The Boyfriend of the Month Club (16 page)

The friendly expression in his eyes died.

What was wrong with her? She’d come here to apologize, not pick a fight. Why was it so hard for her to admit she’d been wrong about him? She thought about what Abuela had said about her stubbornness.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean that. And I’m sorry I accused you of firing Tanya. I thought maybe a nice flan might make my apology seem more sincere. Plus, I thought you might be able to use it for your Thanksgiving party tomorrow.”

She looked over at the small kitchen area to the right. The turkey, still wrapped in its original plastic, sat on the countertop. It was surrounded by what appeared to be some of the ingredients he’d bought at the grocery store on Sunday.

“Joe, please tell me that turkey hasn’t been sitting on your counter for the past four days.”

“Was I supposed to refrigerate it?”

“Um . . .”

He laughed. “I took microbiology, remember? I just took it out of the fridge a few minutes ago to prep it. Or clean it. I’m not sure which, but I know I’m supposed to do
something
to it.”

He was all friendly again and Grace let out an unconscious sigh of relief that he’d accepted her apology, as well as for the fact that he hadn’t let the turkey become a salmonella breeding ground. It would be near impossible to find another turkey this size so close to Thanksgiving.

He looked inside the basket. “How did you know flan was my favorite?” Before she could respond, he asked, “Does it need to go in the fridge? I’ll be honest on this one, I have no idea.”

“Actually, it needs to be flipped first, then refrigerated again. I can do it while I’m here, if you’d like. I’d meant to do it before coming over but I was running late.”

He eyed her Florida Charlie’s T-shirt and her khaki shorts and sneakers but he didn’t say anything. Might as well get this out of the way.

“Yes, you’ve probably figured out by now that I work at Florida Charlie’s. And before you make any wisecracks, let me tell you that my parents own the store. My dad is the one-and-only Florida Charlie himself.”

Instead of laughing, Joe looked impressed. “No kidding. We used to stop there on the way to my dad’s condo in St. Augustine. I thought it was just about the coolest place on earth. Is the alligator still around?”

“Yep, he’s still around.” It was silly, but she couldn’t help but be pleased that Joe remembered Gator Claus. “The shop hasn’t changed much in fifty years.”
Which is part of the problem,
Grace thought. “You should stop by sometime. I’ll throw in a free Florida Charlie’s T-shirt, seeing that you’re my dentist and all.”

Joe placed the baked goods on the kitchen countertop next to the cans of green beans and whole kernel corn. “I thought you fired me in your patient satisfaction survey. By the way, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve now got
People
and
Cosmo
in the waiting room. But I refuse to subscribe to the
National Enquirer
.”

She had been wondering when he was going to bring up the patient satisfaction survey.

Really?
He’d taken her seriously about the magazines? Grace couldn’t help but be pleased.

“You know, supposedly the
National Enquirer
is pretty accurate most of the time. And in my defense, I did give you all tens. I only blasted you in the free text portion because I thought you’d fired Tanya.”

“Why did you think that?”

“I jumped to a wrong conclusion based on something Melanie said. I know, it was totally unfair. Sorry.”

“Do you do that a lot?”

“What?”

“Jump to wrong conclusions.” Joe leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. It was a good look for him. Confident. Sexy. In control.

Grace cleared her throat. “Not normally, no.” At least, she didn’t think she did. “And . . . I’m sorry for firing you. So are we good? Will you still be my dentist?” She fluttered her eyelashes at him hoping he would laugh.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea to keep you on as a patient, Grace.”

She hadn’t expected that.

“Oh. Right. I can see—”

“Like I told you at the grocery store, I don’t date my office staff. And I don’t date my patients either.”

“You want to go
out
with me?”

He raised a brow at her incredulousness. “I thought I made what I wanted pretty clear a couple of weeks ago at the Wobbly Duck.”

Grace snorted. “I don’t think what you wanted that night could be called a
date
.”

“Okay . . . fair enough. But unless I’m getting my signals crossed,” he paused, “and I don’t think I am, I’d say you’re pretty interested too. We can do this any way you want. We can start off as friends and meet for coffee, or we can take it up a notch and do dinner and a movie, or we can cut to the chase and have a few hours of hot, sweaty sex. I’ll be honest, I’d like all three of those, but it’s your call.”

