In my Arms Tonight (NYC Singles Book 2) (16 page)

“That’s probably the only thing she did right,” Ashley muttered under her breath.

Distracted, Kat moved her elbow and it knocked over her wineglass. It crashed on the hardwood floor.

“Oh, my goodness! Sorry. I’ll clean it up.” She bent to pick up the fragments of glass, but Ashley stopped her.

“Let it be. Someone will take care of it later.”

Someone meant her housekeeper. Ashley had a full-time, on-call housekeeper now. It was one of the changes Kat was still trying to wrap her head around.

Bella patted her hand from over the table. “You’ve had a distressing week. Appearing on TV and all.”

This and that had no relation, but she didn’t miss Ashley and Bella trading anxious looks. Clearly, they’d been having a discussion about her behind her back.

“Is there something you want to tell us?” Ashley was the one who got to broach this uncomfortable subject.

Kat stared down at the salad on her plate, unsure of where to begin this conversation. Ashley and Bella were her best friends, so she was going to have to tell them about Alex eventually. But eventually could mean in a few months, right?

“Well, yes. I’m covering the mayoral race now.” Kat pushed around the food on her plate with the fork, guilt gnawing the pit of her stomach.

She should tell them. Ashley and Bella were so open with her about everything. She’d feel bad for keeping it from them later.

“You’re not eating anything.” Bella’s astute observation didn’t miss the mark.

Kat took a swig of orange juice to ease her anxiety. “Actually… I wanted to…”

“Something happened that day at the subway, right? You’ve been quiet since then,” Bella remarked.

“Yes…” She’d met Alex on the subway. “But it’s not what you think.”

“We can’t force you to talk about it.” Ashley’s voice dropped to a soothing hush. “It can be hard to talk about… difficult experiences. But we’re here for you, if you want to.”

“I wasn’t raped, guys. Please stop being so suspicious. I would tell you if that was the case.” Kat bit her lip. “The thing is, there is… a man.”

Bella’s hands stilled on the fork. “I must have heard wrong. I thought you said man.”

“I did say man.”

“And this man did not rape you?” Ashley interjected.

“No, he did not. Can you stop going on about that?”

“Oh, oh, right, it must be some guy at work, right? Sorry, I just thought for a second… what was I thinking?” Bella shook her head, like she’d said something stupid in her drunkenness.

Kat felt some of her courage drain out.

Maybe Ashley and Bella were not prepared to handle the news of her being with someone. To them, she was the one who’d sworn to be single and childless all her life. Until last night, she’d thought the same.

Her mind was unchanged about marriage and kids. Kat couldn’t see herself with Alex long-term. They were both too ambitious to make the sacrifices that would be required for them to stay together. He’d want to take on Capitol Hill or the White House someday, and all she wanted was to stay here and write news. So their break-up was inevitable.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy whatever time she had with him. He was someone she really liked being with and for now, that was all she could ask for.

“No, it’s not some guy at work… it’s kinda related to work… but it’s become personal too…” Kat dithered.

Ashley clicked her fingers, like she’d had a lightbulb moment.

“Someone’s stalking you?”

Under saner circumstances, Bella would’ve been right. For a long time, the only guys Kat had talked about had been her colleagues, her bosses and her stalkers.

“No…”

“Did someone criticize your work? Attack you personally?” Bella followed up.

“I wouldn’t use the word attack…” Kat dipped her head to the right, not even sure which question she was answering.

“Then what word would you use?” Ashley prodded.

“Kissed?”

Deathly silence. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. When nobody had said anything by ten, Kat got fidgety. Agreed, it was a shocker. But shouldn’t they have something to say? Shouldn’t they have many, many things to say?

“Bill kissed you?” Bella’s voice was a barely-there whisper when she uttered the next words fifteen seconds later. “That’s sexual harassment!”

Oh, God. This was really not going down the right way. “Not Bill. Someone else. And it was consensual.”

Coughs sputtered out. Bella and Ashley choked on their food in unison, then hurriedly fumbled for their glasses of wine.

I told my friends I kissed a guy and they choked. How appropriate.

“Who?” Ashley demanded, eyes watering.

“Alex Summer.”

Bella was peeling herself from the chair already. “The hot congressman running for mayor?”

“The very same.” Kat dove into her chickpea salad and gulped down a spoonful.

“Not shit,” Bella applauded. “Well done. Not too many faces like his going around these days. Just sayin’.”

Bella was a regular on the NYC dating scene, so she’d know.

“But isn’t he a lot older than her? He must be forty, at least.” Ashley glowered at Bella’s superficiality.

“Age doesn’t matter. He’s single, he’s heterosexual, out of his twenties and earns well. In this city, finding someone like that is like winning the lottery.” Bella brushed away Ashley’s concern.

“But isn’t it too soon? She barely knows him.”

Scoffing, Bella flipped her hair. “Says the girl who kissed her future husband after talking to him for three minutes in a bar. You don’t need to worry about Kat. She’s so good at her job that I’d be surprised if she didn’t have every detail of his life recorded with dates.”

“Knowing facts about a person is different from actually knowing them.” Kat flexed her toes under the table.

