Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (54 page)

“I needed to get out as much as you did,”
I pointed out. “Besides, with all the Christmas craziness we didn’t really get
much chance to catch up on things.”

“You’re damn right about that!” Jessica
gave me a little smirk. “Like the fact that you’re seeing someone new. I had to
get that from Landon.” I laughed. It had gotten out that I was seeing
someone—Landon had mentioned Mack, but since he knew next to nothing about the
relationship, I’d kept my mouth as shut as possible about it around the family,
especially since I didn’t know how serious it could still, reasonably, become.

“Yeah, well, he made a bet that I wouldn’t
find him a new mom by New Year’s Day,” I said. “I had to make at least a token
effort to prove him wrong.” I took a sip of my coffee, thinking of the pretty
physical therapist and how much I’d wanted to make things right with her but
didn’t seem to have any notion of how to go about doing that.

“That’s a pretty crazy idea,” Jess told
me, raising an eyebrow. “So what’s she like?” I took a breath and tried to
think of just how I could describe Mack to my sister.

“She’s beautiful,” I said, first. “She’s
really dedicated to her work—that’s how we met, actually. She’s Landon’s
physical therapist. She’s smart, too. And funny.” I smiled, remembering some of
the jokes that Mack had made—almost all of them appropriate for all ages, and
somehow so corny that they were funnier than they would have been had anyone
else told them.

“She’s good at her work,” Jessica said.
“Landon isn’t even limping.”

“He’s got a ways to go still,” I pointed
out, “ but he’s making really good progress.”

“You like her,” Jessica said, making it
not quite a question.

“I do,” I told her. “I just—I don’t know
if we’re on the same page.”

“What do you mean?” Jessica frowned. “Is
she like, against premarital sex or something?”

“No, nothing like that—and you really need
to get a sex life of your own,” I replied. “I just don’t know how she feels
about kids.”

“Obviously she likes them or she wouldn’t
be in the line of work she’s in,” Jessica told me matter-of-factly. “And that
kite she got Landon is precious.”

“I just don’t know if she’d be interested
in being an almost-parent to Landon.”

Jessica chuckled. “Brother-dear, you’ve
known the woman for less than a month. The fact that you enjoy being around
her, and Landon likes her, is enough for right now, don’t you think? You’ve
gotten too wrapped up in this bet with Landon.”

“Well, sister-dear,” I said, making a face
at her, “I have to think about him. You know that. God forbid you lost your
husband someday—with your kids still young—you’d want to know as soon as you
could, dating someone, whether they’d work out with your kids, wouldn’t you?”

“Well she works with Landon a few times a
week, right?” I nodded. “And Landon likes her. After a month that’s kind of an
amazing thing.”

“She is good with him,” I admitted.
“Better in some respects even than I am.” I grinned wryly. “Landon actually
listens to her.”

“Kids always listen to relative strangers
more than they do their parents; it’s a fact of life.” Jess shrugged.

“I might have already screwed things up,”
I said with a sigh. “I canceled on her for a date—I told her I had a
last-minute business dinner, but really it was because of some things she’d
said while we were out together.”

“What did she say that would make you
cancel on a date?”

“It’s dumb,” I said, shaking my head. “She
said that she wasn’t sure that she’d ever get married or have kids—not that she
didn’t want them, just that she’d sort of given up on the idea.”

“You idiot! Of course she said that!”
Jessica shook her head at me. “One, no woman wants to look like she’s rushing a
relationship. It’s a sure-fire way to scare a guy off. Those are the kinds of
things you start talking about six months in, usually.”

“Yeah, but if we’re going to get serious,
I have to at least know that she’s going to be okay with sometimes watching
Landon, spending lots of time with him,” I countered. “And I can’t have her—or
anyone—just waltzing in and out of Landon’s life. It’s why I haven’t really
dated all this time. If it’s just going to be a fling, I need to know as soon
as possible.”

