Romantic Times Read online

  There was a lot of deliberate casualness in her words that suggested a jaded carnality with which he was unfamiliar. If he spent the night with her, he’d never make it to China.

  Her attitude might be new, but the rest of her was much how he remembered. The long chestnut hair that used to hang to her waist was considerably shorter and pulled off her neck in some kind of loose, twisty thing that emphasized the elegant curve of her jawline. Her figure was, if changed at all, trimmer and more fit than their college days. And her legs, in that short skirt and high heels, still had the power to turn his knees into jelly, and the area higher up into stone.

  He looked away and tasted his drink. An awkward moment lingered between them.

  “So tell me about your family,” she said.

  “My folks still live in our house. Dad plays a little golf, but mostly he putters around in the shop, fixing old appliances that he then donates. Mom’s taken up painting, and she’s actually pretty good at it. I have an Irma Wilkins original oil hanging above the couch in my living room.”

  “I always liked your parents,” she said.

  “They always liked you.”

  Jake loved that smile. It always caught him right in the gut.

  “When I asked about your family, I meant Lainey and the kids.”

  Of course that’s what she meant. “Well, you met Lainey,” he said. “The kids are… kids.”

  “I bet they have names and ages,” Regi told him.

  “Daniel is three. Pete is about a year and a half, maybe.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “A year and a half, maybe?” she repeated.

  “Sixteen months,” he guessed randomly. Jake had the actual birthday on his phone, but thought it would be way too suspicious to look it up.

  “And you named him after your brother,” she said. “You two must have gotten a lot closer.”

  Jake pushed through his hesitation.

  “We are better,” he agreed with a nod. “Pete started his own business. He’s a commercial contractor. He’s done really well and doesn’t have to feel like he’s always in my shadow these days, always in competition.”

  Regi nodded. “Good for him. I’m sure it was never easy being the kid brother to the son who always did everything right.”

  “Not everything.”

  Jake did not elaborate, but in memory, he saw her once more across the length of the church. He saw the panicked, regretful pallor on her face. With the Bridal March blaring from the organ pipes, he couldn’t hear the words she spoke to her father, but he immediately knew what they meant. Maybe if he’d run after her that very minute. But his own guilt made him hesitate. By the time he’d made it to the church door, the long white limo was driving away.

  “So did Pete marry? Does he have a family?”

  “What?” He pretended not to hear. The bar had filled up noisily around them, making the pretense of deafness believable. “Maybe we can find a quieter table.”

  With an order for some food of his own and the assistance of a waiter waved in by the bartender, they carried their drinks across the room. Jake would never have had the guts to pick the seats they were led to. It was in a small, secluded niche with a comfy padded loveseat, table in front.

  Regi slipped in one side, he on the other, but when they sat their thighs were touching. They smiled at each other, but he knew his was forced and thought hers might be too.

  “So, I’m the guy with the boring life in Cossville,” he said. “You’re the woman who’s seen the world. Tell me about the boring life in London or Paris or Rome.”

  She laughed a little. “I know more about the boring life in Prague and Budapest and Ljubljana. My most successful territory was Eastern Europe. These days, it’s all Asia.”

  Jake leaned an elbow on the table so that he could watch her face as she talked. She had always been like this. So full of life and joy. Always eager to get out into the world, to see those things that she hadn’t seen. To meet those people so different from her. Her stories were not about palaces and cathedrals and monuments. She talked about children skating on icy rivers, old women smoking pipes as they did leatherwork, street musicians and food vendors. She loved all of it.

  The waiter came with his order and fresh drinks. He had no idea what he was eating, but it tasted great, and he began to really relax. She did too.

  This was a time out of time. He was going to savor these moments with her for many years to come. He might never talk to her again and he realized that there were still words that he had to say.

  *

  Seated so close to him on the tiny loveseat, Regi told herself that she was very glad that he was married. It made everything so much easier. That he had found happiness without her, absolved her of guilt. Her residual feelings for him, her wish that things could have been different, that was a punishment she deserved.

  Still, Regi hadn’t been quite as humbled as she knew she should have been. She didn’t want him to think that she still sighed with longing at the memory of him. That he was the standard by which she judged other men and that, for her, they never measured up.

  So she deliberately spiced her stories of foreign adventure with some broad hints about her sexual exploits. And if she conveyed them to be a bit more exciting than they actually were, well, he would be as gratified to know that he hadn’t ruined her life as she was to know she hadn’t ruined his.

  “So three days in Madrid was one long party,” she explained. “Great food, great music and so much dancing. I thought Marco was a bit young for me, but I had plenty of money and he knew how to enjoy himself. Then one afternoon we’re looking at art at the Reina Sofia and I hear ‘Papa! Papa!’ And here are the two cutest little kids on a school field trip.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes.” She laughed with exaggerated gaiety. “And the mom was a trip chaperone. I got to meet the whole family.”

  “Oh God, what did you do?”

  “There was nothing to do,” Regi told him. “I was charming and friendly and pretended this kind of thing happened every day.”