For a moment she was speechless. She felt like a game-show contestant with Joe as the smarmy master of ceremonies offering her the choice of three different doors. Door number one: friends. Door number two: more than friends. Door number three: a
lot
more than friends.

Joe was right. She was attracted to him. She’d already admitted that to herself. But the warning bell in the pit of her stomach didn’t just ding whenever she was around Joe; it clanged.
Hopelessly attracted to hopelessly attractive men
. What was the point of the boyfriend club if not to learn from her previous mistakes?

“The hot, sweaty sex sounds lovely, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass. As for dinner and a movie, that’s a date, and I’ll be honest, Joe, I don’t think that’s going to work out between us.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one, you’re too good-looking.”

He blinked, clearly nonplussed, and Grace felt a twinge of satisfaction that she’d left him momentarily speechless.

“And that’s a problem, because . . .?”

The fact that he didn’t deny he knew he was good-looking actually scored a few points in his favor. False modesty was one thing, but out-and-out denial of the obvious, especially when the obvious stared at him in the mirror each morning, would only fuel the argument she was about to hit him with.

“It’s a problem because in the past I’ve let appearances taint my other relationships. I’ve let guys like you get away with crap just because you have a pretty mug. But if I take away that face of yours I’m left with one indisputable known fact about you. You’re disingenuous. Are you also nice? Yeah, I’ll give you that. Smart, most definitely. But you’re also full of shit, and I don’t feel like starting another relationship where all I do is shovel.”

“Wow. Tell me what you really think of me, Grace.”

Had she gone too far? Grace O’Bryan, ballbuster. But she wasn’t telling him this to achieve any feelings of self-righteous feminine superiority. When all was said and done, she kind of liked him. And she wanted to be honest.

“‘What’s a nice pair of legs like yours doing in a place like this?’ ”
she mocked. “My personal favorite though, and excuse me if I’m paraphrasing, is
‘I meet the girl of my dreams and she’s meeting someone else.’
I’m curious, Joe, how many other girls have you said that to?”

“I wanted to get laid, Grace. I don’t think I’m the only guy in America who’s guilty of that.”

She didn’t say anything and neither did he. But then he smiled and she smiled and they ended up laughing.

“All right, considering our first meet, I’ll buy the disingenuous bit. But are you going to hold that against me forever?”

“Not at all. I find the idea of being your friend kind of intriguing. So I pick the friends and coffee option.”

“I guess I walked right into that one.”

“You told me to pick.”

“How about the friends and a beer option?” He nudged his head in the direction of the kitchen counter. “I could use some friendly help right about now.”

“Domestic or imported?”

He opened the fridge. “Domestic. Sam Adams, to be exact.”

“Okay. But I don’t peel potatoes.”

Joe found a suitable plate for the flan and Grace flipped it the way she’d seen Mami do a million times. The syrup spread slowly, making a halo around the custard. Grace couldn’t help but be pleased. It looked as good as the flans Mami made.

Joe swirled his finger around the edge of the plate and took a taste of the syrup. “Nice.”

“It’s my first flan,” Grace told him. “My
abuela
—that means grandmother—showed me how to make one. Although why I haven’t made one until now is beyond me. I’m thirty years old.”

“I know what
abuela
means.”

That’s right. He spoke three foreign languages fluently. Guatemala. The Peace Corps. Surfing in Australia. Landing on the moon.
Oops
, he hadn’t done that last one yet.

“It’s impressive, really, everything you’ve achieved. The Peace Corps, traveling around the world,” she said sincerely. “Can I ask you a question? Why dental school?”

“You mean why not medicine?”

She nodded. He’d obviously been asked that question before.

“I can’t stand the sight of blood.”

The idea of the man standing next to her being afraid of blood made her laugh. “I might buy that if I hadn’t seen you right after a rugby game. It’s like the most violent game ever. Plus, I know for a fact that you see blood as a dentist. And probably a lot grosser things too.”

He grinned like he’d just gotten caught. “My dad’s a doctor. The hours suck. I picked dental school in part because I work Monday through Thursday, eight to five, Fridays eight to noon. Not so philanthropic, huh?”

