Almost Like Love(15)

He was offering to pay her? Why, that—

“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate,” he went on. “Jacob’s had a rough time since his mom died, and he’s always been kind of an introvert. I’d hate to drag him to this wedding, even if other kids were going to be there.”

Now she’d feel guilty for saying no. She could lie and say she was busy, but—

“I can do it,” she heard herself say.

“Really? That’s great.” The relief in his voice was palpable. “Do you want me to pay you an hourly rate or a fixed sum for the night?”

It was then that Kate realized one of the reasons she’d said yes to this.

“I don’t want you to pay me at all. I’ll watch your nephew because I’m a nice person. I remember you said once that there’s no such thing as a nice person—that when someone does you a favor, there’s always an agenda involved. The only thing I want in exchange for helping you out is an acknowledgment that you were wrong about that.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Ian said, sounding disgusted.

Kate found herself smiling. “It’s a pretty small price to pay for free babysitting.”

A short silence. “What exactly do you want me to say?”

“Just that people can do nice things without having an agenda. I’m sure you can manage to utter the words without actually choking on them.”

“But you do have an agenda. You want me to say that there’s true kindness in the world, or whatever. That’s an agenda.”

“All right, then. Good luck finding another—”

“Fine, I’ll say it. There may, on rare occasions, be people who do nice things just for the sake of being nice. Is that good enough?”

She was still smiling. “Yep, that’ll do. What time do you need me tonight?”

“The babysitter was supposed to come at five o’clock, but if that’s too early I could—”

“Five o’clock is fine.”

“I won’t be home until after midnight.”

“That’s fine, too. You’re sending me home in a car, right?”

“Right.” He paused. “So . . . I’ll send my driver to pick you up at five. He’ll call when he’s downstairs.”

“Sounds good.”

Another pause. “Okay, then,” he said after a moment. “I guess I’ll see you later today. And . . . thanks, Kate.”

“You’re welcome.”

It occurred to her after she hung up that she still had to cancel their date to Jessica’s wedding. But when she went into the bathroom to shower, she saw Chris’s toothbrush on the sink and felt a sudden spasm in her throat.

She and Chris had met a year earlier at Jessica’s engagement party. He was a biology professor and, like her, not much of a party person. They’d bonded in a quiet corner to which they’d both retreated to get away from the crowd. Their friendship had begun that night, and a few months later they’d started dating.

The transition had been smooth and effortless. They got along as a couple as well as they did as friends—they rarely argued, and there was no drama or angst between them. When Chris had proposed two months ago, it had seemed like the natural culmination of their relationship. Add in the fact that Kate was twenty-nine—right on the cusp between not-a-kid-anymore and holy-biological-clock, Batman—and their engagement had felt almost inevitable.

A part of her had wondered if she ought to be more excited about the whole thing, but she’d long ago come to the conclusion that there would always be a gap between the romances she read and wrote about and the ones she experienced in real life. And Chris was a kind, intelligent, gentle man, and she loved and trusted him.

At least, she had until he’d fallen in love with someone else.

How could she have been so blindsided by someone she thought she knew? Had there been signs all along—signs she’d missed? Their relationship might not have lit the world on fire, but up until yesterday she’d thought it was solid. She’d thought they wanted the same things and were looking forward to building a life together.

But Chris, it turned out, had been looking for something else. Someone else. Someone who made him feel whatever it was Anastasia made him feel.

Someone who wasn’t her.

She picked up his toothbrush and squeezed it in her hand.

They’d spent more nights at his place than at hers, but he did have some clothes in the closet and some toiletries here in the bathroom. The clothes she’d give back to him, but a spare toothbrush she could—and did—throw out.

Once she’d dropped it in the wastebasket, she scoured the bathroom for other remnants of him. She found an old bottle of aftershave, a razor, a stick of deodorant, and an empty prescription bottle. They followed the toothbrush into the trash.