Made for You (8 page)

“Hmm, I think this one has just a little too much give,” he muttered, pretending to test the current mattress. “Say, Princess, could you straddle me for a minute so I can get a sense of how much leverage a woman’s knees could get on this thing?”

She ignored his request, and instead tapped a long finger against her lips and pretended to study the mattress. “You know, that’s a valid point. I seem to remember you just sort of
lying
there, so considering the woman will have to do all the work, it’s good that you’re paying attention to the female needs. Especially if you want her to come back for more. Oh, wait, you don’t
do
repeats.”

He gave an exaggerated sigh and moved on to the next mattress in one fluid movement. He watched carefully as she checked her watch, although he didn’t think she was really in a hurry. In fact, for most of the day, she hadn’t seemed to mind being with him. Much. He’d intentionally let her pick all of the furniture. Well, except for that awful beige couch.

He’d known all along that the thrill of being able to decorate a house from scratch would be too much for her to resist, and she’d thrown herself wholeheartedly into the task, asking the sales people millions of questions, trying dozens of different options before informing him firmly,
this one
.

He knew he was pushing it with mattress shopping, but it was a necessary step in his plan.

A salesperson approached them warily as Will rolled around on each mattress, and Brynn patiently explained that no, they didn’t need any help, that her acquaintance merely wanted to try them out. All of them.

The salesguy gave a tentative smile and wandered away as Brynn pulled out her buzzing cell phone, her eyes scanning the incoming message.

It was the moment he needed. Taking advantage of her distraction, Will rolled to his knees, hooked his arm around Brynn’s waist, and tugged, flopping both of them back onto the mattress with just enough of a jolt to make her purse whack him in the chest before he rolled her beneath him.

Or almost beneath him.

Mostly she was just wiggling and muttering obscenities at him.

He rolled onto his side, locking his arm around her waist and pulling her into the little-spoon position.

“So now what do you think about this one?” he said against her ear. “It’s hard, but I’m kind of thinking it’s just right.”

“Oh, wow, a blatantly obvious double entendre. How unexpected of you.”

But she was smart enough to know that every one of her wiggles rubbed her ridiculously tight ass against his erection. Other than her heaving breath, she lay perfectly still.

“We’re making a scene,” she said under her breath. Will almost smiled. She was curled up on a mattress with her worst enemy and she was worried about making a scene.

He rolled onto his back, but not before he’d clamped his hand around her wrist so she couldn’t wiggle away. “Now tell me honestly, what do you think about this mattress?”

She was still for several seconds before she rolled onto her back next to him. “I want a whole bottle of wine, Will.”

Victory.

“Fine.”

“And their baked brie plate.”

He smiled. “You got it.”

“And there’s this salad…”

“No, no salads,” he said, unable to stop himself from rubbing his fingertips against the sensitive skin of her inner wrist.

She hissed in a breath. “Well, if I get the rich cheese dish, I have to get the salad.”

“Says who?”

“My thighs,” she said primly.

“Honey, I’ve seen your thighs. They don’t care whether you have the salad or the cheese or the Goddamn crème brûlée.”

Brynn loved crème brûlée. Not that she would ever admit it.

“I guess I could do an extra session of yoga tomorrow.”

He snorted. “Yoga? You?”

She rolled her head to the side to scowl at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I dunno, it just doesn’t really seem like you. Doesn’t that require patience?”

He felt her eyes studying his profile, and it took everything in him to not turn toward her and meet her eyes. And then to roll on top of her and kiss every cheese-loving, yoga-hating bit of her.

“I don’t really like yoga,” she admitted finally. She sounded surprised, although he didn’t know if it was surprise at the realization or surprise that he’d been the one to note it. She’d never exactly been one to know herself.

“So it’s decided. Cheese, no salad?”

This time he did turn his face toward hers, putting their lips just inches apart.

Will waited for her to whip her head away from his in panic, but she surprised him, remaining perfectly still except for the wary eyes that searched his face.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked quietly.

“Making you skip the boring salad?”

“Everything. The next-door-neighbor thing. The out-of-coffee ploy. The furniture shopping. And now dinner?”

He locked his eyes on hers, telling her the truth for the first time in a long time. “Don’t you ever get tired of fighting, Brynny?”

He kept his tone light, but she must have read the intensity in his gaze because her blue eyes went slightly wide. “Do you?”

I don’t mind the squabbling. I just want more.

But it was too soon. She still looked like a wary cat ready to call her stupid boyfriend at the first sign of her being turned on. And he knew he could turn her on. Easily. Her eyes kept moving to his lips and her pupils were dilated.

She wanted him. She’d wanted him when she he’d kissed her in the driveway last week, and when he’d rubbed against her in the kitchen this morning, and she wanted him now.

