Something About You (Just Me & You) (13 page)

She looked at Sabrina expectantly.

“I dunno. Who?”

“Les.” Molly aimed the bowl of her spoon at Sabrina. “You’re
like Nola if her life jumped the shark.”

Molly had a way of cutting close to the knuckle sometimes.
Oh,
god
, Sabrina thought gloomily.
I really do have daddy issues.

“D’you think if I’d stayed married to Jackson, he would have
had an illicit
affair d’coeur
?” she asked.

Molly shrugged. “That’s one possible outcome. There are
others.”

“You think
I
would have eventually had an affair?”
Sabrina asked, embarrassed that her best friend’s insinuations hadn’t exactly
left her aghast.

“Jackson didn’t exactly frost your cupcake, Brini,” came the
frank reply. “What do
you
think?” 

Sabrina didn’t want to ponder over Molly’s rhetoricals
tonight. Her best friend was right. Leftover champagne retained its fizzle
longer than the brief-lived physical attraction Sabrina had felt for her ex.
And it had gone flat before Jackson had started getting the marriage itch. Had
they stayed together, it would have only been a matter of time before one of
them got a roving eye.

History would have repeated itself.

“How did you come up with this, Molls?” she asked. 

“Because it makes sense. And because I’ve known you all of
your life. You’re an only child, but astonishingly, you have no clue how to
fill your downtime. That’s when you make poor decisions. That’s when you start
dating men like boring ol’ Jackson.”

“You’re probably right.” Sabrina frowned and twirled her
index finger around her bangs. “Sometimes I still dare dream about the
impossible — or rather, the improbable.”

“What’s that?” Molly asked with curiosity.

Sabrina gave a meek shrug. “That twenty years from now, I’ll
be in a blissfully happy marriage. You know, sort of like—” She clamped her
lips shut. Finishing the sentence would pull her into a bittersweet mood. But
Molly had already read her mind.

“—Like Grandma Ella?” she asked softly.

Sabrina nodded. The two friends smiled as they shared a
moment of reflection. For as far back as she could remember Sabrina couldn’t
think of a single cross word spoken between Ike and Ella Fontaine. Ike used to
brag about his “beautiful bride” to his wife’s customers and boarders, and
Grandma Ella’s face would crease with girlish delight. The way the couple
coddled, teased and doted on each other gave people the impression that they
were perpetually courting.

Marriages like the Fontaines’ — marriages that spanned
more than six decades — weren’t very common, Sabrina thought longingly,
although Molly and Sebastian were looking like strong contenders.

“Molls, I really don’t want to end up alone.” Sabrina
despised the forlorn note she heard in her voice. She thought of the seasoned
female staffers that populated the legislature, many of whom were much older
than she was and were divorced or devoutly single. She was supposed to be a
strong woman, damn it. Not a needy one.

“Then don’t,” Molly said, as though it were that simple.
“Mr. Right will come around once you’ve sorted yourself out. In the meantime,
there’s legislative session. I’m sure you’ll keep yourself busy getting Theo to
ribbon cuttings and fancy soirees.”

“Keeping him out of trouble is more like it,” Sabrina
muttered, setting a mental reminder to pick up more Febreze on her way to work
the next morning.

Molly smiled a dulcet smile and added, “And now you have
Gage.”

“For what, exactly?” Sabrina wondered what Molly was getting
at.

“Gosh, let me think,” her friend replied innocently. “You
could see movies at the Alamo Drafthouse. Maybe drink beer together. You could
try out new restaurants that serve bizarre world cuisine or check out the
latest band—”

Sabrina tilted her head and gave Molly a pained look.

“—Or the two of you could just sit around your house and
converse,” Molly concluded weakly.

“All of that sounds an awful lot like dating.”

“So—?” Molly gave her a look that let her fill in the rest:
What’s
the problem?

Sabrina was aghast. “Oh, geez. Oh, Molls.
Gage?
‘Fitz
and Giggles?’
Tattoos
?”

