Unsuitable Men (20 page)

If he’d had to guess, he would never have pegged Tracy as the kind of woman who liked to take care of her man domestically. But she did. Not only the cooking, but she dropped off his dry cleaning and picked it up without him asking, and he’d once overheard her chiding the lady from the cleaning service for doing what she called a “superficial job” on the stove, and the woman replying that she wasn’t accustomed to seeing the stove in this unit used, so had mistakenly overlooked it.

The evening he’d figured out what was going on with the groceries, Tracy had made her third run up to the kitchen in a half hour to fetch him something, when Brendan finally followed her, ignoring her protests that she didn’t “mind at all” getting him whatever he needed. When he opened the refrigerator and saw that it was stuffed to the gills with food, he’d looked at her and she grinned back at him with her shoulders hunched and the cutest little grimace on her face as though she expected him to yell at her.

Brendan,
she said.
We can’t go to the store every single day. And if I’m not here one morning, I just know you’re going to buy something junky from the deli near your office.

He was touched that she cared whether he ate junk or not, but was more focused on another part of what she’d said.

Why wouldn’t you be here one morning?
he
asked, eyes narrowed.

Well
, she responded, looking almost shy.
I can’t be here
every
night, Brendan.

He’d just barely stopped himself from asking her why not. But it had to have been written all across his face because she’d gotten up on her toes and looked up at him, and he leaned in to kiss her, right there in front of the open—and thanks to her—overstocked fridge.

But that kind of shit couldn’t keep going on. Nope. Didn’t work for him. Especially not when she was dropping little bombs on him like the news that “someone” had asked her out. What the hell did that mean anyway? Who was this “someone”? They were together damn near every minute unless they were working. So that was it—someone at her job had asked her out. Working in that testosterone-driven environment that was Wall Street, he would be shocked if it didn’t happen all the time. But she’d mentioned this someone because maybe she wanted to say ‘yes.’

Before she could wake up, Brendan dressed for a pick-up basketball game and stayed out as long as he could. It was past noon when he turned, and by then he had been gone for a good number of hours, an uncharacteristically long period of time, knowing full well that she would be waiting for him—anxiously, he hoped—to return.

And she was. As he entered the bedroom, Tracy sat up, cross-legged in the middle of his bed, looking at him as though she’d spent the entire morning waiting to confront him, but had suddenly forgotten what she planned to say.

“Hey,” he said; his voice was emotionless.

“You want to talk about last night?” she asked finally.

Brendan shed his perspiration-soaked shirt and looked at her.

“What part of last night? The part where you told me you’re about to start dating?”

“Everything.”

But she seemed not to have thought of anything to say. Good. That was good. He had her off balance, like he’d been knocked off balance by the realization that Tracy wasn’t the woman he thought she was.

Tracy wasn’t the one you got your fill of and let go; no, she was the one you
couldn’t
get your fill of. She was the one you keep. And that last part was what killed him because he didn’t know what that looked like quite yet. The epiphany was way too new. So thank God for Sam Gaston and this trip he was about to take.

“Look,” he said wearily. “No heart-to-hearts necessary. You’re off the hook. We made no promises, no commitments, and as far as I know, we told each other no lies. So let’s just have breakfast and enjoy the rest of the day.”

Tracy blinked a few times and Brendan turned away from her.

“I’m about to take a shower,” he said. “You want to come with me?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll wait till you’re done.”

Did he really not care if she went out with someone else?

Last night, he’d been angry; very angry, she was certain of that. He didn’t kiss her on the mouth when they were having sex, didn’t wait for her to finish, didn’t even seem to want her to, which was not just unlike him, it was downright cruel. She wasn’t even sure what had gotten into her bringing up Jason’s dinner invitation. Maybe a perverse need to cut through the thickness of her growing feelings for him, to dilute it a little bit, maybe even to self-sabotage. A part of her wondered when she brought it up if he would dump her. If he did, it would be easier, because she wasn’t sure anymore whether she
would be able to walk away from him when the time came. And the time was coming, she was sure of it.

But this morning when she woke up and he was gone, without a word, or an attempt to wake her first, she felt a stab of hurt. That was not the kind of thing Brendan did, ever. He was almost scarily attuned to her moods, and could predict her reactions with such precision, she almost resented it.

Tracy recalled a Thursday evening a month earlier when she’d come in from work stressed and bitchy, and Brendan told her to get dressed so they could go out. As usual, he told her nothing about where they were going.

She’d come out wearing three-hundred dollar Chloe jeans and some similarly pricey top with wedge heels and he’d gotten a dubious look on his face. Tracy remembered her exasperation.

It’s all I’ve got,
she snapped at him.
So we either go with me wearing this, or we stay in.

No,
Brendan said after a moment’s consideration.
I think we definitely need to go.

And then he’d taken her to Queens to an enormous warehouse. For paintballing. She’d been livid enough to refuse to get out of the car for twenty minutes while he cajoled, teased and finally coaxed her into it. There were goggles and smocks to wear over your street clothes but by the time they were done, her jeans were still ruined, as was her pedicure because she’d had to remove her wedges and play barefoot, which was against the regulations, but Brendan made her do it anyway.

Tracy had laughed and squealed and ran like a kid, and Brendan had been merciless about hunting her down, as they’d hooked up with another group, and he joined the guys and she the women. When he ambushed her, just as she expected him to blast her with a pellet, he’d instead pulled her against him and kissed the living daylights out of her.

Traitor,
she’d murmured against his lips.