But she wouldn’t take him. Not until she’d gotten rid of Jimmy what’s-his-name. If he kissed her now, she’d hate him. Hate herself for liking it when she was supposed to be loyal to an absent boyfriend.

He allowed himself one more lingering touch of his fingers on her palm. Just enough to remind her of what it had been like with them. Enough to have her sucking in her breath and springing away from him.

Clearing his throat and hoping his erection wasn’t
that
obvious, Will glanced around until he spotted the salesguy he’d shooed away a few minutes ago.

He rattled off his desired size and model to the short, eager-to-please employee, who took rapid notes, and couldn’t resist sneaking a look at Brynn.

She looked properly furious.

“You didn’t even
try
that mattress,” she hissed after he’d given his payment and shipping information. “That brand of mattresses is over on
that
side of the store, and we haven’t gotten there yet.”

“Yeah, I don’t really want something new. I like the one I had before.”

He didn’t know if the double meaning was unintentional or if his subconscious had made him say it, but he found himself meeting her eyes all the same, watching for any sign of understanding.

But she lowered her eyelids as soon as he tried to meet her gaze.

Too soon
, he thought, sucking back a sigh.

“Come on,” he said, patting at her butt. “Let’s go get you that baked brie.”

The wine bar was just around the corner from the mattress store, exactly as Will had planned.

“What is it with women and wine bars?” he asked, as Brynn led them to a spot at the bar. He would have preferred sitting at a table so he could see her—read her—but he knew that was too date-like for her.

“They’re our response to sports bars,” she said, gracefully sliding onto the high stool and arranging her skirt around her knees like the perfect lady she so wanted to be. “Except there’s no peanuts on the ground, no obnoxious TVs, and very few leering men.”

“Except for me.”

She smiled at him, and then looked surprised for smiling. “Yeah. Except for you.”

Two cheese appetizers, a crème brûlée, and a bottle of wine later, Will was guiding a very tipsy Brynn toward his car. He’d deliberately let her drink more than her share of the bottle, not only because he was driving, but because she’d clearly needed it to forget that she was with the enemy. Maybe even
enjoying
herself with the enemy.

For the first time in their history, they’d shared a meal, just the two of them, and there hadn’t been a single argument or jab. She’d even laughed.

God he loved her laugh.

“I’m
drunk
,” Brynn said with emphasis, swinging her purse into the backseat of his car and dropping messily into the passenger seat.

She didn’t object when he scooped her legs up, tucking them into the car. Didn’t object when his fingers lingered on her smooth calves.

“You’re not drunk. Just…happy,” he said, closing the door carefully behind her.

The ride home was mostly silent, other than the radio, which she changed every two seconds.

It started to rain as he exited the freeway, and though it was raining more often than not in Seattle, he wondered if she remembered the only other time they’d been alone in his car together.

It had been raining then too, but she hadn’t been tipsy. Just good and pissed about something he’d said and his own temper had spiked until he’d almost told her everything. And then he’d lost his mind and kissed her. Their first kiss.

He wondered if she ever thought about it.

Will pulled into her driveway, and she gave him a puzzled look. “You could have parked in your own garage. I could have walked.”

“It’s raining,” he said, not looking at her.
And if I let you anywhere near my house right now, I won’t let you go.

“Don’t tell me there’s a gentleman hiding in there,” she said with a giggle, stabbing at the buckle on her seat belt and getting it on the third try.

“If there is, I’ll never tell,” he said, reaching into the backseat for her purse.

“Well, thanks,” she said, clutching her purse to her chest. “I um…I had a good time.”

“You sound surprised.”

She snorted. “Well, yeah. It’s probably the first time I didn’t want to kill you.”

“Unlike the last time we were in a car in the rain.”
Whoops.
He hadn’t meant to go there.

Her eyes clouded over. So she did remember.

“You were mad at me,” she added softly.

Dammit.
Her voice sounded tiny and hurt.

“Honey, we’re always mad at each other,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

But she wasn’t having it. “No, I mean you were
really
mad at me. You told me I was vapid and selfish because I was trying to boss Sophie around, and Sophie’s all you ever cared about.”

He refused to let his expression change. “I don’t remember that.”

“Well…I do. And then because yelling at me wasn’t bad enough, you had to punish me by
kissing me
.”

He swallowed, desperate for the flippant sarcasm that normally came so easily to him. But it was nowhere to be found. Her eyes were open and wounded and a little raw. As though that evening had hurt her.
As though his opinion had mattered.

“I didn’t kiss you to punish you,” he said finally. It was more than he wanted to say, but he had to do something to vanquish the lost look in her eyes.

“Then why?”

Her eyes were locked on his lips and his hand was cupping her cheek before he was even aware that he’d moved.

“You don’t know?” he asked, his voice a little gruff.

She gave a sad smile. “I do know. I’ve always known.”

