The Groom Wanted Seconds: A Novella (5 page)

She passed under Mass Ave., the constant Boston traffic a roar overhead. Her music player shifted to J. Lo’s “If You Had My Love,” and Rebecca’s steps slowed. The song, coupled with the reminder that this had been the path she and Jeremy had jogged a hundred times over the past year, made her steps stutter. She crossed to the grassy banks of the river and took a seat, watching the crew team and other boaters, while the music played in her ear, and she realized she couldn’t outrun anything.

She hadn’t found any answers. If anything, she’d created more questions. Rebecca ripped out the earbuds and let them hang around her neck.

A pair of familiar Nikes appeared in her peripheral vision. Rebecca jerked her head up. Jeremy stood beside her, his dark hair lit by the sun behind him. He had on shorts and a T-shirt, baring the muscles in his legs and arms. God, he was a sexy man. No doubt about that. She’d been attracted to him since the first day.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” she asked.

“Same thing as you, I bet. Running off some stress.”

“You still run this path?” she asked. Like she hadn’t been looking for him. Like she didn’t care.

He nodded. “Several times a week.”

She wanted to ask if he did it because he loved the Esplanade or because he missed running it with her. She could have chosen one of a million routes in Boston, but today, she had chosen the one that had been their favorite. A subconscious move? Or just a need to be near the water? Or because she secretly hoped to run into him?

“Mind if I sit down?” He gestured toward the grassy space beside her. She nodded, and he sat down, not too close, but not too far away either. For a long moment, the two of them just watched the water ripple, the boats pass.

If she didn’t think about it too much, it was like they were still together, sitting in comfortable silence. But she didn’t want comfortable anymore. She didn’t want predictable. She wanted—

Real.

There’d been moments when she’d been with Jeremy where she thought they had that, then he would retreat into work or his lists, and the sparks would get lost in his insistence on logical order, the romantic moment swept away before it even really began.

She cursed the fact that she still felt that same rush of sexual tension when he was near, that craving for his kiss, his touch, the way he knew her body like no one else. But that wasn’t enough to build a future on, and she needed to remember that, even as a part of her ached to reach out, to touch him.

“We, ah, got our first order,” she said, focusing on the impersonal, asexual. Not on how close he sat, how it wouldn’t take much effort at all to brush against his skin, to be curled under his arm and pressed into his chest. How tempting the thick grass seemed, how it urged her to lay down with Jeremy and soak up the last rays of sun for the day. She cleared her throat. “So I guess that means we’re in business now.”

A smile filled his face. “That’s great, Rebecca. Really great. I’m proud of you.”

She shrugged. “I owe it to you. You’re the one who introduced me to your cousin’s wife, you know, the one who’s a realtor? She ordered twenty baskets to give to her top clients.”

“I’m glad that worked out.”

“Me too. It’s a start.” She fiddled with the grass by her ankles, wanting to stay, but knowing it would only lead them down a path she didn’t want to take. Hadn’t she learned her lesson this summer? Acting without thinking caused her to make very, very bad decisions, as did forming a relationship that was never going to have real love at its core. The logical side of her knew that Jeremy was never going to change, and hoping for more just because of the way he kissed her or because she craved his touch, wouldn’t make it so.

She spent a year hoping he’d become a man who would put their relationship first. Jeremy had been a nice guy, caring, sweet, but…distracted, his mind never fully there when they were together. Even when she’d broken up with him, she’d hoped he’d come to his senses and come after her. But he hadn’t.

He’d let her go. Hadn’t even fought for their relationship. If anything had told her where she stood in his life and how he really felt, that was it.

How could she date, or worse, marry a man who wouldn’t stand up for “them”? Who didn’t love her?

She started to get to her feet. “Well, I should let you get back to your run. And finish my own, before it gets dark.”

Jeremy laid a hand on her arm. “Stay. Please. Just for a little while.”

When he touched her, desire rushed through Rebecca. A part of her wanted to forget they’d ever broken up, forget the reasons why she’d left him, and go back to that comfortable connection. Burrow deep inside it, like thick blankets on a cold winter’s night.

“I should go,” she insisted.

“And keep avoiding me?”

“I’m not avoiding you, Jeremy. It’s just…we’re over and we should stay that way.” Except she had yet to shrug off his touch or to leave.

“Why?” he asked. “Why should we stay that way?”

She sighed. “We aren’t going to work, Jeremy. So just save your money, and quit sending roses.”

“I thought you’d like them.”

“I do, they’re gorgeous.” Her gaze met his, and for a second, she wished he got it, but damn it, he still didn’t. “But they’re not me. And that’s the problem. You never really knew me. And no matter what I feel when I look at you or touch you—and damn it all to hell, I still feel something when we touch,” the words jerked out of her, caught on a sob, but she shook her head and chased the tears back, “none of that is enough to change the truth.”

He got to his feet and took both her hands in his. He had closed the gap between them, and she had to look up to see into his deep blue eyes. “Then give me the chance to get to know you.”

She shook her head. “You had a year, Jeremy. It’s too late.”

“I don’t understand. I know where you live, where you work, what you’re trying to build with Candace and Maria. How is that not knowing you?”

She ran her thumbs over the backs of his hands, wanting to let go and at the same time, holding on. “I know everything about you. I know that your eyes look green on cloudy days. That you got that scar on your eyebrow when you were five and ran into a picnic table at the family reunion. I know you hate Brussel sprouts and love broccoli, and always wear green on Celtics game days. I know you played the clarinet in high school, but taught yourself guitar on the side. I know you are one of the smartest men I’ve ever met, and also,” her voice broke, her words lodged against the lump in her throat, “one of the dumbest.”

