Looking Real Good

by C. Morgan

  The brake lights of the Rover flashed red when Art pulled over up ahead. We turned from the path, crossed the grass, and approached the car just as the sky let loose the first couple drops of rain.

  Kayla slid into the back seat and I held the door open for her.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a ride back to your building?” she asked, eyes full of concern and guilt. “It’s going to start raining.”

  “I want to walk. Might as well mess up the suit once and for all, right?”

  She smiled, and I was glad for that. “Okay. We’ll talk soon?”

  “Soon.” I closed the door and stepped back. The windows of the SUV were too tinted for me to see through, but I watched her pull away nonetheless.

  Once the car was out of sight, I turned toward the downtown core and began my slow procession to my office tower, under which my Lykan was parked. All the while, I thought about Kayla, the kiss, and the soft sigh that had escaped her when I pulled her in close.

  The sky was still heavy with clouds the following morning when I arrived at my mother’s assisted living home. There was a new plant in the lobby, a palm-leafed, tall thing that looked like it belonged in Los Angeles, not Seattle, and it was full of white twinkling lights. A card on the front of it had a note about which family had given it to the home as a gift. I didn’t bother going over to read it. Instead, I made my way to my mother’s room, where I found her cross-stitching.

  She looked up when I entered and smiled, and I knew right away that this was a good day to visit.

  She knew who I was.

  She beamed. “Lukas, you’re all grown up.”

  “I am,” I said as I pushed the door closed behind me. It clicked softly into place. “And you’re cross-stitching. I haven’t seen you do that in ages.” I moved across the room and sat down across from her on a chair drowning in pillows and knitted blankets. “What are you making?”

  My mother held the small circular cross-stitched picture up. It was a bouquet of flowers against a white backdrop. One stem hung limp from the rest, its petals sad and wilted.

  “It’s beautiful,” I told her.

  “It’s a little messy. Could be better. Could be worse.” She put it down on the table beside an empty cup of tea. “How are you?”

  “I’m good.”

  “You have that look.”

  “What look?”

  “The look of a son who wants to talk to his mother about something important.”

  How her mind could be ebbing away but still be so sharp, I would never know. I sighed. “Do you remember Kayla Goodfellow?”

  “Lisa’s friend? Of course, I remember Kayla. Sweet girl. Charming girl. A girl who was most definitely going places. How is she?”

  “She’s good,” I said.

  My mother leaned forward. Her chair creaked. The shawl over her shoulders slipped away and settled behind her. “And who is she to you now?”

  “A friend, Mom. Just a friend.”

  “A mother always knows when her child isn’t being honest with her.”

  My mouth twitched.

  My mother pointed it out. “You see? I know you, Lukas. Now tell me what you came here to tell me. Go on. I’m listening.”

  I took advantage of her day of clarity and came clean. I told her how Lisa had arranged for Kayla and me to work together, and I told her how I’d been growing closer to Kayla and how I couldn’t stop thinking about her. All the while, my mother listened with a knowing twinkle in her eye that was both rewarding to see and irritating. She’d always been a bit of a smartass, and on days where she was lucid like this, that quality shone through.

  “I’m proud of you,” my mother said once I’d told her about how things ended with me and Kayla on the Sound last night. “It’s nice to see you finally interested in something other than money and financial stability. Can I give you some advice?”

  “Please.” The word sounded weak in my ears.

  My mother reached out, took my hand in hers, and looked me in the eyes. “Follow your heart. There will always be more board meetings. More conference calls. More software to build and lines of code to write. But love? Dear boy, the real thing only comes around once, and that’s if you’re lucky. Don’t let it slip through your fingers, David. You’ll regret it one day.”

  David.

  That was my father’s name.

  My heart went cold and hard in my chest. I pulled my hand free and leaned back. “Your advice is as good as ever.”

  She smiled and patted my knee. “Who are you kidding? You never listened to my advice a day in your life. That’s why we never worked. You were too stubborn. And I was too—”

  “Good for me,” I said. My father had never been good enough for my mother and he knew it. That was why he’d left in the first place, and it was why he never came back.

  And it was why I never missed him.

  Chapter 16

  Kayla

  “Can I try one of those?” Lisa leaned forward on her elbows to peer over at my plate.

  I nodded and let her skewer one of the curried shrimp on my salad. She took a candied pecan and some greens as well, popped them in her mouth, and chewed gratefully while pressing her thumb and forefinger together in a symbol of perfection.

  “Damn, that’s good,” she said, pointing at my plate with her fork. “I’m getting that next time.”

  It had better be good. The damn salad was costing me an arm and a leg. Who in their right mind could charge twenty-one dollars for a salad and still have a clear conscience? I wished I’d checked the price before I ordered but I thought I was on the safe side by ordering a bowl of greens and uncooked veggies. Apparently not. I would have to cut back somewhere else this week to make up for it.

  “So Lukas told me he had an awesome time out at the farm with you and the kids the other day,” Lisa said. “He wouldn’t shut up about it actually. Kept going on and on about how he needs to get out more and how good it was to be out in nature. Nature?” She scoffed. “Who’d have thought Lukas would ever rekindle his love for the outdoors?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Yeah, true, like Lukas wearing jeans. He wore jeans the other day, Kayla. Who is my brother and what did you do to him on that farm?”