His heart lurched and he forced himself to swallow and keep his gaze on hers. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “You wanted what you couldn’t have. So you took it. Just like when we slept together. I was the lone holdout on your endless line of bedpost notches, and once you checked me off the list, the challenge was over. And then you left.”

His heart felt like it tumbled into his stomach, and he didn’t know if it was in dismay or relief. His hand dropped away from her face.

She didn’t have a freaking clue.

He didn’t know if he was disappointed or relieved.

He let himself shrug. “Yeah, well…if it’s any consolation, you were worth the wait.”

He expected her to get pissed, but the wine had made her soft. “You’re not getting in my pants again with the sweet talk, Thatcher.”

She patted him playfully on the cheek climbing out of the car and going into the house without a glance backward.

Will waited until the door closed behind her before dropping his forehead onto the steering wheel and letting out a string of oaths.

He’d known that the game he was playing would be difficult.

But he hadn’t anticipated it being painful as well.

B
rynn had barely had time to take off her shoes after a particularly hellish day of removing braces when there was a knock at the front door.

She took a deep breath, rolling her shoulders in an attempt to prepare herself for the confrontation. She wasn’t entirely sure she was ready to see Will again. It had been three days since their surprisingly amiable day of shopping together.

Three days since that…
moment
in the car. Three days since she’d thought he was going to kiss her.

Three days since she’d
wanted
him to.

Three days to feel guilty about wanting it.

And as though her guilt had some sort of beckoning power, it wasn’t Will on the other side of the door.

“James!”

“You sound surprised,” he said with a small smile. He looked every bit as exhausted as she felt; she was oddly reassured by the tension around his eyes and the strained smile. It reminded her that they were the same. Serious adults with grown-up jobs. Not playboy entrepreneurs who spent all day working on their six-packs and flirting with the recently divorced Tammy Henderson across the street.

Not that she’d been spying or anything.

“Well, I am a
little
surprised,” she admitted, standing aside to let him in. “You haven’t exactly been returning my calls.”

Calls she’d made out of guilt. Out of need for a reminder that she should not be even close to thinking about kissing Will Thatcher.

“Sorry,” he said, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “Terry has the flu, so I’ve been on call for five days straight.”

Brynn made the appropriate sympathetic noises as she pulled a bottle of Pinot Noir off the wine rack and poured them both a glass before joining him on the couch.

“You want to order in?” she asked. “Or I could make some carbonara? I have some of that good pancetta.”

He shook his head slightly, taking a healthy swallow of wine. And then another. “I can’t stay long.”

Brynn frowned in confusion. “You drove all the way over in rush hour, and you’re not sticking around for dinner? You’re the one who’s always informing me how out of the way I live.”

He didn’t respond, just took another of those big swallows before topping off his glass. Brynn’s frown deepened. James was a total wine snob. He was a big fan of what he liked to call the three
S
s. Swirling, sniffing, and sipping. There was no
gulping
of wine in James’s world.

And he
loved
her carbonara.

Something was wrong.

Brynn took a small sip of wine and ordered herself not to panic. He’d said he was tired. And he was always in a bad mood after a long streak of being on call with little sleep and hurried meals. He was still in his scrubs, for God’s sake. She was worried for nothing.

She casually swung her leg over his, letting out a small sigh of relief when he didn’t shift away or push her off.

“Do you have tomorrow off?” she asked, watching his face closely. “I think I have a slow day. I could pass off a few appointments to Susan.”

“Brynn, we need to talk.”

There it was.

She had the slight urge to throw up. Surely she wasn’t being…dumped.

Brynn had a near-perfect record. Other than the time in tenth grade when Patrick Mulligan had reneged on his homecoming date offer in order to take the better-endowed Carrie Lowry, Brynn had always been a dumper, never a dumpee.

But looking at the resigned, detached expression on James’s face, she had a feeling that was about to change.

“Sure, what do you want to talk about?” she asked, hating the false bright note in her tone. One octave higher and she’d be squeaking.

He set his hand on her knee. Squeezed. “I think we need to take a break.”

Brynn didn’t let her smile slip. Couldn’t even if she wanted to. It was frozen on her face.

“A break, James? I’m not sure anyone beyond junior high really knows what that means.”

He let out a small exasperated sigh. As though
she
were being the difficult one. “It means I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.”

“You’re not sure,” she repeated in a flat voice.

He rubbed a hand through his hair. Hair that suddenly seemed unbearably
boring
. “I care about you, Brynn. I really do. And we’re perfect together, it’s just…”

Brynn set her wineglass on the coffee table with a clink. “We
are
perfect together, James. We want all the same things, we like all the same people…”

“I know,” he said, giving her a sad smile.

“Then
why
?” Her voice was a whisper now.

His lips tightened and something like guilt flashed across his face, and Brynn felt it like a knife to the gut.

Still, she made herself ask it. “Is there someone else?”

