The Rebound Girl (Getting Physical) (13 page)

“Is that what you’d call it? Because it feels like something else to me.”

“I mean it—just give me a chance to find you someone better.”

“What if I don’t want someone better?” he asked, and Whitney no longer had any idea who the
better
referred to in this context. Better than his ex? Or better than her?

“Fine. You want to do it this way?” She sat up, her hands spread wide. There would be no holding back now. “Almost two years. That was my longest relationship.”

Matt might not be an expert, but he knew enough about women to recognize that now would be a good time to back off. Whitney clearly didn’t want to talk about this, and he was already treading on unstable ground with her.

But he could no more stop the question from forming on his lips than he could pretend his feelings for Whitney didn’t exist. “He’s the one who cheated on you?”

She nodded once. “Isn’t it cliché? I’m a psychoanalyst’s wet dream.”

“What happened?”

“You’re really not going to let this drop?”

Matt shook his head resolutely.

“The short answer? We met through John. We dated in college. I caught him sleeping with another woman. It’s not terribly interesting.”

He waited.

“Please stop looking at me like that. The details aren’t important. Maybe it wouldn’t have affected me so much if I hadn’t dropped out of nursing school to follow him to the middle-of-nowhere Guatemala, but I did. It’s impossible to pretend the betrayal wasn’t made considerably worse by that fact. I gave up my life. I gave up my dreams. I hated every minute of it.”

“Guatemala?”

“Make the World Smile.” She flashed a big, false smile by way of punctuation. “He’s a plastic surgeon—
the
plastic surgeon, a way better one than I’ll ever be. He wanted to spend a few years repairing cleft palates before settling into a medspa practice with me and Kendra and John, and he thought the only way our relationship would work was for me to follow him to the ends of the earth. Where he then decided he liked Nancy the anesthesiologist better.”

“That’s terrible,” Matt said, and he meant it, even though it was hard for him to imagine anyone not wanting Whitney. Especially a Whitney who willingly gave up so much for a chance at love. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.” She offered a one-shouldered shrug, and her loose red blouse slipped off. The round, naked curve of her shoulder sagged, saying all the things she tried so hard to keep back. With Whitney, her body spoke a language all its own—and Matt was rapidly becoming her most diligent student.

“At least I have Jared to thank for me becoming a surgeon myself.” She sat up, adjusting her shirt so that the gorgeous, sloped, vulnerable shoulder disappeared. “I would have never pushed myself this far if I hadn’t felt like I needed to prove something—to him, to myself, to Kendra and John. But you know what the worst part was?”

Matt shook his head wordlessly.

Whitney grabbed his hand and placed her palm against his, their fingers twining. She held them there, suspended and steady, until he looked up and met her gaze. “The worst part was that I couldn’t
leave
. Transport services only came every few months, so I had to sit there in that tiny camp, rolling bandages, watching them together. Not a day went by when I didn’t feel the urge to stab him in the face with a tracheal tube, but I was just a student volunteer. There was nothing I could do.”

She squeezed his hand and dropped it, but her eyes remained locked on his. “The only thing that allowed me to keep my sanity was a German microbiologist. Claus.” She smiled. “I owe quite a bit to Claus and his gratifyingly audible lovemaking. By the time the supply helicopter came in to carry me away, the whole damn village knew exactly how he liked it.”

Jealousy, hot and unwarranted, twinged for a second before Matt realized the moral of this particular story.

“He was your rebound.”

“We still send Christmas cards to one another—he’s married to this hugely tall model with gorgeous hair and has the most adorable two boys you’ve ever seen. And while we’ll always be friends, not for one second did either of us delude ourselves into thinking we had a future together.”

Matt opened his mouth to protest, but John chose that moment to plunk unceremoniously back into his seat, politely pretending not to notice how furtively Matt and Whitney pulled away from one another.

“So.” John settled his napkin into his lap. “Are we having a second round of mimosas or what?”

“Yes,” Whitney said brightly. “I was just thinking that what Matt and I need is another drink. Several of them, actually.”

Matt, normally not one to drown his sorrows, couldn’t help but agree.

