Chapter 3
Kathryn
I loved the convenience of living in an older neighborhood downtown. Houston had its charm, especially at night when the downtown lit up in multicolored brilliance, and my living situation allowed me to walk almost everywhere I needed to go.
And tonight, I needed the fresh air more than usual.
As we left the Purple Dragon, my thoughts weren’t on the man next to me, who had agreed to walk me home when I claimed exhaustion as my excuse to go home early. They were on one tall, dark and handsome bartender. Alexander shouldn’t have me so worked up. He really wasn’t any different than any other bartender. Sure, he was fit and obviously worked out on a regular basis, his biceps stretching out his sleeves as he mixed drinks. And the angles of his face were sharp and perfectly symmetric.
His skin was a golden color that you couldn’t even achieve with a tan, and his dark hair held the hint of a wave but was cropped short enough to just fall in a naturally attractive mess on top of his head. His eyes were mysterious, and I couldn’t tell much from the hooded deep blue orbs.
But there was nothing special about him.
To distract myself from the wayward thoughts that didn’t even make any sense, I reached for Christian’s hand. “Thank you again for walking me home. And I’m sorry I’m bowing out so early. I just have to be in the office an hour early in the morning.” That much was true. As an admin at the medical center, I had regular hours. But in the role I’d taken on as a patient advocate, I sometimes had early meetings with other staff to discuss particular patient situations or general ideas to better the patient experience. I even met with some of the patients themselves, or their families, to hear out anything that might be wrong.
Tomorrow morning, I actually had a meeting with a family whose son was going into hospice care. I wanted to make sure all arrangements had been made and they were satisfied with the service and care we’d provided. I also wanted to set up a regular report so I would know more about how our recommended hospice facility treated patients.
But I was also bored with Christian, and I was anxious to go home, where I could get into my pajamas and maybe munch on some corn chips. I held to a particular regimen with Christian when it came to eating at restaurants. I could eat tons and still maintain my weight, but I’d seen him raise his eyebrows the first time we went out for a meal. After that, I decided to conform to what he expected—a skinny girlfriend who picked at her food. Besides, that’s why corn chips were invented, right?
“I understand,” he said with a serious expression. “I’m sure the papers stack up and don’t file themselves.”
I clenched my teeth against his misunderstanding of my job. I didn’t want to correct him again, knowing I would get irritated and start an argument. The last thing I needed was to push Christian away just when things looked like they were working out. Instead, I told him, “I have a meeting in the morning. I need to be at my best, so I want to get a full night’s sleep.”
Christian gave a little laugh. “I know when I first started at the accounting firm I had to work long hours, and it felt like I was never going to catch up on sleep.”
Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, a bit distracted by my thoughts of a sexy beast behind a bar. But I had no idea how his statement related to the conversation I thought we were having.
A wave of guilt rolled over me. I wasn’t being fair to Christian. He had done everything in his power to entertain me and keep my attention tonight, and here I was mooning over some random guy who had poured me a drink.
This was the sort of thing that could lead to worlds of trouble, and I wouldn’t allow myself to fall down that rabbit hole. It was obviously just raw sex appeal, nothing more. The guy was a blip that had lit up my radar for a moment, and that moment was over. I needed to think about my happiness and my future, and that was with Christian.
A man so predictable he probably arranged his clothes and underwear in a certain order for even rotation.
But I wanted predictable. I wanted consistency. I wanted to know that my man wouldn’t stray from his daily routine without good reason and would be devoted to me with no desire to look elsewhere for any of his needs. Christian was my match. He fit every one of my requirements, and I redoubled my resolve to make sure nothing came between me and my goal of marrying him.
We arrived at my apartment, which was actually the second floor of a house that had been converted into two separate units. The entrance was on the ground floor, but the foyer and stairwell had been walled off, with doors leading to each floor, and a kitchen had been installed upstairs to make it a complete apartment. The red brick building was on the end of a quiet but trendy street with several such homes, and it was literally around the corner from the heart of downtown.
I turned to Christian and gave him a truly appreciative smile. “I had a wonderful time tonight, and it was great to celebrate. And again, I’m sorry for bailing so early.”
He shrugged. “Are you sure you want to go straight to bed? I mean, we don’t have to end the night right here. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.”
