Blame It on the Bachelor (21 page)

“And he took his temperature.”

“Really. How exactly did he do that?”

“With a tiny thermometer. Right up the little guy’s bung hole. Yeah. Never seen anything like it.”

Kylie raised her eyebrows.

“And then he gave him a little bitty fish shot and sent us on our way.”

“No pills?” She asked the question to see what he’d make up next.

“Nah. But listen, you wouldn’t believe the bill—”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said dryly. “Dev, how stupid do you think I am?”

“Ha!” he said, with a wary glint in his eye. “Just yanking your chain.”

“No,” Kylie shook her head, “I don’t think you were. I think you actually expected me to believe you. What I don’t get is why you’d lie to me about taking a fish to a vet.”

Dev opened his mouth as if he had a reasonable answer to this question.

Kylie held up a hand. “Why don’t you get dressed and you can tell me all about it on the drive to my place.”

DEV WONDERED IF it was his spit that had killed Fugly. Maybe saliva was toxic to fish. Or maybe it had been the impact with the windshield. Or the minute or two without water. And then the nonconditioned tank had finished him off. At any rate, life for Fugly had been ugly, brutish and short.

Dev asked Fugly’s spirit for forgiveness as he unlocked the passenger door for Kylie, who was ominously silent and, unfortunately, fully dressed once again.

Hell. How had the perfect evening ended on such a sour note? Drinks had been great. Dinner had been fantastic. The balcony sex had been sublime. And now this.

Dev cleared his throat. “I was just kidding around with you, Kylie.”

“No, you weren’t. You were trying to cover up your earlier slipup about driving with the fish. Which confuses me even more.”

Dev sighed. “All right, all right. Here’s how it was. I got home after Mark’s wedding and my fish Ike had died.”

“Ike?” Kylie wrinkled her brow.

“Yes, Ike. Remember the fish flu? Well, Ike was my original fish. And you’d mocked me about— Well, you said that if I couldn’t keep a goldfish alive, then it didn’t bode well for me having a relationship.”

“Go on,” Kylie said.

“So I came home and Ike was dead. And today, in the face of the possibility that I’d be bringing you here, I decided that you couldn’t see that I’d killed my fish. It was embarrassing, and it was hard not to view it as some kind of omen. So I got a replacement for him—Fugly. But I was in a hurry…” Dev told her the whole miserable story. He was immensely relieved when she laughed.

“
That’s
why you told me you took him to a vet?”

“Yeah,” he admitted sheepishly.

“Dev, that’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, trying to catch her breath.

“It’s pretty bad,” he agreed.

“And now you’ve killed
two
fish.”

He stepped harder on the gas and took the next turn with a slight squeal. “Yeah. I’m a regular fishicidal maniac.”

Except for the car’s engine, silence fell in the car. “So when can I see you again?” Dev asked after a couple of moments.

She didn’t reply.

Dev got a bad feeling. “Kylie?”

“You lied to me.”

This was not happening. “Kylie,” he said in even tones, “I fibbed about a
fish.
”

“You misrepresented the facts, you lied and then you tried to cover up the lie.”

“Aw, damn it!” He banged his hand on the steering wheel. “I did it for
you.
”

She shook her head. “No, Dev, you did it for yourself. You didn’t want to look bad in front of me.”

“Okay. Fine. Guilty as charged, Your Honor. Charge me and give me probation. But don’t walk away over such a little thing. That’s ridiculous.”

She sighed. “It’s a little thing this time. But next time it might not be.”

“What, you think I’ll do this with a dog?”

“No.”

“A woman? Kind of hard to pull off, don’t you think?”

“Dev, you know what I mean. The fact that you’re lying to me on a first date…what kind of lies will you tell later on?”

“None! I’d never lie about anything big.” Dev swung the Corvette into her parking lot with a feeling of doom. He got out to open her door, but she didn’t wait for him. She was already out of the car.

“Thank you for a really wonderful evening, Dev. I do mean that. It was close to magical.” Her tone, as she said the last sentence, was full of regret. Yet he detected a strange hint of something else. What was it?

Relief.
There was relief mixed in with the regret, and he caught it in her demeanor, too.

She turned and walked toward her unit without waiting for him, but he caught up easily.

“I’ll see you to your door.”

“It’s okay, really.”

“No, it’s not.” He matched her step for step. “I want to know you’re safely inside before I leave.”

“Thanks.”

As they arrived at her door, he asked, “So will you still be my date for the grand opening?”

She turned to face him. “I’ll go with you in a business capacity. As a representative of the bank. How’s that?”

Dev tried to tamp down his frustration, but he didn’t mince words. “Frankly, I think it sucks.”

She winced, then looked away.

“And you know what else I think? You’re using this whole damn fish thing as an excuse not to get involved with me. Because you’re scared to venture out of your comfort zone. You’re afraid to try something new. You’re terrified of your own feelings.”

“You’re wrong. I don’t trust you.” Kylie dug her keys out of her purse.

