The Misconception

by Gardner, Darlene

  “I’ll tell you,” Tracy offered.

  “Don’t you dare.” Marietta shook her finger. “Not that it matters anyway. I wouldn’t go anywhere with him even if I didn’t have classes for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “You can’t teach class. You’re not feeling well,” Jax protested.

  “I’m pregnant. Not sick. There’s a difference.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Okay. I’ll accept that. It’s probably better for the baby if you’re active during the pregnancy anyway. How about this? I’ll meet you when you get off work, and we can hash out the details of the wedding then.”

  “Weren’t you listening? There’s not going to be a wedding.”

  “I think you should consider it, Mari,” Tracy, the traitor, said. “Jax is the father or your child, after all. It says something about a man’s character when he’s willing to own up to his responsibilities. I like him.”

  “Thank you,” Jax said.

  “You’re welcome.” Tracy smiled at him.

  Marietta pinned her sister with a stare. Was Tracy, too, becoming a victim of impeccable symmetry? “Whose side are you on, Tracy?”

  “This isn’t a war, Marietta,” Jax said. “We’re discussing the future of our child.”

  “I’m not discussing anything with you,” Marietta said, knowing she was being unreasonable. The ability to think logically and analytically was what separated man from animal, but right now she preferred to act like a rabbit and make a run for it. Everyone expected pregnant women to act irrationally anyway. She pushed through the door, intent on escape.

  Jax started after her, but Tracy laid a hand on his arm and took a step sideways until she blocked his path. His muscles were tense and his jaw clenched, as though nothing were more important than chasing down the mother of his unborn child and making her see reason. Tracy nearly sighed at the romanticism of it all.

  Unfortunately for Jax, he didn’t know Marietta very well. Her sister was so opinionated that what she considered to be perfectly reasonable was often what others thought was just plain wacko.

  “I think it would be best,” Tracy said as gently as she could, “if you gave her some time to cool off.”

  “But she’s pregnant, and she’s upset. I don’t want her to be upset.”

  Tracy reached up and patted his cheek. He seemed genuinely concerned about Marietta, and that made her like him even more. From the tension that had sizzled between Jax and Marietta, she’d wager he’d changed her sister’s low opinion of sex, too. “I’ll go after her. It’s a pretty safe bet that having you chase her isn’t going to calm her down.”

  He ran a hand through his thick-brown hair. He was outrageously good-looking, this man of Marietta’s, with his high cheekbones, broad shoulders and doe-brown eyes. He was well-dressed, too. Tracy knew clothes, and the suit, she’d venture, was Armani. The shoes were made of expensive leather, Italian, she’d bet. But his looks weren’t all he had going for him. Tracy saw intelligence in his eyes, goodness in his soul.

  “You’re right,” he said finally. “I don’t want to upset her any more than she already is. I’ll give her time to cool off and then talk to her.”

  “She usually gets home around six. You might pick up some points if you bring dinner. Our townhouse is in Old Town Alexandria a few blocks from the Potomac. If you have a street address, it shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “I’ll find it. You can count on that.”

  She smiled at him, because she didn’t doubt it was true. Jax had the air of a man who could be counted on. Giving a little wave, Tracy exited the restroom and headed in the direction of the classrooms.

  As she walked, she thought about her sister’s predicament. Sure, it must have been a shock to discover her sperm supplier wanted to be a family man, but Marietta would be a fool to refuse a man that fine. Why, he was nearly as appealing as Ryan.

  Tracy frowned, as she reluctantly admitted that wasn’t quite true. Since leaving her soon-to-be-ex-husband nine months ago, Tracy had compared every man she met to him, hoping one would measure up.

  Not one of them had.

  It was starting to seem as though nobody on God’s green earth was as appealing as Ryan Caminetti.

  Tracy put her feet down harder as she walked, trying to stamp out thoughts of Ryan. It didn’t do any good. Since this morning, when she’d called the salon to check on her appointments, she’d been thinking of him even more than usual. Every slot but one was filled by regulars. The exception had been claimed by a man named Ryan who wanted a cut and blow dry.

