Page 4 of Never Marry the Best Man (Whatever It Takes #4)
Chapter Two
Tom
“For heaven’s sake, Thea!” Tom didn’t bother hiding his irritation. “What was that all about? I wanted to look around in there.”
“You wanted to chat up that woman. She’s just your type, isn’t she? Old.”
“She was not old, and I do not have a ‘type’!”
“I suppose not. Blonde, brunette, tall, short–as long as they’re twenty years older than you are…”
“You’re being ridiculous. I just like strong women with experience and opinions, and style, that’s all. I’m not interested in dating children. Thank the Lord.”
“My friends all have experience and opinions and style.”
He snorted. “Not the kind I’m talking about.”
“Right. The old kind. Anyway, I want to do some serious shopping, not look at silver-backed hairbrushes with someone else’s initials on them. Gucci is closing in an hour.”
“Thea, you live within a thirty-minute drive of London. Every major design label in the world–and every minor one, for that matter–is available to you at any time. What is the fashion emergency here in Boston?”
“There might be something different here,” she answered vaguely. “Something no one has in London. Why are we walking? Didn’t you call an Uber?”
“You are a spoiled brat.”
“Not at all. I am a woman with experience and opinions.”
“So you say.”
They walked on in silence, giving Tom the opportunity to reflect.
His first crush, when he was fourteen, was a girl called Zara.
To Tom, she had seemed the absolute pinnacle of sophistication and maturity, not to mention a kind of sultry beauty that he associated with sexual experience.
He had always been big for his age and athletic, so the fact that he was three years younger was not immediately obvious to her.
They shared a few kisses in her father’s stables before she heartlessly threw him over for a second-year Oxford student.
Maybe the die was cast then.
During his own time at Oxford, he had gravitated to the graduate students.
Afterward, when he began studying architecture, his classmates were like siblings, comfortable and asexual.
It was the guest lecturers who fascinated him, women who were already making their mark on the profession and the built environment.
They raised the professional bar for him, challenged his design thinking, pointed out the real-world constraints of budget, time, client approval, municipal bureaucracy.
All of this was invaluable, like a private seminar, as he competed with his gifted and ambitious cohort for recognition and then for employment.
Thea was wrong about the age difference, though.
Five or ten years–that was nothing, really.
Of course it seemed like a lot when you were really young, when it meant the difference between school years, or having a beer in a pub, things like that.
But once you were an adult, established in your career and with a flat and a car and disposable income, age just didn’t mean that much anymore.
And surely there had never been anyone twenty years older… had there? That did begin to sound like rather a lot, he had to admit. Almost… generational.
He searched his memory.
There was the brief fling with a French real estate developer. He remembered she had insisted on the lights being turned out, just a few candles. Was that romance or stratagem?
The Italian furniture designer who always– always –wore a scarf wrapped around her neck. Her signature style or camouflage for sagging skin?
Anyway, what difference did it make? He had thoroughly enjoyed himself and so had they, so far as he knew.
Now that Thea had brought the subject up, damn her, he did remember the Christmas holiday when his mother had asked delicately, “Tom, darling, do you think you might ever want to have children? Of your own, I mean?”
The truth was, he hadn’t thought that much about it. Children might be fun, but the goal for him wasn’t to pass along his DNA. Why not adopt a child who needed two mature parents, ready to take on such an enormous responsibility? He’d worry about that when the time came.
Although… he was thirty-eight, almost thirty-nine. Maybe the time was, in fact, coming. Did he want that?
He sighed, and Thea looked up hopefully. “It is rather a long walk, isn’t it? Are you getting tired?”
It was the wrong question to ask someone who has just been reflecting on the implications of advancing age. “Of course not! It’s only a few blocks.”
“Why are you so cross? Go back to the shop and talk to Helen Mirren if it’s so important to you. I’ll meet you at your flat.”
She was limping slightly now, and he took pity. “Don’t be so silly, Thea. I’ll get an Uber. Why did you wear such high heels, anyway?”
"Because they look good."
Such a simple answer.
Maybe that was it. He adored older women because he just did. They looked good to him. Better than good. Why stir up trouble and overthink it?
That woman back in the shop was not unlike Thea's shoes.
"Quit smiling like that," his stepsister snapped as she walked away from him. "And no need for an Uber. My arches handle five-inch heels perfectly well.”
