Just Friends To . . . Just Married

“Good night, Kim,” he called back, disappearing from view.

She glared at the empty kitchen door, fists balled. After a few seconds, she calmed down enough to realize he was right. She needed time and distance from this afternoon to be totally rational on the subject of Perry’s desertion. Jax was an expert on “totally rational” because if there was one thing Jax was, besides brilliant, it was rational.

She could hear his rapid tread as he jogged up the stairs two at a time. He was really going. “Hey,” she shouted. “What happened to my hug?”

Somewhere in the distance a door slammed.

CHAPTER THREE

FOR Jax the night became an endless roller-coaster ride. He got no rest, tossing, turning, pacing and glaring out of the window, then tossing and turning some more. He couldn’t bear to have Kim around, so near him, her scent driving him to distraction, her soft, radiant hair begging to be stroked. Her blasted need to be hugged, with those “best friend” pecks on his cheeks and jaw driving him crazy. Was it possible she didn’t know what she did to him? Or was she so narcissistic she needed to torture him to get her jollies?

He ground out a blasphemy. Of course, she didn’t know. He blamed his frustration and fatigue for such asinine thinking. Standing before his window, exhausted yet wide-awake, he peered at his watch. Illuminated by the rosy glow of dawn, its silver hands broke the bad news: 5:33 Heaving a weary groan, he decided he might as well go in to work. Yawning between mumbled curses, he went through the motions, his mind clouded by conflicted emotions.

He heard no stirrings from the guest room, so he quietly went downstairs to find the kitchen spotless. Apparently Kim hadn’t left the dishes after all. “Thanks for that, at least,” he grumbled. “You kept me up all night, wanting you, knowing I can never have you, but the dishes are clean.” Resentment spiked in him. The trade-off was light-years away from being even.

By rote he made his usual pot of coffee and filled his insulated travel mug. Before he left he scribbled Kim a note about being back around six, suggesting she relax and promising to bring home the makings for her favorite dinner. Taco salad. A favored meal would set a better tone for a frank discussion. Perhaps she might even be willing to admit her commitment phobia. Maybe she could begin to understand that if she ever wanted to have a lasting relationship with a man, she needed to deal with that first. If he did his job as friend and fixer well, one day Kim would find lasting happiness with some man.

Some other damn man.

He headed down the stairs to his garage, slid into his Jaguar coupe, and fired up the engine. “The irony is,” he muttered, “the one relationship she’s genuinely committed to is ours—so pathetically platonic it’s killing me.”

At six-thirty, he arrived at the high-rise office of Gideon and Ross, Business Productivity Consultants, to find his partner, Tracy Ross, already there. No great shock, since she practically lived in her office. Her door stood open, so as he passed by he crossed her line of sight.

“Hey,” she called, “I didn’t expect you for another hour. What gives? Problem?”

He didn’t want to air his “problem” with Tracy, but knowing her burr-under-the-saddle personality, he might as well come clean, or she’d poke at it until it bled. Tracy was an exceptional businesswoman and an able partner, but she was an equally exceptional snoop with an exceptional snoop’s radar.

He glowered at her. “Is it illegal to come in early?”

She grinned at him from behind her polished steel and Plexiglas desk. Tracy was a handsome woman with a close-cropped cap of naturally platinum hair and features made striking by exquisite bone structure. Designer half glasses perched on her slender nose. In heels she towered nearly as tall as he, which made her an intimidating six-three. She was as no-nonsense in business as she was classy in her choice of attire. Without any long-term, personal relationships and no interest whatsoever in the male sex, her life was her work.

Therefore, their business relationship was simply that, un-complicated by sexuality. They both knew that many of their clients assumed they were lovers. The premise amused them. In actuality, they were a well-oiled machine, moving up fast in their profession, with an outstanding reputation for competence and positive results. He respected Tracy, prized her business acumen, was comfortable with their relationship, except at moments like these, when a male partner would ignore an awareness of a problem or never detect one at all.

“It’s not illegal to come in early, Jax Man.” She removed her reading glasses and set them on the legal-size notepad in front of her. “If it were, I’d be a lifer.” She motioned for him to come in. “I brought muffins.”

He half smiled. Even as all-business as she was, there were times when she reminded him of his grandmother. “Homemade?”

“Naturally.” She shoved the open tin toward him. “These are not only delicious, they’ll add ten years to your lifespan.” As he approached her desk her grin faded. “Man, you look like twenty miles of bad road.”

Here it came. “Only twenty?” he asked, his tone sardonic.

“I was being generous. It’s more like fifty.”

