Mr. Right Goes Wrong Page 11

  “Did you get an answer to that?”

  “Sort of,” Mazy told her. “I can’t explain it as well as the doctor did, but it seems to be about deliberately picking the men who are going to ultimately reject me.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “It’s not that I want to do it. It’s more that I feel compelled to repeat a pattern.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know my father died when I was eleven.”

  “Of course, I remember that,” Karly said. “Our class got permission to attend the funeral. But I didn’t have a dress to wear and it seemed disrespectful to show up in jeans.”

  Mazy shrugged. “I wouldn’t have even known that you were there. It was such a strange day. My mom was just wilted and all these relatives that I didn’t really know were taking over everything and telling everybody what to do. It was all so emotional and overwhelming.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks,” Mazy replied. “Daddy and I were very close. Then suddenly he was gone. Our life was never the same after that. I was never the same after that.”

  Karly was nodding.

  “Anyway, according to the shrink in Wilmington, when he died I was ‘on the cusp of womanhood’ or something, and the pattern imprinted on me in my relationships with men.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I loved him and he left me,” Mazy explained. “So now I subconsciously choose to fall in love with the men who will leave me.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “By definition.”

  “Your father didn’t mean to leave you. Now my dad, he hightailed it out of town on purpose. But yours didn’t mean to die.”

  “Apparently it doesn’t matter. The subconscious mind is not a rational mind. Even if you intellectually know something, emotionally you may react as if you don’t.”

  “Wow.”

  “Exactly,” Mazy said. “It was a real eye-opener for me. I’d begun to think that either all the interesting men in the world were jerks or that I was completely unlovable. Either option was pretty depressing.”

  “Sounds that way. So, is there hope? Can you cure this? Take Prozac or Xanex or something? One of the teachers at school swears by Xanex.”

  Mazy laughed. “I wish I could take a pill. More therapy would help, I guess. I can’t really afford that right now. Mostly I’m trying to follow the therapist’s advice. Live day to day and look at my decisions about men a little deeper than the surface. Hopefully I’ll be able to change up my behaviors. I want the next serious relationship I have to create a new pattern. A pattern that values me.”

  Karly nodded. “I’d say you’ve got a good start. Eli Latham is not going to do anybody wrong.”

  Mazy smiled. “That’s what I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I was a little freaked out by falling into the sack with him in the heat of the moment. That’s never a good idea and my shrink would definitely not have approved. But the past couple of days, as I’ve been thinking about it, I’m feeling better. I’m not any good at celibacy, that’s just a fact. Eli is so safe, so good. And if I can learn a new pattern, learn to appreciate a man that won’t leave me, maybe I can finally heal the old wounds. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  “It would be something worth shooting for.”

  16

  Eli made it through the afternoon feeling by turns self-satisfied and skittish. There was a tremendous feeling of accomplishment at having put Mazy off for three long days. But there was always the niggling fear that she might give up. If she didn’t continue to chase him, what would his next move be? There was no use in being a jerk if the woman you wanted didn’t fall for it.

  But concerns about a plan B scenario vanished into thin air when she showed up at his door that night. He’d thought her beautiful, desirable and sexy when she was in her baggy sweater and mom jeans. Tonight the sweater was tight enough to show off her gorgeous breasts and the skirt was short enough to show a long expanse of shapely legs in high heels. With an excess of eye makeup and red, pouty lips, clearly this was a have-sex-first, ask-questions-later situation.

  Which was exactly what they did.

  Without so much as a “Hello, how was your day?” he pulled her into the apartment, led her to the bedroom. Normally he would have been welcoming, offered food and drink, and they would have politely sat through a conversation before he made any moves. But he was not being normal, he reminded himself, finding surprising pleasure in that fact.

  He tossed her on the bed, scooted up her skirt and went for it, both of them fully dressed, except for the panties that he discarded on the floor. Eli had never had sex with high heels rhythmically jabbing him in the back. He decided he kind of liked it. She apparently liked it, as well, as she began making those wonderful moaning sounds and her body clenched him again and again.

  Afterward they both lay sideways on his bed, staring at the ceiling as they caught their breath. Straightforward sex—satisfying and efficient. He hadn’t actually meant for it to happen like that. He had meant to make her sort of beg for it. She needed to struggle to get him. Too late for that now.

  Then, as if a lightbulb had appeared, Eli recalled one of the letters the bad-boyfriend advice columnist had posted.

  He acts like I just came over for sex, and after that’s over, he’s not very interested in me.

  That was the way forward from this.

  Eli sat up. He turned to look at Mazy. She was glowing and gorgeous. Smiling up at him with eyes shrouded by satisfaction. She was everything that he’d ever wanted. Everything that he’d ever dreamed of. He wanted to make love to her again, this time slowly, tenderly, tasting every inch of flesh on her body.

  He resisted.

  Instead, he gave her a couple of congenial pats on her bare thigh. Something akin to a teammate in an athletic event.