“No, sweetheart. You don’t
want
to trust me.” And with that parting shot, he turned and walked away.

20

KYLIE WALKED INTO her apartment and was greeted by an unpleasant surprise: Potsy had coughed up a giant, matted hairball in the middle of her sofa.

He came to greet her, waddling in and emitting his signature, throaty half-warble, half-croak of a meow.

She sighed. “Thank you, Potsy. It was incredibly thoughtful of you to leave me such a nice gift.” She kicked off her heels and padded barefoot into the kitchen to get paper towels and stain remover.

“Why
should
I want to trust Devon McKee?” she asked the cat. “Give me one good reason. Why
would
I want to trust him? He’s probably just like Jack. Maybe even worse. I’ve
had
it with trusting men. They aren’t worthy. And if they are worthy, like my dad, then they go and
die
on you.”

Potsy yowled.

She grabbed his disgusting hairball through four layers of paper towel and stomped off to drop it in the trash. Then she returned and doused the remnants with the stain remover. She glared at the mess and waited for the chemicals to sink in and do their thing.

“Where does that superior tone of Dev’s come from, and that implied challenge to my judgment, when he just got through telling me a pack of lies for the dumbest reason on the planet?”

Potsy squinted at her and then licked himself in an uncouth place.

“Hey, would you cut that out?” she said. “You’re going to cough up another mess.”

Potsy ignored her.

“But it’s your nature to lick yourself, right? Just like it’s his nature to lie or cheat and it’s my nature to attract these loser men.” Kylie started to blot up the stain.

Potsy gnawed on something between his toes, the identity of which she didn’t want to know. Ugh.

“Well, he’s not a loser, exactly…but I don’t know if I’d call him a winner. He seems kind of on the cusp—like he could go either way.”

Potsy commenced a nasty slurping noise, between a different set of toes.

She cast him a glance of distaste and glanced at her watch. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. Too late to call a girlfriend—even Melinda.

Bad television didn’t seem the answer to distract herself. She’d read all her latest paperbacks. The call of the internet held no appeal. Which left work.

She went over to her soft-sided briefcase and withdrew Dev’s file to examine the numbers. Because despite the date, she was going to have to pay a professional visit this next week before the grand opening.

Kylie curled up in her favorite reading chair and delved into the figures. Dev’s assets were his old SUV, the Corvette and his condo, which he’d put up as collateral for the business loan since he had very little equity in the building housing Bikini. Value of the condo had dropped by half since the big mortgage crisis had kicked in, so the restaurant’s loan wasn’t nearly as secure as it once had been.

She also felt that, according to the business plan he’d submitted, his cash outlay was underestimated and his revenue was overestimated. Especially since he’d hired more staff and waiters for the upcoming opening of the restaurant. And then there were the actual girls he brought in to model bikinis all night and flirt with the customers.

Kylie ran numbers on her laptop for another hour and didn’t like what she saw. She didn’t like it at all.

Under the loan agreement, the second installment of the loan would only be paid out pending the account manager’s approval. And unless she was missing some vital information or the grand opening was a smashing success and launched celebrity patronage of the place, Kylie didn’t see any way she could responsibly grant that approval to Dev.

She cursed herself for unknowingly crossing the line between professional and personal with him. And then crossing it again with full knowledge that she had a conflict of interest. Not for the first time, she wished she’d passed the account to someone else immediately when she’d found out Devon McKee was the client. But at the time, she’d been unwilling to call attention to herself, and afraid of what Dev might say to bank management in retribution. She’d been an idiot where he was concerned—and still was.

DEV DROVE TOO fast and too aggressively after dropping off Kylie. He headed straight for Bikini to check on things, even though he’d asked his buddy and fellow groomsman Pete to make sure the place was under control. Adam had said he’d stop by, too. Either one of them could talk Lila off the ledge as well as Dev could, and easygoing Pete was a natural with the rest of the staff, too. He was the ultimate people-person and customer-service guy.

Dev squealed into the tiny lot near the bar and saw Pete’s car there, thank God. He stalked towards Bikini.

How could Kylie peg him as a liar just because he’d told fish fibs? For that she found him untrustworthy? Ridiculous.

But they
were
lies,
said his conscience, unaccountably not in its normal coma.

Dev scoffed. A whitewash story didn’t count as a lie.

Yes it does.

Okay, fine. But it was harmless.

Evidently not, dude. She’s done with you.

He was in a foul mood when he pushed open the back door of Bikini. The noise level up front was deafening, and he could hear rhythmic clapping to the Brazilian dance number that was on. Dev threaded his way through the back, nodding at Maurizio, Carlos the busboy and Eddie the dishwasher.

The latest bikini girl was putting on quite a show. She was up on the bar, dancing barefoot for a wildly appreciative crowd, and many of the men showed their appreciation of her talents by slipping bills into her exceptionally small bikini bottom.

Occasionally Lila glanced up at her in disdain, but the crowd loved her. And they seemed to be a very thirsty crowd.