“He has body art. So what?” Molly carried their plates to
the sink. “He’s kind to the eyes even with the ink. Especially with the ink, if
you ask me. He’s got a wicked sense of humor, he’s intelligent, and most
importantly, he’s not threatened by strong women.”

Now everything was becoming clearer.

“Please,
please
tell me you did not have an agenda
when you suggested I take Gage on as a boarder,” Sabrina begged.

Molly meant well. But her way of horizon-expanding had a way
of backfiring. In ninth grade, Molly had convinced Sabrina to choose art as an
elective course. Sabrina quickly grew impatient with the slender, delicate
brushes and tiny tubes of paint, which she had to mix, dab and stroke into
recognizable elements. Her semester project, an unintentionally abstract,
blue-themed blur she titled “Horizon,” blew her straight-A average.

“Honestly, Sabrina,” Molly demurred. “Do you think I’d try
to orchestrate your love life?”

Sabrina didn’t want to answer that question.

“You don’t understand, Molls,” she said. “Everything feels
so complicated right now. I came
this
close to losing my house.
Sometimes I think it would have been easier to — oh, never mind.” Sabrina
let her shoulders slump.

“What?” Molly pressed.

Sabrina gulped. “To stay married to Jackson.”

“Hush your mouth, Sabrina Jane March!” Molly looked
horrified. “Don’t ever think of that again. Remember Zarabeth Singer?”

“Oh, good lord,” Sabrina groaned. “Who could forget her?”

Zarabeth was a slightly younger girl who had lived on the
same block when Molly and Sabrina were children. The three of them had hung out
together on the porch of Ella’s on many a Saturday, drinking Orange Crush
straight out of the bottle while the old men played dominoes and their wives
gossiped inside the bakery. Zarabeth had been raised by her two great-aunts,
Emily and Otille, and they had remained devotedly stuck in an era when women
still came with dowries and hope chests. The aunties’ attitudes had rubbed off,
and Zara had been marriage-crazed by the tender age of ten. The last Sabrina
heard, Zara led a pampered but miserable existence living with a man with more
money than heart.

“So now what?” Molly crossed her arms and set them on the
table.

“So now there are five bottles of tequila on my mantle and
I’m living with a man I barely know who seems to have nothing but ill-veiled
contempt for me.”

“What?” Molly looked concerned. “That doesn’t sound like
Gage. You two seemed to be getting along when he came over to the house the
other night. Unless, of course, there’s something you’re not telling me.”

Now was as good a time as any to come clean. To tell Molly
about the heavy petting that took place at her un-wedding and the subsequent
humiliation of having their interlude described on air. Then she saw the
genuine compassion brimming in Molly’s eyes and decided against it.

“We just don’t get along after all. Gage thinks I’m a —
a—” What else did he think about her that he wasn’t letting on? “He thinks I
was cloned,” Sabrina choked.

“Oh, Brini!”

“Never mind,” Sabrina muttered. She needed to get over
herself. “The most important thing is that I still have my home, right?”

“Right.” Molly looked at her with sympathy. “Need a
sleepover?”

“Do you mind terribly?”

Nestled in the sewing room in her old bed, Sabrina struggled
to fall asleep. Her thoughts were smash-banging around, replaying snippets of
unrelated events. Theo haranguing her about accidentally ordering unrecycled
stationery. Jackson’s pinched face when she said,
I’ll let you file first
.
A silver quarter landing on Gage’s arm.

The front door opened and closed, sending a draft of cool,
musty air into the room. Now she could hear Molly and Sebastian talking in
their bedroom. Something about replacing the gutters, extra table leafs and
butternut squash.

Oh yes, Thanksgiving’s coming …

The sound of their voices finally lulled her to sleep.

Gage stared at the flawless face of the pretty palomino
blonde looking at him from across the table at Intermezzo, a popular outdoor
coffee, gelato and pastry joint overlooking Ladybird Lake, and waited for a
visceral reaction to kick in. Instead, he found himself wondering what his date
had looked like before she got cheek implants.

