Friend and Lover Read online

  Reed looked away. “I told him you were in the shower.”

  She stood up then. “Why do you do this, Reed? Dexter is the man I’m going to marry. You have to accept that.”

  “Never,” Reed whispered under his breath.

  “I heard that, Reed,” Paige said, walking toward the door. “I think you’d better go now.”

  He stood up and opened his arms to her in supplication. “I’m sorry, Paige. I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just that the guy rubs me the wrong way.”

  Paige dropped her hand from the doorknob. “Don’t you see what your attitude is doing to me, Reed? I value our friendship, but Dexter is going to be my husband.”

  Reed knew what was coming and he dreaded the words, but he couldn’t stop what he had set in motion. He and Paige had been coming to this point ever since he’d first expressed his reservations about Mr. Dexter Fine. “So, what are you saying, Paige?”

  She maintained the eye contact. “Don’t make me choose between you, Reed.”

  Reed felt as if she’d slugged him in the gut. He had no doubt whom she’d choose.

  As he thought back on that evening, Reed wondered again how Paige could be so blind that she couldn’t see through the guy.

  Now, three months later, Fine was up to his old tricks again. It was the holidays, and the guy was nowhere to be found. Reed knew where he’d be if he had a fiancée like Paige: he’d be right by her side. No way would she be spending the holidays without him.

  Reed thought back to the kiss they’d shared. A simple kiss, their first kiss. A kiss she thought was a hoax but a kiss that had come from the depths of his feelings for her.

  He wanted Paige. As a friend. As a lover. As a wife. But she wanted him only as a friend.

  Well, Reed told himself, he had one week to change her mind.

  ~ ~ ~

  Paige closed her bedroom door quietly and walked back into the great room. Reed had made himself at home. He sat on the sofa with his legs propped up on her table, reading one of the magazines from the white wicker basket across from him. His bomber jacket was thrown over the back of the sofa. “Take your feet off the table and start talking,” she said, as soon as she sat down.

  Reed flashed a hundred-watt smile, and Paige felt her insides quicken. What was wrong with her? If she’d seen Reed smile once, she’d seen him smile a thousand times. Why was he having this effect on her now? “What are you grinning at?” she asked, to mask her roller-coaster emotions.

  He moved his feet off the table and nodded toward her closed bedroom door. “Big Momma.”

  Paige returned his smile. “She’s really something.”

  “That she is.” Reed sobered. “Thanks for letting us stay here, Paige. I know it’s an imposition.”

  Paige nodded, thinking again that she needed a bigger place. Her family and friends agreed, and they told her so frequently. “This is a one-bedroom apartment, Reed. How are three people going to live here?”

  Reed inclined his head in the direction of the bedroom door. “Well, it seems Grandma has staked out her place. I’ll flip you for the sofa.”

  Paige laughed. “I don’t think so. This is my apartment. You get the floor.”

  Reed dropped the magazine on the table and looked up at her. “Now, what would Big Mamma say about that? We’re supposed to be engaged.”

  A warm feeling curled in Paige’s stomach. She ignored it. “How can I forget? Whatever made you tell your grandmother we were engaged in the first place?”

  Reed shrugged his shoulders before standing and turning his back to her. “It just happened.”

  “Come on, you can do better than that.” She noticed the way his jeans curved across his buns and thought for the first time that he had a very nice butt. Very nice.

  He turned around to face her. “She hadn’t been feeling well and she kept talking about the great-grandchildren she’d love to see before she left here. I felt like I had to give her some hope.” He sat down on the sofa next to her. “Your name just came up. I never thought she’d come to meet you.”

  Paige nodded. “She seems feeble, but she doesn’t look like she’s that sick.”

  Reed brightened. “It’s amazing. It’s almost like the news of our engagement gave her a second wind. That’s why this week is so important. She needs something to hold on to, Paige.”

  “But why me, Reed? What about some of those, ah, women that you’ve been dating?”

  “Not quite grandmother material. You’ve said as much yourself.”

  Paige couldn’t argue with him there. She’d often spoken to him about the quality of the women he dated. “You think I’m grandmother material?”

  His gaze caught hers and held it. “Definitely.”

  The potency in his words made her want to turn her gaze away, but she couldn’t. It was as if she were trapped by his eyes. “Oh . . .”

  Reed brushed his hands down his jeans-covered thighs, stood, and shoved his hands in his pockets, breaking the spell. “So are you going to go along with the ruse?”

  Paige was grateful for the change in topic. “Why are you asking me to do this, Reed?”

  “Because you’re my friend.”

  She heard his unspoken, And friends help friends out. “Are we still friends?”

  He jerked his head in her direction. “Why do you ask something like that?”

  “I think you know.”

  “You’re talking about Mr. Fine?”

  She heard the distaste in his voice, but choosing to ignore it, she merely nodded. It was about time she started thinking of her fiancé.

  “But he’s so—”

  She lifted a hand. “Stop right there, Reed. If you want me to do this for you, you have to do something for me.”

  “So, we’ve moved from friendship to blackmail? Is that what we’re doing, Paige?”

  She wasn’t going to let him shame her into doing what he wanted. “Let’s call it two friends entering into a pact to help each other.”