"You're a regular Nancy Pelosi."
"Who?"
Unlike Tom, Thea wasn't half American.
He waved his hand as they walked side by side. She glanced at him again.
"I said quit smiling like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you're in on some secret joke."
"My smile has nothing to do with you."
"Good, because I've done nothing to mock me about, and my outfit is impeccable."
I'll wager Thea's never heard of Peter Beard , he thought. The flash of the woman's smile back in the shop, her keen, sharp eyes meeting his as they chatted, sent a shot of something old and young through his blood.
"Copley Place is a bloody hike. My GPS is lying to me," Thea announced dramatically, as if walking eight-tenths of a kilometer were a marathon.
He looked at her heels again.
"You rejected the Uber." He knew it was a dig, and her exasperated huff made him smile again.
"I didn't realize it was almost a kilometer! The GPS if often wrong. Who designed this city? Why would you put Newbury Street so far away from all these other fantastic shops?" Her whine was genuine, entitled, and oh, so earnest.
"A savage. A monster. Such a brute. Someone with no consideration for women's feet."
"Shut up, Tom."
"Perhaps the nice salesperson at Gucci will have bread and gruel for you after you make the trek."
She punched his arm. It felt like a victory.
It occurred to him that he could turn around, jog back to the little shop, find the nice Peter Beard admirer, and ask her out for a cup of tea or a coffee. They could huddle together over a book, a shared interest, a -?
A what?
Traffic lights turned Thea positively apoplectic as the crosswalk sign forced her to wait an interminable cycle.
Unable to spend a single minute without being entertained, she pulled out her phone as Tom looked around.
Boston was so young compared to London, yet positively ancient when put up against other cities he'd visited for work. Houston. Phoenix. Tulsa.
The buildings were so varied. Brownstone houses lining the street. Red brick buildings with elaborate entryways.
And granite. So much granite.
It had a solidity to it. It felt familiar, yet different. A good compromise between London and America.
A good choice.
They strolled down Newbury Street, his steps unhurried as Thea made frustrated sounds that just made him slow down and take his time.
He admired the elegant brick townhouses and shopfronts lining the street.
It reminded him faintly of certain corners of London.
Kensington, perhaps, but with a distinctively American flair, lighter and less burdened by centuries of grime and restoration.
As they approached Copley Square, his gaze lifted, and there it was: Trinity Church.
Trinity’s red sandstone exterior glowed against the blue sky, the massive tower rising in a statement of faith and power. He paused, taking in the boldness of it. In London, churches like St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey spoke with the voice of empire. Solemn, monumental, softened by time and soot.
Trinity, by contrast, felt muscular and self-assured, its Richardsonian Romanesque arches exuding strength rather than delicacy. It had none of the Gothic lacework or intricate tracery he associated with home, but it possessed a confidence that demanded respect.
“Oh, God,” Thea whinged. “Seriously? Again with the churches, Tom? Just become a priest and get it over with.” The joke was old, and he rolled his eyes, but returned his gaze to the church’s windows.
They crossed toward the square, glancing at the Boston Public Library’s dignified facade beside the church.
Together, they formed a tableau of intellect and faith, standing shoulder to shoulder.
In London, churches were often nestled among winding streets, their spires peeking out unexpectedly like sudden exclamations in the urban narrative.
But here in Boston, Trinity stood squarely in the open, unafraid of being studied from every angle, like a proud uncle posing for a portrait. Trinity could not, would not, be ignored.
“TOM! The light!” Thea walked quickly ahead of him as they crossed.
As he walked around the church, he thought of the smaller parish churches back home, like St. Bride’s with its delicate spire, or St. Mary-le-Bow with its bell tower ringing through the financial district.
London’s churches whispered of royal processions, bomb raids, and the wear of time.
Boston’s churches felt younger, more revolutionary in spirit, as if their stones still carried the echoes of defiance rather than ceremony.
By the time he and Thea reached the center of Copley Square, he wished he’d had his sketchbook. He was already envisioning a design, something that would marry the solemn romance of London’s Gothic with Boston’s earnest, democratic confidence.
“GUCCI!” She sighed, as if Thea and Tom were on a desert island and she’d spotted a helicopter. “Finally.”
He winced.
A conversation about Peter Beard over a good book was much preferred.