Tara Reese, assistant spa manager, was proof that there was
a direct correlation between eternal beauty and spending power. Damn if the
woman wasn’t completely ageless, Gage thought, watching her carefully mete out
exactly half a packet of sugar into her cup of green tea. She could have been
twenty-five or forty-five or any number in between. In addition to the custom
34Ds Gideon had extolled, she’d had other “work” done, as women put it, her
features carefully sculpted by a master of plastics.

Gage had to admit that it was good work.

It’s just that there was so
much
of it …

“Do you always ask women to meet you for coffee on a first
date?” Tara smiled, crinkling her perfectly bobbed nose. Although it was chilly
out, she wore a bright pink halter top that displayed an impressive amount of
cleavage, Daisy Duke jean shorts, and those shearling-lined boots that were so
popular with women these days. Surely she had to be cold, Gage thought,
noticing the goose bumps that had popped up on her long, shapely thighs.

“Only if it’s right before payday,” he replied jokingly,
taking a sip of his plain black cuppa joe. “After that, it’s all sirloin and
good shiraz.”

Tara trilled out a laugh and reached for her mug of tea.
Yeah, she was quite a “bee-
yoot
,” as the guys at the station with would
say. She had perfected the art of the unmade-up face so well, Gage felt like he
was looking at her through a soft-focus lens. Other men would have been
chomping at the bit to get a piece of that action unless they questioned their
sexual orientation. He had no doubt about his, but curiously, the beautiful
woman with the hot body sitting across from him roused his libido with all of
the force of his coffee stirrer.

There had to be something wrong with him.

No, worse than wrong.
Defective.

“You’re just as funny in real life as you are on air.” Tara
gave him one of those practiced charming smiles that women flashed when they
were trying to make a good impression. “Where did you get your sense of humor
from?”

“My grandpa. I’m the last male in the Fitzgerald line, so I
suppose he had to pass the torch to someone.” Gage had sat through enough
coffee dates with women who were interested in him because of what he did. He
knew what they expected from him. Old-fashioned small-town-boy courtesy and
down-to-earthiness coupled with the quick wit they associated with his alter
ego, Fitz. Only given the problems that weighed on his mind, it was hard to get
the exact ratios right these days.

“So what’s your story?” she asked. “Why is a man like you
single?”

“A combination of choice and circumstance,” he replied. “And
you?”

“I’m just getting back into the dating game after a tough
divorce.” Tara idly fidgeted with the clasp of her gold tennis bracelet with a
worried look. “I hope that doesn’t scare you off.”

“Hey, life happens. Were you married long?” Gage gave her an
easy grin and lifted his coffee cup to his lips.

“Nine years. No—” Tara rolled her eyes skyward while she
recalculated the time. “—I guess it’d be eleven, if you count the two years me
and my ex-husband were separated. We didn’t exactly make a clean break.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Gage said sympathetically and left
it at that. Former relationships weren’t a topic that he enjoyed discussing on
a first date. Well, there was one exception: Sabrina and her ridiculous one-day
marriage. For some reason, he’d had a lot of fun coaxing the details out of her
while she was pouring Shuck’s expensive port down her throat.

Ever since he had moved in, Maid March had made herself
extremely scarce, coming in late or sometimes not at all. He figured she was
staying over at Molly’s house. A week went by, and he had seen her only twice,
when she was brewing herself a pot of decaf in the kitchen. Instead of heels
and suit dresses, she wore loose sweaters over black leggings. With her face
scrubbed clean of makeup and her streaky hair tucked around her ear, she looked
much younger. Prettier, even. And a bit bohemian too, sort of like an art
school student slumming it between finals.

Unlike most women he had known, Sabrina didn’t talk just for
the sake of talking. Gage found himself appreciating a woman who used words
efficiently and economically. When he asked her to meet him at the market that
night for a joint grocery shopping venture, she had simply sighed and said,
“Whatever, Fitzgerald.”