“Ah, the truth,” he said, without smiling. “Doesn’t that feel better?”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that.” She lifted the tin in his direction, as though it was imperative that he benefit from their life-enhancing sustenance. “I bet you haven’t eaten.”

“Wrong.” He lifted his insulated mug.

She wrinkled her nose. To her, caffeine was poison. “You need a muffin. Did you even shave?”

He thought he had but he felt his jaw to verify. Instead of smooth skin he detected definite stubble. “Damn. I guess not.”

She set down the tin. “I’ve never seen you with a 6:30 a.m. shadow before.” Pausing, she assessed his new look, then shook her head. “I have to say, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being fantabulous, I give it a minus one thousand.”

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow at her barbed assessment. “When you make up your mind about how you really feel, don’t hesitate to tell me.” He picked up a muffin and took a bite. For health-nut food, it was actually good.

“So what brings you here at daybreak with us workaholics? Or are you coming down off an all-night bender? Maybe you spent the night in jail for speeding around in that British playtoy you drive?” She eyed him critically as he finished the muffin and downed the rest of his coffee. “On third thought, after I left you at dinner last night, did our client, Derk, drug your coffee and have his way with you in the alley?”

Jax didn’t have to work hard to show aggravation. Frustrated and tired, he was in no mood for jokes. “A comedienne you’re not.”

She sat back in her jade-green leather chair and clamped her hands on the padded arms. “Okay, you tell me what brought you in here at this hour, looking like a hit-and-run victim?”

She didn’t know how painfully close to the truth her comparison came. Characterizing Kim’s connection to Jax as hit-and-run was horribly precise.

He propped a hip on the corner of Tracy’s desk, and broke eye contact to gaze unseeing out of the window. He glanced down at Lake Shore Drive. Bumper to bumper traffic snaked along as the morning rush hour kicked into gear. His gaze drifted across the greenbelt of parkland and trees to Lake Michigan, sparkling in the morning sun like a placid, inland ocean. “Kim’s here,” he said simply.

A silence filled the room that was so profound it had the effect of a shrill, protracted scream. Tracy remained uncharacteristically mute for a long time. Though their partnership started after he’d last seen Kim, Tracy knew about her—of her acceptance of him when others thought he was weird. Of her generosity, her warmth and her easy laughter that could brighten even the most awkward and alienated geek’s gloom.

Tracy knew being with Kim was like being home, to Jax. She also knew, with every date Jax went on with another woman, he tried to wash a bit more of Kim’s memory from his heart. Kim had been the warmth in his life, a warmth he still struggled to learn to live without.

“Oh,” she finally said. Right now he wished he’d never told Tracy about Kim. Hearing pity in her voice made him cringe. After another drawn-out silence, she asked, “Why now? After all this time when you’d almost…” She didn’t go on, but he knew what she meant. When he’d almost broken free of the hold she had over him.

He returned his attention to her face. She looked so sad for him he felt a tug of compassion and tried to shrug it off. “The usual. Another broken heart.”

“And you’re supposed to fix it,” Tracy said.

He grinned with bitter irony. “When she says she needs her Jax Fix, she’s usually talking about a heart overhaul.”

“Lord!” Tracy bent over and bumped her head on the legal pad, a prime theatrical bit. With her face on her desk, she covered the top of her head with her hands. “Now that I’ve heard everything, I might as well croak.”

He looked out of the window again, then back at his partner, so dramatically overwhelmed. “It’s what she needs,” he said quietly.

Tracy rolled to her cheek and frowned at him from her desktop-view. “What about your needs, Jax?” She sat up and lay her hands flat on the desk. “You’ve told me enough that I know it kills you to be with her, yet—not be…”

He appreciated her loyalty and sensitivity and reached over the muffin tin to lay his hand across hers. “You’re a good friend, Trace. And it is hard, but…” How did he put into words the horror that squeezed his heart at the thought of never seeing her again. Being with her was hell, but all the years he’d been without her had been worse. At a loss, he shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

Tracy snorted. “If I had one measly dollar for every time I’ve heard that pruney old cliché from a friend in a one-sided relationship, my household staff would consist of France. ”

He squeezed her fingers and kidded, “Instead you can only afford to employ the population of little old Nebraska.”

She smirked. “Okay, laugh it off. But clearly the matter of our success doesn’t solve life’s problems because you—who could actually afford to employ all of France—look like you just clocked off a gritty, all-night shift in hell.”

He stood up. “Then I’d better go shave.”

“That would be a start, since looking the way you do, you’d scare the hirelings.” She flicked her wrist over to check her gold watch. “Speaking of whom, a few early birds will be arriving very soon.”

He nodded. “Point taken.”