  I hoped my red cheeks didn’t betray me as I sipped my water to buy myself time to respond. “I think it was the kids, not me. He bonded with a little girl named Angelica. He was really sweet with her, Lisa. You should have seen it.”

  “He told me about her. Said she was the reason he wanted to fund the lunch program. I can’t believe how easy it was to pull off. I thought you’d have to work on him for days to get him to come around. Weeks even. But you did it all in one afternoon. See? I knew you’d have the magic touch.”

  Magic touch or magic kiss?

  “In case you were wondering, his interview went well with Rebecca Mills yesterday,” Lisa said matter-of-factly. She paused to take a bite of her lettuce wrap and dabbed chili sauce from the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “He was raving about the apple orchard and the educational value the field trip provided for the kids. He name dropped you like six hundred times.”

  I blushed. “Oh.”

  “That’s a good thing, Kayla. Don’t sweat it. Good Fellow’s is going to get more free publicity from Lukas than you could orchestrate in a year.”

  That was one way to look at it.

  “Anyway,” Lisa continued, “Rebecca asked him what sort of action came out of the day at the orchard and he told her all about the school lunch program and his plans to fund it with local produce and food from Seattle-based small businesses. I have to ask, was that his idea or yours?”

  “That was all Lukas.”

  Lisa grinned like a proud mother bear. “That makes me really happy to hear. I can’t thank you enough, Kayla. Seriously. What you’re doing for my brother and his reputation… well, I don’t think I have the right words to express just how much it means to me.”

  Gu
ilt rippled through my belly. “I’m the one who should be thanking you and your brother. Because of him, Rodney and I are going to be able to feed thousands of hungry kids. The best part is, I don’t have to worry about finding where to get the money next year. Lukas is in it for the long haul.”

  “Maybe my brother isn’t as far gone as I thought,” Lisa said before diving back in for another bite of her lettuce wrap.

  I wondered if that was true. I had seen a different side of Lukas this past week. But I’d also seen the disappointed side. Driving away from him at Puget Sound had not been easy.

  Did things have to be this way between me and him? Was our only option to resign ourselves to the fact that we could be nothing more than professional colleagues?

  Maybe it was time to put some feelers out there and find out.

  “Hey, Lisa?”

  My friend looked up at me. “What’s up?”

  “What would you think about Lukas starting to date again now that he’s started to loosen up and he’s not so married to his work?”

  Lisa shrugged one shoulder. Her cardigan slipped free and she pulled it back up. “I hope he finds someone, but I’ll be honest. I don’t think it’s in the cards for him anytime soon. He has a lot to be careful about like gold diggers and such. Once the articles start getting published, I expect things will get worse before they get better and women will start throwing themselves at him looking for a night out with Seattle’s most eligible bachelor. I guess I’m just wary. Why?”

  “Just curious,” I said thinly.

  “My brother isn’t one for dating anyway. I don’t think he wants something serious. He’s enjoying the single life, you know? No attachments. No responsibilities. No commitments to spend a certain amount of time with a woman so she doesn’t feel neglected. His lifestyle doesn’t permit room for a girlfriend and the timing is bad.”

  Disappointment settled in place of the guilt I’d felt moments before. “Right, that makes sense.”

  “My brother is a fool anyway.” Lisa laughed. “What girl in their right mind would want to date him unless they were in it for the money?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  The girl who’s known him almost his whole life and knows all his darkest corners and feels safe in his brightest rooms.

  Lisa flagged down the server and put a fifty-dollar bill on the table. “I have to run back to the office. Thank you for meeting me for lunch. It was a nice break. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Lisa, you don’t have to pay for lunch. I can—”

  “Nonsense, I want to. Besides, Lukas pays me really well. So technically, lunch is on him.”

  Lisa got up, slung her purse over her shoulder, and bid me one last farewell before she hurried out of the restaurant and out of sight. She left me with a few bites of salad left and I told the server to keep the change when he came by. He was delighted by his twelve-dollar tip.

  I left shortly after and hopped on the bus to ride down to my office. It was only a fifteen-minute ride from the restaurant and I was inside flipping the closed sign to the open side before one thirty in the afternoon. I tucked into my desk and opened my computer to start responding to emails.

  There were over two hundred in my inbox that I needed to get through.

  The feeling of overwhelm left me paralyzed. My mind hadn’t been fully on work lately. And by lately, I meant since Lukas came back into my life and shook everything up like a snow globe, minus the magical feelings and perfect flakes of glitter. He’d shaken it up in a confusing, messy, stressful sort of way. I wasn’t supposed to have any of the feelings that caught me off guard at random points of the day every time I thought of him.

  And I wasn’t supposed to think of him twenty times a day either.

  Something was wrong with me. I’d turned back into that lovesick girl who’d pined over her best friend’s older brother with the charming smile and bad boy attitude. He still had both of those things but a bit more class and flair now.

  And money.

  Twenty minutes passed and I only got through two emails.

