Her Leading Man. Maggie Dallen
patience. “What does that mean?” The words came out through gritted teeth, and she glared at him across the table. He continued to chow down on his bread as he explained—loudly and with an excessive amount of hand gestures, not noticing or caring that his running commentary on her life had struck a nerve.
“Look at you.” He waved a hand toward her, nearly tipping over the condiments in the center of the table in the process. Caitlyn picked up her purse again to look for her wallet, hoping that by ignoring him, he would stop speaking.
It didn’t work. Ben continued on with his explanation undeterred. “There’s probably a hot piece of ass hidden under all those layers, but no one would ever know it.”
A sudden jolt of anger made her nauseous. Caitlyn clutched her purse, and for one brief moment she envisioned slugging him with it.
He kept going, apparently unaware that he was in danger of being smacked upside the head with an oversized handbag. “This whole look you’ve got going is so Plain Jane. Are you trying to come across as frigid and matronly? Because if so, you’ve succeeded.”
She tried to hold on to the initial rage, but his words hit too close to home. He was all but echoing everything her ex had said. Oh, her ex had never been quite so crass—aggressive and crude had never been his style—but the basic message was the same.
“You need to spice it up a bit,” he was saying. She was vaguely aware that her date was still talking, but his words were partially drowned out by the rush of blood pounding in her ears.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she tried to rein in her raging emotions. Do not listen to him. He’s a drunken asshole who has no idea what he’s talking about. Despite her mental pep talk, her hands were shaking. She stared at the jumbled contents of her bag. She needed to find her wallet so she could pay and get the hell out of there.
“I mean, I get it if you’re going for the whole sexy librarian thing but trust me, love, if that’s the case, you really need to focus on the sexy part of that equation.” He laughed at his own joke, and it sent little crumbs of bread flying out of his mouth. “And no offense, but a yarn store? Sounds painfully boring.”
The waiter walked past—without the bill—but with an apologetic smile that said he heard every word and felt sorry for her. Great, stranger pity. That was exactly what she needed after being mocked mercilessly by the man who was supposed to be perfect. She didn’t need pity; she needed the damn check.
Mr. So Not Right leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “You know what you need?”
She ignored him, focusing instead on fishing out the leather wallet that had gotten wedged beneath a tattered romance novel and a skein of yarn. Wallet found! Now where, for the love of God, was the check?
“You need to get laid.”
Caitlyn gasped, her cheeks burning and her stomach sinking with revulsion at the crude remark. “That’s it, I’ve had enough.”
Screw the check. After digging into her wallet, she pulled out enough cash to cover her drink.
“I’m serious,” he said, one hand reaching out as if to grasp hers. She pulled back just in time. The man was repulsive enough to listen to—she sure as hell didn’t want his hands on her.
“I’m serious,” he slurred again. “You look like a woman who needs a little excitement…in the bedroom.” Leaning back in his chair, his lips turned up into what could only be described as a leer. “I could help you.”
Bile rose in her throat at the repulsive, offensive offer, and she didn’t attempt to hide her cringe of horror. The waiter finally set the bill down on the table between them. Thank the freakin’ Lord.
They reached for it at the same time, but Caitlyn was faster. Her date lurched forward to snatch it out of her hands. “I got this.” He fell back into his seat, knocking the rest of his beer over in the process—directly into her lap.
Yup, it was official. Worst. Date. Ever.
* * * *
Caitlyn stomped through the snow on her long walk from Manhattan's Murray Hill neighborhood to Alphabet City. It was quicker than waiting for the bus at that time of night, and the exercise helped her work off some steam.
That man was infuriating. And worse, a complete and total waste of time. She could have gone out with her friends tonight. Or made some progress on her latest knitting project. But no. She'd spent the last hour listening to some jackass from London explain in excruciating detail why he was God's gift to women.
If that had been the extent of it, the night wouldn't have been completely intolerable. But then he'd insisted on challenging—no mocking—her life decisions, and apparently doing his very best to make her feel bad about herself. As if her self-esteem wasn’t already at an all-time low after the breakup.
She had nothing to feel bad about, she reminded herself. Just because she didn’t have a sexy career or a boyfriend didn’t mean she was a failure. She liked working at the knitting store, and she loved sharing her craft.
It wasn’t so easy to dismiss his comments about her sex life, however. Or rather, the lack thereof. But it wasn’t like she wasn’t trying to get back on the horse. Yes, she had taken some time to recover from her heartbreak, but she hadn’t joined a nunnery. She’d gone along with Meg’s great Internet dating plan, hadn’t she? And look how well that had turned out. She blew a strand of hair out of her face. Clearly online dating was not for her. She’d stick with the tried and true method of meeting a man in her everyday life. Well, probably not at the yarn store. But at a bar, or when she was out running errands. That kind of thing happened, didn’t it? That was it. This was the last time she’d let her friend talk her into online dating.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Speak of the devil.
“I am never going to forgive you for putting me up to this,” she greeted her best friend, pouting into the phone despite the fact that her friend couldn’t see her.
Meg sounded annoyingly amused. “I take it the big date didn't go so hot?”
“I don't want to talk about it.”
“Fair enough. Would a drink cheer you up? I'm at Cagney's and need some company.”
Halfway between Murray Hill and home, Cagney’s was an old-school pub that offered the sweet, sweet temptation of blissfully mind-numbing alcohol. “I'll be there soon.”
Meg and her husband, Jake, had bought the bar several years before, and at the time it had been as run down as the old movie theater it neighbored. Caitlyn spotted Tamara in the ticket booth as she walked by the theater. Her friend was bundled up, her long blond hair tucked into an oversized hat, and her slim shoulders hunched over beneath a puffy winter coat. She looked freezing and miserable, but she gave Caitlyn a smile and a wave as she passed by. “How was the date?” Tamara mouthed through the glass.
Caitlyn scrunched up her nose in disgust and gave her the thumbs down signal. Tamara’s face fell, but she didn’t look surprised. As a fellow single lady, she was adamantly opposed to blind dates or online dating…or dating at all, for that matter. She would most likely take Caitlyn’s failure and use it as yet one more reason why dating was not for her.
And maybe she was on to something. Her friend seemed to be quite content with work and friends. Maybe that’s all she needed too. Inside Cagney’s, a fire roared in the giant fireplace and couples cuddled up against one another in the booths. Loneliness made her throat tighten. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t like Tamara—she wanted to find someone and she couldn’t deny it. And not just any someone, she wanted to find the one. A partner, a friend. Someone she could count on. Her parents had found it. They’d been lucky in that regard. Even if they hadn’t had a full lifetime with one another, the time they’d had together had been perfection. Or at least that was how Caitlyn remembered it. They died when she was a teenager, but all of her memories were of her parents as a united, contented team.
She