Playing for Keeps (17 page)

I looked at Riley, startled. “Excuse me?”

“Pete.” He lifted his glass toward the bar, where Pete was ordering our pizza. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in love with you.”

It felt good to hear someone say it, even if it was Riley. But, as much as it pained me, I had to deny it. I didn’t want it getting out. Next thing you knew Riley would tell Nell, and then half Portland would know. My dad’s half.

I mean, I wanted to scream that Pete was mine. I wanted to tattoo his name on my forehead.

Kind of.

I mean, I did. One day.

Really. Maybe in another month or two. When I was more used to the idea.

I cleared my throat. “Has Pete said something to you?”

“He’s my best friend. I can just tell.”

“Pete and I are friends.” How was that for evasion? It wasn’t even a lie.

Riley shrugged. “Just as well. Love is for suckers.”

That was a far cry from the man who was so eager to propose that he overheated and melted the wax ring in his pocket.

Pete slid in next to me and handed me a beer.

“Riley was just telling me love is for suckers.” I gave Pete a
help me
look.

“Suckers, huh?”

I flushed. The way he said it brought to mind all sorts of lewd images. I was beginning to realize that I loved lewd.

I shook the pictures out of my head and paid attention to what Pete was telling Riley.

“You have to calm down. Nell loves you. You know she wants to marry you.”

“I know no such thing. Remember Louise Marketti?”

Pete glanced at me before replying. “Nell isn’t Louise.”

“We don’t know that. The next thing you know, Nell will be dumping me and asking you to the prom.”

I raised a brow at Pete.

He flushed. “We aren’t talking about the prom. This is a wedding.
Your
wedding. If Nell didn’t want you, she wouldn’t have agreed to be your wife.”

That must have been the magic word because Riley got all soft and mushy. “She did, didn’t she?”

Pete clapped his hand on Riley’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, man. Everything will work out.”

“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to be left out.

Pete grinned and covered my hand with his. I tensed under the public display before I realized my hand was in my lap, under the table. There was no way Riley could see.

Riley teared up. “You’re the best friend a man could ask for. You’re the best almost-sister-in-law too, Gracie.”

“Right.” I rolled my eyes. Obviously alcohol made him emotional. Mental note: keep the champagne away from him at the wedding to avoid tearful speeches.

Riley suddenly gripped the hand I was holding the beer with. “I have an idea. Could you talk to Nell? Just to make sure everything’s okay. I’d be so relieved.”

“I’m not sure I can be much help.” Nell wasn’t exactly talking much to me these days either.

“Please, Gracie.”

“Don’t you think it would be better to talk to her yourself?”

“No.”

Pete prodded me by squeezing my hand. I glared at him but then I acquiesced with a sigh. “Fine. I’ll talk to her.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” He pried my hand off the pint glass and kissed it.

“Sure. No problem.” The second I snatched it back, I rubbed it off on my jeans.

The pizza arrived—half pepperoni and mushroom and half ham and pineapple. When I looked at Pete, he just squeezed my hand again, but his gaze made me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

“I should get going.” Riley eased himself out of the booth, slowly, as if to see if he could stand up on his own. He smiled brilliantly when he didn’t fall over.

Pete frowned. “Hey man, you okay to drive home?”

“No way.” He looked like such a little boy for a moment. “I’ll take a cab.”

“Come on, buddy.” Pete got up and put an arm around Riley’s shoulder. He turned around and smiled at me. “Don’t eat all the pizza.”

Through the front window I saw Pete wave down a cab and help his friend into it. He even paid the cab driver before he rejoined me.

“You’re a good man, Pete.”

He smiled and lifted a piece of pizza. “If hailing a cab for a drunk friend is all it takes for me to get you to look at me like that then I should do it more often.”

“I wasn’t looking at you.”

“You were. And now you’re blushing.”

I wrinkled my nose at him. He laughed and kissed my neck, which made my nipples pucker even as it made me freak out.

“Cut that out. We’re supposed to keep a low profile.” I glanced around to see if anyone noticed. When I looked back at Pete, he was staring at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking because his eyes were so shuttered.

