It had been a long week for Amanda.
Her art had been a struggle, as usual. There were too many days when she got a brush in her hand, ready to paint whatever came into her mind, only to find an image of Hudson van Buren, leering at her crotch. And then the day was ruined.
She still forced herself to paint. Even when it just meant giving the garbage truck more to haul. It was a matter of self-image. An artist without discipline is an unemployed person telling people she’s an artist.
But the greater struggle, she could admit, was that her good friend—and great distraction—had been out of town. Brock was on a cruise in the Caribbean. He had asked her if she wanted to come at the last minute. He even offered to treat.
She declined, telling him she was concerned about the Zika virus.
And that was true. But the larger truth was that it didn’t feel right to do something like that while Tommy was in prison. Even if Tommy would have implored her to go and have a blast, she wouldn’t have been able to enjoy herself. The guilt alone would have destroyed the trip.
She missed Brock all the same. And she was thrilled when her phone, which had been so silent all week, buzzed with an incoming text early Saturday afternoon. The message itself, however, was puzzling:
Dinner tonight? Pick you up at 7? I need to tell you something. Then I need to ask you something.
She didn’t immediately answer. He wanted to tell her . . . what? And ask her . . . what else? It wasn’t like Brock to be so cryptic. She tried to keep herself from conjecturing.
Yet she worried. She knew enough about guys and how their minds worked. Brock had been away for a week, allowing him to think. A guy like Brock—so decent, so gentlemanly, so far above making a sleazy move on his friend’s fiancée—would need that kind of time to summon his courage.
And now he was going to lay his feelings out for her in the most mature, aboveboard way possible. He wanted more from their relationship. More than friendship. More than quick hugs and brotherly pecks on the cheek. He didn’t care that she was pregnant with his friend’s child. He would raise the baby as his own, and then they’d have their own kid together. Maybe two. Blended families were so common now, what did it matter?
Amanda could see it all coming so easily.
But what should she do about it? She couldn’t actually consider that proposition, could she?
Yet the moment she asked the question, her gut answered it for her. Brock was beautiful, sophisticated, smart, rich, and fun; he was the scion of a thriving jewelry business that could launch the Amanda Porter Collection and give her an artistic alternative to her sputtering career as a painter; he had that and a thousand other things going for him that any woman would be lucky to find in a mate.
But he wasn’t Tommy. She had never once felt that Rice Krispies snap, crackle, pop around him.
Damn. She missed that sound, that sensation. Missed it like a limb that had been amputated.
And, yes, things with Tommy were rocky at the moment. Of course they were. She still hadn’t told him about Hudson van Buren. In that respect, they hadn’t had a fully honest conversation in months. Plus he was in prison. What did she expect their relationship to be like?
When he got out, it would probably take six seconds for them to be back to normal. And normal with Tommy was what she wanted. Now and forever.
She texted Brock back:
Sounds great. See you tonight at 7.
She’d just have to let him down easy.