I’m In No Mood For Love (3 page)

After his high school graduation, his father had sent him a plane ticket to Boise. He hadn’t used it. The first year he’d attended the University of Washington, his father wanted to visit him, but
he’d said no. He didn’t have the time for a father who hadn’t had the time for him. By the time he graduated, the relationship between his father and mother had become so acrimonious, he’d asked Leo not to attend the ceremony.

After graduating, he’d been busy building his career. Much too busy to stop and take time out of his life for his father. He’d interned at the
Seattle Times
, worked for several years for the Associated Press, and written hundreds of freelance pieces.

Sebastian had always lived his adult life untethered. Free-wheeling. Roaming the world without attachments to hold him back or tie him down. He always felt superior to the poor suckers who had to take time out to call home on a satellite phone. His attention was never split in different directions. He’d been dogged and determined and extremely focused.

His mother had always encouraged him in everything he’d done. She’d been his biggest supporter and most vocal cheerleader. He hadn’t seen her as much as he would have liked, but she’d always understood. Or at least had always said she did.

She had always been his family. His life was full. He and his father didn’t even know each other, and he’d never felt any desire to see him, always thought that if at some point in the future he felt the urge to reconnect with his father—perhaps in
his late forties when it was time to slow down—there would be time.

All that changed the day he put his mother in the ground.

He’d been in Alabama, deep into research, when he received the call that she was dead. Earlier that afternoon, while trimming her clematis, she’d taken a fall off a step stool. No fracture or cuts or scrapes. Just a bruise on her leg. That night, she died alone in her bed when an embolus traveled from her leg to her heart. She’d been fifty-four.

He hadn’t been there. Hadn’t even known she’d fallen. For the first time in his life he felt truly alone. For years he’d roamed the world, thinking himself free of strings. His mother’s death had truly cut him free, and for the first time he knew what it was like to be untethered. He also knew he’d been fooling himself. He hadn’t traveled the world without strings. They’d been there. The whole time. Keeping his life stable. Until now.

He had one living relative. Just one. A father he hardly knew. Hell, they didn’t know each other. It was no one’s fault, just the way things were. But maybe it was time they changed that. Time to spend a few days reconnecting with the old man. He didn’t think it would take long. He wasn’t looking for a Hallmark moment. Just something easy and free of the strain that existed between them.

He got out of the Land Cruiser and made his way across the thick green lawn to the flower garden rich with explosive color. Sebastian thought about the diamond stud in his pocket. He thought about giving it to Mrs. Wingate to return to Clare. He’d have to explain where he found it, and the thought brought a smile to his lips.

“Hello, Mrs. Wingate,” he greeted the older woman as he approached. Growing up, he’d hated Joyce Wingate. He’d blamed her for his sporadic and unfulfilled relationship with his father. He had gotten over it about the same time he’d quit blaming Clare. Not that he harbored any love toward Joyce. He didn’t have feelings one way or the other. Until that morning, he hadn’t had any thoughts one way or the other about Clare either. Now he did, and they weren’t nice thoughts.

“Hello, Sebastian,” she said, and placed a red rose in a basket hanging from her bent arm. Several ruby and emerald rings slid on her bony fingers. She wore a pair of cream-colored pants, a lavender blouse, and a huge straw hat. Joyce had always been extremely thin. The kind of thin that came from being in control of everything in her life. Her sharp features dominated her large face, and her wide mouth was usually pinched with disapproval. At least it had been whenever he was around, and he had to wonder if it was her acerbic personality
or her domineering ways that had always kept Mr. Wingate firmly planted on the East Coast.

Probably both.

Joyce had never been an attractive woman, not even when she was younger. But if someone shoved a gun in Sebastian’s ear and forced him to say something kind, he could say her eyes were an interesting shade of light blue. Like the irises growing at the edge in her garden. Like her daughter’s. The harsh features of the mother were smaller and much more feminine in the face of her daughter. Clare’s full lips softened the lines of her mouth, and she’d inherited a smaller nose, but the eyes were the same.