  It could be a coincidence. Lots of men were named Ryan, after all, but her assistant said the man requested her by name. Tracy pressed, and the girl remembered his voice was deep and sexy.

  Ryan Caminetti’s voice was deep and sexy, though not as sexy as the rest of him. His hair was silky and black, his body lean and muscular, his eyes so dark she felt like she was falling into them whenever they made love.

  Marietta had pointed out that everything about him made Tracy go as weak in the brain as she did in the knees. When she discovered how he wronged her, however, Tracy had immediately packed up and left him.

  He’d wanted to explain, but she wouldn’t let him. She’d hung up on him when he called, slammed the door in his face when he showed up at Marietta’s looking for her and insisted they communicate only through divorce lawyers.

  After about a month, he’d given up trying. He hadn’t attempted to get in touch with her until yesterday. When she’d seen that name scribbled in her appointment book.

  She reached the door to one of the classrooms and peeked inside. Marietta was sitting behind the desk in the front of the room, her head in her hands. The irony of the situation struck Tracy. She would have come to Kennedy College seeking out Marietta’s opinion even if she hadn’t been asked to deliver the glasses. But now it was Marietta who was more in need of counsel.

  Since all the desks were empty, it was obviously too early for class to begin. Tracy dragged a chair across the room and sat down catty-corner from her sister.

  “Want to talk about it?” Tracy asked.

  Marietta raised her head and shook it. “I don’t even want to think about it.” She pasted on a smile Tracy knew was fake. “I’d much rather talk about you.”

  “Me? But, Mari, it’s not every day the father of your unborn child proposes in a toilet stall. Isn’t that a more interesting topic than little old me?”

  “You haven’t even given me an update lately on your anthropology classes,” Marietta said. “Has Professor Bingham given his lecture on biological-physical anthropology yet? He has the most fascinating theories about Java Man.”

  “Java Man?”

  “Aren’t you paying attention in class, Tracy? Java Man is an early form of human whose fossils were found in the 1980s. Anthropologists believe he lived between eight hundred thousand and two million years ago. What’s fascinating is—”

  “Actually,” Tracy interrupted, “I’ve been doing a lot more thinking about a real, live man instead of a fossilized one.”

  Marietta’s regard sharpened. “Did you meet somebody new? You didn’t tell me you met somebody new.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then is it somebody you already know? Take a piece of advice from me, Tracy, you better go into it with your eyes wide open this time. As long as you keep in mind that you can’t trust anybody with a Y chromosome, you’ll be in a position of strength. You can’t be naive the way you were with Ryan. Now who is this man?”

  “Actually,” Tracy said, taking a breath. “I was talking about Ryan.”

  “I thought you were all through with Ryan.” Her sister said the name as though it were a dirty word. “Your divorce will be final in another three months.”

  “Actually,” Tracy said, clearing her throat. “It’s another seventy-one days.”

  “So? What’s the problem?” Marietta’s face fell. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me he’s tried to contact you.”

 
“No, but—”

  “Because if he does, you just tell him you aren’t going to talk to him. Do you hear me, Tracy? This is serious. You got everything you wanted in the divorce settlement, and you can’t put that in jeopardy. You absolutely cannot talk to him.”

  “But what if he wants to explain what he was doing in a hotel with that woman.” Even referring to the incident that had wrecked her marriage sent a shard of pain through Tracy. “I was so angry at him, Mari, that I never let him explain.”

  “There’s nothing to explain. I was there that day, remember? You should thank Providence I invited you to lunch or you never would have seen him with that blonde at the elevator. They were all over each other.”

  “But maybe. . .” Tracy’s voice got small, because she knew how ridiculous this would sound, even though more and more she wanted to believe it. “. . . maybe it was her who was all over him.”

  “And that’s your explanation as to why Ryan registered for a room? Remember, Tracy, I got the desk clerk to show us the registration book.”

