Not the Girl You Marry Read online

  Introducing Hannah to his mother on the second date was an abject failure. And he was almost five days into the two weeks allotted for completing his article. So far, he’d given her a mind-blowing dinner—and his best oral sex performance—and made his mother fall in love with her. He was as bad at losing a girl—during the first few weeks of a romance—as Chris and Joey were at keeping a lady interested. But they were also quitters, unlike him. He would turn himself into a human red flag tonight, come hell or high water.

  So, he’d have to move on to Plan B, who was currently circulating among guests and pouring champagne. He caught her eye and winked. After hesitating for a moment to fight his instinct to tell Hannah he’d be right back, he walked toward Plan B.

  * * *

  —

  ARTIE GRABBED THE FAT on the back of Hannah’s arm and squeezed. That was just plain rude. “What?”

  “Your man.” She nodded toward their left. “He is flirting with another woman.”

  “He’s not my man.” Hannah’s gaze followed her friend’s. Sure enough, Jack was holding a drink and close-talking a waitress. “He’s probably just being friendly.”

  They watched for a few moments, and the server threw her head back in a fit of audacious laughter and put her hand inside his jacket as though she was about to stroke his left moob.

  Hannah gasped, and a spark of anger made the champagne turn over in her stomach. She was the only one who currently got to grab either of his moobs, and that was the way it would stay for the next two weeks.

  Artie made a little grunt that conveyed her lack of approval. Hannah wanted to do a whole lot more—like run over there and bust her empty champagne flute over that woman’s head. She’d always prided herself on not being the jealous type—it wasn’t very enlightened—but something about Jack made her want to bust a cap in the ass of any woman who touched him like that. This wasn’t even rational. Jack wasn’t her real boyfriend, and she wouldn’t have the right to get jealous over him, even if he was. This was a second date.

  She was in the midst of chanting This is fake. This is fake. This is all fake, in her head when Jack’s mother noticed that they were no longer paying attention to her story about the sculptor she’d slept with while doing her thesis project in Spain. She looked over her shoulder to where Jack was still letting that woman touch him and snorted.

  “You don’t have to worry about her.”

  “I’m not worried.” Hannah’s attention snapped back to Molly. “Who’s worried?”

  Molly motioned toward Hannah’s face with one slim finger. “You’re bright red, dear.”

  Shit. “We’ve only just started dating.” Molly raised one brow, and Artie started looking for more drinks or for people with less family drama to talk to. “He can do whatever he wants.”

  Jack’s mom shrugged. “My point is that there’s no point in being angry—”

  “Can we just pretend we never saw this?” Hannah asked. “Can we maybe pretend that this portion of the conversation never happened?”

  “I’m not going to tell him anything, Hannah.” Molly held up one hand, and Artie—godsend that she was—replaced her empty champagne with a full one. “My point is that you don’t have to be angry, because she’s not into Jack.”

  “How do you know that?” Any woman who was stroking Jack underneath his clothes, in a public place, while she was working, was into him. “It certainly looks—”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Molly shook her head and finished her drink in one gulp. “That’s Darcy McGinnis; she grew up on our block. She also came out years ago. They dated in kindergarten, but then it was most definitely over.”

  “Well, what’s going on, then?”

  “My son is being a man—an idiot man.”

  “Aah.” Apparently, Artie knew what was going on, but Hannah was still woefully in the dark.

  “What the heck is going on?” Hannah had been this close to avoiding cursing in front of Jack’s mother until now.

  “He’s trying to make you jealous.”

  Hannah was about to argue, but she guessed that was the only thing that made sense. Except it didn’t make sense at all. Why would Jack be trying to make her jealous on their second date?

  “Why would he do that?” she asked, not necessarily expecting an answer.

  “He’s a man.” Artie had turned into a parrot of Molly, and nothing was any clearer. She looked down at her half-full glass, wondering if maybe she’d had too much champagne. But too much champagne wasn’t actually a thing in her world.

  “You have to nip this in”—Artie appeared to search for words—“the bud.” She was getting much better at her American idioms.

  “I’m not going to say anything about it.” What could she say about it? If Jack were any other guy, she’d shrug it off and move the hell on. Alone.

  But if she even mentioned his talking to another woman, he would think she was absolutely nuts. They were on a second date. They weren’t exclusive, and she hadn’t even given him an orgasm yet. She had no right to be jealous, even if he was trying to elicit some sort of response from her.

  She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of saying anything. It was too bad that he’d ruined the evening.

  Unexpectedly, she’d liked meeting his mother. She enjoyed feeling like she could fit with people in Jack’s family. Molly was lovely, and her first thought on meeting her was that she was the explanation for why Jack was such a lovely man. She was elegant and feminist and crazy-funny.