That wasn’t the situation Gage found himself in now. When
he’d first pulled up in Intermezzo’s parking lot, he had hoped to god that Tara
wasn’t one of those women who had perfected the art of the boring love life
monologue. Unfortunately, she was. He really didn’t like hearing about what
went on in her personal life in great detail. Gage forced himself to listen
politely while she described the demise of her marriage. His ears registered
all of the timeworn, clichéd reasons and tried to stave off his boredom because
hell, the poor woman’s marriage had ended.
Something changed. We became more
like brother and sister. We just grew apart.
Then with practiced fluidity
that suggested she’d told them all before, she went into the finer details of
the legal wrangling that transpired between their divorce attorneys.

Gage sipped his coffee and zoned out, occasionally snapping
himself out of it to nod understandingly or utter a platitude. The most he
could do was ride this one out and try to enjoy the fact that men passing by
were almost tripping over themselves trying to sneak a peek down his date’s
impressive cleavage. He prayed he never had to go through what Tara had gone
through. Especially if it involved—

“—the kids,” she said. “They’ve been through a lot. They still
love both of us, but it’s hard for them not to pick sides. Are your parents
together?” She looked at him with friendly curiosity.

“No,” Gage said, hoping that Tara wouldn’t ask him any more
questions about his family or childhood. Those topics were off-limits with
everyone except for close friends like Sebastian.

“Then you probably remember how hard that was,” she sighed.
“If any kids can get through their parents’ divorce, that’d be my boys. They’re
tough.”

“How old are they?” Gage knew that it was considered polite
to ask. 

“Three and five. They’re just so yummy, you’ll want to eat
them up.” Tara’s face lit up with motherly pride. “Would you want to see
pictures?” she asked hopefully, reaching for her purse.

Here we go
, Gage thought with dread. The kid pictures
again. He never knew why women insisted on showing him something so personal on
a first date. He was pretty sure it was some kind of a test. He smiled as Tara
displayed a wallet shot of two little tow-headed boys sitting on Santa’s knee.
Judging by the terrified looks on their little faces, neither of the children
had been particularly happy to be there.

“They’re real cute,” Gage commented when Tara continued to
display the photo.

“They’re even more adorable in person, and they mind well,” she
assured him as she put her wallet away. “Do you want children of your own?”

Gage looked around to make sure that she was talking to him.
It was a question women asked other women. Not a question women asked men over
hot beverages at Intermezzo on a first date.

“I’ve never given it too much thought,” he replied honestly.
“When it comes to relationships, I’m not what most of my friends would consider
a forward thinker.”

He slipped his cell phone from his pocket and covertly
checked the time on the display. It was almost seven-forty, and he was supposed
to meet Sabrina at the Grab & Go at eight. He needed to wrap things up and
get to the market, pronto.

“I always wanted to be a mom, ever since I was a kid
myself,” Tara looked off into the distance, a nostalgic smile playing around
her mouth. “My girl friends wanted to be ballerinas and actresses and rock
stars. Not me. I used to dream about how nice it would be to stay at home and
take care of my babies. But like you said, life happens.” Then her expression
changed, and she gave Gage a direct, practical look. “I suppose I should
probably be upfront with you. I want a healthy relationship with a man who’s
ready to have one. But I don’t want to get my hopes up if you’re not
interested. I know this is going to come across as me being presumptuous, but
I’d like to know if you’re going to ask me out again.”

Shit
, Gage thought wearily. There was only one thing
left to do. Level with her. It was the right thing to do. He looked Tara right
in the eyes and said, “No, I’m not.”

“Is it because I’m divorced?” she asked.

“God, no,” Gage assured her quickly, feeling terrible at the
hurt look in her eyes.

“Is it …” Tara bit her lower lip and stared at the table.
“…is it because I’m a single mom? A lot of guys seem to have problems with
that.”

