by Lake, C. J.
“That shows character,” Marta continued with an approving nod. “Eye contact, good handshake, un-antagonistic demeanor. Often these are the marks of a real man.”
“Interesting,” Emma lied. “Anyway--”
Now Marta’s neck was craned all the way in the direction of the kitchen. “He’s not classically handsome like a movie star,” she commented, even rambling on, “but I could see the appeal.”
“Marta, please,” Emma implored--trying to stay professional, but it was impossible not to betray some of her frustration at the moment.
“Oh--you may be wondering why I’m mentioning all this,” Marta said in a rare moment of self-awareness. “It’s because I’m thinking of hiring someone to do some work on my house. Would you get a referral fee if I hired him next?”
“I’m not sure, but don’t even worry about that. I’ll be happy to give you the number of the company Matt works for.”
“But I want him.”
“Well, you can tell them that,” Emma said simply, feeling irrationally annoyed and possessive of Matt. It was ridiculous. Marta Vincent was in her fifties and insufferable; it wasn’t like she was competition for Matt’s attention, or for Matt’s heart--
Heart? God, why had her mind even gone there?
Disturbed by the sudden direction of her thoughts, Emma forced thoughts of Matt out of her mind. If Marta was going to obsess on him--out loud--then this meeting was officially over.
“Marta, I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I need to pick my sons up from school soon, and I don’t want us to squander this brief time we have to discuss your work--which is brilliant, by the way.”
Writers loved being called brilliant, and Marta was no different. Her head snapped back in Emma’s direction. “Yes, it’s being hailed by many blogs as earth-shattering,” Marta stated proudly. “In fact, I’ve been collaborating with some of the big-name bloggers for my new online magazine. Have you seen it yet? It’s called, Marta’s World. Martasworld-dot-com.”
“Uh, no, I haven’t seen that,” Emma replied, thinking how all-too-fitting the title was. “I can’t wait to check it out! As for your story, if we could get back to that…”
“Well, you’re happy with the story, aren’t you?” Her tone had shifted, becoming defensive, almost accusatory.
“Thrilled,” Emma assured her. “As I said, I only had a few concerns, one of which is about the ending--”
“Oh, by the way, what are Matt’s spiritual beliefs?”
Emma sighed. “I have no idea.”
“I only ask because as a lapsed Wiccan myself, you know, having someone working in my home--”
Now Emma was the one to interrupt. Enough was enough; her whole world couldn’t revolve around Marta Vincent’s ego. “You know what? We don’t seem to be getting anywhere today. Some days are just like that,” she threw in insipidly. “Why don’t I simply email you my notes? And if you have any comments or questions, you can let me know.” Emma started to push away from her desk.
“You mean our meeting is over?” Marta said, clearly stunned.
“Yes, for today,” Emma replied, hesitating--sensing she’d made some critical error.
“Well,” Marta said with a hmph. “Excuse me for living and breathing.”
Inside, Emma panicked a little. Had she offended “the talent”? Derek wouldn’t be happy if that were the case. Trying to do damage-control, she said, “I think I’ve taken enough of your extremely valuable time for today. I don’t want to keep you from your muse! Um, so like I said, I’ll email you my thoughts, but there aren’t many, because your work is just brilliant.”
That seemed to appease her. “Yes, that sounds fine,” Marta agreed, unfolding herself from the chair, swirling her blousy skirts all around, and finally heading toward the foyer.
At the door, Emma handed off Marta’s elaborate wool cloak and thanked her for coming through one of the faker smiles she’d ever had to exhibit. As Marta was saying her overly long goodbye, Emma’s phone rang. It was the house line, so Emma immediately thought the call might pertain to her sons in some way--doctor, dentist, school, etceteras. A ringing phone would be the cue for most people to wrap it up, but not Marta. “So, this weather is something,” she remarked. “I hear a blizzard is expected soon. At least one,” she said dramatically, wrapping her cloak up tight. “Then again, it is Massachusetts, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Mmm-hmm, all right, well, drive carefully,” Emma was saying.
