jared. You’re the best.”

  He chuckled, giving me a squeeze before tugging a loose curl. “I know you and Anna aren’t on the best terms right now, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need a listening ear.”

  “Good luck with your meeting.” I pulled away and turned back toward the entrance.

  He disappeared into the men’s locker room and I left, no longer caring that I’d made my point and more with Hungry and Desperate. If I could even remember what point I’d been trying to make.

  Chapter Four

  Sometimes when you think things are going perfectly, life takes a swipe at you and knocks you right on your ass. That’s why I was only marginally surprised that my kitchen sink sprang a major leak the following day.

  After dragging all the usual clutter from the cabinet and packing it with towels to soak up the mess, I grabbed my phone to call for help. Normally I would’ve immediately called Anna. When it comes to emergency home repair, she has half a dozen contractors in her mental rolodex that will move heaven and earth to do her bidding. It’s sort of a real estate perk. She throws regular business their way for her clients when it comes time to pass inspections, so she’s a preferred customer. But Anna and I weren’t exactly on the best of speaking terms.

  There was also my fledgling relationship with Ollie to consider. My mom, who with my dad had retired like a cliché to Florida years before, had always said the best thing about having a man in her life was not having to worry about taking care of the little home repair problems. So even though I was a modern girl and liked my independence, I admit I was sort of psyched that I now had a man to call about my little leaky sink problem.

  But what milestone in a relationship had to pass before I could call Ollie for stuff like that? I waffled back and forth, tossing my phone from hand to hand while sitting on the floor with my back against the cabinet, trying to decide. Fortunately, the decision was taken completely out of my hands when the phone trilled Ollie’s special ringtone.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to put just the right amount of damsel-in-distress in my voice and not wanting to sound like a total imbecile.

  “Hey you, I can’t stop thinking about you. What’s up?”

  As always, his voice melted me like warm butter, and I basked in his acceptance. “My kitchen sink just attacked me!” I told him mournfully.

  “Aw baby, I’m sorry to hear that. Did you call the repair guy?”

  Hold on—the repair guy? I felt a wave of glum feelings wash over me as I realized Ollie and I must not have reached that relationship milestone yet. “You’re not going to come and rescue me?”

  His low chuckle sent a thrill sliding down my spine. “I’d be happy to come over there and rescue you any way you like, baby, but that won’t get the sink fixed. I’m pretty useless with the repair stuff. I know a guy that might be able to help you out though.”

  My sun came out from behind the clouds and I beamed into the phone. I hadn’t failed to reach a milestone. It wasn’t that Ollie didn’t want to help me, he just couldn’t. Home repair wasn’t his thing, and I was more than willing to accept that. “No, you be the responsible one and stay at work. I’ll call a repair guy and get this taken care of.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yup, we both know if you come over here there won’t be any work done or any sink fixed,” I teased.

  I could practically hear him leaning closer to his phone for privacy. “Now you’re making me want to play knight in shining armor.”

  I had an odd flashback of Jared using that very phrase in his text the day before. I shoved the thought right back out of my head and focused on the sexy baritone coming to me through the phone. “Then maybe I’ll have to find some kind of distress to get into that you’re good at fixing,” I suggested.

  “Baby, you are one smart girl.”

  I don’t know how much longer that went on, us laughing and teasing back and forth with enough innuendo to make me start wondering how intense the physical aspect of our relationship was going to be.

  It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought about what it’d be like to have a physical relationship with Ollie. I’m not a nun. I like sex. I like it a lot, in fact. But I can’t just jump into bed with a guy after knowing him for a few days or weeks. I want to be comfortable with him and trust him before making that kind of commitment. Because no matter what our modern standards tell us, there’s a commitment of some kind made every time the clothes hit the floor and you make for the bed.

  By the time early afternoon rolled around, I still hadn’t gotten anything done about the sink. I had started pacing back and forth in the narrow hallway between my kitchen and living room, wondering if I were going to regret this next phone call. Deciding I had more to lose by not making it, I dialed Anna and held my breath.

  “This is Anna, how may I help you?”

  Uh oh, she was answering my call in her formal voice. That meant I was still in the doghouse. Feeling ten kinds of sheepish, I let my story tumble out. “My kitchen sink is leaking everywhere, and I don’t have a repair guy. I just always use whoever you send.”

  “Is the water turned off or is it still running?”

