Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (21 page)

He just loved those contradictions in her. She usually surprised him and challenged him as a result. But here they were at dinner and, try as he might, he still couldn’t figure why she could act with perfect pleasantness toward every member of his family and, yet, give him the cold shoulder. Even Tony noticed the change.

“You two get into a fight?” Tony whispered to him.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

His brother winced. “Oooh. Those are the worst kind. Hey, man, take my advice and just apologize now.”

“For what?” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Yeah, you did. You just don’t know it yet. Nip it in the bud and say you’re sorry. It’s easier that way. Really. Trust me on this.”

But games like that made Rob mad, so he ignored his brother’s wise counsel, only to regret it on the car ride home.

“You need to keep your eyes on the road,” she informed him when he leaned over to kiss her at a stoplight.

“O-
kay
.” He snapped back to the driver’s seat and stared straight ahead until the light changed and he could floor the accelerator. A Porsche can go damn fast.

“S-Slow down,” she hissed, crossing her arms and looking all irritated.

What was this? Driving 101?

He didn’t slow down.

“Rob, what do you think you’re doing?”

He slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. He shoved the car into park with a force that probably wouldn’t be looked upon too favorably by the manufacturers.

“What the hell do you think
you’re
doing?” he said, none too quietly. “What is up with you tonight? I did not do anything wrong, and I’m not going to apologize. So
there
.” Okay, well that last part came across as kind of childish, but he really wasn’t in the mood to care much.

Her green eyes narrowed. Her lovely lips tightened. Her soft hands clenched together so hard he worried a few of her fingers might get dislocated.

“I saw you flirting with Gretchen this morning.” Her words were pointed, precise, as accusatory as they came and without a stutter anywhere. “She is my friend, you know, and if you’re leading her on or—”

“You think there’s something going on between me and
Gretchen?”
WHAT? “Hell, Elizabeth, she’s the only one of you guys who isn’t acting like a nutcase today.”

Oooh, she didn’t like that comment. Whoops.

She snatched at the handle of the passenger door and began to pull it open.

“Would you just wait a minute?” He tugged at the hem of her blouse to keep her in the car.

Oooh, she didn’t like that move either, and he was rewarded with a glare that could freeze water in Aruba.

“Why should I wait?” she said.

“Because this is ridiculous! There is nothing—I repeat,
nothing
—going on between me and your best friend. Gretchen’s fun to talk to, that’s all. She tells goofy stories and they make me laugh.”

Oooh, man, was he ever striking out tonight. Now she looked hurt and he remembered—too late, of course—that she was sensitive to the whole speaking thing. Not that he ever thought of her as having a speech impediment anymore. And the two of them talked constantly. How could she forget that? How could she act like an insecure seventh grader?

Women were these crazy-making beings, which reminded him of why he’d stayed clear of them in the first place.

“Please drive me home,” she commanded.

“Fine.” He put the car back into gear and got them the hell out of there. Not that it helped any. A change in location didn’t change her attitude toward him.

“I’m still very angry with you,” she said primly when they reached her apartment complex. “I’d rather you didn’t come up tonight.”

As if!
“You don’t have to worry, sweetheart. I could use a good night’s sleep for a change.” He heard—and cringed at—the bitterness in his own voice.

Clearly, she heard it, too. Something in her expression telegraphed both fresh pain and confusion.

“I’m s-sure you’ll have plenty of restful n-nights soon…back in Chicago.” Her tone was sad, regretful even.

If he’d have stopped right there and apologized for losing his temper—and let her apologize, as he sensed she probably wanted to—he could’ve gone up to her place with her and they could’ve made love and their kisses would’ve removed the stingers they’d thoughtlessly inflicted on each other.

But, dumb-ass that he was, he didn’t stop there and apologize for his part in letting this silly battle escalate—even though she was wrong about the flirting. Oh, no.

Instead he said the genius line, “My nights in Chicago aren’t restful at all. I’ve been taking it easy up here.”