“What?”

Pete shrugged and bit into his pizza.

“What?” I didn’t like the way he looked at me.

He slowly chewed his mouthful before wiping his mouth and saying, “When are we going to stop hiding, Grace?”

I winced. This topic came up with more frequency lately. “I thought we settled this already.”

“We didn’t settle anything.”

“You agreed that we wouldn’t announce, uh, this”—I waved my hand between us—“for a little while.”

“And it’s been a little while.”

“We should wait a while longer.”

“How long?”

“Until after Nell and Riley’s wedding.”

His eyes went stormy as he slumped back against the booth.

“It’s not that much longer,” I hurried to say. “That way we won’t steal their thunder. And, really, won’t it be nice to savor this privately for a couple months longer?”

“If I thought savoring this was your real goal, I wouldn’t have any qualms.”

“Of course it’s my goal.” Kind of.

“No, it’s not. You’re motivated by fear. You’re hiding behind your dad and your sisters.”

I set my beer down with a
thunk
. “Are you saying you don’t like that I take care of my family? Because I promised my mom—”

“You’re hiding behind that promise. Do you think your mom would be happy that you’re sacrificing your happiness for them?”

“I’m plenty happy,” I protested with a scowl. I took a bite of my slice, not wanting to see the emotion in his eyes.

The silence as we ate stretched painfully. Usually, we could spend hours in each other’s company without saying a word and it was okay because we communicated without words. But it felt like a wall had been erected between us, and it hurt.

I sighed. “I promise as soon as the wedding is over we can make a grand announcement of our love.” To me, that meant we’d tell people we were kind of dating. I didn’t want to imagine what that meant to Pete.

He gazed at me steadily. I had to look away because I knew he’d be able to see my every thought.

He sighed. “What do you think is going on with Nell?”

“I think she’s just stressed,” I said, feeling hugely relieved by the change in subject. “It’s a lot of pressure planning a wedding.”

“Except she’s hardly doing any of the planning.”

I couldn’t argue with him there. I’d taken care of most of the details.

“It was nice of you to agree to talk to her for Riley.”

I shrugged. “I doubt I’ll get very far. She’d been super unreasonable lately.”

“Still.” His hand reached toward my hair, as if to tug it, but he caught himself and pulled back.

Something inside me wilted. I wanted his touch.

Then I felt disgusted with myself. I just told him we had to back off in public. I couldn’t have it both ways.

Somehow, that bit of logical was little comfort, and I couldn’t help thinking I’d made a big mistake I’d never be able to rectify.

Chapter Thirteen

Invincibility is a matter of defense; vulnerability is a matter of attack.

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I decided to pay Nell a visit. Given the way she was acting these days, I didn’t think she’d come see me if I asked, not even under the pretext of discussing wedding stuff. I also didn’t want to give her any warning of my visit—the chances that she’d sneak out to avoid seeing me were pretty high. So I arrived at her condo exactly two minutes after the market closed. I figured she’d still be wrapping up her workday.

Sure enough, she answered the door. “What the hell?”

“Good to see you too, dear sister. I’ve missed you.” I kissed her on the cheek as I pushed past her into her apartment.

I’d barely stepped foot into her living room when George bounded around the corner and pounced on me.

“Holy crap. Down, Fido.” I caught my balance before the mutt knocked me down. “What have you been feeding him? He’s huge.”

Nell dropped onto the chaise lounge. “He’s no bigger than he was.”

I eyed George. He stood in front of me with that goofy grin of his, panting eagerly. I swore he stood at least six inches taller than the last time I saw him.

Setting my bag out of George’s reach, I sat on the couch facing Nell. “So. How have things been going?”

“As much as I’d like to believe this is a sisterly visit, I’m having a hard time completely believing it.”

“Can’t I come by just to chat with my younger sister?” I tried George’s innocent expression.

It didn’t work. Nell snorted. “Right, Gracie.”

I shrugged. Hey, I tried. “How are you really?”

“Fine,” she barked.

“That was convincing.”

“What? You want me to tell you that work’s been crazy and that everyone’s been so needy it’s driving me
insane
?”

