My Favorite Mistake Read online

  “Relax, Geary.” Flynn still didn’t bother to turn around. “If you don’t want to deal with it, you don’t have to. Skye and I have it under control. Go back upstairs.”

  The minute things get tough, you turn tail and head for the hills.

  I set my jaw and crossed my arms under my flowing white shirt. “I’ll stay, thanks.”

  “Good.” He finally glanced back over one wide, broad shoulder. And his face went from blank and blasé to hot and bothered. “What the hell are you wearing?”

  I grinned. “Top half by Leah Goldberg, bottom half by Skye Geary, hair, unfortunately, a Faith Geary signature. Like it?”

  “But you’re not…” he sputtered, gesturing at the thin silk skimming my nipples. “I can see…”

  “You can?” My hands flew to my chest, which suddenly felt completely exposed. “From there?”

  “It’s my fault,” Skye said. “I just lost my head at the Soap ‘n’ Suds. But I think she looks fabulous. Very riot grrl.”

  Flynn addressed my sister without taking his eyes off me. Well, off my breasts, to be precise. “I’ll tell you what she looks like. She looks like a—”

  “Woman who doesn’t need a scathing fashion critique right now,” I finished for him, reminding myself sternly that that he could love me or hate me, I didn’t give a rat’s ass. “Now hand me those pretzels and let’s get to work.”

  The Arts and Humanities faculty showed up first. They took the news quite well. The female professors in particular seemed eager to share their wine with professional athletes.

  “Hockey players. Really,” mused Valerie Wheeler (harpist, potter, Women’s Studies). “I’ve been wanting to investigate the layman’s view of Showalter’s gynocentrism theory and this will be the perfect chance.” Then she hurried off to the ladies’ room to fix her hair.

  Barbara, the American Literature specialist, was equally delighted. “Oh, fantastic.” She rummaged through her bag and pulled out some Chinese herbs and a tube of lipstick. “A fresh new audience for my word dances. And they work out every day, you say?”

  “Real men! Finally!” whooped Teresa, the studio art teacher. “Hallelujah!”

  The male faculty members were less enthusiastic.

  “I don’t see how we’re supposed to have serious conversations about curriculum development while surrounded by a herd of drunken degenerates,” harrumphed Bryson (husband of Valerie Wheeler).

  Frederick Gill, a reed-thin sociologist with ethereal blond hair, glanced at the kegs in dismay. “Where are we going to set up our annual chess tournament?”

  Ian pulled me aside and tugged at his bow tie. “Are you certain this is a good idea? My colleagues seem most off-put.”

  “Are you kidding? Take a look around. You’re the new hero of female scholars everywhere!” I pointed to the jukebox, where Barbara and Valerie were giggling like schoolgirls and watching the front door with the predatory intensity of wolverines.

  Teresa, impatient for the pro hockey players to arrive, made a beeline for the amateur defenseman. She had Flynn backed into a corner and was fluffing her hair in his face. I hurried over to Skye.

  “Go deal with Ian.” I grabbed her wrist and pointed. “He’s freaking out, and I have to go rescue Flynn.”

  “Why?” She glanced over at Teresa. “He looks fine to me.”

  “Shut up and get over there,” I hissed. But before I could unhook Teresa’s claws from my man—okay, my ex-man—the hockey players burst through the door, ready to get the party started.

  “Flynn! Dude!” A burly thug with a shaved head and a scruffy beard clapped Flynn on the back with enough force to fell an oak. I squinted, trying to picture him in pads and a hockey jersey, and thought I recognized him as Harley McKellar, a first-string center raised in California and prone to vicious fighting on the ice.

  “Sorry we’re late, bud. Claude waits until we’re halfway here, and then he pulls over, throws up, and goes, ‘Sorry, guys, I’m too hung over to drive anymore.’ ”

  “What could I do?” Claude, short but massive with a huge bruise over one eye, was unapologetic. He spoke with a French-Canadian accent and had an absolutely heart-melting smile. “I’ll be damned if I’m throwing up in the new Benz.”

