That she understood less. Her parents might have been messed up, but they’d never expected her to be anyone but herself. “I get it.”
“You can’t. Not really.” He took a deep breath, and she waited for him to talk. For some reason, knowing this man—even a little—was vitally important to her. “It’s like this . . . Between the relatives on my dad’s side that came over on the Mayflower and the ones who came here from Japan and had a lot of things to prove, I can’t let down either side by being anything less than the best at anything. And until recently, I was doing okay. I was in law school, and one of my parents was going to groom me to take over one of their companies. I was practically engaged to Naomi.”
A hum of anger filled Bridget’s mind at the idea of Matt marrying Naomi—whom she knew of through Hannah, whose ex was married to Naomi’s cousin, Madison. Or something like that. Thinking of her with Matt—and how good they looked together—made Bridget feel dowdy and inadequate.
But thinking of how everything in Matt’s life was laid out . . . Bridget couldn’t imagine the pressure. She was the best because that was who she’d pushed herself to be. All the pressure was internal, and the only person she would let down if she failed was herself. And the way she’d ridden Matt all summer, thinking he was some spoiled trust-fund asshole playing at charity, probably hadn’t helped.
Regret bloomed in her gut. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For being so mean to you.”
The smile was back—the one she might do some very stupid things to see again. “I kind of liked it.”
She had the feeling that he wasn’t talking about just work. It didn’t take crackerjack prosecutorial instincts to get that.
“So, you’re doing all of this for me because you’re grateful that I was a bitch to you all summer?”
“Not exactly.” He looked at her from under his lashes. Mischief personified. “I liked that you treated me like any other grunt, that you didn’t expect great things from me just because of who my parents are. Who my grandparents were.”
Not wanting to be defined by her family was definitely something she could understand. But she wasn’t ready to reveal all of her bullshit to him. Wasn’t sure that she could give anyone that—especially someone she wouldn’t really see after this weekend. Someone who didn’t fit in her life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MATT WASN’T SURE IT was a good idea to reveal any vulnerabilities to Bridget. She was way too savvy to just let that pass without exploiting any weaknesses he revealed. Although their relationship had changed—she was no longer in a position of authority over him—he’d come to Vegas with her in hopes of turning the tables.
He hadn’t been entirely honest about why he’d wanted to bring her to Vegas in his family’s plane. He’d definitely hoped to relieve some of the tension between them. Sure, all of that was wrapped up in wanting to spend more time with her salt-of-the-earth family and place whatever guy who’d had the audacity to discard a creature as glorious as Bridget in check.
And he hadn’t lied. He really was grateful to Bridget for giving him shit all summer. No one at either of his parents’ companies would have done that. They would have let him fuck everything up then quietly cleaned up after him. They’d done that his whole life, and he was frankly tired of it.
The flight was uneventful and—more importantly—Bridget had loosened up enough that she seemed like she kind of enjoyed it. He liked her this way, bouncing in her seat like a kid when they passed over the Rockies. She’d lose it when he brought her to his family’s place in Aspen.
Shit—when had he started thinking of doing things in the winter with Bridget? That wasn’t what this was supposed to be at all. He was just doing her a favor by running interference with her douchebag ex for one weekend.
Then he would go back to school, and she would go back to working one hundred hours a week without having to supervise an idiot intern.
Still, when he put his hand on the small of her back at the bottom of the steps leading to the tarmac, it felt right to be next to her. He wasn’t normally a possessive dude, but he liked being next to her and wanted everyone to know. He wanted her gaze to find his across a crowded room when she needed something.
Whatever she wanted, he wanted to give her. Not that she would accept it.
* * *
• • •
BRIDGET HAD NEVER SEEN anything like how Matt was treated when they got to the hotel-casino where her family was staying. Before they’d even gotten out of the car, their luggage was whisked away, and they didn’t even have to stop at a reception desk. Instead, they had a private concierge who met them at a private elevator car and led them all the way up to the penthouse.
She didn’t like to think that she was susceptible to this kind of thing. The Nolans were the sort of people impressed by nothing but hard work and smarts. Still, she was kind of dazzled by the whole thing. She wondered if she would feel the same way if she was being dazzled around anyone but Matt.
Probably not.
It was as though he’d shed some sort of skin that made him seem like a regular guy as soon as he stopped being her intern. It was as though she couldn’t really see him before now. And she wasn’t sure she could go back to not seeing him.
Especially when he turned to her and said, “Your family’s going to come up and meet us for lunch.”
“But how?” When had he had time to arrange that?
“While you were freaking out about the tiny plane.” So, when she’d been freaking out about almost kissing him. “I sent some e-mails and upgraded their rooms.”
“That was really nice of you. Not necessary—”
He waved a hand. “Not the Douche’s, though.” Matt leaned over and whispered to her, though it wasn’t strictly necessary. It gave her goose bumps. “They put him next to the ice machine.”