  Jake shook his head incredulously, but he was smiling. She wondered if she had shocked him. She wondered if that’s what she’d intended.

  The incident had happened so very long ago and it had been horrible. She had been so lonely and he had been so full of life. She had grabbed for a heart salve and ended with a handful of humiliation. She could no longer remember the Spaniard’s face, but she could never forget the eyes of those children.

  The warmth of Jake beside her, the scent of him, it was so intoxicating. She didn’t want him to leave. She kept chattering in the hope that he would stay.

  He switched to wine and had the waiter bring them a bottle.

  It seemed very natural to be with him. She had to resist the impulse to snuggle in his arms.

  “It all sounds very exciting,” he told her.

  She nodded, but for the sake of being friends, she also wanted to be truthful. “It is sometimes, but you know the traveling thing gets really old,” she said. “I love seeing new places and even revisiting cities that I love. But there is a lot of business to be done in cities and industrial zones that I don’t love. And day after day dragging a bag on and off a plane or trying to figure out how to turn the heat on in unfamiliar hotel rooms, that gets old.”

  Jake smiled. “I guess in the end, a job is a job.”

  Regi agreed. “And I love what I do,” she said. “But these days I find myself doing a lot more of it by video chat and web conferencing.”

  “That’s certainly more efficient and less expensive.”

  She agreed. “And when a face-to-face is absolutely required, more often than not I’m managing and mentoring younger staff on the road.”

  “I bet that has its moments too.”

  Laughingly, she told him about a phone call, explaining the vagaries of parking a rental car on a side street in Seoul.

  When he chuckled, Regi noted a bit of five-o’clock shadow on his jaw line.
It served as a reminder to her that this man with the polite manners and friendly smiles was still wholly masculine, a fiercely passionate and unrelenting sexual partner.

  She swallowed that thought with another splash of Shiraz and began a very recent story about the foibles of a staff member who had an overly optimistic confidence in his language skills. She wanted to hear him laugh. She loved the sound of it pouring over her like a warm balm.

  A moment later, Regi looked into Jake’s eyes and forgot everything else. Those amazingly long eyelashes, darker than his hair. She used to tease him, saying that he must secretly be using mascara. Once, as a joke, he allowed her to catch him sneaking the tube out of her purse.

  And she remembered those eyelashes fluttering against her temple as she awakened in his arms.

  For the first time in an hour, there was silence between them. All around them noisy, happy revelers celebrated wins or drank to forget losses, but in the cozy alcove two people gazed at each other.

  Jake looked away first.

  “I’m glad you got to go after your dream,” he said.

  Was he glad? she wondered. Was she glad?

  “I’m so sorry about what I did to you,” she admitted. “I can’t imagine what it was like for you at the church, in front of all those people.”

  Jake shook his head. “I don’t even remember the people. All I remember is watching you make your getaway and realizing that I blew it.”

  Regi was startled at that statement. “You didn’t blow it.”

  “Yes, I did,” he said. “I seriously did. I knew all along what you wanted out of life, and I think it’s past time that I apologize for almost stealing it away.”

  “What? Oh no,” she said. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  “I do. I do,” he insisted. “Sometimes I tell myself that I was just young and stupid. But I wasn’t that stupid. I was willfully ignorant.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I knew you,” Jake said. “I had listened to your dreams for years. You wanted to travel the world. You wanted to see new things, meet new people. And it wasn’t just pie in the sky, ‘I-wanna-be-a-rock-star-when-I-grow-up’. I was there when you earned your degree in International Business. I sat beside you reading subtitles in a million foreign films and travelogues. I drilled you on French conjugations and German declensions. Did I really think you were going to use all that in the front office of the Wilkins’ Plumbing Supply?”

  Regi felt a blush sliding up her neck. Was that what she had thought? The entire time they’d dated, she’d known that he was being prepped to take over his father’s business. And while she had talked about all that she would see and might do, he had never wavered from his plan to go into the family business. No. She’d discounted his dream. His dull, responsible, pedestrian dream was no match for hers. She’d convinced herself that because they really loved each other and because what she wanted was so much bigger, he’d get on board.

  “Working at Wilkins was never an option that I considered,” she admitted now. “It seemed… boring. A job that old people would do.”

  His expression registered a momentary surprise, then he laughed. “So I guess that in those years when we thought we were learning how to make a life together, we were actually working at cross-purposes.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so. When I thought about your future, which was rare, I always assumed that despite what your parents wanted, you would go away with me. That we would travel the world for twenty years and then retire to a beachfront villa on the Mediterranean.”

  “Now that doesn’t sound bad,” Jake told her. “You should have let me in on the plan. God knows, some days when I’m listening to some long diatribe about how ‘they don’t make p-traps like they used to, jetting off to the Riviera is mighty tempting.”

  “It took me a while to realize that you would never leave your folks in the lurch.”

  His brow furrowed. “Taking over at the store was not something that my parents pushed on me,” he said. “It was always what I wanted.”

  Regi nodded.

  “But, I also wanted you.”