  The entryway was awash with testosterone, all of it flowing in the direction of my sister, who didn’t seem to mind at all.

  Skye pulled me into the swarm of alpha males and put an arm around me. “This is my sister Faith. Isn’t she the cutest? Don’t you guys love her pants?”

  Ten pairs of appraising eyes immediately turned to my thighs.

  “I love the pants,” said Claude, hoisting a full stein of beer. “Here’s to the pants.”

  Amber liquid sloshed onto the carpet, the tables, and the front of my shirt as mugs were raised in the name of black leather.

  “Savages.” Bryson whipped a sterling silver flask out of his breast pocket and quaffed. “Has anyone seen my wife?”

  Somewhere between the second keg and the third replay of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” the party dissolved into a free-for-all.

  Harley McKellar was hunched over a tiny corner table with Frederick, immersed in a cutthroat game of chess.

  “Checkmate, bud!” bellowed the six-foot-three bruiser, swigging from beer mugs in both hands.

  “Rematch! I demand a rematch!” Frederick howled surprisingly loud for one so frail-looking.

  Barbara was giving the Polecats center a dance lesson, Bryson was losing an arm wrestling competition to a defenseman, and Teresa was getting her freak on with Claude in the corner.

  “Isn’t this the most raging party ever?” Skye shrieked.

  I stared. “How are we going to calm these people down before they start rioting in the street?”

  She shrugged one lamé-clad shoulder. “Who cares? Valerie just told me she’s having the best night of her life! She’d never even done a keg stand before, can you believe it? Stop stressing and enjoy! Flynn’s got everything under control.”

  I climbed onto a chair and scanned the crowd. “Where is he, anyway?”

  “Up on the roof. Some of the guys wanted to see if they could throw the moose head all the way to the river, but he’s stopping them. They already threw the muskie. But that only made it across the street.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Yeah! And it’s all thanks to Ian! Thanks for introducing us, by the way. He’s going to be my next.”

  I stopped gaping at Harley’s bulging biceps for a second. “Your next what?”

  “My next husband, of course. As soon as I track down Bob and get divorced.”

  A hard-bitten right-wing player sidled up to us and asked Skye to dance.

  “Okay!” She clapped her hands. The neckline of the gold dress dipped dangerously low. “Conga line, people!”

  She blew a kiss to Ian. He nodded back indulgently but did not, I noticed, stir from his teacup by the chessboard. She then scrambled onto the bar and everyone, athletic and academic alike, hoisted themselves up after her.

  “Shake it like a Polaroid picture!” she yelled. And they did.

  This was officially out of control.

  “Geary.”

  I whirled around to find Flynn six inches behind me, staring at me with steely intensity.

  Our eyes met. I was suddenly very conscious of the cool whisper of silk against my skin. I anchored the neckline of my shirt with one hand and tried to look dignified.

  I straightened my shoulders, and stared right back at him. “How may I help you?”

  “I need a word with you in the office.”

  I hadn’t had enough to drink to deal with yet another kiss-and-diss fracas. “Can’t we talk later?” I winced as Claude slipped on a puddle of Pig’s Eye and crashed into Barbara, who fell into Bryson, who thudded to the floor and decided to curl up and take a nap right there among the bar stools. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk after we take everyone to the emergency room.”

  “Now. C
ome on.” He captured my wrist in his hand and tugged me toward the back room.

  “Hey. Less bone-crushing pressure, please,” I protested as he dragged me down the hall. “Why so grabby these days?”

  No response.

  I threw up my free hand in exasperation. “What now? You don’t like the fact that people are having a good time and we’re making money? Jollity offends you?”

  He slammed the door to the back office. “Why are you still wearing that…that?”