  “Thanks, babe,” he said. “That was great.”

  He stood, zipped up and walked out of the room.

  In the kitchen he got a beer from the refrigerator and deliberately began whistling. He felt good. Sex had a way of doing that. But he was also back to being worried. What was Mazy going to do? How was she going to react? At the very least she would probably come in and ask him what was going on. And she had a perfect right to be pissed off when she did. Honestly, what she ought to do is walk out of the place in a huff and slam the door behind her, never to return.

  She did none of those.

  He heard her running water in the bathroom. He decided that he shouldn’t drink beer on an empty stomach, so he heated up last night’s leftovers in the microwave.

  By the time Mazy joined him in the kitchen, he was sitting at the counter eating dinner. She was wearing one of his shirts and her high heels.

  She smiled broadly at him. “Is there some of that for me?”

  “Nope, sorry. I figured you’d already eaten.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  She sat down on the bar stool next to him and effectively crossed her legs. One of her shoes dangled perilously from her foot.

  Eli concentrated on his plate. Without bothering to look at her he said, “There’s another beer in the fridge. Help yourself.”

  “No, thank you.”

  After another minute of watching him eat, however, she did get up and fix herself a glass of ice water. As she was returning to her seat, he slid his empty plate in her direction.

  “Put this in the sink for me, while you’re up,” he said. “And could you run some water in it?”

  “Sure.”

  While she had her back turned he moved to the living room. He grabbed the remote control from an end table, seated himself in his favorite overstuffed chair and turned on the TV. He flipped through the channels looking for something that was all testosterone. H
e finally settled on a reality program with two fat, redneck guys noodling giant catfish. It was not his kind of thing. But he pretended apt interest as Mazy sat down on the sofa across from him and got him wondering if she was naked beneath that shirt.

  “Eli?” she asked eventually. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, babe. Why would I be mad?” He said the words without turning to look at her.

  “No reason, I just thought...well, never mind. I came over here because, well, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Sure, I’m listening.”

  She hesitated. “Could you turn off the TV?”

  For an instant he debated with himself. He couldn’t go too far, she’d know something was up. He clicked the screen into silence and turned to look at her directly. She looked beautiful. Wide-eyed and solemn, her skin was still rosy from sexual satisfaction, as she bit her lower lip pensively.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I may owe you an apology.”

  He didn’t expect that. For the way he’d been acting tonight, she was the one with the apology owed. Then he realized what she must mean and the bottom fell out of his stomach. She wasn’t going to fall for the jerk routine, she was still going to dump him and do it nicely.

  “An apology?”

  Mazy nodded. Those high heels were flat on the ground now and her knees were chastely together.

  “It’s very late to say this,” she began. “Years late, really. But I want to apologize for what happened between us in the months before I left home.”

  That was a pretty good start, he thought. She waited a minute for Eli to comment. When he remained silent, she continued. “I think I probably took advantage of you back then. You were so young and sweet and I...I used you and I dumped you. I am sorry.”

  For a moment the words she said didn’t quite compute. Then he realized that she was being genuine. The words young and sweet were especially painful to hear from her lips.

  “Nine years ago was a fun little romp, which I think you took more seriously than I did. I’m sorry for that. And I feel especially bad about that summer when you were right out of high school,” she said. “I was more than just a year older. As a young mom on the rebound, I was a lifetime older. And I took advantage.”

  The taste of bitterness in his mouth was not imagined. He had been in love with her, willing to sacrifice anything for her, eager to commit his entire future to her and she’d interpreted that as naïveté.

  Eli looked at her intently. He felt almost insulted. Mentally, he scrambled for words to express himself. His feelings, his desires, his love, counted for nothing with her. For a moment he thought he should throw her out of his house and tell her never to come back. He deserved better than a woman who valued his devotion so cheaply.

  Insight forestalled him. Had she behaved with Tad this way? Or the dozen other guys she’d run after? No. She had treated him shabbily because he had allowed her to do so. He had uncomplainingly accepted junior partner status in their relationship and he’d shown gratitude for whatever crumbs of affection she’d been willing to throw. If there was ever to be a chance for the two of them to be equal partners, he was going to have to even up the score.

  Deliberately he made a humorless chuckle.

  “So, let me understand this. Are you apologizing for corrupting me or are you just sorry that we had sex?” he asked. “Because if it’s the former, let me reassure you that, like most guys, I don’t see a bit of learner sex with a more experienced woman as particularly regrettable.”

  “Good, I’m glad,” she said. “I thought maybe...maybe I had hurt you.”

  He laughed again. “Oh, I was devastated!” he assured her. “Truth to tell, you really know how to put the crush in crush. On behalf of my eighteen-year-old brokenhearted self, I accept your apology. But I’m thirty now and remember it as a great time. Hey, everybody has somebody as their first.”

  He knew that the words, supposedly meant to reassure her, really implied that she was simply another vaguely memorable shag in a long, busy sex life.

  Her brow was furrowed. She looked uncomfortable.

