Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Franky
That went well.
I thought it a fairly innocuous observation, but obviously he didn’t see it that way. I made him feel prickly, and he undoubtedly had a similar effect on me.
It didn’t matter that my ovaries had practically exploded on seeing him hunkered down, talking to Tilly. And then to find out he had made the bracelet for her?
The whole scenario was like adding boiling water to my parched libido. Or perhaps it was the fertility drugs I had started taking to stimulate ovulation. Either way, I was primed to view Jason Isner in a different light.
How odd that it should be this individual who made me feel this way. Any number of the men at this cookout were displaying optimal paternal behaviors, yet I was mysteriously hooked on whatever Jason Isner was selling.
But those were my hormones talking. They didn’t understand the emotional aspect of this. How this man was liable to poke fun at someone like me.
How he had done so already.
Sure, it was years ago when Jason was too young to know better.
But I didn’t see a lot of evidence of maturity in the intervening years.
Rosie thought I was nuts to hold a grudge, and perhaps I was.
I couldn’t help how I felt. The absurdity of my feelings didn’t make them any less valid.
(Thanks, Dr. Faison, my therapist until age twenty-three.)
But I had handled our conversation wrong, and I needed to put it right.
He wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room. Theo had yelled, “Buns, dude!” Burger buns, I assumed. There was a pantry in the basement, so I headed down there, and sure enough, the errand boy was bent over a large chest.
And speaking of buns … The position highlighted his ass—his taut, muscular ass—in a way I should not be noticing. Then there were the thick thighs, hairy calves, strong back, trim hips …
A step on the bottom step yielded a creak.
He looked up, his expression shifting to storm clouds on seeing me. “Yeah?”
“Do you … need help?”
“Help? From you?”
I hated apologizing. As a child, I used my intellect to win arguments and manipulate the adults around me. As an adult … I did the same. I rarely felt a need to apologize because I was rarely wrong.
“Icametosaysorry.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry.”
His surprise was quickly replaced by something more akin to glee. Of course. Leverage had come walking in, wearing glasses and an Irish linen button-down.
Message received. I turned away.
“Hold up there, Doc.”
“Would you please not call me that?”
“Why? You’re a doctor of something, aren’t you, at that fancy university?”
“I am. I have a PhD. But when you say it, I know you don’t mean it as an acknowledgment of my intellectual achievements.”
He closed the chest and placed a couple of burger bun bags on the lid. “Of course I do. You have a big brain and when I call you ‘Doc,’ I’m acknowledging that big brain.”
“Yes, but in a way that sounds like you’re sneering at me.”
He growled, and why was that sexy?
“Think we’re getting off topic here. I believe you said something that sounded like the quickest damn apology I ever heard. But I’ll need to hear it again to be sure.”
“You heard correctly. It was an apology.” I turned away once more.
He coughed significantly. The man was infuriating!
“But what were you apologizing for? So quickly.”
I faced him, feeling like a yo-yo. “Our conversation upstairs. You seemed to take offense at my comment about the use of your time in making a gift for Tilly. I didn’t mean that how it sounded, or how you took it, and I came to tell you that.
I actually think it’s lovely that you would hand-make a gift for her. ”
He shifted on his very valuable feet. A slight flush bloomed on his cheekbones. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Oh, it was. Tilly’s going to remember that gift above all others, especially if you wear that bracelet when you visit. She’s a very lucky girl to have so many strong male influences in her life.”
“Guess she is. But that’s what family does.” He moved closer to me. “Have you thought about that?”
“About what?”
“The influences on your future kid’s life.”
Of course I had. “I have a good support network. Violet and Dad, my sisters, my little brother. I have plenty of friends.” I’m not a complete loser.
“But the kid won’t have a dad. Full-time.”
“Lots of kids don’t. Or they have dads not worth writing home about. A man in the picture is no guarantee of a good male role model.”
“True.” He said it gravely, like he had given this some thought. Sean didn’t talk much about his father, but I did know that Jason and he weren’t close.
“So, going it alone. Pretty brave, really.”
I hmphed. “Did you not say I was crazy to do this?”
“I meant the way you’re going about it. Asking randos to donate their sperm. That’s the crazy part.”
I balled my hands into fists. “There’s nothing remotely random about my method! The whole point is that I don’t want a random donation—”
I broke off as his shit-eating grin stretched wider.