That was it. She wanted to keep him. More than the almost kiss, the private plane, the champagne, the lunch, or the fact that he’d generally saved her sanity over the summer—it was the fact that he’d gotten a little petty revenge on her behalf that made up her mind.
Maybe, just for the weekend, she could forget behaving appropriately. She could pretend—in her head—that Matt was actually her date. That he was actually her next chapter rather than a hopeful yet temporary epilogue to her failures with Chris.
“You’re kind of wicked.” She bit her lip and his gaze dipped to her mouth. Brazen, like he wanted her.
He winked. “You have no idea.”
* * *
• • •
BRIDGET’S FAMILY WASN’T ANY less overwhelming in a suite that took up most of the top floor of a shiny new Vegas hotel than they were in their little house. Adding in her ex-douche and Hannah’s bestie, Sasha, the cacophony might cause a noise complaint on a lower floor.
Good thing he knew from experience that the soundproofing in the penthouse was solid.
Matt hung back, following Bridget around the room, promising himself that he would only interfere if Bridget’s ex-douche got too close. As it was, he didn’t like the way that Chris was looking at her, with a mix of longing and irritation.
Bridget didn’t pay her ex any attention, but Matt caught her looking at him quite a few times. It made it easy for Matt to keep his promise to avoid macho posturing. He knew that would piss Bridget off, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. His only objective for this weekend was to show her a good time. That didn’t mean that he didn’t want to posture a little.
After all, he was just the former intern who was doing her a favor. He had nothing on the decades of history Bridget shared with Chris Dooley.
For some reason, he’d expected the guy to at least be handsome. Chris was an associate at a law firm in the Loop—one that Matt’s family had employed from time to time. He was shorter than Matt, with sandy blond hair an
d a dad bod. Not that it mattered, but Matt hoped that Bridget liked the way he looked more than she liked the way her ex looked.
Matt was careful to hold Chris’s gaze for a second too long, just to make sure the other guy registered that Matt was on to him and his smarmy smile and the way his eyes raked over Bridget. Matt wanted to tell the other dude, Too bad you lost her, but he knew for a fact that Bridget wouldn’t appreciate that.
Still, he hadn’t been able to conceal a smirk when some sort of realization crossed over the other man’s face. Matt didn’t think it would be that easy, but after a summer of being a grunt, he kind of liked being that rich asshole who was going to steal Chris Dooley’s girl at the moment.
Matt thought Chris was going to thank him for his hospitality, but that was not what he came over to do. He should have expected him to do what he did, which was say, “How’d you meet Bridget? From what I can tell, she never leaves the office.”
“Good thing I met her at her office, then.”
Chris gave a pointed look at Matt’s watch. “You don’t seem like the type to work some dumb civil service job.”
He grew up in a nonviolent home. Aside from running the odd racist kid over, the Kidos limited themselves to verbal barbs. He hadn’t even been allowed to try out for the football team, because it was too violent for his parents. He didn’t know how to throw a punch, and he’d never had quite the urge to do so until Bridget’s ex sneered at what she did for a living.
Although Matt didn’t have any right to be jealous of Chris, or any reason to think that Bridget wanted her ex back, he hated anyone thinking that her job—this thing that meant more to her than anything other than her family—was something to sneer at.
His pulse rose, and he could feel his skin heat, and before he could tell Chris to shove it, the other man said something that pissed him off almost as much as insulting Bridget’s job. “You’re Jane Kido’s kid, aren’t you?”
He’d done nothing to distinguish himself from his family, but he still didn’t like hearing that he was just his mother’s son. Especially not from this guy. So all he said was, “Jane Kido is my mother.”
“How’d you meet Bridget, then?”
Matt didn’t want to answer the question, but he wasn’t going to lie. He didn’t have anything to be ashamed of, and maybe Chris would respond with something that would give him an excuse to punch him in the jaw. “I was her intern.”
The short laugh almost got him that punch. “Why on earth would you intern there? You could get in everywhere.”
Matt tried to look at it from Chris’s perspective. He’d come from a less privileged background than Matt, and it might never to occur to him to not want a life where all he did was sit on a growing pile of money, just screwing people over to make it grow more. Matt hadn’t started out his summer with pure intentions—merely hoping to get out of seeing Naomi every day and having a job that his parents would have a hard time arguing with. But that didn’t mean he was going to stand by and let Chris disparage what Bridget had chosen to do with her career.
No wonder she thought she was done with relationships if this was the guy she’d been dating.
Matt stood up straighter and looked down his nose a little bit at Chris. He wasn’t going to make a scene or put the guy in his place. He wasn’t the person to do that. Bridget could do that her damn self.
So he smiled and said, “You really have no idea, do you?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, man.” Chris looked confused, so Matt decided to illuminate things for him.
“You really have no idea what you’re missing.”
Chris just gave him a shitty grin and said, “You have no idea what you’re in for.”
