Not That Kind of Guy

by ANDIE J. CHRISTOPHER

  He should have been terrified by that need, so fast on the heels of his relationship with Naomi. But Bridget felt like home to him in a way that no one else ever had.

  “So,” he said, facing her in the sparkling-clean kitchen.

  Bridget yawned, and he half expected her to usher him out. They’d gotten too close, too fast. And he knew her well enough to know that this was when she’d push him away. Over the past few weeks, he’d come up with a theory. She’d dated Chris and no one else because he’d been safe. He was already a fixture in her life, and she figured that he might not be the best guy for her, but he would never leave. When he did, it had rocked her.

  And if she was feeling anything close to what he was feeling for her, she would be afraid right now. She would lock it down because what they had wasn’t safe. Physically, it was safe. Just not emotionally.

  Because he hadn’t been entirely honest with her, hadn’t told her that he’d always wanted to stay married to her because he was into her and not because he thought it would get rid of Naomi, she still thought they were having a fling.

  And he was going to tell her all of this—he was—but she stepped close to him, went on her tiptoes, and kissed him in a way that told him that she didn’t want safe. She didn’t want words. And she wanted him.

  It was more intoxicating than any wine or any drug, and he knew he wouldn’t survive withdrawal. And he didn’t want to think about it. He kissed her back instead of giving her the words. A kiss that said they had all the time in the world to tell each other the truth. How he felt about her was completely out of hand. The only place she opened up to him was when he was kissing her. That was the only time that she let him peel back the layers she kept buttoned up at work—and even in front of her family.

  He backed her up to the kitchen counter and picked her up to place her on top of it. She made a sound deep in her throat that made him weak. He pulled her T-shirt up and drew back as she raised her arms.

  When he’d stripped her down to her pretty pink bra, he let himself look at her face. He wanted to absorb every dimple. And he wanted to commit her kiss-swollen pink lips to memory in case this did end.

  She let him look, and he wanted to drop to his knees to thank her—and maybe do a hands-on demonstration that her kitchen counter was now clean enough to eat off of.

  “Here?” She sounded soft and vulnerable. Knowing that she never let herself sound like that, it made him feel like he’d found rare treasure without a map.

  He pulled his T-shirt off over his back, and she did a sharp intake of breath. He’d do whatever it took to get more of those sounds from her. “Here.”

  And she lifted her hips to let him strip off her jeans and panties. He kissed her neck and her delicate collarbone and the freckles along her belly.

  “I’ll have to clean the kitchen again.” But she didn’t sound that upset, so he didn’t stop. And he nudged her to lie down so that he could have all of her laid out in front of him.

  He decided to leave all his admissions for after the wedding.

  Maybe she would believe him then.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Tuesday 2:30 p.m.

  Matt: How’s it going?

  Bridget: Shouldn’t you be in class?

  Matt: Professor got the stomach flu.

  Bridget: Stay away from the professor. I need you on top of your game for the wedding this weekend.

  Matt: I promise I won’t get the stomach flu intentionally.

  Bridget: Don’t get it unintentionally, either. I don’t have time to find another date.

  Matt: Only useful to you insofar as I look great in a tux.

  Bridget: You got me.

  Matt: I’ll let you get back to work.

  Bridget: I don’t want to. I’d rather talk to you. I’d rather you were here.

  Matt: I want that, too.

  Bridget: Talk to you tomorrow?

  Matt: Yup.

  Bridget almost inserted a bunch of red heart emojis after Matt’s last text. But she didn’t know if they were in a hearts-and-flowers place or more of an eggplant emoji place.

  She’d almost told him that she loved him two nights before at her place. Not even while they were in the throes, but when he’d stood up to clean the table after dinner. She really was easy if that was all it took for her to realize that she was so gone over him. But there it was. Every little thing he did that was nothing like what Chris had done made her realize that Matt was a safe person to fall in love with.

  And while pretending that they were going to stay married had really just been a way for her to save face and for him to shake off his ex, her feelings had never been fake. When she looked at Matt, sometimes she thought she could see the same feelings shining out at her, but she couldn’t be sure.

  She needed to be sure before she told him how she felt because she wasn’t going to put herself out on a limb or make assumptions that would bite her in the ass again.

  Since she wouldn’t see him for the rest of the week, she wouldn’t need to worry about it. She could just focus on work and ignore the fact that she was in love with a guy who might just see her as a convenience.

  After about fifteen minutes, she was able to focus on the grand jury questions she needed to ask a beat cop the next morning. However, her concentration and peace of mind were short-lived.

  Jackie walked into her office. “Good news!”

  Bridget hoped it was actual good news, and not the kind of good news that meant she might have to miss her brother’s wedding. “Oh?”

  “You got the fellowship,” Jackie said, clearly waiting for her to get excited about it. “Not that I’m surprised, given how much you taught Matt this summer.”

  Bridget’s stomach sank. She knew that she had to tell her boss that she and Matt had gotten married—probably best to leave out the drunken-wedding part—and that she most likely didn’t even qualify for the fellowship anymore because she had marital assets now. Not to mention what kind of conflict of interest would come up because she was married to the son of the people who ran the endowment.

