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“There’s no ‘uh-oh,’ Mel. There can be no ‘uh-oh.’ Thomas is a nice guy, and he’s very likeable.”
“Don’t forget hot,” Mel inserted on a wink.
“No need to remind me on that score.” But now that she had, Elizabeth’s internal thermostat was working its way into the red. “The man sure knows how to kiss. But we’re not dating.”
She said the last part a little too emphatically. Mel’s eyes narrowed. “I gather you’re having a bit of trouble remembering that.”
“Guilty as charged. I wasn’t expecting—”
“Fireworks,” Mel finished.
Oh, yeah. And a dizzying display, no less. But since mention of their sexual chemistry was too damning to dwell on, Elizabeth said, “Actually, I wasn’t expecting us to have much, if anything, in common.”
“But you do.”
“We both like Hitchcock movies and spicy Chinese.” She chuckled at the memory of Thomas fumbling his food during dinner. “Even if he can’t use chopsticks to save his life.” Her grin was short-lived. “God, Mel. He’s exactly the kind of man a smart woman steers clear of.”
“But you have common interests, and I thought you just said he was nice and likeable and hot?”
“We do and he’s nice and likeable and hot, all right. He’s also smart and sexy, and … from what I can tell, the flattering adjectives are practically endless where Thomas is concerned.” She grabbed Mel’s arm. “Did I tell you about his manners? He pulls out chairs, opens doors. He even apologizes when he swears, not that he makes a habit of it.”
“Apologizing?”
“Swearing.” She let go of her friend’s arm.
Mel shook her head. “I’m sorry, hon. I’m not seeing the problem here. You obviously like him. I know you like the way he kisses. And he likes you.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath.
“No, Mel. Thomas needs me. That’s one of the big red flags waving madly here. This is business.”
The corners of Mel’s mouth turned down in dismissal and she shook her head. “I’m not buying that. He likes you, and as more than a pal,” her friend insisted again. “You’ve already agreed to spend some time with him acting like a happy couple. So what if a little pleasure is starting to slip into your business arrangement? What will it hurt? For that matter, who knows where it will lead?”
“I know where it will lead. Nowhere.”
But Mel shook her head again. “You are one of the smartest, most self-assured women I’ve ever met when you’re dealing in a professional capacity. But you don’t give yourself enough credit where men are concerned. He may just fall gorgeous head over pricey wing tips for you, for real.”
No wonky pulse now. Instead, Elizabeth’s stomach took a roller-coaster-worthy plunge. Is that what she wanted to happen? She wasn’t sure. They didn’t know one another well enough. Yet. Even if everything she knew about him so far, she liked. Except … “He’s anti-commitment,” she told Mel.
“Come on. Did he actually say that?”
“Yep.” Elizabeth nodded. “He made it clear in no uncertain terms when we had dinner the first night that he has no plans to settle down. Ever.”
“All men say that.”
“No. He means it.” Her heart squeezed as she relayed what Thomas had told her the previous night about his parents, the horrifying car accident that had claimed his mother and his father’s subsequent alcoholism. “He thinks of love as a disease, a chronic one is how he phrased it.”
Mel nibbled the inside of her cheek, uncharacteristically quiet. At last she said, “In his defense, he had a tough break. He was a kid when the accident happened and so it was easy for him to see love as the reason his father is the way he is. But that doesn’t make it so. His father suffers from a disease all right. Alcoholism. That’s why he basically abandoned his son. The accident might have been the trigger, but.” She lifted her shoulders. “The poor guy. It’s no wonder he turned out so gun-shy.”
“I know.” Elizabeth sighed again. “I wish he could be just a jerk, though. You know?”
“Yeah. A garden variety misogynist would make your situation less complicated,” Mel agreed. “You could always tell him that you’ve reconsidered your bargain and want out. We can find another way to make Literacy Liaisons’s endowment a reality.”
“I’ve thought about that, but I’ve committed myself.” Ironic laughter followed her statement. “At least one of us is capable of doing so.”
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
Elizabeth hesitated only a moment. “I’m sure. It’s only for a matter of days. This time next week, Thomas and I will have gone our separate ways.”
Yet that thought brought precious little in the way of comfort, a fact Elizabeth tried to ignore.
“Well, at least your eyes are wide open,” Mel said.
“Yep. Wide open. There’s no changing someone who doesn’t want to change. You can push and prod and you just wind up shoving them further away.”
“Are you okay?”
“Sure. I like Thomas, and I’m definitely attracted to him, but it’s not as if I’m in love with him or anything,” she hastened to assure them both. “Right now, I’ve got paperwork to catch up on.” She swiveled in her seat and began typing her password as Mel started for the door.
“Elizabeth?”
“Hmm.” She glanced up from her computer screen in time to catch Mel’s worried frown.
