“I texted you to let you know that you didn’t need to come in today.” Whitney nodded toward her purse. “Did your little orange friend turn out to be not much in the way of a good host?”
Kendra stuck out her tongue, flashing the silver piercing in the center. It wasn’t the only piercing she had—but with the exception of a tiny diamond stud in her nose, it was the only other one visible to the public. “Judge not, Whitney dear. You’re looking none too pure of heart yourself this morning.”
“When have I ever been pure of anything?”
Kendra laughed, and even though she’d probably just rolled out of bed and stumbled here by foot, Whitney felt a surge of pride and admiration for her friend. There weren’t a whole lot of judgment-free women out there in the world who looked and acted as fabulous as Kendra. Indian by birth, educated at Brown and possessed of a wicked skill at threading a pair of eyebrows into submission, Kendra was the main reason they were actually going through with opening the spa. Her MBA lent them all authenticity, and her esthetician training rounded out an already impressive line of services.
“Did you at least have a good night?” Whitney asked.
“It was...interesting,” Kendra hedged.
“Oooh, interesting.” John leaned on one elbow, propped on the counter near Whitney. “I like the sound of that.”
“Let me guess,” Whitney said, pretending to be thoughtful. “He also spray-tanned his dick, didn’t he?”
John let out a crack of laughter and even Kendra gave in to a soft snort. “A lady never tells.”
“Well—what is it, then?” Whitney prodded when Kendra didn’t offer more. Her friend had never been very good at hiding her worries. Stress always made her quiet.
Kendra shook her head, her chin-length hair—now bereft of the pink wig—swishing around her with razor-like precision. “It’s just that I passed four people I recognized on the walk over here this morning. Three frowned at me.”
“Screw it. Let them frown.” If there was one thing Whitney hated more than critical townspeople, it was critical townspeople who dared to judge her friend. “You’re fantastic.”
Kendra tapped a finger on her lips in a gesture of thoughtfulness. “Don’t think I don’t know that. I just wonder if we overestimated...”
“What, sweetie?” John raised one of his bushy eyebrows. “I officially terminated employment at the sports clinic as of yesterday—there’s no backing out now.”
“We’re not backing out of anything.” Whitney was no quitter. She’d make this business work if she had to run through the town center with her scalpel in hand, threatening the masses. “This is our dream, remember? Everything we ever wanted? The reason we’ve slaved away for years? Any of this ringing a bell? I have fond memories of us sitting in the student lounge writing out a business plan on the cafeteria napkins—I think my parents might even still have a few of them. My mom will probably make us a scrapbook.”
John’s look was just enigmatic enough to cause her pulse to leap. “How could any of us forget? Jared was just finishing medical school, you started taking all your nursing prerequisites...”
Whitney jumped off the counter and pretended to take a profound interest in counting the dead fly carcasses on the huge window overlooking the parking lot. There was no way to avoid the subject—not when Jared had been such an integral part of their group. The Four Musketeers, they’d called themselves, all of them playing second fiddle to Jared’s inborn God complex, herself included. She’d wanted to be his goddamn nurse, for crying out loud. His helpmeet.
She was no man’s helpmeet.
And even though she knew John and Kendra were on her side, it still sometimes felt like they blamed her for Jared’s absence in their medical spa dream-come-true.
He’s the one who cheated, she wanted to scream. He’s the one who ruined the fantasy. The one who ruined me.
If there was one thing Whitney had learned from her life experiences, it was that she didn’t need Jared Fine to make her life complete. She didn’t need anyone for that. Yes, they were a few years behind schedule, what with Whitney’s determination to return to school and become a surgeon herself. And yes, a fourth partner would have considerably reduced the amount of loans they’d had to take out to make this happen.
But they’d persevered. They’d made it. And they’d done it all without him.
She turned, a fake smile plastered to her face so tight it burned. “I, for one, am having no doubts whatsoever. I love this town.”
“I take it that means your evening with Matt went well?” Kendra accepted Whitney’s change of subject without batting a false eyelash.
“There’s a Matt already?” John asked. He, too, was a master at reading Whitney’s not-so-subtle cues. “You girls certainly have been busy.”
“Who? That guy at the bar last night?” Whitney pretended to think about it. “Nah. I was a perfectly good girl last night.”
Under normal circumstances, she wasn’t a very good liar—she had far too much directness to be able to pull duplicity off with any real measure of success. But in the full light of day, it was easy to pretend that she had not attempted to corrupt a kindergarten teacher, and that she had not, much to her dismay, failed in said attempt.
And he’d been such a good kisser too. Surprised, and then...not surprised. Not surprised had been quite the experience.
She decided to change the subject. “I came home alone and at a perfectly respectable hour. Are you going to see what’s-his-orange-face again?”
Kendra pursed her lips. “Probably not. But I mean it, Whitney—I think we may have underestimated just how conservative this place is.”
Whitney shuddered. Conservative was one of her least favorite words. Sweater sets and respectable investment portfolios were other things that made her itch, right up there with commitment. “What are you saying?”
