Robin stopped what she was doing. “You’re kidding, right? He’s already got a wandering eye and you’re still going to marry him?”
Mia nodded matter-of-factly, then rolled her eyes at Robin’s look of surprise, as if Robin was somehow taxing her. “Oh, shut up. All men do it, you know that. But it doesn’t mean we have to like it.”
“All men do not do it, Mia. Why would you settle for anything less than perfect love?” she blurted, instantly wondering where that had come from.
Mia blinked. And then she shrieked a laugh. “What planet did you come from? Look at your dad, Rob! You can be so naive sometimes. There is no such thing as perfect love. There is sex, and there are joint bank accounts. And once the ‘falling in love’ business wears off, you better hope you have married the biggest bank account.”
“God, that sounds so mercenary.”
“Oh please,” Mia said, dismissing her with a flick of her giant amethyst ring, “the only reason Evan never showed any outward interest in other women is because he was scared to death of you and what you could do to his job.” She said it as if it were a proven fact.
That hurt. “Evan was not and is not scared of anything, especially me,” Robin shot back. “And Evan has never been afraid to look at other women.”
“Everyone is scared of you, especially guys. You eat ‘em head first, like gingerbread men.”
It was moments like this Robin wondered why she and Mia had remained friends these twenty years.
“Pretty flowers—where did they come from?”
“The ground,” Robin said defensively. Mia shrugged, picked up a magazine.
Eventually, she got bored. Since she couldn’t coax Robin to go shopping, she picked up her cell phone, got in touch with Cecilia, who convinced Mia they should have a massage first. Mia thought that sounded grand. “See you,” she said to Robin, and sailed out of Robin’s house, leaving more than one slacking jaw behind.
Robin was glad she was gone. Sometimes, Mia was more than Robin could deal with.
She turned her attention back to Peerless. The more she looked at it, the less it seemed like a good deal. By late afternoon, she was surprised to see how quickly the day had gone, and looked at the list of questions she had made for Evan. She thought about calling him, but it was late in New York; he’d probably left the corporate offices by now. Besides, with work on her house starting to wrap up for one day, she had lost interest in anything having to do with bubble wrap and had focused all of her attentions on Jake Manning.
Zaney was the last one out after the crews, waving his cast. “Yo, heeey, lookin’ good!”
“Thanks!” she said brightly.
“Yep, that’s some pretty flowers, all right. Hey!” he said, a light-bulb coming on in his brain. “Those came from Jakie’s! Jakie brought you flowers!” he exclaimed, as if she didn’t know that, and continued merrily out the door.
Jake was the last one down. He paused in the entry, shoved his hands in his pockets. “So . . . you doing all right?”
She nodded, leaned back in her seat, and folded her arms across her middle. “What about you?”
“Better than I have in a long time,” he said with a lopsided smile. “But . . . I’m sort of wondering why you left.”
Robin felt the old twist in her gut. She glanced uneasily at the flowers. “You didn’t really expect me to stay, did you?”
“Well, yeah,” he said, sounding surprised. “Why wouldn’t you?”
Why? Wasn’t it obvious why? “Well . . . because,” she said weakly and wondered if it was so obvious that she couldn’t think of why. Jake looked confused, almost ashamed. Which made Robin feel terribly callous as she struggled to reach the surface of her many thoughts. “Hey, I was wondering . . . since you did so good with the Thai, would you like to try some Cuban food with me?” she asked, hoping to avoid the discussion.
Jake grimaced. “Ah, well . . .” he started uncertainly, and Robin wanted to slide right under the table. Oh man, why couldn’t she wait for him to make the first move? Why did she always have to direct everything? The heat was creeping into her cheeks so rapidly she didn’t hear what he was saying at first and slowly realized he was asking her a question.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“That Cole has a baseball game tonight. I promised him I’d come.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said, a little shocked by her overwhelming disappointment.
But Jake stood there, hands in pockets, looking uncomfortable. “I suppose we could get a bologna sandwich if you want to tag along,” he suggested.
The mere mention of bologna had Robin wrinkling her nose.
“Hey! I tried Thai,” he reminded her.
A kid’s baseball game. A bologna sandwich. How very strange, but it actually sounded like fun. “Can I skip the bologna?”
“Robin,” he said, shaking his head, “You sorely underestimate the great taste of meat snacks.”
She wasn’t going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.