“You’re using Landon as an excuse to
sabotage your relationship with this girl and that isn’t cool,” Jess told me
flatly. “If you weren’t ready to date someone, you shouldn’t have asked her out
on a second, third, or fourth date. You should have just said that it was
really nice to see her socially, and left it at that.”

“But I wanted to get to know her better.”

“Well, the second thing I was going to say
is that it’s possible that she
has
given up on getting married and having kids. There’s probably a lot of guys out
there who can’t handle a woman who’s dedicated to her career, and from what
you’ve said about her it doesn’t sound like she’s exactly been mauling the
mattress the last few years.”

“Sometimes you’re pretty crude Jess,” I
said, grinning in spite of myself.

“I’ve had four kids, Pat. Any shame I
might have ever had evaporated the first time I saw my infant son diddling
himself.” I choked on a sip of coffee and had to take a moment to recover.

“You can go on now,” I said, swatting my
chest a few more times and shaking my head.

“Anyway,” Jess said, shrugging. “Just
because she’s given up on something like that happening doesn’t mean she
doesn’t still want it, it just means she isn’t going into a relationship with
any expectation of it. If
you
want to
get married and have another kid, that’s something you should—I don’t know—
tell her
.” Jess grinned at me.

“You’re right,” I said. “If I can convince
her to ever see me again after the way the last date went, I’ll talk to her
about it.”

“Good boy,” Jessica said, reaching out and
patting me on the head. I groaned and countered by reaching over the table to
tousle her short hair.

“I’m your older brother! Show some
respect!” We both laughed. “It’s enough that I’ve admitted you’re right about
something.”

“Well I do happen to know a bit more about
women than you, considering that I am one,” Jessica said, giving me a
self-satisfied smile.

“I will concede that you know more about
being a woman than I ever will,” I said. “God, I’m glad I left the house.”

Just then, my phone vibrated in my pocket.
For just a second I felt a stab of panic, thinking that it was Jessica’s
husband, calling to tell me that something had happened to one of the
kids—maybe even Landon. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone as quickly
as possible, telling myself that it could just as easily be my parents or one
of my friends. Instead, the name that flashed on the screen was Mack’s.

“Speak of the devil,” I said, as the
notification showed a text message pending.

“She texted you? That’s a good sign! Maybe
you didn’t completely fuck this up after all.” I rolled my eyes and unlocked my
screen, tapping the messages icon to open up the text.

I had expected—seeing that it was Mack
messaging me—that the message would be something like, “Hope you had a good
Christmas” or asking me how Landon had liked the kite she’d bought him—maybe,
at best, an idea for a date. Instead, as I read the message she had sent, I
stared at my phone in confusion.
Another
woman? What?

“What did she say?” I glanced at my
sister, completely stunned by the message that Mack had sent me. “That doesn’t
look like a ‘hey baby, drop by my place’ message.”

“It definitely isn’t one of those,” I
said. I read it out loud to Jessica and for a moment her expression looked the same
way I’m sure that mine did: complete confusion.

Then it all clicked in my head. Mackenzie
had been wandering around the area—we weren’t far from her apartment—and had
seen me in the café. And then she had seen Jessica. “Oh god, I’m an idiot—of
course,” I said out loud, shaking my head.

“What? Are you seeing someone else I don’t
know about?”

“No—no, she saw
you
. Just now.” I laughed, shaking my head again. “God. She thinks
I’m cheating on her with my own sister.”

“Oh god!” Jessica laughed with me. “Oh man—Pat—you
have to tell her she’s wrong. I haven’t seen you this worked up about someone
since Joanne. You can’t let her think you’re seeing some side-girl and that’s
why things got weird.”

“Yeah, definitely,” I said. I looked over
the text message again, amazed that Mack could think that I was seeing someone
else, that I wouldn’t have told her, or just broken things off with her. Part
of me felt insulted that she thought I would cheat, but another part was
relieved that she cared enough to be upset in the first place. I re-read the
text message and caught the part where she mentioned that she had wanted to
invite me to her parents’ party for New Year’s Eve. I smiled to myself, hoping
that I could salvage the situation well enough to get another chance to make
things right with Mack.