“They never salt the side roads properly. It’s bad karma is what it is.”
With her phone still ringing, Emma opened the front door wide, hoping it wasn’t too blatant a hint. “Well…”
Marta started to leave, but then paused on the threshold. “I think when I get home I’ll make a nice bowl of hot soup,” she said. “That sounds good. Clam chowder.” She sniffed the air as if she could smell the fresh catch rolling in, even though they were nowhere near the shoreline.
“Okay, well, enjoy!” Emma said brightly, as she heard a fifth ring and then the machine pick up. From here she couldn’t make out the muffled voice of the caller (especially with the wind whistling through the foyer as Marta stood there, letting the heat out). Hopefully the call was nothing important regarding Jake’s school or Ben’s preschool. Becoming a mom had long ago divided Emma’s attention span into two main segments: her sons, and then everything else.
Finally Marta set her red, witchy-looking boots onto the snowman welcome mat and made her exit. Pushing the door against the blustery cold, Emma breathed a sigh of relief.
Chapter 13
Briskly, Emma made her way to the kitchen to check the machine and to make more coffee. “Hey, how’s it going?” she said as she crossed the room.
Matt had laid drop-cloths down and already painted the ceiling. Now, with his back to her, he was pushing a paint roller up one wall. With each movement his back muscles bunched, his thick arms flexed… Emma held in a sigh. If only his body weren’t so sexy.
Just then she noticed his tattoo. It was a row of stars that stretched across part of his bicep.
“Hey,” he said, angling his head toward her for a second.
“Wow, you’ve done a lot so far.”
“This’ll be easy.”
“Okay, does anything fluster you?”
“I’m sure there must be something…” he joked.
“Uh-huh. Well, don’t mind me. I just need more coffee. That woman is exhausting.”
“Yeah, sounded like it,” he agreed.
That caught Emma off-guard. Uncomfortably, she hoped that Matt hadn’t overheard the whole laughable meeting--especially the part when Marta said he wasn’t “classically handsome.”
“Oh--um--you heard her?”
“Not specifically,” he said as he continued rolling paint on the wall, making it look even and effortless. “I just heard a steady stream of someone’s voice that wasn’t yours.”
Relieved, Emma continued to the machine to find out what call she’d missed.
“Hi, Emma? This is Phil Parker,” a slightly raspy male voice said. “Listen, it was great talking to you the other night; I enjoyed our conversation. I, uh…just wondered if you’d like to continue our talk. Maybe out over a cup of coffee?” Taken aback, she squinted and tried to recall who Phil Parker was. “Not sure if you’re a Starbucks girl,” he threw in lightly, “but if not, I know another cute coffee spot nearby. So give me a call when you can. My number is…”
As he rattled off his digits, Emma failed to hear the numbers because her mind was busy processing her surprise. Now she remembered; Phil Parker was a dad at Jake’s school. He’d bent her ear at Parents’ Night about how the kids had too much homework. Something about how he worked all day and then had to come home to find reams of second-grade schoolwork waiting for him.
Although Emma had engaged him politely, she hadn’t thought much of their conversation. Really it had been so brief that she hadn’t thought anything at all. It was bold of Phi
l Parker to call her out of the blue like that since she hadn’t given him her phone number. Granted, she was listed, so--
“Hot date?”
Startled, she looked over. She found Matt eying her, perhaps waiting for her answer. “What--no. He’s a dad at Jake’s school,” she explained unnecessarily and opened the cabinet.
“He likes you,” Matt remarked casually.
“I barely know him. We ran into each other on Parents’ Night. I completely forgot about it. He started talking to me about how the kids have too much homework and mentioned maybe getting a cup of coffee.”
“Huh, that’s a new one,” Matt said, seeming amused.
“What do you mean? Asking someone for coffee?” She almost blurted out that Matt, too, had asked her out for coffee when they’d first met at the hardware store.
“No, I don’t mean the destination. I mean the cover story.”
“What are you talking about?”