“Your father tells me you plan to leave him soon,” she said. “It’s a shame you can’t be persuaded to stay longer.”

Sebastian looked from the rose in Joyce’s basket up into her face. Into eyes that had shot blue flames at him as a kid. A huge bumblebee bumped along on a slight breeze, and Joyce waved it away. The only thing he saw in her eyes today was polite inquiry.

“I’m trying to talk him into staying at least through the coming week,” his father said as he pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his pants and wiped beads of sweat from his brow. Leo Vaughan was a few inches shorter than Sebastian
and his once brown hair was turning two-tone gray. The corners of his eyes had deep lines. His brows had gotten bushy in recent years and his “twenty minute naps” now seemed to last an hour. Leo would turn sixty-five at the end of the week, and Sebastian noticed that his father didn’t get around the Wingate garden as easily as he remembered. Not that he remembered a lot about his father. A few months here and a weekend there didn’t exactly make for copious childhood memories, but the one thing he did remember quite clearly was his father’s hands. They’d been big and strong enough to snap small branches and boards, gentle enough to pat a boy’s shoulder and rub his back. Dry and rough, the hands of a hardworking man. Now they were spotted with age and by his profession, the skin loose over his enlarged knuckles.

“I don’t really know how long I’ll stay,” he said, unable to commit to anything. Instead, he changed the subject. “I ran into Clare last night.”

Joyce bent to cut another rose. “Oh?”

“Where?” his father asked as he shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket.

“I met an old U.W. buddy at a bar in the Double Tree. He was there covering a Steelhead’s fund-raiser, and Clare said she’d been attending a wedding reception.”

“Yes, her friend Lucy was married yesterday.” Joyce nodded and her big hat dipped. “It won’t be long before Claresta marries her young man, Lonny. They’re very happy together. They have talked about having the wedding here in the garden next June. The flowers will be in bloom, and it will be just lovely that time of year.”

“Yeah, I think she mentioned Lonny.” Obviously, Joyce hadn’t heard the latest news. An awkward silence passed between them, or perhaps it was only awkward on his end because he knew there would be no June wedding. “I didn’t get the chance to ask Clare what she does for a living,” he said to fill the silence.

Joyce turned to her roses. “She writes novels, but not like your book.”

He didn’t know which shocked him more: that Mrs. Wingate knew enough about him to know he’d written a book, though his wasn’t a novel, or that Clare was a writer. “Really?” He would have thought she was a professional volunteer, like her mother. But he did have a vague memory of her telling him boring stories about an imaginary dog. “What’s she write? Women’s fiction?” he asked.

“Something like that,” Joyce answered, and the old blue flames he recognized flared in her eyes….

It wasn’t until later when Sebastian and his father were alone at dinner that he asked, “So, what does Clare really do for a living?”

“She’s writes novels.”

“I got that. What kind of novels?”

Leo pushed a bowl of green beans in Sebastian’s direction. “Romance novels.”

His hand stilled as he reached for the bowl. Little Claresta? The girl who thought kissing made babies? The weird-looking little girl with the thick glasses who’d grown into a beautiful woman? The beautiful woman who wore a little pink thong and made it look good? A romance writer? “No shit?”

“Joyce isn’t happy about it.”

He picked up the bowl and started to laugh. No shit.

“H
e told me it didn’t mean anything,” Clare said, and took a sip of coffee. “As if it was okay because he didn’t love the Sears repairman. It was the same excuse my third boyfriend used when I found him with a stripper.”

“Bastard!” Adele swore, and stirred almond-flavored creamer into her cup.

“Gay or straight,” Maddie added to the conversation, “men are dogs.”

“Worse of all, he took Cindy,” Clare informed them, referring to the Yorkshire terrier she and Lonny had chosen together last year. While he’d packed his things, she’d taken a shower and changed out of her bridesmaid’s dress. Some of the items in the house were solely his or things they’d purchased
together. He could have all that; she didn’t care for any reminders, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d wait until she was in the shower to abscond with Cindy.

