AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What?” he asked. “I’m smart in a lot of things but slow in others. I keep thinking I’m blowing this and now I’m even more confused. What did I do or say wrong?”
She laughed at him. “Nothing wrong. I’ve got horrible taste in men it seems. In the two years I’ve lived here I’ve dated a handful of men and not much more than some dates. No one has wanted to do a picnic let alone on the first date. No one has held a door open for me or bought four bottles of wine to make sure they had the right one. And no one sure the hell told me what you just did about being like your sister and making people laugh and be happy.”
He stopped listening when he heard the part about not dating much in two years. “Sounds to me like you attract the wrong kind of men.”
“I do,” she said. “Which is why I’m wondering what I’m doing here. What might be wrong with you because there is always something wrong with the men I date. I bet you went to an Ivy League school and your father is probably a doctor or something too, right? This is a summer home. Where are you from?”
The last thing he wanted to do was admit she was right on. “You’re a good judge. I went to Yale. I’m from Greenwich where my mother lives with her second husband. My sisters live in New Rochelle and both work in Manhattan and my father is a neurosurgeon. I think that is all.”
She burst out laughing so hard that her hand was in front of her stomach. Then she picked up her glass of wine and downed it. “It’s so out of my league. I was joking. Neurosurgeon? Greenwich? One of my bosses, Poppy, is married to Reese McGill. Reese’s brother lives in Greenwich.”
He knew the McGills. Personally too. At least his father knew Spencer McGill. He’d met Reese a time or two as a kid. He should say that too.
“My father and Spencer McGill might belong to the same country club. My mother used to talk about Reese’s mother.”
“I can only imagine what she said. Reese’s mother doesn’t care for Poppy much. She wasn’t the right pedigree for her son. But then again, Reese was the wild child from what I heard.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And probably much happier for it than those of us that conform.”
12
Came Out On Top
Daisy wanted this date to work out in the best way possible, but she was only kidding herself.
“Conform?” she asked.
“I was young,” he said. “I had a gift that my mother drilled into my head. My father wasn’t around a lot and she pushed me to be the best.”
“Sounds like you are,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “There were a lot of times in life I just wanted to be a kid like the rest of those my age. But I did what I was told and got through. I’m serious like my father is. Like you’ve said. But I’m trying to be more like my sister Harmony.”
“You can’t be someone you’re not,” she said. “I know that. I’ve seen it with my mother.”
Daisy wished she hadn’t said that. “How so?”
“Let’s say, you had an overbearing mother by the sounds of it and I had one that wanted to be my best friend. You wanted to be a kid and maybe I needed some guidance in life.”
The last thing she wanted to do was repeat history and when she was scared at times over that, she had no one to go to talk about it.
She had to live with those fears herself.
Maybe she did have something in common with Theo. Seemed he had some insecurities or fears he lived with alone too.
“Sounds like we both got extremes in our case but came out on top. I’d like to think that. Or I’m trying.”
“Me too,” she said. He held his hand out to her. She grinned. “What?”
“Give me your hand.” She put it in his. “What do you feel?”
“The truth?” she asked.
“I always want the truth.”
“Heat,” she said. “Not just that your hand is hot in mine.”
“No,” he said. “You feel a heat right here.” His other hand went to his stomach. Her eyes followed. “There is a fluttering of nerves and fear that you don’t want to mess up. That you like this person whose hand you’re holding and you are trying to figure out a way to get through without making a fool of yourself.”