Half-grinning, Matt rolled his eyes. “Emma, c’mon. Granted I don’t have kids, but it seems to me that if you have a problem with the homework, you call the school. Not invite a good-looking single mother out for ‘coffee.’”
Emma burst out a laugh. “Okay, first of all, do we need the air quotes around ‘coffee’?”
Matt chuckled as he dipped the roller in the paint tin by his foot. “It’s an obvious line; that’s all I’m saying.”
“But you’ve just made a big assumption.”
“What’s that?”
“That he finds me good-looking.” She shrugged as she pulled out the coffee canister. “Maybe he doesn’t.”
Matt snorted at that. “Yeah, right.”
She willfully had to suppress a smile, because in those two short words, Matt had given her an immense compliment. Of course the only thing to do was to play it off. “And speaking of coffee…do you want a cup?”
“Sure, okay.”
As the coffee brewed, Emma leaned against the counter and tried not to watch Matt work. Several moments passed before Matt said, “So are you gonna go?” When Emma looked questioningly at him, he jerked his head toward the answering machine.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s no point. Why would I get into some homework battle when Jake will be changing schools anyway?” She didn’t acknowledge the implicit idea that the homework topic was a smokescreen for a date. Because even if that was the case, she still didn’t see the point to going.
“What if your house doesn’t sell right away?” Matt asked. “Are you still leaving?” His eyes were focused on the wall he was painting, and his question seemed casual…but she honestly couldn’t tell. Something made her think that he cared about the answer.
“We’re definitely going,” she said. Maybe a little too emphatically, but she wanted to be honest. “I’ll leave the house on the market and we’ll stay with my in-laws till I can get a place for us up there. My late husband’s parents still live in New York,” she explained.
“Makes sense,” was all he said.
Soon, when the coffee was brewed, she poured him a cup and took her own mug to her office.
Matt couldn’t help checking her out as she left the kitchen, watching the sway of her hips and that shapely ass that he just wanted to grab. God, she made him hot. But he had to forget it, at least for now. While he was working at her house, nothing could happen. She’d set that tone pretty clearly with her just-friends vibe. But honestly, he was beginning to wonder if anything could ever happen between them. As she’d said in no uncertain terms: she was leaving in a few weeks no matter what. So why even contemplating starting something up with her?
Later, on his drive home, he let the diagonal drift of snow against his windshield blur his thoughts. When he had gotten into his truck, he’d discovered a voicemail from Pellican, asking to crash at Matt’s place for a couple days. Apparently some pipes had frozen and burst in Pellican’s building and now he had no heat or hot water. Before he started driving, Matt had texted him to say no problem, then texted Tragan and Bardo to let them know, in case they wanted to come over and hang out later.
Now, he was stopped at a traffic light and the snow began to fall harder, suddenly splattering the glass with fat, wet drops. Matt sped up his wipers and punched the defogger button, watching as a sea of headlights swirled across the intersection.
Though he had decided to push the subject of Emma Slate out of his mind, he couldn’t help thinking about her reaction to that phone call today. It was like she couldn’t see that the guy was making a move on her--almost like she didn’t want to see it. She wasn’t just single; it was like she was totally self-contained. At this point, Matt really couldn’t figure her out.
Chapter 14
Later that night, Pellican and Bardo were at Matt’s apartment watching football. During half-time, Matt jumped on his computer to pay some bills, while Bardo read aloud from Men’s Life IQ magazine. He’d just finished reading from the “Ask Zack” column. “Lame problems this month,” Bardo commented. “‘My girlfriend doesn’t like my sideburns’? What am I supposed to do with that?” Giving the magazine one more flip-through, he said, “This is ready for recycling.”
“Just leave it; I’ll toss it later,” Matt said.
“Wait! I didn’t see this article,” Bardo said, straightening up his slouch on the sofa and folding the magazine to the inside back cover. Then he read the title aloud: “‘Dud to Stud--The Sex Moves You Need to Learn Now.’” Efficiently, Bardo tore the page from the magazine and held it out. “Here, Pellican.”