  Instead of fessing up, all that came out of her mouth was another, “Oh?”

  Jackie was literally vibrating with excitement. “I knew you could get past your misgivings about mentoring Matt . . .”

  Bridget’s face heated, and she knew she would be bright red if she looked in a mirror. Under no circumstances would she tell Jackie all the ways that Matt had been mentoring her on filthy sex. No way could she tell her boss that she’d married him. No way could she turn down this fellowship. It meant that she wouldn’t have a ten-ton weight resting on her shoulders for the next twenty years.

  “Why aren’t you excited?”

  “I guess . . . I’m still in shock.” Bridget started trying to cover. Maybe the Kidos didn’t know that she’d applied for the grant, and maybe they had very little to do with it personally. Some staffer had probably approved it. Or maybe it was a mistake.

  “This is a coup for the office,” Jackie continued, oblivious to Bridget’s confusion and distress. “And for you, of course.”

  “Of course.” Bridget forced herself to respond, but her mind was going a mile a minute. There had to be some logical explanation for this. It couldn’t be that she was now the recipient of nepotism—the kind she’d eschewed her whole life. There had to be a reason that the Kido Foundation chose her for the fellowship, and that reason had to be some sort of mistake.

  “I think there’s been a mistake . . .” She needed to find a way to explain this to Jackie that didn’t include admitting that she’d married and had been sleeping with her former intern. She couldn’t take the fellowship money, but she couldn’t decline in a way that would torpedo her entire professional reputation. After all, without the fellowship money, she’d have to continue working here until she was a crusted shell.<
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  “There’s no mistake.” Her boss was emphatic. “In fact, Jane Kido wants to take you to lunch tomorrow.”

  The sick feeling in her stomach told her that it was more that Jane Kido was going to eat her for lunch than tell her that she’d won the fellowship with no strings.

  * * *

  • • •

  BRIDGET HADN’T BEEN ABLE to get ahold of Matt the night before. She shouldn’t have been as pissed about it as she was, but his phone going to voicemail had made her even more agitated. The last thing she’d needed the night before had been agitation. Having lunch with her mother-in-law, the one who’d just offered to give her more than a hundred thousand dollars, was nerve-wracking enough.

  She didn’t know why, but she smelled something rotten about the whole thing. It didn’t sit well. Jane Kido was too sharp not to see the optics of this—it looked nepotistic and corrupt. It would put their name in the same breath as the Chapins. People would talk about how they were corrupt, and it would obviate the whole existence of their philanthropy.

  In the back of her mind, she suspected that this was just an elaborate way of getting rid of her. And part of her wondered if this wasn’t at Matt’s behest. There had been nothing strange about the last time they’d seen each other. He’d kissed her forehead before slipping out of her condo to get to class. They hadn’t shared “I love yous,” but it had felt like there was more to this than assured closure.

  But Bridget had been fooled into believing that she had a future with someone before. Maybe he’d decided that being with her was too much for him or not what he wanted and was having his mother clean things up for him. Maybe she’d been wrong all along and he really was the kind of guy who used his money and privilege to escape hard work or inconvenience.

  She didn’t think that was true, but she couldn’t exactly trust herself.

  When she walked into the supremely elegant restaurant, the kind of place where ladies who lunched smiled with their mouths and stabbed with their words, she didn’t let any of her anxiety, confusion, or anticipatory grief show. She held her spine straight and put a smile on her face.

  She didn’t even miss a step or let her smile fade when Jane looked her up and down in the same way she had the first time they met—as though she was lacking. Instead, she extended her hand and made sure it wasn’t shaking.

  “Please sit.” Jane motioned to a chair across from hers. “I took the liberty of ordering the branzino for two.”

  Fish wasn’t Bridget’s favorite—it reminded her of Lenten Fridays and sacrifice—but she didn’t tell Jane that. This woman didn’t get her vulnerabilities in a moment when she wasn’t even sure if she was going to blow up her marriage. The one she hadn’t known she wanted to stay in until a few days ago.

  “Thank you. Sounds delicious.”

  Jane gave her an almost-indulgent smile when the server came over and poured them both a glass of white wine. Then her mother-in-law picked up her glass as though she was going to make a toast, and Bridget braced herself. “To your new fellowship.”

  “Mrs. Kido—”

  “Please call me Jane.”

  Now Bridget was in a bit of a cold sweat. “Jane, I think there’s been a mistake. I sort of wasn’t thinking about the fellowship application when I married Matt, and I know I can’t accept it. I shouldn’t have gotten it in the first place.” Jane quirked her head, and Bridget couldn’t seem to keep herself from talking. “How can I fix this?”

  After a beat, Jane said, “I’m glad you asked.” She turned and pulled a manila envelope out of her shoulder bag. She pushed it across the table. “A final divorce decree. I had to pull a few strings with Judge Dickerson’s clerk, but he expedited them for me. We’re good friends.”