“Your eyes, I know you said they’re wide open, but prop them that way with toothpicks, ‘kay?”
In lieu of toothpicks, Elizabeth got down to business. Personal business. There would be no meandering conversation during dinner tonight, she decided. That was too much like what occurred on real dates. Nope. She would treat this like a job interview even though, technically, she’d already been hired. She created a file and made a list of questions she needed answered. Then she spent the next fifteen minutes ruminating over what more to tell him about herself.
She decided to break the information down into likes and dislikes. Since he already knew her preferences when it came to movie genres, directors and actors, she started with music, moved on to authors and completed the entertainment category with board games, adding in the dislike category her disdain for the computer variety.
From there she moved on to her basic values, causes beyond literacy that she supported and a very brief sketch of her education, since he already knew she’d attended State. She considered attaching her high school and college transcripts, but that seemed overkill.
As for her childhood, Thomas had met Howie and she knew that as a child he’d owned a cockatiel named Hitchcock. She jotted down the names of the guinea pig, flop-eared rabbit and pair of very long-lived goldfish she’d had while growing up.
When it came to her parents, she filled in their vital stats, leaving out their lack of a marriage certificate and their other free-spirited oddities. As for her brother, she touched on Ross only briefly, in part because she knew so little about him these days, including his whereabouts.
She swallowed thickly and touched his name on the computer screen. She missed him. As always, she wondered if he ever would decide to come home. Unlike her parents, she did not view her brother’s vagabond lifestyle as freedom even if it was a kind of escape. No, Ross had run away. It didn’t matter that he’d been five months shy of eighteen years old at the time, close enough to adulthood, according to their parents, to make his own choices.
“He’s happy,” Delphine had claimed at the time. “You like school and you were smart enough to get a scholarship. But not everyone’s cut out for book-learning and college, Lizzie.”
Skeet had seconded the opinion. And why not? Their father had gotten by on charm and luck, working odd jobs to raise his family. More often than not he’d been paid under the table. If at times they’d had to live with relatives or crash in friends’ apartments that was okay in his book.
It’s all good. That was Skeet and Delphine’s mantra.
But they weren’t to blame for Ross’s leaving. No that fell squarely on Elizabeth’s shoulders. Where their folks hadn’t been tough enough on Ross, Elizabeth had been unyielding in her nagging after he quit school.
“You’re squandering your life,” she’d raged during that final argument before he’d left home for good. “You’re going to end up penniless, homeless.”
“Mom and Dad have done just fine.”
“That depends on your definition of fine, Ross. How many times would we have wound up in a shelter if not for friends or family opening their homes to us? In the meantime, the job market has only gotten more competitive.”
“You’re competitive enough for all of us.” He hadn’t intended it as a compliment. “When are you going to accept that I’m not smart like you?”
He was smart, every bit as bright as she was. Intelligence and literacy didn’t go handin-hand. But she’d nicked his pride and had put him on the defensive, a mistake she never made these days with Literacy Liaisons’s clients.
If she hadn’t been so critical of Ross, so self-righteous and pushy, he would have been comfortable confiding in her what their parents had long known. Ross could barely read above a third-grade level. Instead, he’d bolted without speaking another word to her.
Thomas thought her cause noble. He thought she was so selfless in starting up her nonprofit and wanting to see it survive. Indeed, last night he’d told her she was perfect.
Elizabeth knew the truth. She was anything but.
After that steamy encounter in her living room, Thomas worried that he would have a hard time keeping his hands to himself the next time he saw Elizabeth.
He worried that once again he would be compelled to satisfy his curiosity where she was concerned. And that was all this was, he assured himself, a really severe case of curiosity.
What else could it be?
Of course he liked her. It was impossible not to. She was smart, ambitious, interesting and all of that. A little voice in the back of his mind kept reminding him that brains and spunk had never proved such a huge turn-on in the past. Nor had he ever found himself this wildly attracted to a woman he would describe as cute and petite.
And then there was that tantalizing glimpse of pink lace he’d spied beneath her blouse. The memory of it was eating away at his peace of mind. Like a rip in the paper wrapping on a Christmas present, it invited his imagination to fill in the blanks. And was it ever.
Even so, he would make sure everything between them returned to normal—or as normal as possible given the odd set of circumstances surrounding their relationship.
They didn’t.
The first indication came that evening almost immediately after he picked her up for dinner.
“This is for you,” she said. They were stopped at a red light when she presented him with what amounted to a resume that included her background and interests.
“Ah, this is … helpful …” The light turned green and he pulled ahead, not sure what else to say.
“I thought it would be. Time being so tight and all.” He barely had a chance to digest that when she told him, “I made a questionnaire for you to fill out.”
“A questionnaire.”
“You don’t need to fill it out tonight. You can get it back to me later. By tomorrow afternoon, say. I included my fax number at the top of the first page.”