  He sighed in defeat. “Okay. What do you want?”

  “I’ll play the ruse for your grandmother, if you’ll agree to spend New Year’s Eve with me and Dexter.”

  Reed laughed a dry laugh. “That doesn’t sound like fun to me, Paige. Three’s a crowd, or haven’t you heard?”

  She rolled her eyes, wondering why Reed was being so obtuse. “You get to bring a date. That’s the whole point. It’ll be a double date. Me and Dexter, and you and one of your women.”

  “Talk about double standard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pointed a finger at her. “You. I’m a bad guy for my opinions about Mr. Fine, yet you make snide remarks about my dates all the time.”

  “But you aren’t serious about them, Reed. I talk about them the way you do. Now, is it a deal or not?”

  “I don’t believe you’d tell my grandmother the truth. You aren’t that heartless.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “But I’m appealing to you as a friend. Will you do it for me? I’m not asking for much—just a beginning. New Year’s Eve, a double date. What do you say?”

  Two

  Reed stared at her, taking in the determined set of her beautiful face. Her thin brows were arched, her nostrils slightly flared, her lips set in a straight line. He didn’t have a chance. Though it pained him to do it, Reed knew he had to agree to her plan. She wanted a double date on New Year’s Eve. Well, he’d give her a double date.

  “You’ve got a deal.” He stood up again. “Now, what do you want for dinner? I figure I could pick up some take-out.”

  Paige wondered at Reed’s quick acquiescence, but she decided to take his words at face value. “We can’t give your grandmother take-out.” She got up and walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she felt she needed to do something while her emotions settled down. “I’ll prepare us a nice dinner. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Reed followed her. “You don’t ha
ve to cook for us. Big Momma likes Chinese and Mexican.”

  Paige pulled a head of cabbage from the vegetable tray and closed the refrigerator door. “I prefer to cook. Besides, I want Grandma Lewis to think I can take care of her grandson, and I know, in her mind, that includes cooking.”

  Reed leaned back against the counter. The idea of Paige taking care of him brought back his smile. Of course, he could think of other ways she could take care of him. “So, you’re going to play the domestic for Grandma.”

  Paige put the cabbage on the cutting board, got a knife from a cabinet drawer, and began to chop the cabbage into four sections. “Maybe I like being domestic.”

  “Maybe Mr. Fine likes your being domestic,” Reed said before he thought, and regretted the words as soon as they’d left his mouth.

  She didn’t bother turning to look at him. She filled a boiler with water and placed it on the stovetop. “Yes, Dexter likes my cooking.” She turned to look at him. “And I like cooking for him”

  A sarcastic Right was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t say it. “And when did you get this desire for cooking? I thought you were the eat-out, take-out queen.”

  Paige smiled. Reed was right. She remembered all the nights the two of them had gone out for a late meal after a twelve- or fourteen-hour day at the office. And her weekends were no better. She and Reed had tried every restaurant in Atlanta. She had a cabinet drawer full of take-out menus and squirt packages of every condiment imaginable. “Things change, Reed.”

  “So I see.”

  She turned around. “What do you mean by that?”

  Reed shrugged as if the answer didn’t really matter to him. “You’ve changed, that’s all.” His unspoken Since you’ve met Mr. Fine hung in the air between them.

  “Everybody changes . . . even you.”

  He walked up behind her. She was right about that. He’d changed in ways that she had no clue about. “How have I changed, Paige?” he asked.

  She felt his breath on the back of her neck and all of a sudden the kitchen was too small for the both of them. She wanted to leave the room, but that required turning around. And she knew if she turned around, she’d be face-to-chest, literally, with him. And that, for some reason, scared her.

  “Paige,” he asked again, “aren’t you going to tell me how I’ve changed?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, wishing he’d move back to the counter. He was too close. “When you first came to Atlanta, your goal was to be the best trial lawyer in Atlanta. And the highest-paid.”

  He grunted and moved away from her.

  She breathed a relieved sigh and turned to face him before adding, “Now you’re working in the public defender’s office. I call that a drastic change.”

  “And you never approved, did you, Paige? You thought it was the wrong decision.”

  Paige returned her attention to the cabbage. The water was boiling now. She sliced the cabbage sections and put them in the boiler, thankful for the time the act gave her to think. It wasn’t that she thought he was wrong. She just hadn’t understood his decision. She hadn’t judged him, although she’d known it wasn’t a decision she could make.

  He tapped the toe of his loafers against the floor. “Are you having hearing problems today, or what? Say something, Paige.”

  She put the last of the cabbage in the boiler and covered it with a lid before turning to answer him. “No, that’s not what I thought.”

  “Sure,” he said. His tone made it obvious that he didn’t believe her. “Isn’t that one of the things you find attractive about Mr. Fine—that he’s a hotshot lawyer who can impress the hell out of your daddy?”

  Anger flashed in her pretty brown eyes, but she didn’t say anything.

  “That’s another way you’ve changed. You don’t have as much spirit as you used to.” He laughed. “I remember the arguments we used to have. You used to argue about everything. Did Mr. Fine change that, too? Does he want a docile little woman? Is that what you’re trying to be?”

