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And now after one phone call, she was supposed to forgive Tom for getting all furious over her work hours, over her commitment to her career. Tom, who worked a forty hour week as an air traffic controller and got so annoyed when she wouldn’t dump work, derby, sleep, to fit in with his shift breaks he’d tried to traffic control her. He’d slapped down the ultimatum. Quit the traineeship or lose the relationship.
He had no idea how easy he’d made it to choose. What surprised Bree was how quickly she forgot about him. He was in her life one minute and then he wasn’t and after a few weeks of feeling angry and betrayed she simply got on with things and didn’t think about him again.
Tom on the other hand had just said he’d done nothing but think about Bree for last two hundred and eighty days. He had a funny way of showing it. By which he clearly meant ‘treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen’. No call, no letter, no email, no text, no flowers, no showing up. So not surprisingly, Bree had not a teaspoon of keen.
It’d taken her two minutes to tell him so. It could’ve taken less time, but she’d made the mistake of letting him try to defend himself. The whole discussion could’ve taken much less time if she’d just said, “Tom who?”
What a jerk.
Had he been a jerk when she was seeing him too and she’d never noticed? No, he’d been a good guy. She didn’t go out with jerks or losers or insecure boys. He was generous and happy and spontaneous and loud and funny and loved to laugh. He was fun to be with and um, yeah he liked a good laugh, and...
Well, that’s probably what he’d excelled at—being fun to be with, until he’d had his sudden conversation to insecurity and jerkdom right around the time she entered the traineeship and her work hours increased and her play time got compromised. And then he wasn’t fun to be with. He was sullen and grumpy and expert at ladling out the guilt.
He’d said, “You’re not giving us enough time.”
She’d said, “You know this is what I’ve been working for. It won’t always be like this.”
He’d said, “You’re putting your career and that idiot derby league before me.”
And she hadn’t known what to say about that, because she was. So the ultimatum had been convenient in its way. Insulting and hurtful, but a no come-back, get-out free clause.
Until just now, when Tom had tried to re-negotiate it.
But what was really confusing about this wasn’t the guy’s gall in assuming she was pining for him after all this time, not his stunning confidence that she’d consider getting back together after his lack of consideration, or even his failure to ask how work was going. Stupid jerk. What was really confusing about all this was that she hadn’t even stopped for two seconds to consider it. There was the big fat hovering presence of the word ‘no’ in her mouth almost from the moment Tom said, “Jesus, it’s good to hear your voice, Bree. I’ve missed you so much.”
Which told her something she’d known deep inside, but not articulated. She was happy being alone. She was happy putting her career, for all its stresses, worries and heavy time commitment before a relationship with Tom or anyone else for that matter.
Bree could see the skin on her arms pinking slightly. She should put her jacket back on, she should go inside, but she was stuck in the heat wondering what that said about her. She hadn’t bothered dating since she’d shown Tom she preferred office and track time to Tom time. And she wasn’t the least bit concerned about that. It was smart to focus on the work. It was healthy to be self sufficient. It was making something of her life to have goals and chase them. It was everything she wanted.
And the best thing—since she was so smart, so healthy and so ambitious, she didn’t have time to feel lonely. And the barely two second pause before she told Tom to take his offer of renewed association and permanently shove it where the sun didn’t shine, was the proof.
She picked up her jacket and draped it over her shoulder. She walked out to the kerb and dumped the empty smooth cup in a street bin. She didn’t feel rattled about the call with Tom, if anything now that it was all over she was amused. He’d actually used the line, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ as his reason for not being in contact, when absence —hers, had been the whole reason for the ultimatum in the first place. It was a toss-up as to whether that was so lame it was legless or so dumb it was without a voice box.
“What’s got you smiling?”
Bree pulled her jacket on quickly and turned to find Anthony standing there. He had his suit coat off and slung over his shoulder and the cuffs of his white shirt turned back and rolled up so she could see tanned forearms. There were little beads of moisture on his forehead. He looked hot and bothered by it.
Hopefully he hadn’t noticed how bruised her shoulder was. “The weather.”
He nodded. The top button of his shirt was undone and his tie was pulled out from his collar. It was maddeningly inconvenient that he was so delicious to look at. Not even Bree’s suspicion and general wariness about him was enough to wean her off how much she appreciated his whole physical package.
He smiled. “It’s the kind of heat that feels dirty, unless there’s a sea breeze behind it.”
Good God. He’d said the words heat and dirty in the same sentence. They flew across the melting pavement between them and invaded her body like little lust missiles. He’d said the word breeze and she’d felt a whisper soft caress. And he smiled at her. She was half tempted to look around to see if he was talking to someone else. She tucked her head down and looked at her shoes. There was no reason to respond. She had no response. Her tongue had melted. How was it possible for a man she distrusted so much to be able to do that to her? She needed to shut that down, right now. Hard.
She’d been so worried Monday morning after G-man and his crew were at the track she’d watched him like he was highly flammable. Because if he’d twigged, it would make things very hot for her. She had a strategy. If he mentioned it: deny it, laugh it off, tell him he needed an eye check-up. As strategies go, it might as well have been designed by Tom. It was lame, dumb, but it was all she had. Because there was no way she trusted him to keep the secret like Chris did. No matter what Toni said, Anthony was the ultimate competitor, he’d use whatever he could to get ahead and if that meant making her secret common knowledge she didn’t think he’d
hesitate for a second to send leading comments her way until the curiosity of the whole team, heck the whole office would be focussed her way. And not with the kind of attention she needed.
But he’d treated her no differently. He didn’t look at her more or less often. He didn’t talk to her more or less often. He did however lose the worst of his pissed-off-ness. She got her usual good morning, her usual offer to bring back coffee or a sandwich, her usual good night. After a few days of this she stopped waiting for him to confront her or start with the innuendos. It seemed Kitty was safe to ride again.
But Bree had wobbly knees.
Maybe it was seeing him track-side looking weekend casual and slightly out of sorts surrounded by his coupled-up mates, or it was all the surreptitiously checking him out she’d been doing since then, watching to see if he was going to give the game away.
He’d be easier to ignore when the words coming out of his mouth conjured up end-of-year tax returns not sultry nights, silk sheets and dirty sex. Why did he have to say that? Couldn’t they have had that stupid, forgettable, state the obvious weather conversation you generally had with people.
He moved first and she followed him up the buildings front stairs to the foyer. When the doors slid open it was like standing in front of a dinosaur-sized fridge. The cold air wrapped around her and relief shot straight to Bree’s head. She sighed aloud. Anthony groaned with pleasure, lifting his face to the ceiling, bearing his neck. Oh God. It was too easy imagining him doing that when.... shut that down, right now.