  I experienced a palpable sense of relief. Anna was in disaster control mode now. She wasn’t mad and she was going to help me. It’s amazing what I can tell just by her tone, but we’ve been friends a long time. “I got the water stopped, but I can’t use the sink and I’m afraid there’s something wrong with the pipes and th
ey’ll burst. You know my luck.”

  She laughed. “That’s true enough. Hang tight, okay? I’ll have someone there in fifteen minutes.”

  I swallowed, acutely aware of how glad I was that I hadn’t lost my friend. “Thank you, Anna.”

  “Worried isn’t the same as angry, Megan.”

  I sighed, I didn’t want to open this back up to discussion. “I know. I’ll call you later once things have settled down here, okay?”

  “You’d better.”

  She didn’t wait for me to say goodbye, she just hung up.

  I thought about what she’d said, about being worried. What was she so worried about? Ollie wasn’t the stalker rapist type. He hadn’t tried to abduct me from the café yesterday. We weren’t even sleeping together. What was there to be afraid of?

  * * *

  True to her word, someone knocked on my front door 13 minutes and 45 seconds after she hung up. Thanking my lucky stars for Anna’s micromanagement skills, I flung open the front door for the repairman only to freeze solid in shock a moment later.

  “Hey.”

  I gaped at Jared, painfully aware of my faded sweatpants dotted with water stains from my earlier battles, my snug plain cotton T-shirt, and my messy ponytail. “She sent you to fix my sink?”

  He shrugged. “Anna said it was an emergency. We could hardly let you float on down the Mississippi, could we?”

  He wore faded blue jeans with a rip across one knee and a long sleeved gray thermal T-shirt, and carried a big canvas tote with some hardware brand name scrawled across it in one hand and a tool box in the other.

  “Can I come in?” His tone was patient. “This stuff is heavy.”

  “Oh sure.” I scampered back, holding the door. “Come on in. I was just surprised to see you. I guess I didn’t realize they taught handyman classes at Personal Trainer School.”

  Jared chuckled as he set his toolbox gently on my faded black-and-white tiled kitchen floor. “If I called a repair man every time something in that old building needed fixing, we’d be paying the guy full time.”

  “So you’re just cheap.”

  “Savvy.”

  “Same thing.”

  “You’ve shopped with Anna. You can’t tell me those two things are the same.” He knelt on the floor and stuck his head under the sink, carefully contorting his body and wedging his broad shoulders through the opening to rest on the cabinet floor.

  “You got me. Those two things are nothing alike.” I leaned against the opposite counter. “Has she always been like that?”

  His chuckle echoed in the cave of my cabinet. “Even when we were kids she was wearing the hottest Buster Brown saddle shoes and paying half the price everyone else was. I think she even sublet her lemonade stand.”

  I burst into laughter, imagining Anna convincing some poor little kid to rent her lemonade stand and then taking twenty-five percent of the profits. “Did she have a day planner in Kindergarten?”

  Jared reached for a big, fat wrench. “Nope, but she used to get really upset if our teacher didn’t put the daily schedule up on the board every morning.”

  We both got a chuckle out of that one. After all, it wasn’t hard to imagine Anna going toe to toe with her Kindergarten teacher and demanding a closer schedule with less wasted time.

  “Well, well, Megan Myers. What kind of stuff are you putting in here?” He slid out from under the cabinet just far enough to shoot me a crooked grin.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You missing anything?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Hang on, it looks like you wouldn’t be missing the whole thing. Just the bottom half…” Jared wrestled a bit with something underneath the sink. “What about electrical issues?”

  I frowned. “Well, I think the light bulb above the sink went out a few nights ago, but that’s not unusual. I’m not too good about turning lights out, so I burn through bulbs pretty quickly.”

  He made a noncommittal noise and reached for a huge pair of pliers.

  I stared around the kitchen, wondering what he could possibly be talking about. My kitchen is pretty small and basic. Not even a dishwasher. The old houses in Soulard weren’t wired for those kinds of luxuries. I didn’t mind. I barely cook. Not that I can’t, but it seems pointless to make a whole meal for one person.

  My eyes drifted over the countertops, searching for whatever it was Jared was hinting at. They came to rest on the plug beside the sink next to the garbage disposal switch where I’d put one of the phone chargers I’d purchased to help me keep my stupid phone alive. I’d bought one for every room in the house so I wouldn’t have to go searching for one when my phone died. Let’s just say the one I’d placed beside the kitchen sink was no longer exactly where I’d put it. Though the plug part was still lodged in the wall outlet, the end that slid into my iPhone was strangely missing. Instead, a frayed wire lay next to the cookie jar on the countertop.