The fury in her eyes told him he’d better get used to Tony’s sofa sleeper again. The hurt on her face told him that they were now paying the price for a relationship that should’ve never happened in the first place. He could see her practically computing the hours until she could watch him leave the city limits of Wilmington Bay—and leave her alone.

* * * * *

TONY COCKED AN eyebrow at him when he returned to his brother’s house that night after a ten-day absence.

“I told you, you should’ve apologized. No questions asked,” Tony said.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ah-huh.” Tony flung some sheets and blankets at him. “I believe you. Really.”

Something in his head exploded. “Women are
crazy
.”

Tony nodded like a freaking TV shrink. “Yep.”

“They get these damn fool ideas into their heads about something and they won’t listen to logic or to reason or to anything that remotely makes sense.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“And I was
not
flirting with Gretchen.”

Tony laughed. “Oh, boy.”

“I am really pissed off.” He massaged his temples with his fingers and collapsed onto the sofa sleeper.

His brother slapped his shoulder on his way out of the room. “Love does that to you,” Mr. Family Man said.

“Dammit,” Rob said back.

And, just for the record, he did not have a restful night.

* * * * *

ELIZABETH KNEW JACQUES didn’t own much black—it didn’t suit his coloring—but, whatever he’d collected in mourning colors, he was wearing all of it the next day.

“I haven’t been much of a friend lately, have I?” she said to him in the early-morning, pre-opening-shift hours at Tutti-Frutti. She enjoyed coming up here before the crowds. It was peaceful, and she needed that these days. She’d be long gone before Rob and Gretchen waltzed in at ten.

She leaned against the counter and finished filling out the order forms she had to complete. Then she handed Jacques one of the blueberry muffins she baked oh-so-late last night when she was
not
with Rob.

“I’ve been pretty self-absorbed with my own bizarre life, and I’m sorry,” she told him. “I know something’s bothering you. Do you want to talk about it?”

He took a deep breath then a big bite of muffin. “Mmm,” he said without enthusiasm.

She smiled slightly. “Are they that bad?”

His brow wrinkled. “Well,
chéri
, let’s just say they aren’t your best effort.”

“I was mad when I made them. And sad. And…well, I don’t know.”

“Just as it was in that film
Like Water for Chocolate
. How the family’s reactions to the foods the heroine served depended on her emotions when she cooked them.” He sighed. Jacques was a longtime fan of foreign flicks that played at independent artsy theaters.

Of course, in this case, he was probably drawing an accurate comparison.

She snatched the muffin plate away. “Better not eat these then. I don’t want you suffering through my reactions from last night.”

“Rob—he’s a short-term thing, yes?” He looked up at her with big worried eyes.

She hated to admit it, but she couldn’t lie to her good friend. “I suppose so.”

He reached past the plates and papers and gave her a long hug and then a soft kiss on her cheek. “You know, my marriage proposal—it still stands. We could be very, very happy together. Good friends, comfortable. Not this constant and unpleasant churning of emotion.” He smiled at her. “Why don’t you marry me, Elizabeth?”

She glanced at him sharply before being distracted by a noise. “Did you hear something?” she said.

He shook his head then grinned a little wickedly. “Just my beating heart.”

“Nice try.” She thought about his words. What he’d described as a “constant and unpleasant churning of emotion.” He wasn’t just talking about her feelings for Rob. Something was definitely up with him. Then it suddenly hit her. “Jacques, are you in love with someone?”

He gave her a stricken look. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t like this. I don’t want this.”

“You
are
in love with someone.” And she knew, with certainty, that this someone wasn’t her. For a moment she felt a sting of hurt, but she and Jacques had always worked best together as friends. She knew that even before Rob Gabinarri returned to put a big crimp in her life.

Jacques still wasn’t talking.

“Why won’t you tell me?” she asked him. “You know you can trust me.”

“Oh, I know. It’s just—I’m just—” He paused and she saw actual tears in his eyes. Tears she knew he wouldn’t let fall. “She’s a good friend, too, but there was always something…more to it. A spark of something beyond friendship, which made everything more frightening.”

