What a Woman

by Judi Fennell

  Jared wasn’t feeling like her father. And he wasn’t feeling like her friend. Or Dave’s either for that matter, regardless of the guy’s intentions.

  He was feeling like a caveman. Wanted to toss her over his shoulder, parade her around the town so everyone would know she was his, then bring her back here, carry her up those stairs, and toss her onto the middle of his bed where they’d spend the next week ordering Chinese takeout.

  “Just treat her nice. Bring her roses. Take her someplace elegant, like Sanders’ maybe. But know that her brothers are my friends, Dave. I’ve known her my whole life. Hurt her and you have to answer to me.”

  “I dunno, Jare. For someone who says he’s not interested, you seem an awful lot like you are.” Dave hiked the gym bag’s strap onto his shoulder and headed toward the door. “It’s just dinner. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  Jared stayed put, gripping the wooden knob on the sofa’s armrest like a lifeline. Which it was: Dave’s, because Jared wouldn’t mind ripping the guy’s face off right about now. “Good luck.”

  Dave stopped in the doorway. “You saying that to me . . . or to yourself?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  JARED heard Mac on the stairs when he got up the next morning, and he quickly threw on a pair of shorts before meeting her in the hall.

  “You’re here early.”

  She looked startled. “I’m, uh, sorry. I was trying to get in here quietly. I wanted to get done early so I can, uh . . .”

  “Get ready for your date with Dave?” He tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t need much time. Dave will be thrilled even if you show up looking like you do now.” God knew he would be. The soft green shirt brought out the color of her eyes, all framed in sooty lashes that matched her silky hair, those figure-hugging pants perfect for whetting a man’s appetite, and yeah, he might just be that man.

  Damn it.

  “Give me a minute to toss on a shirt and brush my teeth, and I’ll be up to join you.”

  “Okay. No problem.”

  Mac seemed a little distracted. Jared put it down to the date with Dave. Was she really looking forward to it?

  Well, of course she was. That was a stupid question. Mac wasn’t the type to go out with a guy simply for a free meal.

  Not like Camille.

  Jared grabbed a blue T-shirt and pulled it on, then shoved his feet into a pair of rubber-soled slippers. The doc told him he could put weight on his leg now, so these were safe. Using one crutch, he made it up the steps.

  Mac was bent over a large box in the corner, pulling out a bunch of blankets.

  “Digging for gold?” he asked her.

  Mac’s head shot up, her ponytail sailing over her crown. “Do you know what’s in here?”

  “Blankets?”

  “Not just any blankets. These are quilts.” She held an all-white one up that had a pair of intersecting rings stitched in the middle. “Wedding quilts. And look. They have all of our names on them. This is mine.” She showed him the corner with a very fancy MAM in it. “Here’s yours.”

  His, too, was white and matched hers. Which was . . . interesting.

  He felt a little better when she said, “And there’s one for Sean, Liam, and Bryan, as well.” A pale blue, pale green, and pale yellow. “How sweet is it that your grandmother made them for me and my brothers?”

  “You know Grandma.” And so did he. He knew exactly why his and Mac’s matched and he wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Manley had helped. The grandmothers had obviously been planning to get him and Mac together for a long time. Too bad neither of them had seen a Dave coming along.

  Too bad he hadn’t seen a Dave coming along . . . “I guess we should each take ours. That’ll help clean out the attic.” Not that he’d be using his anytime soon. After Camille, marriage was the furthest thing from his mind. Maybe he’d use it for the kittens to sleep on.

  “We will not.” Mac spread one out and started to fold it. “These are wedding gifts. They need to stay right here until they’re needed.”

  “That’ll be kind of tough when we sell the place.”

  “Oh. Right.” She stopped folding and scrunched her lips. “We’re going to have to get them to your grandmother without her knowing we’ve seen them.”

  “Come on, Mac. Of course she’s going to know. She sent us up here to look for her ring.” The one he was coming to suspect wouldn’t be found. “She told us to go through every box in the place. Do you really think she’s not going to know”—or expect—“that we found them?”

  If he knew Grandma, he was guessing she’d moved them up here just so they’d find them. No one kept heirloom quilts in a cardboard box in an attic. Mice would turn them into balls of fluff in no time.

  “I guess you’re right. So what should we do with them?”

  “I say we take them to her. Who knows, maybe your date with Dave will turn into something more and you can take it home with you.” He plastered a smile on his face, but really wasn’t feeling it.

  Mac got very interested in folding Liam’s quilt back into the bottom of the box. “Uh, yeah. Who knows?”

  He hadn’t expected her to agree with him. “I mean, yeah. Dave’s a good guy. You could do a lot worse.”

  Eyebrows arched, she glanced at him. “That’s your endorsement of your friend? I’d love to hear what you say about Liam.”

  “What do you want me to say, Mac? That Dave’s a great guy and you should jump his bones?”

  Dude, never ask a question you don’t want to know the answer to.

  “If that’s how you feel, then yes, you should.”

  Case in point.

  “Fine. Then go ahead. Sleep with him. See if I care.”

  Seriously? Are you nuts?