“You ass.” But there wasn’t much heat in it.
“I guess I think that’s pretty brave, too.”
“Two compliments in less than two minutes. Wonders will never cease.”
“I guess not.” Still grinning. So handsome.
But temperamentally unsuitable.
“Your turn,” he said.
“For what?”
“Give me a compliment.”
I rolled my eyes. “Pretty sure I said you gave a memorable gift to your niece. That observation, coupled with an apology for my misspoken words, makes us even.”
He scoffed. “Not even a little. You know what I really want? Tell me why I’m persona non grata on that list of yours.”
“I should never have discussed that with you.”
“But you did. You needed me to know why I wasn’t in the running. Or more accurately why I was once in play but then my chance was ripped away.”
His chance “ripped away”? As if he would care. Yet there was something about his energy. This really bothered him.
“You were originally on the list because I was being scientific. All men I know of a certain age and health status were included.”
“And then …”
“By process of elimination I weeded people out. As you and I have never gotten along, it made sense to remove you from contention.”
He moved toward me. A low-ceilinged basement like this usually felt cramped, but not to this extent. Not to the size of a postage stamp.
“So you brought your emotions into it.”
“It’s one more variable. Maybe not completely even with other variables, but where all things are equal, that kind of confounding factor is enough to take you out of the running.”
“Fair enough. Let’s talk about the variable. Or confounding factor, the one that’s specific to me. What makes me such a bad prospect?”
Oh, he was taking this very personally. Despite having the science on my side, I no longer felt on solid ground. This conversation had revealed a different side to Jason. Any explanation could only come up short.
“For a start, we rarely seem to be able to converse without it devolving into eye rolls and sneering.”
He crossed his arms. His studly, thick … stop it!
“You do tend to get very facially animated around me,” he said.
“I’m not the only one guilty of this. You scowl at me. Often.”
“Only because you start it.” He held up a hand. “Or maybe I’m predisposed to scowl because I’m bracing myself, waiting for you to unveil your smarty-pants claws and scratch.”
That sounded like a concession, which meant I owed him something similar. Quid pro quo, the building blocks of peace.
“And I might start off on the wrong cloven-hoofed foot because I’m expecting you to be mean.”
That earned me a lip twitch. I had amused him with my self-deprecatory reference. There was something a touch thrilling about being able to provoke this reaction from him.
“Mean? I haven’t a mean bone in my body.”
The man couldn’t pass more than five minutes without another dollop of innuendo. I moved over it, though my eyes did attempt a slight roll, which he caught like a puck on his blade.
“There she goes.”
“You made a dick joke.”
“Your mind has to be fairly deep in the gutter to go there, Francesca.”
Maybe it was. Maybe I was enjoying this much more than I expected. It felt remarkably like flirting, especially when he said my name like that. It had been so long that I’d forgotten what it felt like. The buzz, the anticipation, the knowledge that sex might be on the table.
Or on that chest behind him.
Damn these fertility drugs, sending my hormones into a tailspin. I needed to shift the dynamic, recall the emotions that had guided me for all these years when it came to Jason Isner and his ilk.
He stood mere inches from me. When had he become so close?
“You think I’m mean?” he asked.
“You have said cruel things to me.”
“Such as?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ve obviously been stuck in warring positions for some time, but even if we’re no longer looking at each other the same way, it doesn’t mean we’ve reached a full detente.”
“That means a truce, right? Or something close enough?”
I rolled in my lips to hide a smile. How was he so smart all of a sudden?
Maybe it wasn’t so sudden. Maybe the intelligence plus muscles in one hot package scares you.
“Tell me one of these cruel things I said, Francesca.” His voice was low. A murmur, a plea for understanding.
I was trapped on the bottom step of the staircase. Backing up would look like backing down, yet his closeness was setting off firecrackers in my body.
“You-you called me a name once.”
“What did I say?” He didn’t even deny it. His ready acceptance of whatever slight he’d delivered in the past threw me.
“It doesn’t mat—”
“What was it?”
I snatched a breath. “Slug Girl.”
The moment ticked over, my heart with it.
“When did this happen?”
I was abruptly aware of how foolish this all sounded. I was a grown woman, close to forty years old, and I was holding onto this animus for no good reason. I needed to leave. Recalibrate. Go back to my list and assess next steps.
