Page 34 of The One You Want

They both got pancakes. She put cut strawberries and a dusting of powdered sugar on hers. He drowned his in butter and syrup. They both got scrambled eggs, bacon, and fruit salad, and bypassed the pastries.

“They’re too sweet,” he complained.

She stared at the bucket of syrup on his pancakes, then at him, and laughed. “Really?”

He rolled his eyes and escorted her back to their table, where Jeanine had dropped off their mimosas and water.

Gray set his plate down, held her chair out for her again, helped her get seated, then sat beside her. He picked up his drink and held it out to her. “To keeping this real.”

She clinked her glass to his. “Absolutely.”

They ate, chitchatting about his working out of his hotel room and her redoing her childhood bedroom and why it was a cleansing of the past and embracing who she was now.

“When you have to take something away—good or bad—people have a hard time letting go. Adding something good to your life is easy. Accepting something bad is hard.” Gray chewed the last piece of bacon from his plate. “I really wasn’t excited about working from here for the next week. I knew it would be a huge hassle. But then I met you, and it’s an annoyance I can live with because I get to spend time with you.”

“You’ll probably be sick of me by the end of the week.”

He put his hand over hers on the table. “I seriously doubt that.”

She hated that she was keeping something from him. Something that could change his mind.

She needed to tell Maggie about her night with Marc, then she could tell Gray.

But first, Gray owed her an explanation.

“I’m really enjoying our time together, too. And I hope this doesn’t spoil things.”

Gray read her mind. “But you want to know about Marc.”

“He’s marrying my best friend. And to be honest, Maggie and I have had a hard time connecting this past year. Work and life have kept us both busy. I knew about Marc, but until last night, I’d never met him. She didn’t share any pictures.”

“He’s got this thing about his privacy.”

She had a good idea why, but wanted Gray’s take on it. “With social media it’s not easy to keep your private life private anymore. Why is he so against pictures of him getting out?”

Gray frowned, wiped his mouth with his napkin, then set it on the table. “Marc doesn’t care or apologize if others think he lives his life a bit recklessly.”

“How do you mean?” She had a pretty good idea.

“Maggie is probably the longest relationship he’s ever been in. When he called to tell me they’d gotten engaged, I seriously thought he was calling to tell me he’d blown up another relationship because he’d...” Gray paused, unsure or unwilling to say the last part.

“He cheated.” It wasn’t a hard guess, since she’d played a part in his cheating on his girlfriend.

“He has a pattern. When one relationship is crashing, hestarts up another one before he actually bails out of the last one. Sometimes the women figure it out and leave. Other times, they’re still holding on and he strings both women along for a time until one or the other figures it out.”

“What an asshole.”

“Agreed. One hundred percent. But you have to understand, Marc’s parents cheated on each other. That’s what broke them up. Then he watched his father go through a string of women, most of them overlapping. As a teen, Marc thought his dad was a player and that was a good thing. His father’s self-worth was tied to the women he had coming and going in his life. He’d tell Marc not to get tied down. The minute things weren’t fun anymore, get out. There were too many women out there to get stuck with just one.”

“And then Marc met Maggie, he fell in love with her, and he decided she was better than any other woman.” Rose really hoped that was the case.

Gray’s gaze dropped to the table. “It appears that way, yes. They seem happy together.” That wasn’t the resounding confirmation she wanted.

“But?” She waited for him to look at her again.

“No one was more surprised than me that they were getting married, but he seems committed and that’s a good thing.”

She gave him a sideways look. “Seems?”