Try - The Complete Romance Series (23 page)

“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.

“Really?”

I hugged myself; standing still in the
cold was definitely a bad idea, but I couldn’t walk, talk, and listen at the
same time. “You were really talking about me and he really said those things?”

“Really and truly,” Jessica said. “I told
him to stop being such an idiot and actually talk to you about things if he had
worries.” After a moment I heard her laugh. “He’s red as a beet right now, you
should see it.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, laughing in spite of
myself. “I believe you are really and truly his sister.” I remembered that
Patrick had mentioned having a sister named Jessica—and he’d mentioned it more
than once. He wasn’t the only one who had managed to twist things around and
screw them up.

“I would love to meet you sometime soon,”
Jessica said cheerfully. “Whether or not my brother manages to make everything
up to you. I’ll get your contact details from him; maybe we can grab a coffee
sometime.”

“That would be great,” I said, shaking
from a mixture of cold and relief. I shook my head, smiling in embarrassment at
my outburst. I heard the background noise go louder again and then it quieted.

“So you see? I am absolutely not cheating
on you,” Patrick told me.

“I will admit that I might have jumped to conclusions,”
I said wryly. “But you seemed really familiar with her in the two seconds I saw
you together.”

“And I’ve been dropping the ball,” Patrick
admitted. “Jess is right about that, and you had every right to assume the
worst after the way I’ve been making everything weird and awkward.” I smiled
again and started walking slowly, making my way towards my car. I had to keep
moving or I’d become a Popsicle.

“I appreciate that,” I said. “Thank you
for taking the time to set me straight.”

“More than happy to do it,” Patrick told
me. “Now—you mentioned that your family is throwing a New Year’s Eve party? I’d
understand if you wanted to punish me for upsetting you—but I’d love to go with
you. Can I have my invitation back?”

I laughed. “It wouldn’t be fair of me to
keep it now that I know you’re just being a good brother,” I pointed out. “I’d
love to have you as my date to my parents’ New Year’s Eve party, if you don’t
have other plans.”

“None whatsoever; without you my New Year
would be depressing—I’d just sit on the couch watching the ball drop while
Landon sleeps and drink champagne out of a bottle.”

“This will be a lot better than that,” I
promised.

“Of course it will,” Patrick said. “If
you’re there, the whole house could go down in flames and it’d still be
better.”

 
I
laughed again. “I hope that doesn’t happen, but I’m glad that you can come with
me,” I told Patrick. I shivered as I approached my car, and I knew that no
matter how good it felt to hear his voice and to know that he wasn’t cheating
on me, that he was actually being as upfront as possible, I needed to get into
my car and out of the cold. “I have to hang up now,” I said. “I am freezing out
here and I need to get home with the things I just bought.”

“Okay,” Patrick said. “Get inside before
you freeze to death. Can I see you at the clinic tomorrow?” I thought about it;
I did have a shift at the clinic, and I was pretty sure than Landon had an
appointment.

“Absolutely,” I said. I smiled to myself,
thinking that just seeing Patrick in the office again would be great; it would
be good to get back to the way things had been before things got weird. “I’ll
be glad to see you.”

“Me too.”

I finished up the call and unlocked my car
door, climbing in and making sure none of the things I’d bought would shift
around too much when I drove home. I turned the car on and turned the heat up,
for a moment just sitting there and letting the air get warm enough to thaw me
out a little bit. I smiled to myself, more relieved than I would have thought
even possible by the fact that I hadn’t actually caught Patrick with some other
woman. Until I’d seen him in the café with his sister, I never would have
thought that Patrick was cheating on me. I had thought that things had gone
south, and that he’d lost interest—but nothing at all about the way that
Patrick treated me suggested that he was with someone else.

I felt a little bit embarrassed at the
fact that I’d rushed to such a drastic conclusion, especially since I should have
remembered that Patrick had siblings. If he had decided to be angry with me for
making the assumption that he was cheating, I couldn’t have blamed him. I was
glad though that Patrick had cleared the air between us; I wasn’t going to let
him go so easily in the future.

I pulled out of my parking spot and
started for home, thinking about the fact that for the first time in years, I
was going to have a date to my parents’ New Year’s Eve party. If anyone in my
family or amongst the family friends thought that I had been making Patrick up,
they would know the truth as soon as I came in with him. “Oh god—what am I
going to wear?” I almost turned back to go shopping for my dress, but decided
that since I had a few days before the party, I would wait and make a special
trip for it. I was exhausted from all of the stresses of the day, and I wanted
to devote all of my attention onto getting the right dress—something sexy, but
not too sexy, glittery without being tacky, something that would make me look
amazing next to Patrick.