  “Fine. Maybe I will.”

  “Fine. Do that.”

  “Fine.”

  They stood there glaring at each other, and Jared could feel his conscience strumming its metaphorical fingers along his spine.

  What had he just done? Given her carte blanche to sleep with one of his best friends? Apparently he was nuts. “I need to go check on the kittens.”

  “Fine. You do that.”

  “I will.” He spun around—damn, shouldn’t have used his bad leg for that—and headed to the stairs before he said something else he’d regret.

  Mac watched Jared leave. What just happened? One minute they’d been talking about wedding quilts and the next, Jared was pimping her out to Dave.

  Good lord, the man could drive someone insane.

  Well it wasn’t going to be her. She was having dinner tonight with a nice, normal man who didn’t have any reason not to like her. And if she needed any more proof that Jared wasn’t the god she’d thought he was, she’d just gotten it. Nope, her future was definitely not going to include Jared Nolan.

  * * *

  JARED was going stir crazy.

  After today’s nightmare, he’d stayed with the kittens for the better part of an hour, leaving Mac up in the attic to sort through things he ought to be sorting through, then when he’d gone up, she’d come down to do a thorough cleaning of the parlor, which had then segued into another round of kitten bathing, which they’d done very stiltedly and very silently, until it was more than apparent she couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  He hadn’t blamed her.

  He’d been an ass. Of course, this great revelation didn’t come to him until she’d been gone not three minutes and he realized he ought to apologize, not send her off on a date with a guy who could actually be good for her, leaving him to sit here and stew about whether or not she was going to sleep with that guy.

  And how fucked up was it that he’d even say that to her? Mac wasn’t that kind of girl. Of course she wouldn’t sleep with Dave on t
he first date.

  Except he’d all but dared her to and he knew how Mac took dares.

  He shoved himself off the sofa and raked his hands through his hair. He couldn’t sit around here and imagine what was happening on their date. Maybe he should call Renee or Sherisse or Juliette . . . Hell, maybe he should call all three. Get his mind off Mac and see if there was someone out there for him.

  He picked up the phone and one of the cards in the basket beside it and dialed the first three digits.

  What was he doing? This would start a whole other round of problems he didn’t want to deal with. He wasn’t interested in them and it would be wrong to lead them on. He didn’t need the extra baggage in his life and if he could get over himself, he’d see that.

  Jesus. He’d sent Dave and Mac to Sanders’. Of all places. He hated that place; it held too many frustrating memories of sitting there, all trussed up in a suit and tie, having to mind his manners and act like the “perfect little man” while everyone else he’d known was home ripping through piles of wrapping paper or eating homemade turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes in their sweats and playing video games.

  He’d suggested it because he wanted Dave to fail.

  But the problem was, Sanders’ didn’t hold the same memories for Dave and Mac that it held for him, so they might actually have a nice time. That he’d sent them on.

  Damn. He didn’t want Mac to like Dave. Not like that.

  Which was completely selfish of him.

  He picked up his phone and scrolled through his contacts. He needed to get out. There were a few guys from the old neighborhood still around. He’d try one of them because he wasn’t about to text Liam. He didn’t want to be around any of the Manleys tonight—not if he couldn’t be around the one he wanted.

  * * *

  YOU look amazing.” Dave stood on her front stoop with a sweet smile and a sweet-smelling bouquet of flowers. “Here. These are for you.”

  “Wow. I didn’t know guys still did this.”

  “I heard you like roses.”

  “You did? From whom?” Actually, she liked daisies.

  “Jared.”

  Well that was odd. Jared had given her very first flower to her and it’d been a daisy. She’d skinned her knee and was trying not to cry, then Jared had stuck the daisy under her nose and the tears had dried up. She had a feeling that was when her what-ifs had started.

  “Thank you for these. It was really nice of you. Let me put them in water and then we can go.”

  He followed her back to the kitchen. “Nice place.”

  She looked over her shoulder. “Please. It’s my grandmother’s 1950s throwback that needs a lot of work. She moved into the same place where Jared’s grandmother lives, so I’m slowly but surely updating it. Going to take a while, though, with my business.”

  “Yeah, being self-employed means you’re working all the time.”

  “I hear you, but it beats working for someone else.”

  She cut the stems an inch, stuck the roses in a vase of ice water, added some sugar, then cleaned up the mess, and brushed off her hands. “Okay, I’m ready. Where are we going?”

  “I thought Sanders’ would be nice.”

  Sanders’ was the place Jared had spent his holidays.

  Damn it, she didn’t want to think about Jared tonight. Tonight was about Dave and moving forward with her life.

  “I’ve heard it’s wonderful.” And she’d make sure it was.

  “Jared suggested it. Said we’d like it.”

  So much for that.

  Dave held both the front door and the car door for her, his Prince Charming meter going up quite nicely. Flowers, upscale restaurant, gentlemanly manners . . .

  The only thing was, he kept talking about Jared. She heard about the first time they’d met, how they started hanging out, some of the stories from games on the road when Dave had been the team PT . . . It was almost as if Dave was afraid to talk about anything else in case they found out they didn’t have anything in common. If a relationship between them was going to happen, they couldn’t count on Jared to keep them together. Especially when she was desperately trying not to think about the guy. She wanted to think about Dave.