I couldn’t believe he chose tonight of all nights to suggest coming up. I had just insinuated at dinner that I wasn’t ready to get physical—at least not with him—and I wasn’t going to change my mind on a whim a couple hours later. Besides, my roommate, Crystal, would be watching our every move. She was fascinated by my interest in Christian, and she’d want to analyze him later.
I wondered how she’d analyze my attraction to that bartender.
Gently and with a smile, I told him, “I’d love to invite you up for another drink, but I really do need to make it an early night. But I promise to call you tomorrow when I get home, okay?”
He was visibly disappointed, and I’m sure he meant to earn sympathy points for it, but I really was tired, and I had a lot of unwanted thoughts at the moment.
“Goodnight, Kathryn,” he said, pulling me into a kiss. He was a good kisser, and I didn’t pull away in a hurry. But as an image entered my mind of being in Alexander’s arms, I imagined his kiss would curl my toes and heat my blood. And that thought forced me to end the kiss so I could rip myself out of the fantasy.
“Goodnight, Christian.” I quickly opened the door and hurried up the flight of stairs. Inside my own space, I closed the door and leaned against it, wrinkling my nose and groaning. I had probably just ruined a perfectly good night during which I’d made a lot of progress and pretty much clinched the victory over Christian, all because I’d acted like a prudish, work-obsessed career woman.
And why couldn’t I get the bartender out of my mind?
“Hey, Kitty-Kat,” Crystal called where she sat curled up on the corner of the couch. She was surrounded by pillows, her tiny, birdlike frame almost swallowed beyond notice. A lock of her curly red hair bounced back into place as I looked at her.
I gave her a knowing glare. “Stop chewing on your hair.”
She scowled at me, looking more like an angry adolescent than a twenty-six-year-old woman. Such was the curse of being barely five feet tall, but when she stood up, her figure reminded people she was a full-grown woman, and combined with her perky attitude and her southern drawl, made her popular with men.
Her scowl faded quickly as I traipsed through the living room to my bedroom. Originally, I’d rented the one room from Crystal, who had rented her room from her former roommate, Michelle, three years before. But Michelle had gotten married and bought a house with her husband, leaving Crystal an entire apartment to pay for on the meager wages of a sales clerk. Now, we split the rent and all the other bills in half, and since I was a bit of a genius when it came to being frugal and not needing a lot, we both lived pretty comfortably.
As I changed into a set of flannel Victoria’s Secret pajamas, I smelled the fresh coffee brewing and thanked my stars for having a great roommate that knew me so well. And instantly changed my mind as I heard her call, “Can’t wait to hear all the sordid details of the date!”
I leaned around the door to see that the television was still on and felt a sense of relief. I would at least have until the end of the current rerun of Friends before I got the third degree. It was policy never to interrupt an episode during a marathon – we waited until the end credits and paused it prior to the start of the next.
Padding back out after hanging up my dress, I asked, “What episode are you on?”
“Season four, number seventeen,” she said, coming back with a bowl of popcorn and two mugs of coffee on a tray. I’d gotten Crystal hooked long ago.
I nodded. “‘The One with the Free Porn,’ right?”
“Exactly.”
We sat in silence, aside from laughter, for the next ten minutes until it was over, and the remote was in her hand immediately as she bounced around to face me, her legs folded under her. “Alright, spill the beans, sister,” she said through a mouthful of popcorn.
I frowned. I didn’t really have much to tell her. Or rather, much I felt like talking about. I shrugged. “We went to dinner at that expensive little place on Bagby, toasted our three-month anniversary, and talked about the future.”
“Did he tell you he loved you?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean? He either said it or he didn’t. I don’t know any other way to classify it.”
I sighed. Crystal was from Cameron, a really small town a few hours north. She didn’t have much exposure to the real world until she did what most graduates from her high school did – moved away to a place with opportunities. She’d answered Michelle’s ad for a roommate two weeks before graduation and was in Houston three days after, hitting the streets looking for a job.
She’d been working in the same boutique clothing store ever since and was a manager now, with big dreams of opening her own shop in New York, where she could sell unique items and some of her own designs. She was creative, intelligent, and a loyal friend, but she was quirky and still very naïve when it came to social aspects.
I sighed and told her, “He said I was a central part of his life, and he thought about me all the time, really cared about me. So, he didn’t say he loved me, but he insinuated that he was at least getting there.”