  “So, is that it?” he asked.

  “Uh, yes.”

  “Then should I turn the TV back on, or would you like to use that gorgeous mouth of yours for something other than apologies?”

  17

  A full week after her letter went out, Mazy was disappointed that not one person had tried to meet with her to reevaluate a payment plan. She had the distinct feeling that the group consensus was that if they just ignored her she would go away.

  She wasn’t going anywhere. This was her job and she was determined to do it. So at exactly 11:00 a.m., when the morning rush was clearly over and people were just beginning to think about lunch, Mazy grabbed her purse and her briefcase and crossed the street to see Charlie McDee.

  Initially she assumed that Charlie would have made the list of Tad’s untouchable local businessmen. But, no, McDee apparently didn’t make the cut, so he was fair game for Mazy to try to help.

  One lone customer was leaving as she made her way through the door. Charlie’s wife usually helped him in the mornings, but he was alone in Local Grind and he visibly paled at the sight of Mazy walking into his shop.

  “Hi, Charlie,” she said.

  “Hello, Mazy.” He was loading stacks of foam cups into the dispenser next to the work area. He wiped his hands unnecessarily on his apron. “Can I get you something? Is it too early for a macchiato?”

  “Yeah, I think it probably is,” she answered. “I actually came over here to talk to you.”

  “I hope the subject is who we knew in high school.”

  Mazy’s heart went out to the guy. He already looked defeated and she hadn’t mentioned the word money.

  “How’d you get interested in the coffee business?” she asked.

  He paused before answering, as if he wasn’t sure the purpose of the question.

  “I always liked coffee,” he said. “I can drink it all day. Caffeine never bothers me. Alice, my wife—if she so much as has a sip after noon she’ll be sitting awake all night. But I can take a cup to bed with me on a cold night.”

  “So this place is a labor of love,” Mazy said.

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that,” he replied. “I got interested in different kinds of coffee. Then I started roasting my own beans. Getting my buddies to try out my efforts. One day I got it in my head that I could make a living doing something I love. I’ve been dreaming about it ever since.”

  He sighed with a fatalism that aged his face twenty years. “I guess you could say my dream has turned into a nightmare.” Charlie squared his jaw and looked Mazy in the eye for the first time. “I don’t know how this works,” he said. “Do you put a sign on the door? Seize my coffeemaker? What?”

  “Oh, no, Charlie, I wouldn’t do that,” she assured him. “The bank would never do that.”

  “They wouldn’t?”

  “No, we would actually do something worse,” she said. “We would sell your loan to a collection company. Those people will be nameless, faceless strangers who will hound you night and day for months on end. They will get their money back. Only bankruptcy will stop them, and even then they’ll be first in line to pilfer through whatever you have left.”

  “Oh, jeez,” Charlie said, running a hand down his weary face. “I never thought my life would end this way. Broke and a failure. I had this nest egg that I put away to invest in my little retirement business. I was going to start slow. But Paul Brakeman—you remember Paul—he was selling this building and he told me that it was a great deal. The rents from the tenant business alone would pay the mortgage. And if I started too small my place would never catch on. He talked to Tad and Tad was willing to loan me the money. It all seemed like the pe
rfect opportunity.” Charlie sounded defeated. “I don’t know what I was thinking. If it was that good of a deal, Paul would have saved it for one of his friends.”

  Mazy remembered Paul from high school—he was one of Tad’s crew. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d planned the whole thing for their own benefit.

  “So what happened?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Basically nothing. We got the shop open. People come. We’ve got regulars every day. They’ll pay two bucks for a coffee, but the old guys expect free refills, like in the old days, so I’m never making a dime on them. The other folks keep the lights on and milk in the fridge, but it’s a small town and I’m never gonna get rich here.”

  Mazy didn’t need him to get rich, only to do better.

  “What about the building tenants?”

  “There aren’t any. That’s why the building was available at such a good price. Nobody wants a business on Main Street anymore. Everybody has moved out to the highway. The structures are newer, parking’s not a problem and there’s all that visibility from the traffic passing through.”

  Mazy nodded thoughtfully.

  “You know where the Jiffy Dog used to be?” Charlie asked.

  She knew exactly.

  “I could have rented that building and started up without borrowing a red cent. But, no, I’ve got to have this old monstrosity.”

  “I always loved this building,” Mazy told him.

  “Well, I’m thinking you’ll be able to buy it for a cut-rate price when the bank takes it, or the people that you sell the loan to take it, or the devil takes it. It’s going to go cheap.”

  “Charlie, we’re not letting anybody take this away from you,” she said. “I think I speak for myself and the bank and the folks in this town when I say that as long as you still have your heart in this business, we’re going to try really hard to keep it open.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  She couldn’t blame him for being skeptical, but she was determined to prove that she was here to help. “Well, first we’re going to get you out of default,” she said. “Let’s try to figure out what you can pay. Then we can restructure the loan to give you some breathing room to try to build the business and attract some tenants.”