PART 4

Chapter One - Mackenzie

After I sent the text message to Patrick
confronting him about seeing another woman, I put my phone in my pocket and
hurried down the street towards where my car waited. I wasn’t sure whether I felt
more angry or hurt—and with each step, the two emotions flip-flopped inside of
me.
Why would he do this to me? Who does
he think he is? Was I reading him wrong the whole time? How many other women is
he seeing? I can’t believe that I actually thought he might be looking for
someone serious!
I shook my head, feeling the sting in my eyes that told me
that if I didn’t get to my car soon I was going to just start crying.

I started when my phone vibrated in my
pocket and thought about ignoring it.
It
could be Mom or Dad. Or someone from the clinic, needing emergency coverage.
I took the phone out of my pocket, hoping for something to distract me from my
angry-sad thoughts about Patrick and what a fool I’d been to think about him at
all; but of course it was him. Patrick’s name flashed on the screen as it
vibrated again, and I almost threw my phone down onto the sidewalk.

“Screw you, asshole,” I muttered at the
phone, my finger hovering over the “decline call” icon. If he wanted to explain
himself, he could leave me a voicemail and maybe—maybe—I would listen to it
later. I caught someone looking at me funny as they walked past and took a deep
breath as my phone buzzed a third time. I could just let it roll over into
voicemail, like a calm person. Or I could answer it and see what Patrick had to
say for himself.
It was another woman,
but was it a significant other woman?
I didn’t know whether I could trust
Patrick to tell me the truth, but as my phone buzzed for the last time
curiosity won out over my anger and sadness and I tapped “accept”.

“Mack? I was worried you were going to let
me go to voicemail,” Patrick said, as soon as the call connected.

“I was pretty much going to do just that,”
I told him, continuing to walk towards my car. “I decided I wanted to hear what
you had to say.”

“I appreciate it,” Patrick said. I could
hear the noise going on in the café around him on the other end of the line. “I
wish you could have come to Christmas at my family’s place; you would have met
my sister.”

“Okay,” I said, frowning as I tried to
understand why that was relevant to what I’d said to him.

“But since you saw me out—and since you
texted me—you can meet her now.” I stopped in my tracks, startled.

“Meet her now?” I edged away from the flow
of traffic, trying to understand.

“The woman you saw me with is my sister,”
Patrick told me. “She’s technically another woman, but she’s not one I’d ever
cheat on you with, if I ever wanted to cheat in the first place.” I frowned and
bit my bottom lip, trying to decide whether or not to believe Patrick. It was a
convenient excuse; but just because it was convenient didn’t mean that it was a
lie.

“I don’t know,” I said, worrying my bottom
lip for another moment.

“Here,” Patrick said, “let me introduce
you. Mackenzie, this is my sister Jessica.”

I started to protest—to tell Patrick that
I didn’t want to talk to anyone else. I heard the background noise get louder
for a moment as he handed the phone off.

“Hey! I’m really sorry if you thought that
Pat was cheating on you. I’m Jess.”

 
I
opened my mouth and realized that I didn’t know the first thing to say, and
then closed it again.

“Hi, Jessica,” I said finally, leaning
against the outside wall of one of the shops; I wasn’t sure which one it was.
“I’m Mackenzie.” I licked my dry, cold lips and tried to decide whether or not
I should trust that this truly was Patrick’s sister—or if she was just going
along with him to help him out.

“Patrick and I were actually just talking
about you,” Jessica told me. “My dope of a brother was telling me about how
smart and beautiful and talented you are, and how he was afraid he’d screwed
everything up with you and didn’t know how to fix it.” I took the phone away
from my ear and stared at it in shock. I could believe that a guy would ask the
girl he was with to humor him and pretend to be his sister; I couldn’t believe
that any woman would play along quite that much.