  “Dave, why are you bringing up Jared so much? Surely we can find something else to talk about besides him.”

  Dave shrugged. “He’s our common denominator, and since we both care about him, I figured there’s no need to not talk about him. Is there?”

  She got stuck on the caring about him part. Was she that obvious?

  “Well, no, but I’ve heard more about him than I have about you. Do you have any siblings, for example? I know Jared’s an only child.” And the reason that was suddenly came to her. Growing up, she’d wondered if his parents couldn’t have more children; now she wondered if they’d never tried.

  “I’m one of three. Middle kid. Only boy. Jared’s like the brother I never had.”

  And they were back to Jared. “How old are your sisters?”

  She managed to keep him off the Jared track for the next ten minutes or so while she learned about his family, where he grew up, and the camping trips his parents had taken them on in the pop-up trailer every weekend in the summer for about five years—stories that actually got a pang of envy from her. Gran hadn’t been able to afford vacations. A trip to the zoo or the free bible camps had been it for her and her brothers. She’d never been to the beach until one of her friends had invited her for a week in high school with her family.

  “We loved going to the chalk mines down South. They had these huge mounds of chalk—well, gypsum—that we loved to climb. We’d get brown paper bags from supermarkets and fill them with the stuff and bring it home. My sisters were the hopscotch queens of the neighborhood. The game boards, or whatever you call the chalk drawings, went along the entire block. I can’t tell you how many sprained ankles there were when people kept trying to hop the entire thing.”

  “Too bad you didn’t know then what you were going to do with your life. Just think how much fun you could’ve had wrapping all those girls’ ankles.”

  “Oh I didn’t do so bad even without the wrappings.”

  Yeah, she could see that. He was good-looking, he was smart, he was funny, and he knew how to hold a conversation. And how to treat a woman. He’d surreptitiously signaled the waiter when her water was getting low, he’d held out her chair, deferred to her for ordering first, offered her some of his shrimp cocktail appetizer . . .

  It’d been a long time since she’d been out on a date. Hell, it’d been a long time since she’d had a free night to even consider doing something other than paperwork or prospecting for new clients, both of which she should be doing tonight.

  But she wasn’t. She was here. Trying to make Dave into the guy she couldn’t stop thinking about because putting Jared in that role hadn’t worked so well. Even after watching movies together Saturday night, he’d spent twenty minutes talking to Ms. Face-In-The-Window yesterday. Mac didn’t need to be clubbed over the head to get it.

  “So Jared tells me you guys have been friends your whole lives.”

  “He actually said that?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  Mac shrugged, trying to go with the not-so-embarrassing version of their history. “He’s friends with my older brothers. I was that tagalong little sister everyone had to take care of. He, needless to say, wasn’t thrilled having me around.”

  “Shame on him. I bet you were cute.” Dave picked up the wine bottle and offered her more.

  She chuckled as she waved the bottle away. Yes, Dave was definitely charming, but wine on a date wasn’t always the smartest move. “I’m sure it got old. After all, he didn’t have a sister. He never had to deal with having to take care of someone else. My brothers were used to it.”

  “Maybe he was jealous.”

&nb
sp; “Jealous?”

  “Think about it. He’s got all his parents’ expectations about sports, they even hired a trainer for him and built an expensive batting cage in his yard, but the few hours of freedom and play time that he had, he had to spend it with his buddies’ little sister. To your brothers, it was just another day hanging out, but to him, his opportunity was hijacked. By you.”

  “But that’d make him angry, not jealous.”

  “Unless he’d wanted a little sister. Or liked you.”

  She sputtered on her water. “It’s a nice thought, but no, that definitely wasn’t the case for Jared and me.” Jared had liked her? Hardly.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Mac. I was with him through the mess with Camille. From the beginning of the relationship to the rotten end. And I have to say, I’ve never heard as much about Camille’s childhood as I have about yours over the past two days.”

  “Jared was talking about me?” Now she was completely confused.

  Dave reached for her hand. “Oh, I might have asked him some questions. Call me curious.”

  That got a smile out of her. She wasn’t feeling the same spark with Dave that she felt with Jared, but maybe that would change when he kissed her.

  * * *

  IT didn’t.

  Mac stood on her front stoop, very aware that they were standing there, and that Dave’s arms were around her and his lips were on hers, with his head tilted to the right so their noses brushed but didn’t bash into each other, his breath warm and wine-scented against her cheek, a few inches taller than she was, with broad shoulders and strong hands that knew how to hold her just right and she felt . . .

  Nothing.

  Oh, it was pleasant, but the fact that she could hear the crickets and regret that her porch light was on, and know exactly how his nose brushed hers, and how she was standing, and how he was standing, and a whole bunch of other details bummed her out to no end.

  When Jared had kissed her, she hadn’t been aware of what day it was, let alone where they’d been standing and how his head was angled, because she hadn’t been able to think. She’d been one big mass of feeling and now . . . she just wasn’t.