  I slumped forward on my desk and rested my forehead on the back of my hands. “I’m screwed.”

  My office door opened. I lifted my forehead from my knuckles and blinked up at Rodney, who stood backlit by the sunny afternoon with a grin on his face and a bottle of some kind in one hand. In the other were two plastic champagne flutes that looked like they were from the dollar store.

  “Rodney?”

  “Hey, Kayla,” he said as he approached my desk. Out of the soup kitchen, he looked much less the ragged man that I was used to seeing. Instead of chunky black shoes with thick rubber soles, he wore a plain brown boot with no laces. He looked good in his dark green chinos and cream-colored polo shirt. He wore a thin brown jacket and looked the part of a successful entrepreneur instead of an exhausted kitchen worker. He set the bottle down and I realized it was champagne. “I’m glad you’re here. I brought wine so we could celebrate.”

  “Celebrate?”

  “Yes, celebrate. I owe you a big one. I can’t believe you got the entire school lunch program funded! I knew you wouldn’t let me down but I had no idea you’d secure this kind of funding. It’s mindboggling and it’s probably the most wine-worthy thing that’s happened to either of us in a long time.”

  I smiled and closed my laptop. “I honestly hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Probably because you’re running yourself ragged going all over town making everyone else’s day better. Please tell me you can spare a minute to have a drink with a friend.”

  I couldn’t spare a minute. Not really. But then again, when had I ever been able to say yes to that question and be telling the truth?

  “I’d love to have a drink with you,” I said.

  Rodney clapped his hands together enthusiastically. “That’s what I wanted to hear. I only have one problem.”

  “And what might that be?”

  He grimaced. “I forgot to bring a corkscrew.”

  Chuckling and shaking my head at his forgetfulness, I went over to the three-tiered table upon which I kept my electric kettle. In the top shelf, tucked away in a wicker basket I’d found that fit snug in the opening, were all my tea bags and fixings. In the second drawer were non-perishable snacks like individual bags of chips, granola bars, dried apricots, crackers, and trail mix that had been untouched for months because I’d eaten all the chocolate out of the bag. I crouched down and opened the bottom drawer which held my hidden mess. The junk drawer overflowed with random items including a tape measure, a bedazzled hammer Lisa had bought me eons ago as a grand-opening present when I secured the lease on my office, and other things like extra light bulbs, batteries, lighters, and miscellaneous debris. One such debris item was a silver corkscrew with a blue rubber grip.

  “Aha,” I declared victoriously when I found it in the back corner of the drawer. I popped up to my feet and spun to face Rodney. “We’re in luck.”

  Rodney took the corkscrew and opened the bottle of wine. He poured us each a glass in our flute and apologized for the champagne flutes. “Originally, I was going to buy champagne,” he said as he lifted his glass to his lips, “but the price tags were a little off-putting.”

  “I prefer red over bubbly anyway. Cheers, Rodney. To the kids.”

  “To the kids.” He grinned. “And to the greatest non-profit director in the world, and an incomparable woman as well.”

  “I don’t know about that.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. There he went, always making things a tad uncomfortable for me.

  “I swear you could squeeze money out of a stone with those little fists of yours.”

  “If that was true, I’d have a much nicer office.”

  Rodney laughed. I’d always thought he had a nice laugh, even if it sometimes did seem a little exaggerated. “What are you talking about? You have a great office.” He looked around and the corner of his mouth turned down. “Although I suppose a fresh coat of
paint couldn’t hurt. But hey, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to toast to your brilliant mind and persuasive skills. How did you convince that scrooge to give us money anyway?”

  “I didn’t—”

  Movement to my left caught my eye. I shut my mouth and turned, only to find Lukas standing in the doorway that had framed Rodney minutes ago. The sun was still shining at his back, casting his face into shadow, but I didn’t miss the glint in his eye as his gaze landed on me.

  “Lukas,” I breathed.

  I couldn’t read his face or hardly make it out in the shadows that fell across him, but I could feel his energy, and it wasn’t warm and friendly.

  I swallowed and nodded at Rodney. “Would you like a glass of wine, Lukas? Rodney and I—he’s the manager and coordinator at the soup kitchen—were just going to toast to your donation and—”

  “I’m sorry, but something came up,” Lukas said smoothly. He simultaneously pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it up. “Duty calls.”

  With that, he turned his back on us and left.

  Rodney tipped his head back and took a sip of wine. “See? Told you. He’s a stone.”

  Chapter 17

  Lukas

  Who was the guy in the cheap polo shirt in Kayla’s office drinking wine with her? And why did his smug smile piss me off so much?

  I jerked on the hem of my suit jacket, pulling it sharply against my shoulder blades as I strode purposefully to my Lykan parked at the curb.

  I didn’t like seeing Kayla with him drinking wine and smiling at each other—like how I wanted her to smile at me. And what was that asshole saying? Something about her being able to squeeze money out of a stone?

  I stepped off the curb and walked around the hood of my car. The handles lifted automatically and I wrenched the door open. “Stone, my ass. I’m throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars their way and they’re toasting to what?” I slid into my seat and turned on the ignition.

  Was Kayla playing me? Was she only in this for my money after all?