Chapter Ten

Hilly and her husband, Donald, owned a farm. It had been a point of pride with his sister for years, as though possessing a plot of land once toiled over by Quakers somehow made her a better person, even though the only thing they grew on their ten acres of pristine Pennsylvania countryside were weeds.

Matt parked his car in the huge area in front of the farmhouse, which carefully straddled the line between historic and decrepit. Built in the eighteenth century, the house could very well travel back in time and fit in. Few updates other than plumbing and electricity had been added over the years, and the rooms boasted the low-ceilinged, cramped feeling common in all the old homes in this part of the state.

Not that he could judge, what with his current cheese-shop accommodations. And Hilly’s two sons, Trenton and Dylan, seemed to like the house. They said it was a lot like living in a fort full of hidden nooks and crannies, including a staircase cupboard so small no grownup could come crawling in after them.

Matt enjoyed a few minutes of quiet contemplation before entering the house. Tonight was their monthly family dinner, presided over by Hilly, whose rambunctious family seemed to take up all the space around them. It reminded Matt a little of his own childhood, when he and Lincoln did their best to break every bone in their bodies and every valuable in the house.

The rumble of gravel kicking up came along not too much later. Even from a distance, Matt could tell his brother’s car was flashy and too fast, showering the top layer of unpaved road over the porch and the empty potted plants and the piles of tires that sat, haphazard and toppled, all over the front yard.

Chances were the car, with the rounded yellow molding denoting speed and low self-esteem, wasn’t even Lincoln’s. His salary as low-level cop, though more than what Matt enjoyed as a low-level teacher, wasn’t nearly enough to support him in the manner to which he was accustomed. Every time Matt saw his brother, he was driving something new, and he held the cars of spurious origin just long enough to sell them at a profit.

Lincoln always had some sort of trading deal going on Craigslist and, from the looks of the dark brown bob in the seat next to him, he’d also managed to get a date to accompany him to the family dinner. He had a way of getting results. It just defied Matt’s capabilities of reason to figure out how.

“Matt!” Lincoln called amiably, sliding over the hood of his car to pull open the passenger side door. Matt recognized the woman who emerged—it was Lincoln’s supposed one-night stand, the friend and business partner of Whitney’s with the flawless eyebrows.

“Hey, Lincoln. Kendra, right?” He extended a hand. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Is it weird that I’m here? It’s weird that I’m here.” She looked around, taking in the disrepair and fields of rippling weeds with a near-grimace. Like Whitney, she oozed city polish, dressed in a skirt and wobbly-looking shoes, her hair shiny in ways that didn’t seem natural.

Hilly was going to eat the poor girl alive—if there was one thing she hated more than women who wore dresses, it was women who wore dresses and actually looked good in them. She’d been married in a beige pantsuit, Hillary Clinton style.

“No, not at all,” Matt said warmly, even though it
was
kind of weird. He hadn’t even known Lincoln was seeing Kendra like this, let alone enough to foist their family on her. “I didn’t know we were bringing dates. Should I call Whitney to see if she wants to come?”

Kendra laughed. “Oh, you’re cute when you’re funny. Whitney doesn’t do families.”

He should have assumed as much. Parents implied longevity, and after their chat at brunch the other day, he knew better than to give her even a whiff of that.

Lincoln draped a casual arm around Kendra’s shoulder and pointed out various areas of non-interest to her as he led her into the house. An empty silo leaning so far it almost touched the ground. A chicken coop containing one scrawny bird that pecked at anyone who dared come within a few feet.

Kendra nodded politely in all the right places, and the look Lincoln cast at Matt over his shoulder was one of triumph—calculated to put him in place. Matt doubted his brother even cared that much about Kendra in romantic terms. He just couldn’t stand coming in second.

He allowed them to enter the house first, mostly out of respect so that Kendra didn’t have an audience when she met the insanity that was the Fuller family. In his experience, his sister didn’t make anyone look good, what with the constant bombardment of inappropriate questions voiced at top decibel levels.

“Uncle Matt!” A blur of mud tackled him from the side, and Matt lifted the grungy, red-haired seven-year-old into the air with a roar. As he came crashing back down to the ground, the boy added, “Do you want to see my tadpoles? Trent and me caught them at the pond yesterday. Three of them are dead—those are my three, Trent says—but they still float. If I poke them it’s almost like they’re swimming.”