Gage knew there was a right way and a wrong way to answer
that question and that if he were completely frank with her, she’d label him as
one of
those
men even if she didn’t come right out and throw it in his
face. The selfish rat bastard who scratched a woman off his “to-do” list
because she had the misfortune to have started a family with a man who turned
out to be Mr. Seriously Wrong On All Levels. And it wouldn’t be completely
true. At least he didn’t think so. He was in a position to take care of only
one person right: himself. 

He sure as hell couldn’t take care of three more.

And he wasn’t sure that would ever change.

The best way to respond to her question was by asking one of
his own. “Why did you ask Gideon to give me your business card, Tara?”

“Wow, what a weird question,” she said, nonplussed. “I
wanted you to know that I was interested in you.”

“You didn’t know a single thing about me. I could be a total
jerk, for all you knew. I guess what I’m trying to ask is, why me?” Gage
already knew why. He just needed to hear the answer.

“We-
hell
.” Tara drew out the word, sneaking a coy
look at him from underneath her lashes. “You’re a hot guy with an even hotter
body. You make me laugh, both on the air and off.
And
—” She lifted her
cup with a smile. “—you paid for my tea. You’d be surprised at how many men
want to go Dutch on a first date.”

They were reasonable answers. But Gage had heard them all
before. And they weren’t the answers he needed to hear.

“Look, Tara, I have a confession.” He cupped his hands
around his coffee cup firmly just in case she yielded to the need to throw it
at him. “I’m not ‘healthy relationship’ material. Hell, I don’t even think I’ve
ever been in one before. I know why you’re here, but damned if I know why I am.
What I do know is that we’ve been sitting here talking for two hours, and I’m
not feeling the magic. I don’t think you are either.”

“But we’re just getting to know each other. Please don’t
tell me you’re one of those guys who believe in love at first sight.” Tara
rolled her eyes, but there was an anxious edge in her voice.

“No, I’m not one of those guys,” Gage said soberly. “But I
know who I’m looking for. I want a woman who makes me want to shut up — not
because she feels like talking but because she has something so interesting to
say it leaves me speechless. I want a woman who sees the picture even bigger
than I do, somebody who always keeps me on my toes. I’m a slow learner, Tara. I
might not fall for her the first time I see her, but I hope to god she doesn’t
get away before I realize she’s the one. Somehow I don’t think that you and
me…” He shook his head and corrected himself. “I just didn’t
think
.”

“But your friend Gideon told me that—” Tara looked
distinctly confused. “—He said you thought I was smokin’ hot.”

Gage looked around him, at the tables occupied by happy duos
of all ages. College students flirting. Married couples in their thirties and
forties and older, engrossed in more serious conversations. Some just sat
together in calm, settled silence.

“You are a very beautiful woman,” he said. “Hell, you’re the
most beautiful woman here. But that’s not the problem. Gideon orchestrated all
this without my knowledge or consent. Otherwise I wouldn’t have called.”

She blinked in astonishment. “So why did you even bother?”

“If I hadn’t, you would have thought I was an asshole.” Now
Gage wished he’d at least made the two hours worth her while. She’d probably
had to hire a sitter for her kids, and sitters cost money. The least he could
have done was ask her to meet him at someplace with table service.

“So that’s the truth,” he went on. “I owe it to you, Tara.
Not a cup of damned green tea.”

Her pale blue eyes briefly registered surprise before they
narrowed into slits of irritation. She opened her mouth to say something and
then closed it, shaking her head. He released the cup, resigned to the
intensity of her Bunsen burner glare.

Go ahead. Let me have it
, he thought.

“You
are
an asshole,” Tara choked as she grabbed her
handbag. She slung it over her shoulder and got to her feet, pushing stray
strands of ash-blond hair away from her face angrily.

Gage watched her stalk away. This disaster of an evening
hadn’t been her fault. No, he laid sole claim to that. Something had changed
the night he kissed Sabrina. He didn’t know exactly what had changed or why. It
was easier to guestimate by process of elimination. She wasn’t in love with
him. And he definitely wasn’t in love with her.