Elizabeth covered her mouth as the connections in her brain began to zig and zag and reach an amazing—but not really so unbelievable—conclusion. “Gretchen?” she whispered.

Jacques nodded. “For maybe two years now,” he admitted. “She’s like the smell of bread dough rising. Like thick chocolate icing on a fresh pastry. Like powdered sugar on Mexican wedding cakes.” He gave her a small smile. “Like all the things I love best.”

“Does she know how you feel?”

A single tear escaped his eye, but he brushed it away before it rolled down his cheek. “I was going to try to tell her yesterday. Then I saw her with Rob. And I realized that, even if there’s nothing between them, she has higher standards than just me.” He looked utterly, inconsolably miserable.

“Jacques, don’t say things like. It’s so, so not true. You’re a wonderful man who’s incredibly caring. Gretchen, or any woman, would be delighted to know you were interested in her. Even when I knew you were just playing around with the marriage proposals, I was still flattered that you’d thought enough of me to pretend.” She took his hands in her. “Please, d-don’t sell yourself short.”

“Guys like Rob are tall. They have a head full of hair, muscles and no flab. They don’t have a silly accent and they know how to play all sports. There’s no comparison between him and me.”

“But Jacques, you and Gretchen can literally see eye-to-eye. She laughs when she’s with you and has told me a trillion times that she loves your French accent and wishes it were even thicker.”

This made him grin. “Really?”

“Oh, yes. And you know darned well that appearances aren’t everything. Hair and flab don’t matter where there’s true affection.”

He tilted his head to one side and regarded her strangely. “You believe this?”

She paused for a moment of personal honesty. “Well—” she began.

“You’re saying
you
believe, although your hair was so frizzy and you were a little chubby in high school, that these things didn’t matter? That a boy who cared about you wouldn’t have cared about those features? What you always considered to be your flaws?” He shook his head.
“Mais non, il n’est-ce pas vrai.
It’s not true that you believe this.”

“But that was
high school
, Jacques, not
now
. That same kind of shallowness doesn’t hold up anymore. We’re all smarter and wiser. At least most of us are.” She grinned at him and tried to make herself project total belief in this position despite all of her evidence opposing it.

If only Rob would have ever said that he thought she was beautiful to
him
. He must’ve said a thousand times he thought she was brilliant. But, to her, that was decades-old praise. And, perhaps her grand wish was just an expression of human nature. Everybody craved the one compliment they never got.

Jacques still looked sad as he stood up and tossed the rest of his blueberry muffin in the trash. “Ah,
mon amie
, thank you for the advice. I will consider every thought. Although—” He grinned. “I’ll wait for the next batch of muffins you bake, if you don’t mind. Those were dreadful, you know.”

“I know,” she said, pitching the remaining ones into the trash bin one at a time as Jacques left. Without Rob, most everything was dreadful.

CHAPTER TWELVE

ROB FOUND HIMSELF on US-41 driving a good twenty miles per hour above the speed limit. He didn’t care. He was headed southbound to Chicago and, by God, he couldn’t get there soon enough.

There were times in a man’s life when standing and fighting were the best options. There were also times to head for the hills. Or, in his case, a high-rise condo overlooking the Windy City’s Lake Shore Drive. Go Bears.

Even now, an hour later, he still couldn’t believe what he’d overheard. Monsieur Jacques saying so breezily to his secret love interest, “Rob—he’s a short-term thing, yes?”

And Elizabeth—damn her!—saying, “I suppose so.”

And then the two of them mumbled some stuff he couldn’t hear because he was too busy picking his heart up off the floor. Oh, except for the last, extra-special bit: “Why don’t you marry me, Elizabeth?”

Why? He could sure give good ole Jacques a few hundred reasons why
not
…in English or in
français
, for that matter. He’d taken two whole years of French in high school. He could put a few fairly graphic sentences together if he ever found his battered old dictionary.

He stepped a little harder on the gas pedal.