Matt looked at his nephew’s wide grin, missing two of the most important front teeth, and nodded solemnly. “I love tadpoles. Especially dead ones.”

“Cool!” Dylan, younger than his brother by three years, reminded Matt an awful lot of himself at that age. “I wanted to show Uncle Lincoln but he said he sees enough dead things during the day.”

“Uncle Lincoln is probably grouchy because he hasn’t had anything to eat yet today. Low blood sugar does that to him.”

Dylan nodded as though that made perfect sense. “He told Trent he’ll take him out to shoot cans later. How come I can’t shoot cans, Uncle Matt? Amn’t I big enough?”

“Aren’t you big enough,” he gently corrected him, “and no.” He didn’t have the heart to tell the poor kid that it wasn’t his age, but rather his clumsiness, that prevented him from participating in Lincoln’s plan to show off in front of his lady friend. “Besides—if you were out shooting, then we couldn’t go see how many more tadpoles we can catch. You know what’s a really good trick? Putting them in your mom’s glass of water when she isn’t looking. Did I ever tell you about the one time Uncle Lincoln and I tricked her into eating a peanut-butter-and-firefly sandwich...?”

* * *

“I’m just saying that maybe you wouldn’t feel quite so depressed all the time if you upped your intake of Vitamin D, that’s all. One or two tans a week would do wonders for your mood, Matt—not to mention your pallor.”

“Yet the answer is still a resounding no.” Matt looked around for a means of escape. Hilly had outdone herself in terms of cuisine for the evening, piling their plates with a shepherd’s pie made of what looked and tasted like bloodshot roadkill, so food offered no recourse. Lincoln was all too happy to leave him right where he was in the hot seat, and even Kendra was no help. She’d claimed vegetarianism as a means for avoiding the food and merely sat, drinking boxed wine and stifling laughter, while Matt flailed for some kind of foothold. “I appreciate the concern, but I am not becoming a walking advertisement for your business. Lincoln has more than got it covered.”

Beside him, Kendra let out an inelegant chortle.

“Did you see the new car Lincoln drove up in?” Donald asked, attempting to engage his wife in a discussion of something—
anything
—else. “He promised I could take it for a spin later.”

“So.” Kendra turned to face him, a smile playing on her lips as Lincoln vehemently denied his brother-in-law’s claim. “You’re clearly the sane one in this family.”

Matt had to laugh. He was beginning to get an idea of why she and Whitney were such good friends. His personal struggles seemed to be an endless source of amusement for them both.

“I’m the white sheep, I’m afraid. I don’t tan, I don’t steal cars and I don’t teach children how to arm themselves against empty sodas. We’re big believers in owning one’s faults, and they feel I’m sorely lacking in vices.”

“Is that why your sister looked at me like I had two heads when I said I don’t eat meat?” Kendra asked.

Matt nodded. Hilly had heard the word “vegetarian” and gone into a state of denial. Kendra had the biggest portion of them all slopped onto her plate, as if Hilly somehow hoped to woo her to the other side with her military-style cooking. “She grows on you after about fifteen years or so. Aren’t you so glad you came?”

She shrugged and played with her fork. “Your brother’s nice. Persistent too—but I’d be lying if I said I came for him. I wanted to talk to you, actually.”

“Me?”

Hilly scooted her chair closer and cocked an ear their direction, though her attention never wavered from refilling Trent’s glass of milk. At least she was making an effort to be subtle.

“Yep.” Kendra spoke loud enough for Hilly to overhear. “I want to know about your intentions.”

He sputtered on his cheap, acidic wine. “You want to what?”

Kendra didn’t blink. “Whitney’s told you about our plans, right? The spa?”

“Yeah, it’s come up a few times,” he said wryly. He and Whitney might be nothing more than sex buddies, but it would take some kind of jerk not to be aware of what was going on in her life. “I think it’s great what you guys are doing. I can’t imagine the kind of work that goes in to opening up a medical facility of that caliber.”