I winced at the shrillness of her voice. “Everyone?”

“My clients, George, Riley. Everyone.” She crossed her arms and pouted angrily.

“Riley doesn’t seem like the needy type,” I ventured cautiously.

“Goes to show you how well you know him.”

“You’re right, I don’t know him. But I’ve talked to him and—”

“You’ve talked to him?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”

“I didn’t want to talk to him.” That didn’t come out right. “He talked to me. He said you were pulling away from him.”

“As if he’d notice.”

“Nell, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is my boyfriend is self-centered and can’t see anything beyond his needs.”

It was kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, I thought, but I knew better than to point that out right now. “He’s not your boyfriend.”

“What?”

“He’s your fiancé, not your boyfriend.”

It sounded like she said “not for long” but she muttered it under her breath so I wasn’t sure.

“Nell, don’t you think you should treat him a little bit better?”

“Better than what?”

I recoiled at the vehemence in her tone. “Better than a sweater you’ve forgotten, that you only pull out to wear when you’re in the mood. Love isn’t about that, Nell.”

“As if you’d know.”

“Excuse me?”

“Like you’d know.” She waved her hand toward me. “You’re the original spinster. You don’t know anything about love.”

That smarted. I wanted to protest but I couldn’t without revealing my relationship with Pete. “I know what I saw with Mom and Daddy.”

“Mom and Dad were an anomaly. That’s not the norm.”

“Why shoot for the norm when you know the sublime is possible?”

“Maybe I don’t want sublime. Maybe I just want everyone to leave me the hell alone.”

I was used to Nell acting like a prima donna, but this was taking it to extremes. I thought I’d try a different tact. “Riley’s worried about you.”

“How would you know? You don’t talk to him unless you’re forced to.”

“He told me. We met for a drink last night. He’s worried about you. He loves you, Nell, and you’re treating him like crap.” That was what I was reduced to—using “crap” twice in the space of half an hour. It was a testament to my state of mind.

Nell glared at me for a full minute before she burst out in tears. They weren’t pretty tears either. We’re talking big, messy sobs and running snot.

I lunged for the box of Kleenex on the end table and handed it to her before she could throw herself on me and slime my clothes.

“Th-ank yo-ooou,” she wailed, burying her face in a wad of tissue.

I rolled my eyes but I did my duty by getting up, sitting next to her, and rubbing her back soothingly.

Hearing his mistress’s distress, George rushed to us with one of Nell’s shoes dangling from his mouth. He dropped it at my feet and starting howling in harmony with Nell.

Needing to deal with one hysterical being at a time, I waited until her sobs had tapered off to an occasional hiccup before asking her again. “What’s wrong, Nell?”

“Riley came over last week. He was supposed to make dinner for us and we were going to watch a movie, that new romantic comedy with Miley Cyrus. We opened a bottle of wine, but it was corked so—”

“Nell, what does any of this have to do with what’s wrong?”

“I was getting to that.” She glared at me. “You’re so impatient.”

“Fine. This is me being patient. Go on.”

She gave me another evil look. “I don’t know if I feel like telling you if you’re going to have that kind of attitude.”

“Just tell me the story.”

“Sometimes you’re such a bitch.” Sniffing, she continued. “I was saying, we opened another bottle of wine. Then we had dinner and watched the movie. And then we went to bed.”

I waited for her to go on but apparently that was the end of her story because she sat there and pouted at me. “That’s it?” I asked carefully.

“Exactly!” She jumped up and gestured wildly. “
That was it
. Suddenly I could see the rest of my life. Having dinner every night, watching TV, and going to bed.” She shuddered dramatically.

I imagined having the luxury of doing that every night with Pete. My heart swelled at the thought. It sounded heavenly. “And that’s bad?”

“
It’s boring
. It’d be like buying the same tennis shoes for the rest of your life. What if there’s another pair that’s more exciting? What if you want to wear strappy heels?”

“It’s not boring because you love him.” I frowned at her. “Don’t you?”

“Well yeah.”

“What happened to the delirious Nell who couldn’t wait to become Nell Neill?”