Then she broke away and turned back to the path, her vision blurry, her stomach churning with hurt, disappointment. She’d taken four steps before Jeremy was there again, blocking her way. “I agree,” he said. “I am one of the dumbest men alive, because I let you get away. I don’t want to do that again, Rebecca.”

She shook her head again. “Jeremy, I—”

Then his mouth was on hers, and her objections disappeared in a bittersweet, tempting kiss that awakened feelings she thought had died. Feelings that had her curving into him, her arms sliding around his back. She tipped her head to allow him more access, to return the kiss, matching him with her lips, her tongue, her hands, wanting, desiring, needing, feeling everything through the thin fabric of their running shorts, the slickness of their damp skin. It was like coming home again, stepping into a room she knew well, but a room that engulfed her senses with a fire that overwhelmed her. Chased away logic, common sense, reality.

And that was the whole problem. She stumbled back, out of his arms. “Don’t. Please, just don’t.”

“I want you back, Rebecca. I’m not the same without you.”

How she wanted to agree. To say yes would be easy—and be the worst thing she could do. She’d already made the mistake twice of letting sex overpower her better judgment, and settling for less than she deserved. Never again.

“Even now, you can’t say it,” she said softly, shaking her head. “Jeremy, I can’t. If I do, we’ll end up where we were before, and that means in six months, or a year, or two, or worse, after we’ve gotten married and had two kids, I’ll get that same feeling I got at the beginning of the summer. That being in this relationship means I’m missing something, that I could have more of, if only I’d go after it. And thinking that only leads to…” she shook her head, willing away the tears that burned at the back of her eyes, “choices I should never make.”

Then she started running again. The pavement was hard and real under her shoes, the hot early September sun merciless against her skin, and the path a way back home—and far away from another mistake.

*~*~*

Well. That had gone about as well as a fizzled firework. When Jeremy saw Rebecca on the path, he’d thought running into her had to be divine intervention or a gift from Fate that brought them to the same part of the congested city at the same time. Clearly, he’d been wrong.

He thought of all she’d said, all the details she’d recalled. How the hell did she remember all that about him? And how had he missed the same about her? And what had she meant by “even now you can’t say it”? What hadn’t he said?

He started to run after her, then paused on the pavement. Maybe it was better to do what he always did with an engineering problem—step back, evaluate, then plot a course of action. So he headed home, running at a light pace, letting his mind work while his body sweated. By the time he got back to his apartment, he had the answer.

You have such a tight leash on everything
, she had said back in June.
It’s like you’re afraid to take a chance, to open your heart to what matters. You do it with your career.

But not with me.

She was right. Damn it all, she was a hundred percent right. He’d kept his emotions behind a wall, his default position for so long it had become second nature. He poured himself into blueprints for cold, inanimate things. And look what that had cost him.

His gaze went back to the grassy path he had just left, and the woman he had lost. Then, like a blow to the head, he realized what he had left unsaid for far too long. He wasn’t just a fool, he was a colossal idiot. Maybe it was time to show Rebecca he had changed—

And dare her to do the same.

1/2 pound fresh cherries, pitted

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 pound fresh peaches, sliced (nectarines also work)

Admit it—he still makes your heart race. So either you run after him, or you make something sweet to take your mind off his kisses. In a large saucepan, mix the cherries, sugar and vinegar. Bring to a boil then simmer until syrupy, about five minutes. Add the peaches, and simmer another three to four minutes, just enough to soften the peaches slightly.

Pour into a serving dish and sprinkle with additional sugar if needed (all depends on how sweet your peaches are). Or serve over something with additional carbs, like pancakes, and eat until you forget the color or his eyes and the feel of his lips on yours.

C
HAPTER 6

Two days went by. No more flowers showed up on her doorstep. No calls, no emails. Nothing from Jeremy at all. Nor did she see him on her daily runs.

She told herself she was glad. It was what she wanted. Yet a part of her missed him—

Heck, she’d always missed him. All summer she’d wondered where he was, what he was doing, and if he was thinking about her. Jeremy had been her first thought in the morning, her last thought in the dark of night. And damn it, he still was.

Work. She’d concentrate on work. Not a man who hadn’t changed.

“For you.”

Rebecca jerked her head up to see the barista standing beside her with a steaming mug in her hands. “I…I didn’t order a coffee.”

“No, but the gentleman did, and asked me to deliver it to you. Grande zebra mocha, half vanilla, half chocolate, with an extra shot?”

Her exact order. The one she got every time she came to the coffee shop. “Thank you.” Rebecca accepted the mug, then craned her neck to see around the wiry server. Jeremy stood beside the shop’s counter, a To-Go cup in one hand. He gave her a smile and a nod. Jeremy? Her heart skipped a beat and her pulse skittered.

“Thank you,” she mouthed.

He nodded, then pushed off from the counter and crossed to her. Something about the way he walked, or the smile on his face, seemed to exude a new confidence, a new direction. A rush of heat ran through her, fluttering in her heart when he closed the distance between them and stopped by her table. “I saw you working, and thought you could use some caffeine.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” She grinned. “I guess you did pay attention.”

“To some things. Not enough.” He waved toward the coffee. “Enjoy.”

He was going to leave, and even though she knew “broken up” meant she was supposed to let him go, she just…couldn’t. Maybe it was the perfect coffee order, maybe it was the new way he seemed to hold himself, maybe she was just lonely. Or maybe she hadn’t gotten over him like she thought. “Wait. Don’t go.” She gestured toward the opposite seat. The man had bought her a coffee, after all, and it would be rude not to ask him to stay. Yeah, that was why she offered, not because she was intrigued by this new side of Jeremy. “Do you want to sit down? I’m just working on the website design for Gift Baskets, and could use a break. We’re trying to keep costs down by learning the HTML code ourselves, and it’s not easy. At least to me.”