“Just that we might need to tread a little lighter. We’ll be fine—I’m probably overreacting. These people might be a little bit more old-fashioned than we’d like, but they have money. They know other people with money. And they have an inborn need to compete with the Joneses. Let’s focus on fitting in with that.”
“I’m not wearing pastels,” Whitney warned. “Or pearls.”
John grinned. “Maybe we could start small. Drink less, perhaps?”
Kendra shook off the last of her doldrums and began to walk through the front office, pointing out the future waxing room and massage facilities to John.
Whitney adjusted her skirt and followed her friends through the empty corridor with its boring white walls and cheap gray carpet, thinking of the grave look on Matt’s face when he’d offered her a handshake in place of more intimate relations. Hmm. Maybe drinking less was a good idea. They could at least adhere to a strict intoxication-on-the-weekends-only rule.
“The time to ingratiate ourselves here is now, while we have a little time on our hands,” Kendra said, nodding firmly. Then she winced and held a hand to her head. “Or maybe tomorrow, once I’ve had a nap.”
John put an arm around Kendra’s shoulder and steered her in the direction of the front door. “I’m going to take this one home and pump her full of fluids and aspirin. You okay to hand off the keys when the contractors get here?”
Whitney nodded. “I’ll even fight the urge to flirt outrageously with the cute ones. See how respectable I’m becoming already?”
“Don’t listen to her.” Kendra allowed John to lead her away. “She’s got her sights set on the local schoolteacher. She’ll be the ruin of us all.”
“I do not have my sights on him!” Whitney called back, making her voice purposefully loud. “I barely even remember his name.”
Lies. Every last one of them.
Chapter Three
Matt loved his job.
A
ll jokes and stereotypes about male kindergarten teachers aside, he liked going home at the end of the day knowing he’d accomplished something good, that lives were being changed for the better because of his small place in them. He’d never been one to pursue grand ambitions, and he liked to think he’d once been happy.
Work, wife, home. A simple lineup—but then, he’d never professed to be anything but a simple man.
Unfortunately, with one of the key ingredients missing, Matt had moved well beyond simple into dismal territory. It was a fact he felt keenly, never more so than on days like today, when no fewer than three kids had meltdowns before lunch and all he wanted was to go home to a friendly face.
So much for transforming into the free-wheeling bachelor Lincoln wanted him to be. So much for meeting incredible women in bars and taking advantage of what they had to offer.
As the bell rang, signaling freedom, Matt stepped out of the two-story brick schoolhouse, a historic building with ample charm and not nearly enough electrical outlets, with his line of students in tow. Half of them vibrated with pent-up energy, while the other half appeared ready for an afternoon nap. A nap sounds about right.
Visions of his couch and the deep reaches of sleep beckoned warmly. Or rather, they began to beckon warmly. All thoughts of sleep fled the second he caught a bright flash of color the same shade of a traffic cone standing in the schoolyard.
The color itself wasn’t unusual. The woman attached to it, however, was—bold, daring, leaning against a tree and presumably waiting for him.
He did his best to ignore Whitney’s concentrated stare as he handed the children off, one by one, to parents and babysitters. What on earth was she doing here? And how had she found him?
She has your ID information, dummy. She could probably steal his identity if she wanted to. Run a background check. Stalk him to the ends of the earth.
He’d never been stalked before.
Matt’s pulse picked up, clearly enjoying the idea, but he tamped the sensation down. She’d probably left something behind at the diner, or maybe her friend failed to show up yesterday morning and she wanted to exact payment in Lincoln’s blood. Nothing big. Nothing at all like what his overactive and apparently workplace-inappropriate imagination had in mind.
Two of the more persistent moms lingered long after everyone else cleared away, and he had to force himself to greet them with a semblance of calm, to avoid Whitney’s oppressive gaze. As much as he might want to run screaming into the school right now, taking a much-needed time out in the corner, he had to man up and face these women.
All three of them.
The two parents he knew as Tara and Nadine were both single moms, both taking care of robust boys who routinely pushed their boundaries using physical force against the smallest kids. They weren’t bad—they just needed a strong male presence.
The boys. Not the moms.
“I was hoping to set up a time to talk to you about Tommy’s reading.” Nadine tugged her squirming son to stay by her side. She had red hair that passed in a tumble of curls to her mid-back and always dressed in a sweater with a deep v-neck, no matter what the weather. “I’m so happy with what you’re doing—I just want to take it to the next level, you know?”
The sound of a deep, feminine chortle filled the air.
“Of course,” Matt said, doing his best to ignore Whitney. He wished he knew what she wanted. He wished he knew whether the curve of those lips carried mockery or something else...something that coiled down toward his groin and gave an insistent tug. “Why don’t I send Tommy home with a book list that you two can work on together?”
Before Nadine could say anything more, Tara pushed her way forward, a plate of something warm and cinnamony in her hand. Even though she often brought baked goods with her, she looked as though she never ate any. She and her son Giovanni dressed almost exclusively in athletic gear, she in those tight black pants women liked to exercise in and he in matching tracksuits, one color for each day of the week.