“Oh.” She looked a bit confused, but seemed to at least catch the basic meaning. “Well, what did you say?”
“I told him I had similar feelings and thought we were making good progress. And that I thought we should keep taking it slow.”
She grinned broadly. “So, things are going well. Why didn’t you invite him up for a drink?”
“Because he would have expected sex, and I’m not ready to cross that bridge yet.” I was done jumping into bed with people too soon. That was part of the reason I’d fallen so hard for Jarrett. He was phenomenal in bed. Unfortunately, he’d shared his prowess with more women than me. I shook that thought off, not wanting to wallow in pity. I’d stopped doing that months ago. “I’d rather build that emotional connection and breed trust before I slip under the sheets. You saw where it got me last time I made that mistake.”
Crystal had been the shoulder I cried on after the breakup, and I knew she would agree with me. She probably never wanted to go through my distress again. She said, “You’re a better person than I am. You’ve been on a pretty long dry spell, bless your heart. And bless his, too, for not being one of those demanding, impatient suckers who can’t wait to get into your pants.”
Actually, I had an idea that Christian was starting to get there, but I didn’t say it out loud. In fact, I didn’t say anything at all, which didn’t satisfy Crystal’s curiosity. “There had to be more to it than that, Kathryn. I can’t believe you only went to dinner, even if you are home way earlier than usual. What else did you do?”
I hesitated as an image of Alexander popped into my head. I drooled over a sexy bartender who mixed the most incredible drink I’ve ever tasted, and then I imagined I was kissing him when Christian kissed me goodnight. That was totally inappropriate, especially since I was supposed to be putting every effort toward a long term till death do us part relationship with Christian. “After dinner, Christian wanted to go somewhere for a drink. An ‘aperitif.’” I wanted to roll my eyes so bad, but I held it in.
“Ooh, did he take you to a fancy nightclub? Did you like it? Maybe we should go back so I can check it out,” she said. That was Crystal. She wasn’t interested in settling down like I was, but she was constantly on the lookout for someone she could have a little fun with.
“No, actually, I had a few places I wanted to suggest, but he was determined to go across the street to that little hole in the wall. The Purple Dragon. The dive bar.” I wrinkled my nose. “It’s not that there was anything wrong with the place when we got there or anything. It wasn’t seedy like it looks on the outside. But the whole point of our date tonight was to celebrate an anniversary. Going from a fancy restaurant with waiters in black tie to a dive bar just seemed out of place to me.”
Crystal had the good sense to agree with me. “Who does that? I mean, Christian seems like a distinguished gentleman.” Pretentious and a dull were the words I would have used, but I nodded along as she continued, “I wonder what came over him, thinking that was a good idea. Oh, no, you’re not mad at him for it, are you? Is that why you came home early?”
“No, that’s not it at all.” But the inciting incident was the same. Going to the Purple Dragon had been very un-Christian-like behavior, and I was still trying to figure out what had made him decide to do that. Had he noticed that I’d been bored? I’d done my best to show interest in our conversation. I’d never even spoken of being bored out loud—not with him, not with Crystal, and not even alone by myself.
But the real problem was that I had a man I should never have met burned into my brain.
How did I explain my frustration to Crystal without mentioning Alexander?
She saved me the trouble, saying reasonably, “If you aren’t mad, you’ve got to let it go, darlin’. You can’t be all huffy for no reason. Unless there is a reason, and then you have to figure out what it is and talk to him about it. Those are your two choices. It’s black and white.”
For once, she was on the money. My roommate saw everything as black and white, still not quite realizing the world was mostly made up of gray. But in this case, I had to stop blaming Christian and take responsibility for myself. I was the one getting gooey eyed over some stranger I was never going to see again. And that was an affront, whether Christian knew about it or not.
“You’re right,” I told Crystal. Before she could ask another question, I pointed to the television. “Come on, I need an episode before I go to bed.”
“Wait, just tell me one thing,” she said. “Were the drinks any good?”
“My drink was fucking amazing.”
“Oh, we’re so going there soon, then.” She started the next episode, and when it was over, I carried myself to bed. But despite my resolve, it wasn’t Christian on my mind as I sank into my pillow. And I still couldn’t understand why I was so infatuated with the idea of Alexander.
Maybe I’d have to explore the idea a little more. Maybe I could do that with some harmless flirting, with Crystal at my side.