  “I know, but—”

  “There are no buts in this. I know it hurts, but you have to face facts. Ryan Caminetti is just as predisposed to mate switching as every other man on this planet. Sure, you could have stayed in the marriage, knowing he’d keep on cheating, but then you’d be just as miserable as our father made our mother.”

  Their parents. Even though Dad had died four years ago and Mom a short time afterward, Marietta regularly resurrected them in conversations about the interplay between the sexes. She seemed to regard their father as a template for members of the male sex.

  “Just because Dad cheated,” Tracy said, uttering an oft-repeated refrain, “doesn’t mean every man cheats.”

  “Ryan cheated. And remember the way I found Bobby Lancer with Betty Jo Kowalski?”

  “That was in high school.”

  “Let’s skip ahead to college then. Jeff Granger cheated on me, too. Hours after he told me he loved me. To think how stupid I was back then.”

  “You know, Marietta,” Tracy said softly, “none of that means this new man in your life would do the same thing.”

  “Not only isn’t he the new man in my life, but you’re completely wrong. Men are predestined to stray. It’s a biological fact. Stay away from Ryan, Tracy. I couldn’t bear it if he kept on hurting you.”

  Tracy nodded. She doubted she’d get a chance to heed the warning anyway. She’d overreacted when her assistant told her a man named Ryan with a very sexy voice had specifically made an appointment to have her cut his hair.

  This Ryan was probably seventeen with pimples or seventy with sagging skin.

  He probably wasn’t anything like the man she had once loved with every particle of her heart.

  Chapter 9

  Ryan Caminetti stopped at the door of The Cutting Edge and peered through the glass window. A half-dozen beauticians cut, combed and styled the hair of the clients sitting in front of them. But only one of them interested Ryan.

  Tracy Dalrymple Caminetti. His wife.

  He still thought of her that way even though she’d been his wife in name only for almost as long as they’d had a real marriage. He’d had just fourteen months with her before she walked out. For all he knew, she didn’t even use his surname any more.

  She was wearing one of those cute little get-ups she always dressed in for work. A lime-green T-shirt hugged the breasts that could drive him wild and bared a sliver of the satiny-smooth skin at her midriff. Royal-blue bicycle shorts hugged the long, lean legs that used to wrap around him when they made love. Lime-green high-tops completed the picture. He used to tease her about having a Hairstyle of the Month, and this month’s flavor was long, tight curls that made her look a sexy Shirley Temple.

  She laughed at something somebody in the shop said, throwing her head back so her curls bounced. He couldn’t hear her through the door, but knew her laugh sounded like the tinkling of the crystals on a wind chime. He used to try to think up funny things to say just so he could hear that laugh.

  Damn, he loved her. He always had, and he’d recently accepted that he always would. Nine months of separation hadn’t dimmed that feeling. All it had done was make him want her more.

  He had to stop himself from throwing open the door, striding across the shop and hauling her into his arms so he could kiss her senseless until she no longer cared whether or not she trusted him.

  But he couldn’t do that. If he did, his victory would be built on rocky ground that wouldn’t allow anything, least of all trust, to take root. If the past nine months had taught him anything, it was that a marriage without trust could never survive.

  It wasn’t her forgiveness he wanted. Until she trusted him again, trusted him completely, he couldn’t ask her to give their marriage another go. He couldn’t kiss her. He probably shouldn’t even touch her.

  He could, however, make damn sure he didn’t give her up without a fight. Even if it were a sneak attack, sort of like the soldier who infiltrated the enemy camp in the dead of night. Only Tracy wasn’t the enemy: Her lack of faith in him was.

  He forcefully wiped out the desire he knew was on his face. If he let Tracy see the desire, he’d lose the battle before it was fought. Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the door.

  Incessant chatter, the whir of hair dryers and the smell of chemicals assaulted him, freezing his feet in place just inside the salon. Mirrors lined the establishment, making it seem as though there were twice as many rows of chairs as there actually were. Making it seem as though there were two delectable Tracys instead of one.