“She’s an amazing surgeon.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He didn’t. A person of Whitney’s monumental confidence rarely had the chops to back it up but, so far, nothing about her failed to deliver.

“Then I probably don’t need to tell you what it takes to reach her level of skill.” She didn’t wait for Matt to agree with her. “Four years of undergraduate studies. Three of medical school. Internships, residency, the whole package. Women booked her for boob jobs six months in advance. She did mine, you know.”

Matt couldn’t help his gaze from traveling to Kendra’s chest. Now that she mentioned it, she was rather well-endowed, given her small stature. “They’re...lovely?”

She laughed out loud, clearly amused at his uneasiness in checking out her rack. “You know how this works. The night we met, you saw for yourself how Whitney and I protect each other—and I’m not just talking about at the bars. You’re a nice guy, and I know you don’t mean any harm, but you have to understand that as much as she might seem like this outgoing, good-time party girl, there are layers to Whitney you haven’t even begun to touch.”

He knew that. Of course he knew that—the fact that she refused to let him all the way in was something he was rapidly growing accustomed to. But even though Whitney loudly proclaimed her intention to take two steps back every time Matt got too close, her actions spoke differently.

And so did his heart.

“What exactly are you saying?” he asked.

Kendra took her time responding, and in the momentary lull, Matt realized the sounds of conversation and the scrape of dinner being hidden in the napkins had stilled. Everyone was listening.

“In the esthetician trade, the first thing they teach us is about our limits—did you know that?”

Matt shook his head wordlessly.

“It’s day one. No matter how much we might want to or how far technology has come, it’s impossible to completely erase a scar. A plastic surgeon like Whitney can cut into it, I can apply all the topical creams in the world, and we can even improve every other aspect of that person’s physical appearance in an attempt to divert attention. But remnants of the scar tissue will always be there.”

Matt wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond—especially since they had quite a captive audience. He doubted Lincoln or Donald had any idea what Kendra was really talking about, but Hilly had grown abnormally still.

“I’ve always wondered about that,” Hilly boomed. “I have got the biggest, ugliest scar down to my you-know-what—they had to slice Dylan out of me when he was born. Ten pounds, that kid carried on him, and I swear half of it was in his head.” She cast a fond look at her youngest son, whose face bore the resignation of having heard this story countless times over the dinner table. “Still is. In your professional opinion, what do you think would work best for me? Like you said—cut it, cream it or maybe get one of those vajazzle thingies so Don won’t notice anymore when he’s making the weekly trip downstairs?”

Across the table, Lincoln let out a strangled sound and clapped his hands over his ears. Donald grew so red he matched the tablecloth, and Trent asked in the same overloud voice of his maternal parent, “What’s a vajazzle? Matt, do you know what a vajazzle is?”

But the damage—or the repair, depending on your perspective—had already been done. Kendra quietly resumed not eating her dinner and Matt no longer felt compelled to answer her. And as Hilly looked around her with a wide-eyed look, asking, “What? What’d I say?” Matt used the moment to mouth his thanks.

Hilly was a good sister. She might be able to beat him in arm wrestling and try to poison him every month with these family dinners, but if she were an affectionate sort of woman, he’d slap her with a big, hearty kiss right about now.

* * *

“You can’t fix her, you know.”

Matt eyed Hilly warily. He’d forgotten that his generous feelings toward his sister rarely lasted more than an hour at a time. The second he thought they were finally about to agree on something, she pulled rank and started ordering everyone around.

“I never said I was going to,” he protested.

Hilly plopped her coffee cup down, spilling the almost opaque, too-milky liquid all over the coffee table, which was little more than several shellacked pieces of firewood glued together to form a horizontal surface. In their pre-tanning-salon entrepreneurial days, Hilly and Donald once decided to make and sell driftwood furniture out of their barn, take advantage of the rural antiquing crowd. Unfortunately, a shortage of driftwood in landlocked Pennsylvania meant they’d turned to their winter firewood pile for parts. Hilly thought no one would notice the difference. They noticed.

A tabby cat with the size and stripes to rival a tiger jumped onto the table and started lapping the milk. It was only a matter of time before her other seven cats—another barn project—came to share the bounty, so Hilly abandoned her after-dinner beverage altogether.