She pressed a plate of cookies in his hand and beamed. “Right out of the oven. Oatmeal pecan—it’s my great-granny’s recipe.”
Matt held the plate a little farther out from his body. He was deathly allergic to pecans. “Thank you.” She seemed to expect something else, so he paused for a moment before adding, “Did, ah, you guys get the notice about the field trip next week? I think we’re still short a few chaperones, so if you’re free...”
“Oh, I’m free. Absolutely. Count me in.” The words were shot rapid-fire. As her clothes indicated, Tara was very energetic.
“I’d love to help too, but my job as a legal secretary keeps me so busy during the day, you know?” Nadine’s job as a legal secretary had been mentioned so many times throughout the course of the school year Matt sometimes heard it in his sleep. “We didn’t all divorce a big-shot director with alimony to spare. But I can volunteer in the evenings. Any time.”
Matt smiled and nodded, awkwardly holding the cookies so far out a bird could have swooped down and taken every last one. He appreciated that Tara and Nadine took an active interest in their kids, but he hadn’t yet learned how to straddle the line between professionally friendly and not interested.
He fought a sigh. This sort of thing had never happened before the divorce.
Whitney, of course, seemed to take all of this in at a glance, sensing his distress—not that she appeared to have any plans to save him. As though she’d come by merely to spectate, she continued resting against the tree, managing to look amused and relaxed at the same time.
Don’t just stand there—help me, he mouthed, being careful not to draw the attention of the two women, who had squared off to discuss the comparative merits of being a working mom versus a stay-at-home one. Nadine and her legal secretary background were currently in the lead.
He thought for a minute that maybe Whitney misunderstood or was willfully ignoring him, but with a slow, satisfied smile, she pushed off from the tree and sauntered over as if she owned the place. That had to be a thing of hers—that sense of entitlement. It seemed somehow ingrained.
“Hello, ladies,” she said coolly. A quick appraisal determined that she wasn’t wearing anything low cut or revealing, being dressed in skintight jeans and a bright orange top, but she still seemed to swell larger than life, taking over all the air and space.
Or maybe that was just him.
“I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Whitney.” She extended her arm, confident and strong, holding it there until the women had no choice but to take it. “I’m so sorry to have to whisk your child’s teacher away like this, but I’m having a bikini wax in an hour and Matt always holds my hand during the appointment.”
She did not just—
Whitney clasped his hand and beamed, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “And then we always take that baby out for a test drive.”
She did.
But even as Matt’s face burned and he heard echoes of the adage to watch out for cures that were worse than the disease, he felt a smile form on his lips. Maybe he would have adopted a more subtle approach, but there was no denying Whitney’s version got results. He had a feeling she always got results.
“Oh, my stars, I had no idea.” Nadine cocked her head and stared at Matt. “You have got to be the sweetest man on the face of the planet.”
“Thank you,” he managed, striving to keep a straight face. “I try.”
“You are so lucky,” Tara added, her words directed warmly at Whitney. “I couldn’t even get Gio’s daddy to come to the ultrasounds.”
“I know.” Whitney wrapped an arm around Matt’s waist and squeezed him. “And you wouldn’t believe how great he is with those hands.”
Both women looked down at his hands with interest. As far as he could tell, they were just hands, chapped from excessive washing but otherwise unrema
rkable.
“He gives great foot rub,” she added. “Honestly, though, I’m just so grateful to have him in my life. And I know he just loves those kids of yours. It takes a special kind of man to step up for this kind of job. He’s society’s hero, if you ask me. A real pillar of the community.”
Tara and Nadine nodded, beaming at him.
“I couldn’t agree more.” Tara grabbed the plate from Matt and foisted it into Whitney’s hands. “You enjoy those cookies, both of you.”
“Thank you. We will.” Whitney smiled, taking over the conversation with ease, her lips rolling over the word we in a way that made Matt’s insides grow taut with expectation. “And I’ll make sure this gorgeous man of mine brings the plate back when we’re done.”
They stood chatting for a few more moments before the moms took their leave, crises averted, now on perfectly amiable terms with one another.
Matt took a moment to squat to the boys’ level, careful to look them both in the eye. “Remember what I said about your homework tonight. What is it we’re working on, again?”
Giovanni scowled. “I’m s’posed to say please and thank you, ’specially to my mom.”
He ignored the outburst of feminine “awwws” at Giovanni’s recitation. It wasn’t doing these kids any favors for them to think being polite was anything other than what they owed every fellow human being. “And I think you’ll do great at it. What else? James?”
“Look for shapes and write ’em in our journals. My Wii is a white square. I already know that one.”
“You might try looking outside too. There are some really good shapes in nature.” He stood and brushed off his knees. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow, okay?”
He refused to make eye contact with Whitney as Tara and Nadine dragged their sons away, fearful that any sort of acknowledgement of what had just happened would have him rolling on the ground in tears of laughter.
Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t acutely aware of her watching him. He defied anyone to ignore that kind of intensity—they might as well try to turn off the sun. But then she picked up one of the cookies and began nibbling, so he jumped away.
The Rebound Girl (Getting Physical) Page 4