Bella ignored her and lunged for the dessert. “This demands a celebration. My eternally single friend has someone in her life.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not even serious. It might fizzle out anytime,” Kat warned. She wasn’t pinning any long-term hopes on Alex. Since she wasn’t as matrimonially minded as either Bella or Ashley, a short-term fling was still good news to her, though. It’d break the monotony of her life for a little while, help her have a little fun and rev up her sex life. “Please keep this to yourselves. The relationship is a secret.”

“Our lips are zipped.” Ashley made a zipping gesture.

“Totally,” Bella echoed, with an unsettling smirk.

Serving ice-cream was the most monotonous job in the world. If she’d had any doubts about that, they were all gone by now, as Kat yawned for the twentieth time and looked at the creeping arms of the clock on the wall. She was already bored out of her mind, even though she’d been at this job for only an hour.

Her fingers swam in sweat under the latex gloves she was wearing, but she couldn’t remove them and free herself of the discomfort.

“How do you do this, every Sunday? It’s like watching paint dry in slow motion,” she complained to Alex, who stood right next to her, behind bowls of chocolate chips, strawberries, nuts and caramel.

“Smile. It makes life seem better,” he suggested. Kat wondered if his jaw didn’t ache with all the smiling he’d been doing since morning. Then again, that was pretty much what he did for a profession, so he must be used to it.

An hour ago, he’d been across the room, working with some of the other female volunteers (coincidentally, all of the other volunteers were female—was that a surprise, though?) and she’d been talking to the woman next to her, who was a young girl. But she’d decided to take up some other task, and Alex had been happy to take her position. Kat was glad, too. Because now she could talk to him without drawing suspicion. Alex talked openly to the other female volunteers, so why should it be any different with her?

Across the room, pizzas, Coke, cake and chips were laid out on long tables. The room was bustling with kids who’d just finished watching an animated movie minutes ago. The excited noises rose and fell as they chattered amongst themselves.

Sunday was the day of their weekly pizza and movie party, something Alex sponsored for them every week. Based on what the volunteer coordinator at Golden Age Group home had told her, only boys who’d been on their best behavior the past week were allowed to attend this special Saturday party.

Kat stretched her arms over her head, seeing the light in Alex’s eyes grow as he watched the children smile and play. It did something to her chest, that blissful look overtaking his features. He’d had the same look on that afternoon they’d had sex.

Today was the first time they’d met after that afternoon and so far, she couldn’t tell any difference in his behavior. He behaved politely and distantly, as he’d done before.

Obviously, he wouldn’t flirt with her with so many people around them, but she’d have felt reassured if there was even a little difference in the way he treated her.

But then, this was for her benefit so why was she complaining?

“Do you know any of their names?” Kat enquired, glancing at the boys, who were scattered around the room, paper plates in hand.

“I’ve been doing this for six months. I know all of their names.” Alex jabbed a finger in the air, pointing to a cute African-American boy with dimples. “That’s Shawn. Next to him is Adrian. Anti-clockwise round the table, Peter, Ravi, Ethan, Jayden, Pierre, Chen…”

He recounted their names like a newscaster reading the news—confidently and quickly. Kat was stunned that he’d managed to memorize so many names and more because there was no reason for him to have made the effort to do so.

She mock-clapped as a little boy approached her, his shadow lengthening until it collided with her arm.

“Ice cream, please.” It was the kid with the adorable dimples. Shawn.

Happy that she could finally do something instead of waiting around, Kat scooped ice cream, plopped it into a cone and handed it to the kid, who then moved to Alex.

“Hello, Shawn. Did you like the movie?” Alex looked interested in the boy’s reaction and she wondered why.

“It was okay.” Shawn licked a bit of the ice cream. “It was about this scientist who makes a crazy time machine and then goes back in time to meet the dinosaurs. I liked the part where a dinosaur throws him up on a tree. It was funny. Everybody was laughing.”

Giggling, he looked up to Alex. She’d have to be blind to miss the affection with which Shawn regarded Alex. Alex clearly had a fan here.

“That sounds like it was a lot of fun.”

“It was. Jayden’s here this week and I’ve never seen him laugh before. But he was laughing during that scene.”

Alex cast a brief glance at the table where a group of boys were sitting, then returned his attention to Shawn. “What would you like on your ice cream?”

“Chocolate chips.”

Picking out a small number of chocolate chips with blue-gloved fingers, Alex placed them on the ice-cream.

“Thank you.” Shawn swept the room with warm brown eyes, then brought his voice down to a whisper. “Jayden said he wants to meet to you at the alcove.”

“Tell him I’ll see him there.” Alex moved his jaw self-consciously.

Shawn nodded before skipping away to the center of the round red table where the other kids were.

“What was that?” Kat asked.

“Can you keep an eye on this for me? I’ll be right back.” Alex yanked off his gloves before taking off.

As soon as he left, the volunteer coordinator Kat had been introduced to earlier rolled around to her side, one plump hand propped on her hip. Her trimmed hair, peppered with gray streaks, was tamed into a ponytail and she cradled a folder, peeking at the contents through her wide-rimmed glasses.

“Hi, how’s everything going?”

“Great. I’m enjoying the experience,” Kat lied, then embarrassingly, a yawn tugged at her and she succumbed. “I honestly like the kids, though. They’re very well-mannered.”

The coordinator chuckled. “It’s all right, dear. I’d be the first to admit that this can get boring. I’ve done enough of it to know. Why don’t you take a break? I’ll be happy to manage things on this end.”