His fingers flexed on her knee again, but she could no longer stand his touch, and pulled her leg back so that she was sitting upright. It was better posture anyway.

“I didn’t cheat, Brynn. I would never do that.”

She relaxed slightly. And she believed him. James was one of those guys with an iron-rod moral code. He wouldn’t run around on her. And yet…

“But you have feelings for someone,” she prompted. She kept her eyes locked on the tulip arrangement on her coffee table, but she felt him shift beside her.

“More like the
potential
for feelings,” he said awkwardly.

Oh, please.
Now she did turn to face him. “Come on. At least give it to me straight. Who is she? Someone you work with?”

Please don’t let it be that cliché.

He cleared his throat. Took another sip of wine. For a second, Brynn almost felt sorry for him. She knew firsthand how hard it was to break up with someone.

But her sympathy began to fade as she realized she’d never dumped someone because she had feelings for someone else.

She intentionally pushed aside her recent attraction to Will. That was a result of too much wine and too few shirts on his part.

James cleared his throat. “Well, you know Maggie?”

Brynn’s mind went blank for a moment before her eyes bugged out. Oh, surely not. “Maggie, as in your neighbor?”

He colored slightly.
Bingo.

The world that had been starting to tilt around Brynn now felt completely upside down. She’d only met Maggie a couple times, usually when they’d just returned from vacation and she’d come over to drop off the mail that she’d been collecting.

Maggie was…well, frankly, she was a total mess. Brynn had a dim recollection of a tiny, fake redhead whose clothes were always just a little too big and careless, whose fingernails were always chipped and who laughed too much.

Maggie was James’s opposite. Maggie was
Brynn’s
opposite.

It was ironic, really. Brynn had been trying so hard to be structured and normal and
acceptable
so that James would propose.

Apparently he hadn’t wanted perfection at all.

“I didn’t realize you two were close,” she said stiffly.

He started to put a hand on Brynn’s back, but stopped when she tensed and instead took another sip of wine. His sips were calmer now. As though he could relax now that he’d dropped the bomb and would be done with her.

“It’s not like anything’s happened,” he said again. “But she’s come by a couple times recently to drop off UPS packages that she’d signed for, to let me know that maintenance came by to fix the air-conditioner…that kind of thing.”

“And what, you’re drawn to…what? Her split ends? The gap between her teeth? Jeez, James, isn’t she an artist?”

“She paints. Does some freelance graphic design stuff,” he said quietly. Almost guiltily.

“Of course she does,” Brynn muttered.

She felt like a bitch, but she couldn’t help it. She was pissed. And baffled. She ignored the fact that hurt hadn’t yet registered. That would probably come later.

“It’s just…she’s different from me. Different from us,” James said.

“Ya think?” she snapped.

“I like the difference. She’s unpredictable, quirky. She doesn’t care what people think of her, doesn’t care that she’s saying the right thing, doing the right thing,
being
the right thing. Maggie…she makes me feel…alive.”

But being different sucks.
How could this Maggie woman stand it?

How could James stand it?

“And I made you feel…dead?” Brynn asked, keeping her voice calm.

He put his hand firmly on her knee. “No.
No.
But, Brynn, don’t you ever get sick of us? Sick of our plans and our checklists and the way that we know every little step that’s going to be in front of us?”

She stared at him. “Obviously,
I
don’t know every little step in front of me. I certainly didn’t see
this
coming.”

“You didn’t? I thought for sure you’d been feeling me pulling away. I thought you’d been pulling away too.”

She wasn’t in the mood to deal with the truth behind that statement. Sure, things hadn’t been perfect the past couple months, but that didn’t mean she’d been expecting to be discarded so he could dally with a Bohemian.

“I thought you were getting ready to
propose
,” she blurted out.

He went still. Brynn felt both foolish and relieved for having said it out loud.

“I thought we were headed in that direction too,” he said quietly.

She relaxed slightly. At least she hadn’t been
that
far off base.

“What changed?”

And why don’t I care more?

He linked his fingers with hers, giving her a squeeze meant to comfort. She found herself squeezing back.

“It’s nothing you did, Brynn. It’s us together that isn’t working. I realized I want more than a lifetime of white furniture.”

Something sharp and nagging snuck beneath her bafflement. She distantly recalled Will’s disdain for her white furniture, and his refusal to get the leather café au lait sectional she’d suggested. The café au lait couch that was nearly identical to the one she’d helped James pick out.

God, had Will known what she hadn’t? That nobody, not even James, wanted a woman with white furniture and piles of notebooks full of plans?

And suddenly Brynn realized that what was
really
eating at her wasn’t that James was breaking up with her.

It was that James was
right
.

She
was
sick of herself. Sick of her life.

Sick of the fact that her life plan was blowing up in her freaking face.

Brynn needed a vacation.

From herself.