  “You dragged me all the way back here to talk wardrobe?” I planted my stiletto-heeled feet far apart and shook my fist. “You know, fashion fascism is very unbecoming in a man. Unless you’re starring in a make-over series on Bravo, I don’t want to hear it. I’m sorry if this outfit is a little unprofessional—”

  His eyebrows arched. “A little?”

  “But Skye left all of my clothes at the laundromat. We did the best we could. And anyway, I’m starting to like these pants.” I stroked the smooth leather. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to wear a bra, for one thing. Can’t you at least put a T-shirt on under that shirt? A tank top?”

  I shrugged. “I could, but I don’t want to.”

  “Well, I want you to.”

  “But guess what? I didn’t marry you. I don’t have to wear a bra, I don’t have to live in the sticks, and I don’t care what you want.” He looked stunned. I kept raving. “You broke up with me then, and you don’t want me now, so you don’t get a say. I can run around in no underwear at all if I want to.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Are you?” He gave me a look that could only be described as smoldering.

  “Well, evidently, you’re the underwear expert. Why don’t you tell me?” I regretted these words as soon as I said them. He took a step back, studying me, deliberating, lingering for an unnecessary length of time on my panty line.

  Finally, he cleared his throat and met my eyes. “All I know is that you come downstairs wearing this white shirt that doesn’t hide a goddamn thing, and the next thing you know, you’ve poured beer all over yourself—”

  “Oh, please.” I tugged the shirt around my torso, covering myself in the loose folds. “Claude accidentally spilled a little beer, and it happened to splash on my shirt, but…”

  “You thought that was an accident?” he scoffed. “It’s bad enough that you march around flaunting your chest—”

  “Hello? I’m flatter than Lara Flynn Boyle?”

  “—but when I have to hear about it in locker room gutter talk…” He clenched his fists. “I can’t even repeat what Claude said about your…your…”

  My temper swept in and vanquished the last traces of my common sense.

  “I don’t care what Claude said about me. Okay? I’m sure it’s no worse than what I hear every time I walk down Hollywood Boulevard.” This did not seem to placate him. “I’m a single girl at large in the big, bad world, and if you don’t like hockey players looking at me, you shouldn’t have invited the whole team down here.” I smacked my palm down on the desk in frustration. “Flynn. I cannot keep doing this. I hate this.”

  He glowered. “Which part?”

  “All of it!” I started pacing the floor. “This is bullshit. I’m so sick of arguing. I know you don’t trust me anymore, but you could at least pretend to like me.”

  He tipped his head back and inhaled deeply. “I do like you.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “You don’t act like you do. You can’t even look me in the face when you say that.”

  He looked me in the face. “Come here.”

  “Why? So you can put a petticoat on me?”

  But when he opened his arms to me, I let him pull me against his chest. I breathed in, trying to store up the scent of laundry detergent, summer springs, fresh-mown grass—eau de off-season hockey player.

  His breath stirred the curls near my ear. “Hey, Geary?”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe I do like this shirt after all.”

  He kissed me.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back. Because, as it turned out, I did give a rat’s ass.

  Everybody remain calm. This is a kiss, this is only a kiss. Nothing more, nothing less. You are just having a nice little reconciliation smooch. With a lot of tongue.

  While my mind raced, my senses thrilled. Endless chaos in endless cities, and I still craved him. His scent, his taste, his warmth. But his body wasn’t familiar to mine anymore. He’d grown up and filled out. We shifted and curved together, getting reacquainted.

  He broke off the kiss and sighed onto the top of my head. “What are we doing?”

  I let my cheek rest against his soft cotton T-shirt. “Nothing that will come to any good.”

  “Does this change anything?” He traced patterns on my back through the thin white shirt.

  I kept my eyes closed. “I don’t know,” I admitted, so softly I could barely hear myself over the music drifting in from the barroom. “But I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.” He caught my chin and tilted my face up.

  We were both breathing hard in a sort of post-workout pant.

  “God, ten years.” I leaned in closer, ready for another kiss.

  He pulled back an inch or two. “There’s something I have to ask you…”

  Oh no. Birth control, STDs, who knew what mood-ruining horrors were lurking at the end of his sentence.