Best date ever. It was precisely the kind of thing she needed, without even knowing it. The wild and reckless energy she’d expended paintballing had snapped her completely out of her funk. Back at the apartment, Brendan had washed paint out of her hair in the shower and even humored her when she asked him to help her blow dry it so that it was perfectly pin-straight afterwards; she always had trouble with the back near her nape.

The next day at work, when the receptionist told her she had a delivery, she’d expected flowers, but Brendan was never that obvious. He’d sent over a gift-wrapped pair of brand new Chloe jeans, identical to the ones she’d ruined the evening before. That he’d looked at her jeans and taken note of both the size and style had her staggered. But who cared about getting new jeans when the stained ones would always remind her of that night and of his kiss, behind the bales of hay, that took her breath away.

“What
d’you feel
like eating?” Brendan asked.

He walked out of the bathroom completely nude, and Tracy’s mind went completely blank as she took the sight of him in. Long and lean, with that tapered waist and his . . .

Brendan snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Chicken and waffles?”

That revived her. “Brendan, you know I hate that kind of heavy food.”

“Just checking for signs of life,” he said.

He seemed to be back to his old playful self she noticed; which would have been great but for the fact that now she was the one feeling unsettled. After his initial reaction to her dating, he’d let it go, like water gliding off a duck’s back.

Was he really willing to leave for a month and let her date someone else while he was away?

Tracy brooded on that question the entire time she was in the shower and still hadn’t made her peace with it by the time they got to the diner around the corner for brunch. The waitress who served them was named Pam, and had served them many, many times before. She had the rolling hips of a woman who was slightly larger than the fashion magazine ideal but so completely comfortable with her body that Tracy almost envied her. When she walked away to put in their order, it was almost impossible not to watch the rhythmic sway of her gait. But this time, it annoyed Tracy to no end that Pam seemed to be flirting and that Brendan was having fun with it.

No surprise there. He was the kind of man women flirted with because his appreciation of their gender was so genuine, frank and non-threatening. While most men wanted to sleep with any woman they found attractive, not all of them
liked
women at their core. Brendan did, and somehow they knew it, and appreciated him back because of it. Some of that mutual appreciation was a little too apparent for Tracy’s taste.

But she was hardly in a position to complain. She was the one who had announced that she was about to date.

The entire meal was nothing short of painful; not because it was awkward and filled with silences but because it was not. Brendan was himself again, as though liberated by some new realization; or maybe just liberated. With the last of her coffee, Tracy swallowed the fear that in telling Brendan she might go out with someone else, maybe she’d made the hugest mistake of her life.

As soon as Tracy got to the door of the condo, she could hear Cullen’s cries from inside, advancing closer as someone—obviously carrying him—came to let her in. Shawn was holding the baby with one arm against his bare chest and grimacing against the noise of his son’s squalling. Tracy instinctively reached out to take him but Shawn shifted so that Cullen was out of her reach.

“Nah, that’s okay. I got him,” he said.

“Oh. Okay,” Tracy said, hurt.

Wow. He must really be pissed at her.

“He just needs to be fed,” Shawn explained. “I was about to get him something.”

Tracy followed him to the kitchen and sat well out of his way. Shawn moved around in a practiced routine, sterilizing a bottle, warming what looked like breast-milk in a plastic pouch and finally transferring it to the bottle, all while holding a crying Cullen with one hand. He even tested the temperature of the milk on the back of his hand like a mom would before putting the nipple into his son’s mouth.

“You’re a natural,” Tracy commented.

And it didn’t escape her notice that even though Cullen had been crying for at least ten minutes, Riley hadn’t once come out of the bedroom to check up on Shawn. They had become a team; so much so that Riley trusted that even if Cullen was crying, Shawn was handling it, whatever the problem
might be. It was a lesson she might do well to learn. If Brendan fumbled around with the coffeemaker for more than fifteen seconds, she always stepped in and took over, nudging him out of the way never patient enough to let him do it on his own if she believed she might do it better.

And then she caught herself. She and Brendan—to the extent that there even was a ‘she and Brendan’ anymore—were a long sight away from being anything like the now well-oiled machine that was Shawn and Riley.

“Ready to go?”

Riley emerged from the bedroom dressed in a tan shirt and jeans with sandals and a beautiful soft brown leather bag that Tracy knew right away Shawn had probably bought her. It looked too plush, too luxurious to be anything her friend would purchase on her own. Riley paused to kiss the top of Cullen’s head and the bicep of the arm Shawn was using to hold him.

In the elevator, she let out a deep, heartfelt sigh.

“Sometimes I just cannot wait to get away from them.” And then she laughed at the look on Tracy’s face. “What? You think
it’s
sunshine and blue skies all the time? Oh girl, just you wait.”

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” Tracy said wryly.

“Don’t get me started,” Riley said. “I’m beginning to doubt that you want what you say you want.”

“What does
that
mean?” Tracy looked at her.

“It means you screwed up. You leave the best thing you’ve had going for years to date some dotcom millionaire who probably thinks of you as just another pretty little toy he can buy?”

Tracy said nothing. It was true. She knew it was true. But she hadn’t really left Brendan, he’d let her go.

“Riley, he wasn’t exactly blockading the door to stop me, either.”

“Why should he, Tracy? You told him you planned to date someone else!”

“We weren’t exclusive.”

“Oh my
god
! Not with that old line again. What are you? In high school? You need him to give you a promise ring? According to you, you slept at his place practically every night and you saw him just about every day? What more did you need?” Riley demanded.