admit it to his friends, but Mack had spent many nights alone in his gigantic house cursing the silence and staring at the empty space on the other side of the bed.
“It’s harder than you realized, isn’t it?” Malcolm said, interrupting his thoughts.
Mack drank his coffee.
“You really have no idea why Gretchen dumped you?”
“I mean, she had reasons, but they were bullshit.”
“What were they?”
“It’s embarrassing.” Mack knew it was a stupid thing to say before he even said it.
“How many times has one of us said the exact same thing, and you’ve told us we had to get over it?”
Mack picked at the corner of his forgotten menu. “I know.”
“You’ve heard every humiliating aspect of all our lives, man. It’s your turn.”
“I know.” He puffed out his cheeks and let it fly. “She said she felt like I was wining and dining her according to an instruction manual. That it was too perfect.” That still burned. “How can something be too perfect?”
“Because perfection is the opposite of authenticity, Mack.”
He gulped at that because it too closely mirrored what Gretchen had said. Eventually they want it to feel real.
“I don’t know who to be with her,” he admitted quietly, shamefully.
“Just be yourself, Mack.”
But what if that was the one thing he couldn’t give her? If he were smart, he’d cancel tonight. She deserved better. She deserved someone who wasn’t doing the one thing she hated most: lying to her.
He would just have to be what she needed. What she wanted.
Braden-Fucking-Mack.
What the hell was she doing?
Scratching an itch. That’s what she was doing. And nothing more. At five past eight that night, Liv turned onto Mack’s street and slowed to look for house numbers in the dim lighting of the street lamps that cast a warm, yellow glow upon the manicured lawns of the subdivision where he lived. She’d figured he lived in luxury, seeing how he was willing to pay a thousand bucks for a cupcake, but even Liv was unprepared for the overt displays of wealth that dripped from every house she passed. Massive brick and stone houses rose two stories high over elaborate landscaping, their facades illuminated by discreet floodlights designed to show off their attributes without being obvious.
She’d known enough rich people in her life to know there was rarely a noble reason for such ostentatious displays of wealth. The owners of these homes either had a point to make or had something to hide.
The latter, she knew, was always worse.
A half mile up the street, she finally found a stone mailbox with his address. She turned left into the paved driveway and drove beneath a soaring canopy of mature trees. A short distance beyond the trees, his house rose above the lawn.
The front door swung open as she slowed in front of the portico. Mack walked out wearing a pair of golf shorts and a T-shirt that hugged him in good places. He jogged down the few steps and greeted her at her car. Her heart did the thud-thud thing, but she shot it down.
Tonight was about physical release. Nothing more.
“Hey,” he said, holding open her door. Before she knew what was happening, he bent and dropped his lips on hers. “Got anything to carry in?”
Speechlessness was not a natural state of being for her, but it had grabbed hold now. “Cupcakes in the back seat,” she stammered.
“I got ’em.”
Liv followed him inside and tried not to gape at the luxury. The entryway soared eighteen feet and was centered by a circular staircase. A marble floor was cold beneath her feet when she slipped off her shoes.
“You find it okay?” he asked conversationally, carrying the covered plate.
“Yep.”
“Kitchen is this way.”
This time, speechlessness was not the problem. “Holy shit,” she breathed. “You have to be kidding me.”
This was the kitchen of her dreams. A real chef’s kitchen. A gas range with eight burners and a double oven. Oh, the things she could do in here.
“You like?” Mack’s amused voice cut through her culinary fantasies as he set down the plate.
“Why do you need a kitchen like this?” she snapped, cranky for no apparent reason other than her nerves.
“Because I have to eat?” He winked.
“Do you even cook?”
He shrugged. “Sure. Frozen pizza. Sometimes I even shove a lasagna in the microwave.”
Those were fighting words. Mack knew it too. His grin could’ve melted ice.
“You do cook,” she said, realizing she’d been played.
“Of course I can cook. I’m an adult. Feeding myself is part of the deal.”