“At the risk of repeating Maddie,” Lucy said as she leaned forward and poured herself more coffee, “bastard.” Lucy had been married for less than twenty-four hours, but left her groom when she’d heard about Clare’s heartache.

“Are you sure Quinn doesn’t mind your being here?” Clare asked, referring to Lucy’s husband. “I hate interrupting your honeymoon.”

“I’m positive.” She sat back and blew a cooling breath into her china cup. “I made him so extremely happy last night, he can’t quit smiling.” The corners of her lips curved up, and she added, “Besides, we don’t leave for Grand Bahama until tomorrow morning.”

Even though Clare had seen Lonny with her own eyes, she still couldn’t believe it had happened. Raw emotion burned in her veins and she vacillated between anger and pain. She shook her head and choked back tears. “I’m still in shock.”

Maddie leaned forward and set her cup and saucer on the marble and mahogany coffee table. “Honey, is it really a complete shock?”

“Of course it’s a shock.” Clare brushed moisture from her left cheek. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, we all thought he was gay.”

Her fingers stopped and she looked at her friends sitting in her living room on her great-grandmother’s sofa and armchair. “What? All of you?”

Their gazes slid away.

“For how long?”

“Since we first met him,” Adele confessed into her coffee.

“And none of you told me?”

Lucy reached for the delicate silver tongs and added a sugar cube to her cup. “None of us wanted to be the one to tell you. We love you and didn’t want to cause you pain.”

Adele added, “And we kind of figured you must already know on some level.”

“I didn’t!”

“You never suspected?” Maddie asked. “He made tables out of glass shards.”

Clare placed her free hand on the front of her white sleeveless blouse. “I thought he was creative.”

“You told us yourself the two of you didn’t have sex all that often.”

“Some men have low sex drives.”

“Not that low,” all three friends said at the same time.

“He hangs out at the Balcony Club.” Maddie frowned. “You knew that right?”

“Yes, but not all men who have a drink at the Balcony Club are gay.”

“Who told you that?”

“Lonny.”

The three friends didn’t say a word. They didn’t have to. Their raised brows spoke for them.

“He wore pink,” Lucy pointed out.

“Men wear pink these days.”

Adele scowled and shook her head. “Well, someone needs to tell them that they shouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t date a guy in pink.” Maddie took a drink, then added, “I don’t want a man that in touch with his feminine side.”

“Quinn would never wear pink,” Lucy pointed out, and before Clare could argue further, she dropped the irrefutable proof. “Lonny cares way too much about his cuticles.”

That was true. He was obsessive about neat cuticles and perfectly trimmed nails. Clare’s hand fell to the lap of her green peasant skirt. “I just thought he was a metrosexual.”

Maddie shook her head. “Is there really such a thing as a metrosexual?”

“Or,” Adele inquired, “is that just another term for men on the down-low?”

“Men on the what-low?”

“I saw it on
Oprah
last year. Men on the down-
low are homosexual men who pass themselves off as straight.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I imagine it’s easier to fit into society. Or perhaps they want children. Who knows?” Adele shrugged. “I don’t care about Lonny. I care about you, and you should have told us yesterday instead of holding it all inside.”

“I didn’t want to ruin Lucy’s day.”

“You wouldn’t have ruined it,” Lucy assured her with a shake of her head, her blond ponytail brushing the collar of her blue shirt. “I did wonder if something might be up when you all went missing for a while. Then when Adele and Maddie appeared again, you weren’t with them.”

“I drank a bit too much,” Clare confessed, and was relieved when no one brought up her episode at the karaoke machine belting out “Fat Bottomed Girls” or any other embarrassing moments of the previous evening.

For a second she debated whether to tell her friends about Sebastian, but in the end she didn’t. There were just some humiliating moments a girl should keep to herself. Getting drunk and slutty at her age was one of them.
You told me I was the best sex you’d ever had in your life,
he’d said, and laughed as he dropped his towel.
You couldn’t get
enough.
Yeah, some things were most definitely best taken to the grave.