CHAPTER NINE
DO YOU THINK THEY’RE going to fight?” Hannah’s question surprised Bridget. She’d been busy staring at Matt and Chris and cataloguing all their differences. It wasn’t just that she found Matt more appealing aesthetically; it was that he stood straighter than Chris. His confidence shone in a way that Chris’s never had—maybe because Chris had relied on her for years to prop him up.
That was the thing she’d realized when they’d broken up—both of them had been each other’s only real friends, each other’s only emotional outlet. The relief she felt at not having to be the sole receptacle for someone’s fears, anxieties, and grief had been almost overwhelming.
Right now, she could look at Chris objectively and say she was no longer attracted to him. It hadn’t been familiarity alone that begat the contempt that she felt for him—it had been overuse. She’d loved him because he was like family, until she just didn’t anymore.
Hannah waved her hand in front of Bridget’s face. “Earth to Bridget Nolan.”
“What?” She glanced over at her ex and her fake date again, and everything looked copacetic.
Hannah gave her a look that said, Oh you sweet summer child, that her future sister-in-law could only get away with because she’d become such a good friend. No one looked at Bridget that way. Bridget hadn’t let anyone close enough to give her that look before.
Well, Chris had. But he was firmly in her past now. Looking at him interacting with Matt only confirmed that inside her head. She’d spent months wondering how she could put things back together again—wondering if she could make the kinds of compromises that she’d need to make to be with him—before it had really sunk in that she and Chris were not going to share the life they’d planned together. At times, she’d had to white-knuckle the remote so she wouldn’t reach for the phone.
Part of it was that she’d never understood why he’d broken up with her. She’d been shocked, and it had come out of nowhere. Just a conversation over dinner that had gone terribly wrong and left her bereft.
“When we move in together—”
Bridget’s fork froze in the air over the chicken thigh she’d carved off the roast chicken that had taken her all afternoon to cook. “What do you mean?”
“When we move in together, I think the cat should move in with your dad because of my allergies.”
“But I love Licorice.” Bridget was bewildered, and a squeeze of the fear she’d been trying to ignore grabbed her. They’d been floating along—everything was fine—for a while now. But she’d known that things would have to change eventually. She knew Chris was allergic to cats, but the reality of having to give up Licorice was a little much.
“But you love me more, right?” Chris’s smile made her feel nauseous. She knew that wasn’t good, but she’d been trying to deny it.
She couldn’t meet his gaze, but he plowed on without noticing. “I have news.”
That sounded ominous. “News.”
He nodded happily. “Our down payment was accepted.”
“Down payment?” She was definitely going to puke. “On a house?”
“Yeah.” He said it like it was no big deal.
“A house I haven’t seen?”
“Bridge—it was going to sell right away.”
“So, you bought a house I haven’t even seen, without even calling or texting?” Her voice rose on the last word, and she could detect that Chris’s mistake was slowly dawning on him.
“I mean, the schools are great in Skokie.”
Bridget stood up then. “I’m not fucking moving to Skokie!”
“Calm down.” And then he went back to eating his chicken.
It took a lot for Bridget to lose her temper. It was the ultimate slow burn. But, when it boiled over, it took out everything in its path. And Chris was now in its path. Just eating his chicken after blowing up her life without asking her.
“Do you know how long it takes to get downtown—from Skokie?” She tried to keep her voice calm, but it wasn’t working. She knew she sounded unhinged.
“C’mon. It was only a matter of time. We were always going to do this. Now we c
an get married and start having babies.” He explained how he’d taken all her choices away as though he was explaining the rule against perpetuities in property class. But he was similarly incomprehensible.
The man she’d been in love with since she was four years old hadn’t been in the same relationship she’d been in for a long time. And she was angry—less at him and more at herself. For a woman known and feared for her smarts and killer instincts, she’d sure been really fucking stupid. Stupid enough to believe that he really knew her. Dumb enough to ignore the fact that he never really listened to her anymore.
Her whole future flashed before her. They’d move to the suburbs and get pregnant right after they got married. She’d go back to work after the first baby, but he’d talk her out of it after the second. After all, her paycheck would barely cover day care for one kid. And she’d hate her three hours of commuting and spending about five minutes with her kid so much that she’d probably even think it was a great idea.
So, then she’d cart her kid to lessons and other stupid shit that kids had to do to get into the right preschool in the minivan that Chris also talked her into. She’d never get to wear real clothes. Just that stretchy athleisure shit. Probably in bright colors that clashed with her hair.
And she wouldn’t complain.
Because Chris would be the one paying her student loans—actually all their bills. She’d get no say. He’d have all the power. And she’d be trapped out in the suburbs, until she died from pretending to be happy or she bugged out on everything—just like her mother had.
Maybe she’d be okay. Maybe it would be relaxing to sink into the comfortable suburban beige of chain restaurants and chain barre classes. Maybe she was the luckiest girl in the world. But her racing heart and sweaty upper lip told her that it wouldn’t and she wasn’t.
“When were you going to show me the house where you expected me to start popping out your fatheaded babies?”
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