Matt barked out a laugh, while Pellican jerked his head back, glaring at the article like it was a dirty tissue. “What do you mean, ‘Here, Pellican’? I don’t need that!”
Innocently, Bardo shrugged. “Well, I just thought you’d want it. Since you met that girl at your cousin’s wedding.”
“What girl?” Matt asked.
From his spot on the couch, Pellican called over, “Oh, this chick, Janine. We were at the same table.”
“That’s cool,” Matt said.
“Yeah. And trust me, Bardo, I don’t need any help in that department,” Pellican went on, still refusing to take the article that was in Bardo’s outstretched hand.
“Okay, if you’re sure.”
Matt spoke up then. “Here, let me see it.” Bardo hopped up and brought it to his desk. Pellican just eyed Matt, probably wanting desperately to know what the article said, but having too much pride to ask. Fortunately, Matt was a secure enough guy to know what he was doing in the bedroom--and also to know that, when it came to pleasing a woman, there was no harm in learning more.
As Bardo dropped the page on his desk, he said, “Oh! Matt, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you something.”
“What?”
“You remember that girl Neeta Shah I used to like? At my old job?”
“That really short chick?” Pellican called out.
“If by ‘chick’ you mean goddess--yes. So I randomly got a message from her the other day. Just saying hi, blah, blah, but she mentioned that Keri was asking about you.”
“Really?” Matt said, surprised. He hadn’t talked to Keri in over a year. Not since she’d chosen her rich boss over him. Neeta had been Keri’s roommate at the time, and Matt had met them both out at happy hour one night.
“Yeah, Neeta just threw it in. You know, that Keri wanted to know about you.”
“What about me?” Matt couldn’t help asking.
Bardo threw up his hands. “That was the cryptic part. She just slipped it in at the end. Something like: ‘How’s Matt? Keri asks about him a lot.’ You know how girls are,” Bardo went on. “I bet she just tossed that in there to get me to tell you. To manipulate me, like a puppet on a string.”
Matt didn’t bother pointing out that if that had been Neeta’s plan--mission accomplished.
“I agree,” Pellican interjected, picking up the remote and aiming it at the TV. “She knew what she was doing planting the seed about Keri. Game’s ba
ck.”
“Huh,” was all Matt said, not sure if his friends were reading too much into it. Probably. Then again…was it possible Keri wasn’t as happy with her rich forty-year-old boss as she’d thought she would be? He was 100% over Keri. Still, pride made him wonder: after all this time, did she now think she’d made a mistake?
Chapter 15
“Don’t mind me,” Emma said the next morning as she entered the kitchen.
“Why would I mind you?” Matt said as he worked.
When he looked over at her, she gave him an almost sheepish smile, then set her coffee mug on the high table by the bay window and climbed up onto a chair. “I know I’m usually hidden in my office--”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that,” he remarked.
“--but that’s because you’ve never been here early enough to witness my morning de-stressing ritual,” she told him.
With a chuckle, Matt said, “Okay, what’s that? Does it involve stretching? Because I can move the drop cloth,” he offered.
“Ha. No.”
“Sketching?” Matt asked, noticing her pen. “Let me know so I can flex a lot.”
“Actually, smartie, it involves me sitting here, watching the snow fall, drinking my coffee, and most importantly…” She pulled a thin section out of the newspaper and held it up. “Doing the crossword puzzle.”
“Ah. Hey, do your thing. I won’t bother you,” he said.
Today Emma had her dark hair tumbling down past her shoulders, and she wore jeans and a sweater. She was always so covered up, yet why did it seem like the clothes she wore were designed to make a man lust after her?
“I won’t bother you, either,” Emma promised, her voice light and airy.
“I never thought you would. Just act like I’m not here,” Matt said. “In fact, you could traipse around in your ratty bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, with your hair all up in rollers, and I wouldn’t even think anything of it.”
Emma slanted him a wry look. “Really? You wouldn’t think anything of that?”