“I think it’s nice what you did in the Peace Corps, helping people who needed it.”

“It’s not like I was out there doing brain surgery.”

“Hey, you were filling cavities, right? A person needs their teeth. How else are they going to eat? Which reminds me . . .” She waved her hand over the ingredients spread over the kitchen counter. “Where do you want to start?”

In the end, she did peel potatoes, but Joe chopped onions, so Grace figured they were even. She helped him wash and prep the turkey and laughed at the look of astonishment on his face when she pulled the neck and the giblets out of the cavity.

Another beer and a takeout pizza later, Grace stood and raised her arms above her head, stifling a yawn. “I think you’re pretty well set here. And as stimulating as the company’s been, I need to hit my bed. Tomorrow’s a big day. I have to be at my parents’ in time to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV. It’s a family tradition. My mom makes breakfast and we
ooh
and
ah
at the floats.”

Joe smiled. “Sounds like fun.” He walked her to her car and the whole thing felt ridiculously like a date.

“Maybe we can do the coffee thing sometime, if you still want to,” she said.

“I’d like that.” He looked like he was going to kiss her. But he didn’t. And she was relieved he wasn’t going there. And disappointed at the same time.

Make up your mind, Grace
.

“How about next Saturday? We can do coffee. After we do dinner.” He looked smug, like he’d been ultra clever working in the dinner part.

She shouldn’t reward him for his sneakiness. But friends could have dinner too. She was going to say yes when she remembered next Saturday was the first Saturday of the month. “That’s my . . . book club night.”

“Your book club meets on Saturday night?”

“It’s kind of a social thing too.”

“How about Friday then?”

“Okay. But it’s just friends,” she reminded him.

“Sure. We’ll have a real friendly dinner.”

There was nothing in his tone that implied anything to the contrary, but Grace still suspected that somehow she’d been tricked into picking door number two.

An image of what lay behind door number three popped into Grace’s head. She instantly wiped it out.

13

Bad Karma JuJu

For the first time in thirty-some years, the O’Bryan Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade tradition was broken. Charlie worked Thanksgiving morning and most of the early afternoon, barely making it in time to sit down for Thanksgiving dinner. Mami and Abuela clearly disapproved of his working through a holiday, but neither of them said anything. Pop grumbled a bit, but then Charlie told a joke and everyone laughed and that was that. Score one for the Lettuce!

The next day Charlie came to the house to help Pop decorate. Pop loved Christmas lights, the more the better. By the time they were done the place looked like the house from
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
movie. Abuela and Mami had gone out to power shop and Grace was putting the finishing touches on the nine-foot artificial Christmas tree in the living room.

Charlie detoured through the kitchen and came back out into the living room with a soda in his hand. “It’s hot as hell out there. Are you sure this is Thanksgiving weekend? I thought a cold front was supposed to come in.”

“It went down to fifty last night and now it’s back up to the mid-eighties. But that’s Florida. And it’s only going to be warmer down in Miami, you know.”

“You haven’t said anything about my moving to Mami or Pop, have you?” The way he said it reminded Grace of when they were kids. Charlie would inevitably do something he shouldn’t have and Grace would threaten to tattle on him. She never did, of course, and Charlie would get away with whatever it was he’d done. Charlie never tattled on Grace either, but somehow whatever she’d done wrong would find its way back to Pop or Mami and Grace would get in trouble. The same system that worked beautifully for Charlie failed Grace each and every time. Go figure.

“Miami is your news to tell, not mine,” Grace said.

He took a sip of his soda. “I wasn’t going to say anything until I had the details ironed out, but I think I have a solution for the store problem.”

“Oh, yeah. What?”

He shook his head. “Not until it’s solid.”

Later that day, Grace went in to work. Black Friday had never been slow at Florida Charlie’s, but this year it was busier than normal, which was a nice surprise. It also took Grace’s mind off Penny and the engagement ring. She only thought about it a couple of times in between handling customers or going into the back storeroom to replenish the T-shirt inventory. The world’s largest alligator tooth now sat in a glass display case in the front of the store, exactly where Pop wanted it. Grace had to admit the kids (and a lot of adults) got a big kick out of it. Maybe Pop had been right about the presentation thing.