I backed up, but my foot caught on the stair. He grabbed for me and saved my fall, but the move brought me closer to him. My chest to his. My lips to his chin. His hand stayed on my arm, holding me safe.
Making me want.
“You were barely a teen,” I said quickly. Desperately. “Thirteen, maybe? It was here, actually. Well, Theo’s backyard. I was in the garden and you came along with Mikey Callahan and some other boy.”
“And I called you ‘Slug Girl’?”
“We were facing off—”
“Like hockey?”
I shook my head. “I might have started it. You were staring at my chest, and I called you a pervert.”
“Ah.” He smiled, not taking offense at all. “Sounds about right.”
“It was clear you and your friends thought my interests, my research interests, were gross. And after some unimaginative name-calling, you got the final word. I know it’s silly to hold onto that—”
He shook his head, rubbed my arm. “No, it’s not. We all hold onto shit from our childhood.”
“It was so long ago.” Over twenty years. “It’s absurd to hold a grudge, especially for all these years.”
“Yeah, but it stuck in your head. It’s okay, Doc. If anything, it makes you human.”
Arching an eyebrow, I peered up to meet his gaze head-on. My position on the second-to-last step placed us almost at eye level. No neck pain necessary.
“You doubted I was human?”
“I doubted you knew how to bring a human impulse into this baby-making business. Which was wrong of me because you’re obviously very passionate about it.”
My breath caught. We were still close, our breaths mingling, our bodies brushing, neither of us willing to back down, as if this level of closeness was no big deal.
When it was everything.
“I really want it.”
His green eyes flashed. Such an unusual shade, like spring leaves or Leucobryum glaucum, the pincushion moss my snails loved.
“I can see you do,” he murmured.
A baby. That’s what I was talking about, but this conversation had veered perilously off track.
“The name I called you? Twenty-something years ago.”
I swallowed. It sounded ridiculous. “Slug Girl.”
“On behalf of my idiot, barely pubescent self, I apologize. I was a little dick, and I was probably jealous that you were close to Sean. It was a rough time for me.”
Because of his parents’ separation. I had suspected that, but I preferred to ignore it. Not give him any latitude. “It’s silly to hold onto it. I should have known better, especially as I was older.”
“Yeah, the older woman. I had a bit of a thing for you.”
My heart hammered hard. “You did?”
“When I was a kid and just discovering girls. I was twelve or so when we first met and you were—”
“Fourteen.”
He laughed, the sound graveled and warm. “Your glasses were always off kilter.” He reached out and infinitesimally adjusted my frames, though the only thing off kilter right now was me. “Just something I remember.”
What was happening here? This had to be the longest conversation we had ever had, and we seemed to be airing all the grievances and revealing all our secrets.
It was intoxicating.
“The things that stick with us, huh?” He smiled, producing a dimple in his cheek. My heart fluttered. I had never noticed that before.
Because he has never smiled at you.
“So, Francesca, am I back in your good graces?”
“Uh, you were never there. But I’ll probably be less likely to go into full beast mode the next time I see you.”
That amused him, and it didn’t feel mocking. I could tell the difference now.
“Just tiny beast mode,” I said. And that amused me, so much so that a church giggle erupted from my throat. Like I was that silly teen who should have laughed off a stupid insult instead of holding it inside her heart for far too long.
“J! You down there?” That sounded like Conor, Jason’s nephew.
Jason’s gaze remained locked on mine as he returned the query. “Yeah, I’ll be up in a second.”
“Dad’s having a conniption about the buns, dude.”
“On my way.”
The interruption broke the spell. I cleared my throat of the lump of emotion lodged there. “I should head back up.”
“I’ll give you a minute, so no one thinks there’s any funny business.”
I opened my mouth to say that would be unlikely, then closed it again because (a) it might offend him, and (b) after this exchange, was it so improbable?
Funny business with Jason Isner. The world had gone mad.
“Thanks for thinking of my honor.”
I turned to take the stairs and gripped the rail so I would be less likely to trip and fall into his arms like some ditzy damsel. Strange how I had liked it, though. I liked how he touched me. It had obviously been far too long.
I looked over my shoulder, but he had already moved out of sight to retrieve the burger buns and ensure no one suspected we were up to no good at a children’s birthday party.