“Men are so evil,” she said, thinking of Sebastian’s laughter. If there was one thing Clare hated, it was being laughed at; especially by a man. More specifically, by Sebastian Vaughan. “It’s like they can see when we’re at our lowest, our most vulnerable, then they circle and wait until just the right moment to take advantage of us.”

“That’s true. Serial killers can size up the most vulnerable in a matter of seconds,” Maddie added, causing her friends to groan inwardly. Because Maddie wrote true crime novels, she interviewed sociopaths for a living and had written about some of the most violent crimes throughout history. As a result, she tended to have a warped view of mankind and hadn’t dated in about four years. “It becomes second nature.”

“Did I tell you about my date last week?” Adele asked in an effort to change the subject before Maddie got started. Adele wrote and published science fiction and tended to date very strange men. “He’s a bartender at a little place in Hyde Park.” She laughed. “Get this, he told me that he is William Wallace reincarnated.”

“Uh-huh.” Maddie took a drink of her coffee. “Why is it that everyone who has ever claimed to be reincarnated is the reincarnation of someone
famous? It’s always Joan of Arc or Christopher Columbus or Billy the Kid. It’s never some peasant girl with rotted teeth or the sailor who cleaned Chris’s chamberpot.”

“Maybe only famous people get to be reincarnated,” Lucy provided.

Maddie made a rude snorting sound. “More likely it’s all crap.”

Clare suspected the latter, and asked what she thought was the first of two pertinent questions. “Does this bartender look like Mel Gibson?”

Adele shook her head. “Afraid not.”

Now the second question, which was more important than the first. “You don’t believe him, do you?” Because sometimes she had to wonder if Adele believed what she wrote.

“Nah.” Adele shook her head, and her mass of long blond curls brushed her back. “I questioned him and he knew nothing of John Blair.”

“Who?”

“Wallace’s friend and chaplain. I had to research William Wallace for the Scottish time travel I did last year. The bartender was just trying to trick me into bed.”

“Dog.”

“Jerk.”

“Did it work?”

“No. I’m not that easily tricked these days.”

Clare thought of Lonny. She wished she could say the same. “Why do men try and trick us?” Then she answered her own questions. “Because they’re all liars and cheats.” She looked at the faces of her friends and quickly added, “Oh, sorry, Lucy. All men except for Quinn.”

“Hey,” Lucy said, and held up one hand, “Quinn isn’t quite perfect. And believe me, he wasn’t anywhere near perfect when I first met him.” She paused and a smile crept across her lips. “Well, except in the bedroom.”

“All this time,” Clare said with a shake of her head, “I thought Lonny had a really low libido, and he let me think it. I thought I wasn’t attractive enough for him, and he let me think that too. How could I have fallen in love with him? There has to be something wrong with me.”

“No, Clare,” Adele assured her. “You’re perfect just the way you are.”

“Yes.”

“It was him. Not you. And someday,” added Lucy the newlywed, “you’re going to find a great guy. Like one of those heroes you write about.”

But even after hours of reassurance, Clare still couldn’t quite believe that there wasn’t something wrong with her. Something that made her choose men like Lonny who could never love her fully.

After her friends left, she walked through her
house and couldn’t recall a time when she’d felt so alone. Lonny certainly hadn’t been the only man in her life, but he had been the only man she’d moved into her home.

She walked into her bedroom and stopped in front of the dresser she’d shared with Lonny. She bit her bottom lip and crossed her arms over her heart. His things were gone, leaving half of the mahogany top bare. His cologne and personal grooming brushes. His photo of her and Cindy, and the shallow bowl he’d kept for Chap Stick and stray buttons. All gone.

Her vision blurred but she refused to cry, fearing that once she started, she would not stop. The house was so utterly quiet, the only sound that of the air-conditioning blowing from the vents. No sound of her little dog as she barked at the neighborhood cats or of her fiancé as he worked on his latest craft.

