On Second Thought(115)

He took a deep breath. “I’m not going to bring my children into this. They don’t need to know I’m seeing someone until...quite a long time from now.”

“Well, they do know me.”

“They’ve met you. They don’t know you. You work for me, that’s all they know.” He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. “You’re fresh out of a relationship. It could very well be that I’m just a rebound for you.”

“I can think of easier men for a rebound.”

“I don’t want my daughters to get attached to you if things don’t work out. They’ve been through a lot of change in the past two years. I won’t do what their mother did and shove a new relationship into their lives.”

Couldn’t fault him for that. Still, his verbiage could’ve been a little nicer. “I understand.”

“Good.”

I waited for him to say something nice to take the edge off.

He didn’t.

“Okay. I’ll check the chicken.”

I got up and went to the stove, shoved the chicken around a little, turned it. Didn’t really feel like cooking for him anymore. In fact, I felt like being alone.

Then his arms were around my waist, his mouth at my ear. “I’m sorry,” he said, sending a shiver down my spine. “It’s complicated.”

“I know.” My voice was just a whisper.

Then I put down the spatula and turned around to face him. “Jonathan, sometimes I feel like you don’t really like me a whole lot.”

One second. Two. Three. Four.

“You’re wrong.”

“I know you like sleeping with me, but that can’t—”

“I like you, Ainsley.”

Oh, that voice, so deep and rumbly. That wasn’t fair.

He reached behind me and turned off the stove, then cupped my head, his fingers firm on the back of my scalp. My bones started to tingle. “I like that you always seem happy. I like how you talk to strangers. I like your silly dresses. I like that you’re completely different from me. I like the way you smell. I like your hair and your eyelashes and your smile.”

The faintest smile was on his face, and he didn’t look away.

“Okay, you pass,” I whispered.

He smiled full-on then, and my knees buckled. “Go sit down,” he said. “I’ll finish dinner.”

No doubt about it. I was falling in love.





Chapter Twenty-Eight

Kate

I had to talk to Daniel.

All the give yourself a break, have some fun rationale had turned to dust the second I’d seen Brooke standing in my kitchen.

Thank God for Ainsley, making it seem like Daniel was hers.

Sitting there in Nathan’s living room, talking to Nathan’s sister about Nathan’s parents’ party the night after I’d slept with someone who was not Nathan...

Brooke looked like hell. Her hair was falling out, she told me. She kept dreaming that Nathan was alive. She told me Miles was sucking his thumb again. That she was afraid her father’s drinking was getting out of hand. That her mother was too quiet. That she couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her brother again. That she wanted to talk to a medium.

I felt each statement like a punch to the heart, and that spike through my throat twisted. “Oh, Brooke,” I said, holding her as she sobbed, my own eyes dry and hard and wrong. “I’m so sorry.”

“You loved him so much, didn’t you?” she asked. I nodded helplessly, even more guilt sloshing over me.

But I had loved Nathan. Even if he’d never fallen all the way out of love with Madeleine. It occurred to me that I could ask Brooke about that.

But of course, I couldn’t. In the face of Brooke’s grief, it seemed petty, asking about his ex-wife, trying to see just how much Nathan loved her. He was gone, and if I was an insecure widow, I should probably keep that to myself. Especially after sleeping with Daniel.

“We’ll get through this,” she said, blowing her nose. “And God, I’m so sorry, coming over here, crying on your couch when you’re the one who’s really suffering.”

I smiled weakly. Images of Daniel and me last night, in the shower... I was going to hell.

When Brooke finally left, I took a punishing shower, scrubbing every inch of myself as hard as I could. Pulled my hair into a ponytail, put on one of my Cambry-on-Hudson dresses, a pink-and-green Lily Pulitzer dress with strappy sandals that aged me ten years. Drove to Brooklyn, the VW’s air conditioner not up for the task of truly cooling the sticky summer air. There was traffic, of course. There always was.

Daniel was working. It hadn’t occurred to me to check first, idiot that I was. Come on over, he said after I texted him from the sidewalk in front of his apartment building. Meet the guys.

Super. I went to Rescue 2, home of the most elite firefighters in the world, and got out of the car. My back was wet with sweat, and my face felt tight and red. I kept my sunglasses on.

The humble, two-story brick building had a logo painted on the red door. Like all FDNY departments, they’d suffered a lot of tragedy, and I wished abruptly, after three hours in stifling traffic, that I’d thought this through.

Two firefighters were sitting outside the firehouse. One winked at me. “Hi,” I said. “Is Daniel around?”