  His words were low and soft. They sizzled through her veins and caused the butterflies in her mid-section to become frenzied.

  Later, she couldn’t have said if he moved or she did, but an instant later she was in his arms, tasting his lips. It was all there. Everything that had taunted her in loss and buoyed her in reflection. Like muscle memory their bodies knew each other completely and responded without hesitation. It was as if a fire that never truly cooled suddenly flamed up between them.

  Regi knew that she should stop. She knew that for the sake of her heart and her sanity, she couldn’t go through it all again.

  But just one more minute.

  One more minute.

  She wanted him. She had always wanted him. And knowing that they were so good together, knowing how thoroughly he could satisfy her, knowing that she might never get another moment to feel him inside her, Regi could so easily give in.

  And Jake would never forgive himself.

  *

  When finally she broke the kiss, he held her face in his hands, inches from his own. Her eyes were bright with passion and her lips plumped and parted. She had never looked more beautiful. He had never wanted her, wanted any woman, more than he wanted her now.

  “I thought I had imagined it,” she whispered. “I was sure that the spark between us couldn’t have been true. But it’s still there.”

  “It’s still there,” he agreed and pulled her into his arms once more.

  Open-mouthed, he angled his head to bring them even nearer to each other. It was as if she were trying to crawl inside him. He sucked the warmth of her into him and nipped her lower lip with his teeth. The sounds she made at the back of her throat were raw and eager. Jake couldn’t get close enough. In the tiny, confined space he eased her onto his lap. She pressed her breast against him. He ran a hand down the length of her spine.

  “Good grief! Get a room!”

  Jake looked up, startled.

  His brother, Pete, stood at the edge of their table, grinning.

  Regi gasped in horror and abruptly plopped herself back on the seat.

  “Hi Regi. You’re looking pink and pretty, as always.”

  “Pete.”

  “What are you doing here?” Jake demanded.

  “Lainey was so nervous about you being with Regi, she couldn’t calm down enough to go to sleep. I told her she was nuts, but you know what a romantic she is.” Pete chuckled. “She sent me down here on secret reconnaissance. I wasn’t supposed to let you see me. But, then I expected you to be chatting civilly and sipping Singapore Slings, not publicly snogging in a dark corner.”

  “Oh my God, Jake, I am so sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine. Oh, poor, Lainey. Pete, please, please. I’m begging you. It was all my fault. Please don’t say anything to her.”

  “Huh?”

  “Jake would never be unfaithful. He’s not that kind of guy. It was a moment of craziness. I lured him into the past. I made him remember when he loved me. It was so wrong of me, and I am very sorry. I am so, so sorry.” She looked at him then, and Jake saw the same look he’d seen that long ago day in the church. She loved him, but she was going to run. “I know back then I was selfish. I wanted what I wanted and I didn’t care who I hurt. But I’m not like that anymore. I do want you, but I won’t allow myself to hurt you and your whole family.”

  She slipped out the far side of the booth, grabbed her purse and headed out the door.

  Jake rushed to follow her.

  “What’s going on?” Pete asked. “What is she talking about?”

  “She thinks Lainey and the kids belong to me.”

  Pete was incredulous. “You told her you’re married! Are you a complete idiot?”

  “I hope not.”

  Jake raced at the door. He looked left and didn’t see her. He looked right and didn’t see
her. For an instant he felt complete panic, but he was not hesitating as he’d done at the church. He ran down the hallway toward the elevators. He heard the “ding” before he rounded the corner. She was getting on.

  “Stop!” he called out.

  She turned to look at him. There were tears in her eyes, but she made no move to hold the door. The shiny metal was closing so quickly. She would be on the other side, maybe lost to him forever.

  “I love you! Don’t leave me!” he cried out.

  Suddenly, from within the car an arm encased in gold lame grabbed the door. A tall, dark man with a slick pompadour and sunglasses looked out at him. “I know only fools rush in, but I think this has to be one of those now or never exceptions.”

  Jake stepped into the elevator. The Elvis impersonator stepped out. “I’ll catch the next one,” he said.

  When the doors closed behind him. Jake took Regi’s hands in his own. “I hesitated ten years ago,” he said. “I should have run behind the limo. I should have never let you go. Today, I’m not letting you go.”

  Tears were running down her cheeks. “You have to. It’s too late for us. We have our own lives, our own responsibilities. It could never work.”

  “It’s not too late. We’re in love with each other. And we have been for most of our lives. Being in love doesn’t mean being free from complications. Being in love means working through those complications together. Being in love doesn’t mean having the same goals, it means having the one mutual goal of supporting each other.”

  “But Lainey and the children…”

  “Are now, and have always been, the happy responsibility of my brother, Pete.”

  “What?”

  “There is only one woman in the world that I have ever wanted to marry.” He reached over and hit the emergency STOP button. The sudden halt was jarring, but he was on his own power when he got down on one knee. “Marry me, Regi. I don’t care if we live in Cossville or Calcutta, but I don’t want to live anywhere without you beside me.”