  Jared’s hand appeared from beneath the cabinet, pieces of my phone charger dangling from his fingers. “How exactly does this happen, Megan?”

  Totally at a loss, I started to giggle. “I have no idea.”

  “Luckily you chopped it up pretty good with the garbage disposal so it didn’t do too much damage under here. Looks like the cleanout plug got knocked loose. That’s an easy fix.” He grabbed another tool and a piece of the pipe he’d removed to retrieve the phone charger. “On the other hand, you’re lucky you didn’t burn down your house with an electrical fire. I’d guess your bulb above the sink is fine and it’s the breaker that needs to be reset.”

  “I can safely say I’m one hundred percent glad I didn’t have to explain that to a plumber.”

  Jared erupted in laughter, his body shaking as he tried not to lose his grip on the tools. I couldn’t help staring at him. With his muscular legs tucked beneath his large frame to keep himself level, the way he was using his abs showed them off to a spectacular advantage.

  He really was something to look at. I could see why Hungry and Desperate liked to follow him around and stare. There wasn’t an ounce of excess anything on him. Jared had a shape and contour that demanded touching. You couldn’t see him and not want to run your hands all over him just to see if he felt as hard and toned as he looked. But there was a lot more to Jared Walker than looks, and I don’t think most people got that about him.

  “All right, that should do it,” he said, sliding out from under the sink.

  “That was it?”

  He flashed me a teasing grin. “Well it’s amazing how well the sink works when you take the phone charger out of it.”

  “Shut up.”

  Jared turned the water on full blast and squatted down to make certain it was no longer leaking. “You want me to help you put all this stuff back?”

  I looked around at the clutter I’d hastily rescued from the brief flood. “Nope, I’ll get it later. I needed to clean out the cabinet anyway. I’m sort of in the habit of cramming random stuff under there.”

  “Yeah, I can tell.”

  I slugged his arm, flushing bright red with embarrassment over what was sure to become an infamous oops incident. “Cut me some slack. I was trying to cure the dead phone disease.”

  “Very true. That does deserve some props.”

  He washed his hands, and I tossed him a towel. With my little drama drawing to a close, I noticed something in Jared’s expression I’d missed earlier. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but I could tell there was something bothering him since the last time we’d talked.

  “Are you okay?” I finally asked as he started to put his tools away.

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Do you have a few minutes, or do you need to get back?”

  “Nope, I’m done for the day. Yours was the last house call on my list.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet. You want to come in and sit for a bit? I’ll get you a water.”

  His face relaxed into a smile. “Thanks Megan, tha
t sounds good.”

  He disappeared into my tiny living room and I grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the fridge. By the time I tossed one in his direction, he’d already stretched out on my loveseat, leaving me to my overstuffed chair. Snuggling into the soft cocoa-colored chenille, I watched him drain half the bottle in one big gulp.

  “Okay,” I began, casting for information. “How was your meeting last night?”

  He seemed to deflate right there before my eyes. “The partners were approached by a big chain. The offer was pretty good and they want to sell out.”

  I sat up straight. “What about you?”

  He shrugged a shoulder halfheartedly. “I’d still get to stay on and manage, but it’d be a franchise, so I’d be working for the man.”

  “Is it a done deal?”

  “Not quite. Tom and Rich offered me a chance to buy them out. If I choose not to, then majority rules and we become Flex Gym.”

  “Wow,” I mused. “That’s a huge decision.”

  “I know.”

  I drummed my fingers idly on the arm of my chair. “Tom and Rich are sort of silent partners when it comes to the day-to-day running of things, right?”

  He fiddled with the nearly empty bottle in his hand. “For the most part. They’re always a part of the process when it comes to financing a new venture or things like spending a bunch of cash to renovate or buy new equipment.”

  “What about the basic stuff? I know you hire someone to process payments at the front desk and take appointments and stuff, but don’t you pretty much do the rest?”

  His brow furrowed. “What are you driving at, Megan?”

  I shrugged, tossing one leg over the arm of my overstuffed chair and bouncing my foot. “I just wondered what you really needed Tom and Rich for. Believe me; I understand all about needing investors to get something started. But you’ve got a solid business now. You should be able to go in and get some kind of a small business loan to buy them out or maybe even draw up some kind of document to pay them over a period of time from the profits. Then you’re really your own boss and things won’t change much.”