She opened a drawer that had kept his neatly folded trouser socks. The drawer was empty, and she took a few steps back and sat on the edge of the bed. Overhead, a lacy canopy cut shadowy patterns across her arms and the lap of her green skirt. In the past twenty-four hours she’d experienced every emotion. Hurt. Anger. Sorrow. Confusion and loss. Then panic and horror. At the moment she was numb and so tired she could probably sleep
for the coming week. She’d like that. Sleep until the pain went away.

When she’d returned home that morning from the Double Tree, Lonny had been waiting for her. He’d begged her to forgive him.

“It was just that once,” he said. “It won’t happen again. We can’t throw away what we have because I messed up. It didn’t mean anything. It was just sex.”

When it came to relationships, Clare had never understood the whole concept of meaningless sex. If a person wasn’t involved with someone, that was different, but she didn’t understand how a man could be in love with a woman and yet have sex with someone else. Oh, she understood desire and attraction. But she just couldn’t comprehend how a person, gay or straight, could hurt the one they professed to love for sex that meant nothing.

“We can work through this. I swear it just happened that once,” Lonny said, as if he repeated it enough, she’d believe him. “I love our life.”

Yes, he loved their life. He just hadn’t loved her. There had been a time in her life when she actually might have listened. It wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but she would have thought she had to listen. When she might have tried to believe him, or think she needed to understand him, but not today. She was through being the queen of
denial. Through investing so much of her life with men who couldn’t thoroughly invest theirs.

“You lied to me, and you used me in order to live that lie,” she’d told him. “I won’t live your lie anymore.”

When he realized he wasn’t going to change her mind, he’d behaved like a typical man and got nasty. “If you’d been more adventurous, I wouldn’t have had to look outside the relationship.”

The more Clare thought about it, the more she was certain it had been the same excuse her third boyfriend had used when she’d caught him with the stripper. Instead of acting ashamed, he had invited her to join them.

Clare didn’t think it was outrageous or selfish for her to want to be enough for the man she loved. No third parties. No whips and chains, and no scary devices.

No, Lonny wasn’t the first man in her life to break her heart. He was just the latest. There had been her first love, Allen. Then Josh, a drummer in a bad band. There’d been Sam, a base jumper and extreme mountain biker, followed by Rod, the lawyer, and Zack the felon. Each subsequent boyfriend had been different from the last, but in the end, whether she broke it off or they had, none of the relationships ever lasted.

She wrote of love. Big, sweeping, larger-than-life
love stories. But she was such an utter failure when it came to love in her real life. How could she write about it? Know it and feel it, yet get it so wrong? Time and again?

What was wrong with her?

Were her friends right? Had she known on some subconscious level that Lonny was gay? Had she known even as she’d made excuses for him? Even as she’d accepted his excuse for his lack of sexual interest? Even as she’d blamed herself?

Clare looked into the mirror above the dresser, at the dark circles beneath her eyes. Hollow. Empty. Like Lonny’s sock drawer. Like her life. Everything was gone. She’d lost so much in the past two days. Her fiancé and her dog. Her belief in soul mates and her mother’s two carat diamond earring.

She’d noticed the missing earring shortly after arriving home that morning. It would take some doing, but she could find a matching diamond to replace the one she’d lost. Finding something to replace the emptiness wasn’t going to be as easy.

Despite her exhaustion, an urge to run out and fill the void forced her to her feet. A mental list of all the things she needed flew through her head. She needed a winter coat. It was August, but if she didn’t hurry, the wool coat she’d seen on bebe.com would be sold out. And she needed the new Coach bag she’d had her eye on at Macy’s. In black to
match the bebe coat. Or red…or both. Since she’d be at Macy’s, she’d pick up some Estée Lauder mascara and Benefits Browzing for her brows. She was running low on both.

On the way to the mall she’d stop at Wendy’s and order a biggie fry with extra powdered salt. She’d get a gooey cinnamon roll from Mrs. Powell’s, then swing into See’s for a pound of toffee and…