He’d even wondered if she hadn’t seen him flirting. But she’d seemed smug, and dammit if that didn’t make him want her.
But she hadn’t invited him up to her place. She’d just kissed him on the cheek and smiled at him, spitting back his line about an early-morning meeting with a new client that she had to rest up for.
He felt as though he’d called in a favor from Darcy for absolutely nothing. Although they’d been friends since shortly after Darcy had punched him out on the first day of kindergarten because he’d asked her to be his girlfriend, he didn’t really love asking his lesbian childhood friend to feel him up in public.
Darcy was cool about it, though. In fact, her laughing at him made it all the more believable.
Fat lot of good that did him. Although he didn’t want Hannah to break up with him yet, he at least expected her to say something. In fact, he had to come up with another date pronto so that he could make this poor woman think that all men were scum even more than she already did. That had to be the explanation for why she’d taken his flirting with Darcy in stride—she expected that kind of behavior from all men.
But he was someone who prided himself on being the good guy, and that pissed him off. Even more than Hannah’s instant connection with his mother had the night before.
The thought occurred to him that Hannah might ghost him, that there was no early-morning meeting and that she was just trying to let him down easy. Besides the problems that would cause for him in finishing the story—he’d have to start from scratch—he didn’t want last night to be the last time he saw Hannah.
Even though he was wary of any woman who hit it off with his cold, standoffish mother and what that might mean about his Oedipal issues, he really liked Hannah and still wanted to see where things could go between the two of them after this farcical story got over with.
All of his jumbled thoughts and contradictory emotions weren’t going to help him figure out what kinds of words he should put on the page right now, though.
Maybe he’d start with the premise that an eighteen-course tasting menu was a better way to get and keep a woman interested than introducing a woman to one’s mother and flirting with another woman in front of her. It was common sense, but apparently at least the men in Hannah’s experience lacked that in spades.
If men had common sense, there would be no way he would have had the opportunity to touch Hannah, kiss her, and see her go all soft and vulnerable under his touch. If men had common sense, there was no way a girl like Hannah Mayfield would still be on the market. There would be no way he would still have a chance with her.
So he got down to writing about why he didn’t stand a chance with her anyway.
* * *
—
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, JACK walked into a darkened bar looking for his uncle—but not really his uncle—Lou. Lou Bernardi was one of Sean Nolan’s oldest friends, and that wasn’t just because Lou was the guy to get building permits from at city hall, though that was part of it. Uncle Lou had won over the Nolan kids because he always had the best candy in his office.
Even that day, Uncle Lou passed Jack a Little Debbie snack with his beer. “Not necessary, but thanks.”
“Your dad said you want to know about Senator Chapin and the new federal building.” Aside from the candy, the other good thing about Uncle Lou was that he was always right to the point.
“Yeah, as you know, earmarks are illegal—”
“Bribes are illegal, too. But those are barely news anymore.” Lou took a swig of his pilsner. “This is beyond the pale, though. I’ve never seen anyone with the nerve—not since that filthy mobster who threatened to fit me with cement shoes.”
Jack knew that this was going to take forever and a day if he let Uncle Lou start in on the stories, so he said, “Do you have any documents?”
“Yeah, I’ll have them after one or two more beers.” Lou smirked at him. “It’s not a bribe—it’s two old friends catching up.”
Jack tipped his beer toward Lou and started the voice recorder on his phone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“IT WAS BAFFLING,” HANNAH said. “I have no idea where the confident, charming dude who ate me out like he’d been training for it went.”
“Shhhh.” Sasha placed her finger over her mouth.
Hannah was still Catholic enough to know that talking about cunnilingus in a church sanctuary was a ticket straight to hell, so she whispered, “It’s like someone drained all that big-dick energy he had going on.”
Sasha just looked at her with her big, rounded eyes—her expression a prayer that a new best friend, one without a filthy trash mouth, would suddenly appear at her side.
“They can’t hear us.” They were sitting at the back of Fourth Presbyterian Church, waiting for the senator’s daughter and her fiancé—some finance bro—to finish talking with the pastor. They’d all met over coffee at five minutes past dawn this morning because they had a big day of venue visits to get through.
As soon as Madison pushed a hot-pink binder across the table toward them, Hannah knew that she’d made a grave error trying to start planning weddings. With her events—especially the sports ones—she had almost full creative control. No one had been planning their Hall of Fame induction party since they were four. As long as plenty of high-end booze was involved, she could do pretty much whatever she wanted.
But weddings were different, and hearing Sasha talk to Madi–son about hers—Hannah mostly listened—she felt a pang in her chest about her own long-suppressed desire to get married. When she and Noah had dated, she’d dreamed of getting married in the old church in downtown Minneapolis where her great-grandmother had gone to Mass every Sunday until she’d gone into the hospital two weeks before her death.
That had been a pipe dream. Not just because Noah had later clarified, in great detail, the reasons why he would never marry her and why she would have a hard time finding anyone willing to take her on, but because he hadn’t even been Catholic.
Jack is Catholic.
Jesus Christ, her mind was a traitor. She shook her head to purge it of the idea that she and Jack were headed for anything but an awkward head nod on the train platform about a year from now after they’d been broken up for fifty and a half weeks.
A tap on her shoulder interrupted her disturbing thoughts, and the sight that assaulted her was even more worrisome than her musings about possible marriage to Jack Nolan—none other than Noah sliding into the pew behind them.
Sasha gasped, and Hannah bit out, “What the hell are you doing here?” She’d entirely forgotten how to whisper, and her voice echoed off the walls and vaulted ceilings. Madison looked back, and Hannah somehow gathered herself to smile as though the ground hadn’t just crumbled beneath her.