A slight prickle of completely inappropriate jealousy pinched at Lisa’s heart.
“I never lied to anyone,” Mack continued. “I never promised a long-term relationship. I was up front about my situation.” His face fell. “And sometimes I’m sure I was a bit of an asshole. I didn’t want to get serious.”
Lisa waited.
Again, Mack raised his eyes to hers. “But this is different. You and I are different. Maybe it’s the time. Maybe it’s, well, you.”
His words took her breath away. At the same time, she imagined those other women, those sexy women, their waist-length hair and young shapely bodies, their sophisticated ways…she didn’t want to imagine how her own body compared.
It was an absolute blessing when their dinners arrived. Their conversation turned back to memories of former restaurants and bars, and then on to former shops, houses, eccentric islanders, back and back into their childhoods.
Mack paid the check and they walked out into the chilly spring evening. As they drove to her house, they didn’t talk. When he came around to open the passenger door of his truck for her, she stepped down and waited while he closed the door. Mack put his hand on the door handle and his other on the body of the truck, enclosing Lisa in his arms. She leaned back, looking up at him, and he held himself an inch or two from touching her with his own body.
“Invite me in?” he asked.
Lisa’s voice trembled. “Yes. Yes, Mack, come in and I’ll make you another cup of coffee.”
five
Juliet was twenty-seven years old, lived in a third floor walk-up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and sat in a cubicle all day long building websites for Kazaam, a large tech company with employees in twenty-seven states. She was heading a seven-member team that specialized in websites devoted to pets: their health, breeding, and of course their hilarious antics. The people she supervised lived all over the map; they communicated through email and Skype. They could be a lot of fun, but Juliet would have preferred to have fun with people in the same room.
At least in the two years she’d worked for Kazaam, she’d made a good friend in Mary, whose cubicle was across from hers. Mary wanted to make money as fast as she could so she and her boyfriend could get married. She was from a large Italian family, and she was friendly and smart and practical, and she’d warned Juliet not to get involved with their supervisor Hugh Jeffers, handsome and in a hurry and wickedly clever. Mary had been right.
Juliet had gotten over a lot of broken romances in her life, at least a lot for a girl who’d gone through high school always considering herself the smart one and her younger brother the attractive one. Having an absent, totally absent, father had made her distrust guys from the start, and it had also, oddly, sadly, made her feel she wasn’t pretty enough, adorable enough, for her father and therefore for any male.
In college, lots of guys seemed to think she was absolutely the bomb, but she quickly learned that many of them would tell her anything so they could get her into bed. When she was in her early twenties, she’d thought she’d found a lasting relationship with Doug Manchester, but when they both applied for positions at Kazaam and Juliet got hired and Doug didn’t, he broke up with her and moved to Chicago. That had been painful.
For the last few years, Juliet forced herself into a routine that worked for her, even if she did think she was becoming a bit eccentric and more than a bit lonely. She worked hard, went to the pub on Saturday nights with her girlfriends, ran three miles four times a week, and spent Sundays like a Victorian spinster, doing laundry, cleaning her apartment, and making a duty call to her darling, hardworking, lonely mother. She’d taken this job at Kazaam in part to be near to her mother, in case Lisa needed her.
Then Hugh Jeffers was sent by New York to take over this office. Brilliant, impatient, critical, he was also elegant and articulate, unlike her caveman brother and her last boyfriend. While all the other men in the office wore long-sleeved L.L.Bean flannel shirts, as if they were leaving momentarily to work as lumberjacks, Hugh wore designer suits with Brooks Brothers shirts that took cuff links. As a hobby he played classical piano.
Mary’s opinion was that Hugh had quickly noticed who was the best worker, the most diligent, the most influential, and he’d chosen Juliet to be his lieutenant, standing up for him when there were rebellious mutterings when he wasn’t in the office, never failing to carry out an assigned task.
Juliet’s opinion was that Hugh had noticed her for her work and then had genuinely fallen in love with her. Certainly he acted that way. When they were sitting in his office discussing website traffic, he suddenly went very quiet. Juliet looked at him, puzzled.
“I want to ask you something,” he said, “and I don’t want to make you angry.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” Juliet answered honestly.
“Will you be offended if I ask to take you out to dinner?”
She was so surprised, she couldn’t answer.
“I mean, socially. I’d like to date you but I wouldn’t want you to be insulted. You’re too valuable an employee.”
In an odd way, it was a romantic moment.
“I’d be delighted to go out to dinner with you,” Juliet answered, adding of her own accord, “and it won’t change my work habits.”
They went to dinner several times. He didn’t rush her to bed, but when they finally made love, he was careful and caring. He took her to the symphony, the theater, the ballet. She had to buy new clothes for all these special occasions, and beautiful, luxurious, sexy underwear for after.
He wrote a song about how he loved her and played it for her on the piano. He cooked for her. He brought her flowers. He agreed that when they had time, he would go to Nantucket with her to meet her mother.
Juliet was only slightly bothered by the way he acted toward her at work. He didn’t favor her or especially notice her in the office. He seldom looked her way and he never called her in for private meetings. He was out of town many weekends, most often in New York, on business. Those were long weekends for Juliet, because he never called or texted her, and even though she had his number, she was too proud to call him. He had her off balance. She loved her job, and she was good at it, so she had never considered an office relationship. But Hugh told her he loved her. She was expecting a proposal and an engagement ring.
Instead, on a beautiful day in May, Hugh Jeffers walked into the office and announced to the entire staff that he was moving back to New York. Suzanne Daniels would be coming here to Boston to replace him.
Juliet had spent the night with him a week ago, and he hadn’t even hinted at such a move. When he made his announcement to the group, his eyes slid over her as if she were nothing but a shadow.