“Thanks for all your help in there,” she said.
He shrugged. “You’re not going to change their minds, Evie, so you might as well have a little fun with it.” With complete disregard for the supple, tan leather, he tossed the container onto the passenger seat. “After the way they grew up, Mom and Dad have a finely honed sense of what’s right and proper. I’m not saying you should spend your life trying to meet their expectations, but you have to understand where they’re coming from.”
“I know all about what respectable people do,” she said. “I grew up respectably. I am respectable!”
“Do you want their approval?”
“No,” she said simply. “If I did I would have quit the Met ten years ago. I want their acceptance. The same acceptance they give you.”
And, if she were honest, maybe their approval …
He gave her a slightly twisted, very un-Caleb smile. “Acceptance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Evie, because it usually means you’re going up in flames on the pyre of expectations. You could get married. That might help.”
“You’re older. You get married.”
He ignored her. “I missed the boyfriend discussion. You seeing anyone? Quinn asked about you again.”
“I’m not going out with your partner, much less marrying him.”
“He’s a good guy,” Caleb said mildly.
“Blond laid-back ex-surfer dudes are not my type.”
“Eve, just define some parameters for me and I’ll solve all your problems with Mom and Dad. Every unattached male at the firm’s Christmas party last year asked me for your number, and a couple of the married ones too.”
With Eye Candy’s plans already set in motion, she’d served as her brother’s hostess for the party to make connections, and would do so again this year. She rolled her eyes. “Men are dogs. Barking, rutting dogs.”
He didn’t deny it. “What are you looking for? An intellectual property attorney making half a million a year? A level-headed mediator leaving a trail of peace and calm wherever he goes? A public defender on a crusade against crooked cops?”
Completely unbidden, the image of Chad, his eyes dark and heavy-lidded as he watched her grind against him, bloomed in her mind. Tall, with boxer’s hands and broad shoulders, and something dark lurking in his serious hazel eyes. The questions he asked about her, about Eye Candy, like he really saw her, really liked her.
“What he does for a living doesn’t matter. When I do start looking seriously, I want someone who sees me for me, not as a piece of ass to bang for a few weeks, or a trophy wife to go with his car and his house and his big-screen TV.”
“That’s going to considerably limit my candidate pool,” Caleb said wryly.
“I have met your colleagues,” she said, then eased up a little. “Stop being such a big brother. You’ve got lots of time because I’m not looking for anyone now,” she said, then pointed at the eggplant leftovers steaming up the Tupperware plastic interior. “You don’t want to eat that.”
“It’s going down the disposal as soon as I get home,” he agreed. “Take care, sis.”
Caleb roared off in his Mercedes while she climbed into her Cherokee and headed toward Eye Candy. Once there, she got out of her car, her own plastic container of leftovers in hand, and stood in the empty parking lot. The heat clung oppressively to the blacktop, but as the sun went down the air became tolerable. Maybe she’d put on shorts and running shoes and go for a walk in the twilight, let humidity and exercise ease some of the kinks worked into her neck by her family’s loving disapproval. Or their disapproving love. However she framed it, it clung to her much like the buildup of the day’s heat, close, suffocating, yet life-giving as the air she breathed.
As she climbed the stairs to her apartment she tried to imagine Chad coming to a Monday night dinner with her parents, but somehow he didn’t fit. Too quiet. Too constrained, especially on a night when Caleb and her father really got going on local politics and the East Side’s pressing needs. Which was a shame because half of what attracted her to him was that solid quiet, listening, absorbing, processing.
*
For the next week, Chad continued to show up early. On Friday she tucked the cash for his extra hours helping her with prep into his tip jar, only to find it when she counted the night’s take, neatly rubber-banded with a sticky note on top. NICE TRY, BOSS.
On Saturday she got downstairs before Chad knocked, which was unusual. She unlocked the door and found Travis Jenkins leaning against the wall. The second guy from Lyle’s unwanted visit did his slouching thing against the black SUV.
“This okay?” Travis asked. He wore church clothes, black pants, a white shirt, and a tie. Eve would have smiled at the transformation if her stomach wasn’t swelling like a bullfrog in her throat.