  Her expression was animated as she talked to the teenage boy in the chair, her quick fingers teasing a line of dyed-purple hair skyward into a mohawk.

  He saw a flash of something shiny on her left hand as she worked and realized, with a jolt of pleasure, that it was her wedding ring. If she hadn’t taken off the ring he’d put on her finger, he refused to believe that all hope was lost.

  Something, a sixth sense perhaps, made Tracy pause. Then both her faces, the one belonging to the living, breathing woman and that of her mirrored image, turned toward him. Ryan focused on just one of them. The real thing, he thought as his heart stampeded in his chest.

  Her green eyes went saucer-wide. Her sensuous mouth hung open, revealing the adorable little gap between her front teeth. The comb dropped from her fingers, wedging in the teenager’s mohawk.

  “Ryan.” She croaked out his name, telling him she hadn’t been expecting him. His spirits fell. He’d made an appointment in the hopes that she’d see his name and start thinking about him, start remembering how very much she’d once loved him.

  “Hi, Trace.” He greeted her as though it were a few hours instead of endless months since he’d last seen her. Smiling wasn’t a problem, because it was so damn good to be in the same room with her again.

  She leaned down and said something to the boy in the chair, who was trying to extract the comb from his mohawk, and made her way over to where he was standing. She was tall for a woman, just a few inches shorter than he was, another thing he’d always liked about her. She stopped well shy of him, being careful, he supposed, not to touch him.

  “What are you doing here, Ryan? You and I have nothing to talk about.” She was trying to sound stern, but she was nervously biting her lip while her voice shook, giving Ryan hope.

  “I came here to get my hair cut.” If he told her why he was really here, she’d give him no more chance to explain than when she’d seen him at the hotel with that woman.

  “There are a lot of hairdressers in Northern Virginia.”

  “The only one of them who cuts my hair the way I like it is you.” Ryan forced himself to sound nonchalant. “I haven’t had a decent haircut since you left me.”

  “Since you drove me away, you mean.”

  It took willpower not to respond to that, but Ryan managed it. Just barely. “Come on, Trace. I need a haircut. You’re a hairdresser. I even made an appoint
ment. Surely you’re not afraid to cut my hair.”

  She rose to the bait, just as he knew she would. His Tracy was nothing if not courageous. “Of course I’m not afraid.”

  “Then I’ll take a seat and wait until you’re done with the purple Geronimo.” He flashed a smile and sat down before she could reply, picking up a magazine and pretending to leaf through it.

  Tracy glanced back at him when she returned to her station, noting that the real Ryan was even more gorgeous than the one in her daydreams. He wore a long-sleeved denim shirt that made him look virile and, combined with the five o’clock shadow on his jaw, a little dangerous. She dragged her eyes from him, then immediately let them drift back again. Because it just registered that he was holding a copy of Cosmopolitan. Cosmo? For a man who worked as a housing contractor and subscribed to Field and Stream?

  “Who does he think he’s fooling?” she muttered in a low voice. She picked up a comb from her work area and vigorously dragged it through the boy’s grape mohawk.

  “Ow!” the boy yelped. His troubled eyes met hers in the mirror. “You really think I look foolish?”

  “Sorry.” Tracy patted him on the side of his shaved head. “I didn’t say you looked foolish. I said that purple hair won’t be fooling anyone.”

  “No joke. Anybody who thinks purple hair grows out of my scalp would be pretty lame, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Tracy agreed. She spent an inordinate amount of time putting the finishing touches on the mohawk, more to avoid dealing with Ryan than because she thought she could make the grape concoction look any better.

  She simply didn’t believe that Ryan was here simply to get his haircut. Maybe he’d beg for forgiveness and ask if she’d forget about the divorce and move back home with him.

  Maybe he was going to turn on the lights and banish the nightmare the past nine months had been.

  By the time she finished with her customer and asked Luanne, the shampoo girl, to wash Ryan’s hair, Tracy’s hands were trembling. She’d been so angry and hurt when she saw him cheating on her that she hadn’t thought she could ever forgive him.