  “Why do you always bring the conversation back to Dexter? We were talking about you. Are you jealous of him, Reed?”

  Indignation rose up in Reed like a tide. He was jealous of Dexter, all right, but not for the reason that Paige thought. “Why would I be jealous of Mr. Fine?”

  Paige shrugged. “Maybe because he’s so successful . . .”

  “And I’m not?” he finished for her.

  “I didn’t say that. Dexter’s success just has a lot of perks associated with it.”

  “And mine doesn’t?”

  She shrugged again. “I think it gives you personal satisfaction.”

  “You’re right. It does. I was trying to run away from my past when I was at McCurdy and McCurdy.”

  “And working in the PD’s office is not running?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You could have accomplished as much with M & M as you have in the PD’s office. Maybe even more, with the prestige of the partnership behind you.”

  The censure in her voice made him angry again. “You think I was wrong, don’t you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Paige, you’re a snob.”

  “I am not a snob. I just don’t think one has to be poor to make a difference in life.”

  “So now you think I’m poor.” Man, this was worse than he’d thought.

  “That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that there’s more than one way to make a difference.”

  Reed shook his head. “Not for me. The kids I see every day, well, I was one of them. If no one had helped me, God knows where I’d be. They need me, Paige, and I need them. I thought you knew me well enough to know that.”

  Paige was ashamed, but she really didn’t understand Reed and his reasons for doing what he did. She understood men like her father and Dexter. They measured a man’s worth by the size of his wallet and the number of people he controlled. She didn’t necessarily buy into their philosophy, but it was all she knew, all that she’d ever known.

  ~ ~ ~

  Paige wished again for a larger apartment. When she’d moved into this building, she’d told herself it was only temporary. The Buckhead location was close to her office at Lenox, and that was all she’d been concerned with. Now, four years later, she was still here. She had to get a bigger place. Soon.

  As she sat on the toilet in her bathroom, thankful for the privacy, she realized she’d been a fool to tell Reed he and his grandmother could stay here. She’d been a fool to trust Reed. He didn’t approve of Dexter, and he never would. She remained convinced that if he was really her friend, he’d find some way to accept Dexter.

  Besides, Dexter wasn’t a bad guy; he was a good man. A bit inflexible, but a good man. So what if he expected her to support him in his career and was sometimes insensitive to the support she needed from him? So what if he occasionally put work before his personal obligation to her? As he always said, he was doing it for them. A successful career for him meant a more stable home life for them and the children they would have. That made sense, didn’t it?

  Well, she admitted to herself, sometimes she did resent Dexter’s thoughtlessness. She did think he could be a bit more in touch with her needs. But what man was in tune with a woman’s needs? Her father surely wasn’t. He’d never been.

  In fact, Dexter was a lot like her father. She assumed that was why they got along so well. Her father thought Dexter was the best thing to happen to her.

  “You’re not getting any younger,” he’d said on more than one occasion. “You may never get a chance with a man of Dexter’s caliber again. Don’t mess it up.”

  His words had hurt at first, and she’d been tempted to “mess it up” just to spite him. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t “mess it up” and let her father down. Not again. It seemed he always found fault with what she did. Nothing was ever good enough. Summa cum laude, Law Review, McCurdy and McCurdy—none of it had made him take notice. But Dexter Fine had gotten her father�
��s attention. She’d finally done something right. She’d been careful not to screw it up. She had learned to manage Dexter, just as she’d learned to manage her father.

  She did care for Dexter. He had his good points. He didn’t run around with other women. He was financially and emotionally stable. And he loved her. In his own way, he loved her. She was sure of it.

  And she loved him. So what if it wasn’t the love that romance novels said made your toes curl and made fire burn in your belly? Dexter remembered her birthday and the anniversaries of their first date and their first kiss, and he always gave her a gift to celebrate those occasions. So what if sometimes business kept them from celebrating on the actual dates? She knew he loved her. She didn’t need those trappings to prove it.

  She stood and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Why had she allowed Reed and his questions to get to her tonight? He didn’t understand her or her relationship with Dexter. Reed had his own opinions on the matter, and as far as he was concerned, his answer was always the right one.

  There had been a time when she’d loved that about him. She had loved the arguments his pigheadedness had led to. In fact, she’d thrived on them. Reed had been a great friend. Her mouth turned down in a frown. “Had been” was the right set of words. She didn’t know what they had now. If only he wasn’t so critical of Dexter.

  She shook her head and ran a hand through her hair. What was Reed’s problem? Why was it a crime for a woman to marry a man her father actually liked?

  ~ ~ ~

  Reed stared at the bathroom door. She’d been in there a good twenty minutes and he was tired of waiting for her to come out and finish their conversation. He knocked on the door. “Paige, you haven’t flushed yourself in there, have you?” he asked.

  He heard the faucet come on. Then he heard it go off. The door opened and she walked out.

  “You’re going to have to learn bathroom etiquette if the three of us are going to live in this small apartment. How long do you think that’ll be, by the way?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He didn’t want to get too specific. “No longer than a few days. Big Mamma goes back home on New Year’s Eve.”