  Fucking Judge Dickerson, screwing her over again. Bridget wanted to throw up. All over the table and all over the final divorce decree. “I don’t understand.”

  Jane smiled again. “It’s simple. You sign these papers, leave my son alone, and then you get your fellowship. Everyone wins.”

  “But why?” Everything about herself that she’d ever thought of as inadequate rushed up into the front of her mind. And it was compounded by the woman sitting across the table from her. Jane Kido was head to toe a lady. Her nails were perfect, her clothes pressed just right, and Bridget doubted that she’d ever had a hair out of place.

  Bridget knew she didn’t measure up, but she hadn’t thought she needed to.

  “You’re simply not the appropriate partner for my son.” Jane shook her head.

  Even though she wasn’t cataloguing the ways that she didn’t have rich-girl hair or a taste for gin that the appropriate partner for Matt would probably have, she captured a little bit of anger. “Appropriate?”

  “I just don’t think that you’re a good influence.”

  “And so you’re paying me off like this is some kind of 1980s nighttime soap?” Bridget almost pushed away from the table and left. This was beyond insulting.

  “So dramatic.”

  “I’m dramatic?” Bridget scoffed. “I’d say that you’re the dramatic one, lady.”

  There was no way she could take the fellowship now, under any circumstances. And she wasn’t sure how she was going to tell Matt that his mother had tried to bribe her. He would be so hurt by it. But she still didn’t know if he shared her feelings, didn’t know if he would choose her over his family.

  “What happens if I refuse to sign the papers?” Jane was probably prepared for all sorts of possibilities and had contingency plans in place in the event that Bridget told her to shove her divorce papers and fellowship up her well-heeled ass.

  “Well, I think I can convince you to take my side.”

  Matt’s mother had another think coming, but she would hear her out. “Let’s just say you can’t.”

  “Did you know that Matt’s trust fund doesn’t vest until he turns thirty?” Bridget was going to get whiplash from the change in subject, but she was willing to see where this went. “Unless he marries, of course.”

  “So? I don’t know what that has to do with me other than that you don’t have him under your thumb anymore.”

  “I would think that you would care more about being married to a billionaire.”

  Although Bridget was a little bit surprised that Matt was a billionaire in his own right, she didn’t care. She’d want to be with him if he didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and she was going to tell Jane that. “I think you have the wrong idea about me.”

  It wasn’t as though she was from the wrong side of the tracks. She just wasn’t insanely rich, like Naomi Chapin. And she didn’t chase status like—well—her mother.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I think you’re a very clever girl. But you’re not part of our world. Matt needs to be with someone who has been training to be a good steward of resources all of their life.”

  This all sounded incredibly archaic, and it made Bridget question whether Jane knew her son at all. “Listen, don’t let the red hair fool you. I’m not the fucking Little Mermaid, and I don’t want to be a part of your world.”

  Jane looked taken aback for a moment, but she recovered. “I had your credit checked. You’re living hand to mouth, practically. Especially after your unfortunate breakup with Chris Dooley—”

  “You ran an actual background check?!” Bridget was aware that she was shrieking, the other guests were looking, and she was probably confirming Jane’s suspicions that she wasn’t appropriate for Matt. But this woman had no idea what was good for her son. Spending twenty minutes with her had Bridget wanting to become a legit socialist.

  “Of course. You can’t understand what it’s like. But we’ve worked hard to get where we are, and we have to protect our interests.” With that, Bridget felt a little bit of empathy for Jane. She respected how hard her family had worked to get where they were, but that didn’t excuse h
er outlandish, controlling behavior.

  “I can’t know what it’s like to be you,” Bridget said. “But I have always paid my own way, with minimal help from my parents. I only applied for the fellowship because I don’t want my dad to work himself into an early grave trying to pay my way. I’m not with Matt because of your—his—money. And I would never dream of taking advantage of him.”

  “You really care about him, don’t you?” Jane looked surprised.

  “How could I not?” Bridget said. “I know what this looks like—he borrowed your plane to fly me to Vegas and married me the same day as our first kiss. He’d been with Naomi for years, and you expected him to be with her, or someone like her, forever. But I’m not the girl you think I am.

  “I care about Matt. A lot.” She wasn’t going to say the “love” word to anyone but Matt. “And I don’t want to do anything to hurt him.”

  “Then you’ll sign the papers.” Jane pushed the manila envelope an inch farther across the table.

  “You’re not listening to me, Jane.” Bridget stood up then. “I’m not going to let anything hurt Matt, but I’m not giving him up.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  MATT HAD SPENT ALL day and evening Tuesday and Wednesday in the library for the first time since his first year. But it would be worth it so that he could spend the entire weekend with his whole focus on Bridget and their future together.

  He could barely wait to put the nonsense about their marriage being real behind them. He was ready to tell Bridget he loved her, and he didn’t want to do it over the phone or text, so he’d turned those things off while he was working.

  As soon as he turned his phone back on, he realized what a mistake he’d made. He had three voicemails from Bridget, each sounding a little more frantic. Shit. He’d never had to be available to anyone before. Not even Naomi.