  But she couldn’t do that. She would have to grin and bear any stupid man behavior that he dished out for the next eleven days.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SEAN NOLAN DIDN’T RAISE children who gave up. The worst thing one of them could do as a kid was to show up after failing at something without a plan of action for starting over again. It was just about the only thing that could get Jack grounded as a teenager. If he wasn’t going to win, he had to try his best.

  Jack struggled not to let down the Nolan family name as he sat at his desk staring at a blank page, wondering what to write about his night at the museum. Because he had thousands of words to go, he was glad that Hannah hadn’t broken things off after he’d flirted with Darcy for a good hour. But the fact that she hadn’t even mentioned his outrageously uncomfortable tête-à-tête with Darcy at the museum on the way home irked him. He thought for sure that Hannah was the kind of woman who would call him out for flirting with someone else in front of her, but for the whole ride to her place she hadn’t said a word about that or how strange it was to introduce her to his mother on a second date.

  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.

  Noah’s white teeth flashed against his dark skin as he released a muted chuckle that made her feel small. Whenever she’d had an idea or shared a dream with him, she got the muted chuckle. It had become her nemesis over the year or so that they were together, and she’d heard it in her own head since they’d broken up.

  Every time she tried to step out of her comfort zone, there, over her shoulder, was the muted chuckle, laced with the sentiment that she was cute and ought to be patted on her head and sent on her way, soaked in the feeling that she wasn’t smart enough or good enough or strong enough to be taken seriously.

  Except now it was real—her ex-boyfriend, as though all of her most painful insecurities were made manifest, sitting behind her in a church, just as she was trying something new.

  He’d always had a sixth sense for people he should hitch his wagon to, and he was here to make sure his wagon train was still on time. Noah liked to have all of his ducks in a row before he made any move, and he was afraid that Hannah was going to kick some ducks out of their place. It was the source of all the tension between them.

  She felt it now.

  Before Jack, she would have been pulled in again by him. He hadn’t just been blessed with stellar looks—like a young Idris Elba—he could make anyone feel like the most important person in the world. His shrewdness had been the bulk of his charm.

  When they’d first started dating, she had thought it meant something that he’d chosen to be with her. The fact that this man, who knew everyone who was anyone in this town, thought that spending time with her was worthwhile had made her feel like she was worthwhile.

  “You look good.” The way his gaze raked over her belied the compliment. Hannah rather liked the black-and-white mixed-media wrap dress she’d thrown on today. It was easy and fun, and she’d felt sexy but professional when she’d put it on. But Noah’s disapproving tone and look came from the fact that it was from a fast-casual brand. In contrast to his suit, which he’d likely had custom made.

  It draped over his body like a lover—like she’d once draped herself all over him. She interrupted her own inventory of his tweedy yet modern-looking sexiness and met his gaze. She knew that he knew that every atom of her being remembered the attraction that she’d always had to him. Even though he’d always behaved as though their chemistry was inconvenient for him. The fact that he wanted her despite the fact that her family wasn’
t good enough, her language was crass, and she didn’t have the capacity to sprinkle the kind of bullshit that was his area of expertise had tortured him.

  A slim sense of satisfaction slithered through her veins that a spark in his eye said that it still tortured him now.

  That sense was shattered when he said, “You still think that it’s a good idea to do this wedding?”

  “Yes. Especially now that I know how much it bothers you.”

  Sasha had stayed silent, as though if she wasn’t careful her words could detonate the highly delicate Mexican standoff in the back of the church, until she said, “I need Hannah’s help on this one. She is the best at high-profile events.”

  Hannah sent her friend a telepathic high five. Although Sasha could be frustratingly naïve when it came to dating apps, she was intensely and unfailingly loyal. Once they’d broken up, and it had wrecked her self-confidence, he’d died in Sasha’s view. And that was why Sasha was the kind of friend Hannah would call if she ever needed to bury a body. They might look like complete opposites from the outside, but they shared a burning devotion to their friends. Hannah could trust Sasha with anything because they’d been through so many things.

  Her best friend’s metaphorical sword at her back was the only thing keeping Hannah in that church. Every bit of work she’d done over the past two years to make sure she would never be destroyed by a man again, every brick in the wall she’d built around her heart, was going to topple to the ground. The mortar had disintegrated; she could feel the stones teeter and start to give way under Noah’s appraisal.

  This was why letting Jack in had been so risky. At the time, it had felt like a calculated risk, but now she knew it was simply foolhardy to believe that she could open herself up just a little bit. She’d been lying to herself when she’d thought she could walk away from Jack and feel nothing.

  Other than the flirting-with-another-girl thing, he’d been so wonderful that she’d forgotten how bad she’d felt when Noah had flipped the switch. Seeing him now, smelling his familiar cologne and all the memories that clean, manly scent evoked, reminded her that she couldn’t fall too deeply with Jack.