“Fax,” he repeated inanely.
“Yes. I thought this would be a time-saver. Of course, you can email it to me if you’d prefer. My office email address is on the business card I gave you.”
He wanted to appreciate her professional approach to the matter, but he’d been enjoying the way they had been going about getting to know one another.
They arrived at the restaurant and Thomas handed the keys to the valet. Elizabeth was out of the car and almost to the door before he caught up with her. For a small woman, she moved fast and with just enough sway to her hips to make up for the severe cut of her suit.
Was she wearing anything pink and lacy underneath it today? That question, inappropriate though it might be, occupied his thoughts through the salad course, and had his gaze straying time and again to the prim mandarin collar. He imagined himself unfastening the top button, albeit with a bit more finesse than he’d exhibited the previous night, and then working his way down.
He reached for his ice water and downed half the glass before setting it back on the table.
“So, tell me about your day?” He worked up a smile. “Any success stories to share?”
He’d asked the question as much to break the silence as to redirect his thoughts. Whatever his motives, though, he was rewarded with a smile.
“One of our clients read Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? today. Aloud. Cover to cover. Dr. Seuss in case you’re wondering.”
“My mom used to read it to me. It was one of my favorites as a kid.” He smiled, surprised by the happy memory. He’d locked away so much of his pre-accident childhood that the good had been banished along with the bad.
“Mine, too. Anyway, our client got through the entire story with no mistakes. And there wasn’t a dry eye in the room afterward.” Elizabeth’s eyes grew bright now at the recollection. “He’s thirty-four, has twin toddler daughters and when he first came to see us more than a year ago his goal was to be able to read them a bedtime story.”
“Now he can. That’s nice. For him and for you.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her. “Your job must be very satisfying.”
“It is.” She sipped the diet cola she’d ordered. “What about you? What did you do today?”
“Nothing quite as rewarding as hearing someone read their first book.” He shrugged. “Mostly I shuffled through paperwork with Waverly’s chief financial officer. We had plans for an expansion, but they’ve had to be put on hold. Some of our financing fell through. Now, we’re busy trying to line up some other investors.”
“That can’t be easy in this economy.”
“About as easy as reaching your endowment fund’s goal.”
“You’re making that possible.”
Though she smiled after she said it, the warmth of a moment earlier was gone. She returned to business mode and, before long, had him hauling out the form she’d filled out. Before the waiter came to ask if they wanted dessert, Thomas had a bad case of indigestion, but he knew that Elizabeth had once owned a guinea pig named Ziggy, a floppy-eared bunny named Kip and a pair of goldfish she’d called Bonnie and Clyde.
How was it possible, Thomas wondered, that even though he knew a lot more about her, he found her more of a puzzle than before?
After they finished their meal, he drove her back to her car in Literacy Liaisons’s parking lot. The ride had been nerve-gratingly quiet. Now, as he stood next to her car after opening the door for her, the mood progressed from strained to outright awkward.
“Good night.” He leaned in to kiss her, intending a quick, chaste and perfunctory peck, but she stuck out her hand instead. It poked him just below his breastbone.
“Sorry.” She coughed. “I know you said we should get used to kissing and pretending to be affectionate with one another, but I’m really not comfortable doing that.”
This came as a surprise, and not necessarily a good one. Here he’d been steeling himself for physical contact, determined not to let a simple kiss boil out of control, and she was essentially telling him thanks, but no seconds for me. He’d never had a complaint when it came to his kissing and Elizabeth hadn’t seemed to mind it the previous night. In fact, she’d participated rather enthusiastically, if memory served correctly. His ego had Thomas pointing that out.
“You seemed pretty comfortable last night.”
“Yes, well, I think it blurs the lines a little too much given the true nature of our relationship.”
“Uh-huh.”
She swallowed and he needed to believe her expression held some regret before she added, “But don’t worry, Thomas. When we’re around your grandmother, I won’t pull away if you put your arm around me or anything.”
“Gee, that’s good to know.”
“As for the rest, if she asks, maybe you could just tell her that Beth isn’t comfortable with public displays of affection.”
He didn’t remind her that he no longer thought she look like a Beth. The name was beside the point. She’d referred to herself in the third person. If that didn’t imply distance, Thomas didn’t know what did. What could he do but respect her wishes? He shook her hand, bid her good-night. Just before she slipped into the car, he told her, “I’ll have that questionnaire filled out and faxed over first thing in the morning.”
By the time Thomas arrived home twenty minutes later, he was feeling particularly cranky. The house, a large ranch-style on a cul-de-sac in a newer subdivision populated with professionals, was quiet. Though the evening air was hot and humid, he turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows. The sound of crickets, however, did little to ease his agitation. Nor did filling out Elizabeth’s questionnaire.