  “If you had to run away, why didn’t you run away with me?”

  The answer to this question, if I’d ever really had one, had long ago gotten lost in the shuffle of fear and anger. So I just smiled and said, “It’s not too late.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I took a deep breath. “Want to run away with me?”

  He thought this over for about half a second. “Okay. Let’s get the car.”

  “Right now?”

  He shrugged, tossing me a rakish James Bond grin. “Yeah. Why not? Don’t tell me that Faith Geary, single girl at large, is all talk and no action?”

  While I tried to process this astonishing turn of events he started kissing my neck. “Let’s go,” he urged.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My apartment.” His words said Minneapolis, but his tone said unbridled lust and passion.

  My body was primed to go forward, but my mind was reeling back in the equivalent of emotional whiplash. How had we gone from weeks of razor-edged civility to unbridled carnality in the space of ten minutes?

  More importantly, how could I know when we’d suddenly do another one-eighty? I stepped back, letting the cool air rush in between us. Decade-old grudges don’t vanish just because you get some.

  But, damn, he looked good. And old habits die really, really hard.

  “Let’s go.” He pressed his lips against my temple and eased his hand into the waistband of my pants.

  My eyes snapped open. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m just checking out the underwear situation.”

  I risked a glance at his eyes, and then I laughed. “Take me away from all this.”

  And he did. His hand was instantly out of my pants, grabbing my fingers, and leading me toward the back door. Because, really, who needs a solvent small business when you’ve got physical chemistry raging out of control?

  “We’re leaving,” he announced to Skye. “Together. Right now. See you Monday.”

  Her only comment was: “Oh my God, go for it.”

  He led me out into the cool night air. “You’re going to go upstairs and pack whatever you need. Then we’re getting in the car and going straight to my place.” This was his Last Word tone—there would be no deviations from this plan.

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  He looked surprised at my easy compliance. “Okay. Well, then, get over here for a second.”

  I scooted closer into his heat and stared up at the huge white
summer moon. Why couldn’t life come equipped with a “freeze frame” function? I’d just stop things right here and walk away with a happily ever after. Before I sabotaged myself or our pasts screwed up our future.

  “Are we sure this isn’t going to end in scandal, bitter reproach, and smashed crockery?” I asked lightly.

  He stopped laughing. His eyes were sharp and bright in the moonlight. “That’s up to you.”

  I tossed makeup, a few random articles of Skye’s clothing, and the sultriest of her lingerie into a brown paper bag.

  Flynn raised his eyebrows as I clattered down the steps. “Nice luggage.” He opened the passenger side door. “You ready to go?”

  I decided not to consider this question on too many levels. I was packed, right? “Yes.”

  “Good. I checked on the bar and everything’s fine. One of Skye’s many admirers is helping out. The quiet guy? Looks like a bouncer with a migraine?”

  I winced. “Lars?”

  “Yeah. So let’s go.”

  He kissed me, one of his hands stroking my cheek in a gesture that I’d never witnessed anywhere but onscreen in insipid romantic melodramas and in real life with Flynn.

  And then he suddenly pulled away, leaving me with a damp breeze on my lips and a taste for more.

  “All right. Enough of that. Let’s go,” he said. That little muscle in his jaw was twitching again.

  “What?” I stared at him. “I thought you were a guy.”

  “I am. So what?” He ushered me into the truck’s cab.

  “So get your priorities straight.” I watched him walk around to the driver’s side.

  He climbed in and slammed the door. “I do have my priorities straight. First I get you out of Lindbrook, then you can have your wicked way with me.”

  Something was definitely wrong. The Patrick Flynn I knew did not break off in the middle of heated kisses come hell, high water, or the Cubs winning the World Series. Rather, our usual routine had been that I would toss out a few token protests, and then we would make out like our ship was sinking.

  A slick tendril of panic and doubt unfurled in the pit of my stomach.