Crazy as it was, Hayden was the first woman, aside from a reporter, who’d ever asked him about his parents or his college major. Mundane little questions that people asked each other all the time, and yet something he’d been lacking.
He’d seen the potential when Hayden had first walked up to him in that bar. Somehow, he’d known deep down that this was a woman he could have a meaningful relationship with.
And it was damn ironic that she only wanted a goddamn fling.
“What happened to promising to keep an open mind?” he asked quietly.
“I plan on keeping that promise.” She shifted her gaze. “But you can’t blame me for being skeptical about this becoming anything deeper.”
“You don’t think it will?”
“Honestly?” She looked him square in the eye. “No, I don’t.”
He frowned. “You sound convinced of that.”
“I am.” Pushing an errant strand of hair from her eyes, she shrugged. “I’m going back to the West Coast in a couple of months, and even if I were staying here, our lives don’t mesh.”
Irritation swelled inside him. “How do you figure that?”
“You’re a hockey player. I’m a professor.”
“So?”
“So, our careers alone tell me how different we are. I’ve lived in your world, Brody. I grew up in it. Dad and I had most of our conversations on airplanes on the way to whatever city his team was playing against. I lived in five states during a fifteen-year period. And I hated it.”
“Your father was a hockey coach,” he pointed out.
“And the travel requirements are not much different for players. I had no say in the career my father chose for himself. But when it comes to what I want in a partner, I can choose.”
“The guy in San Francisco, what does he do?”
Her discomfort at discussing the guy who Brody now thought of as the Other Man was evident as she began to fidget with her hands. She laced her fingers together, unlaced them, then tapped them against her thighs. “Actually, he teaches art history at Berkeley, too.”
How frickin’ peachy. “What else?” he demanded.
She faltered. “What do you mean?”
“So you’re both interested in art. What else makes this relationship so delightfully rewarding?”
He almost winced at the sarcasm he heard in his tone. Damn it, he was acting like a total ass here, and from the cloudy look in Hayden’s eyes, she obviously thought the same thing.
“My relationship with Doug is none of your concern. I promised to remain sexually exclusive, but I never agreed to sit around and talk about him.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” he growled. “I just want to get to know you. I want to understand why you feel I’m not a good match for you.”
“God, don’t you see it?” she sighed. “I want, I want. You said so yourself, you always get what you want. And that’s why I feel the way I do. I’ve dated too many guys who want. But none of them want to give. They’re too concerned with getting their way, advancing their careers, and I always come in second. Well, I’m sick of it. Doug may not be the most exciting man on the planet, but he wants the same things I do—a solid marriage, a stable home, and that’s what I want out of a relationship.”
A deafening silence fell over the room, stretching between. Brody felt like throwing something. He resented the fact that Hayden was projecting her frustration with her father and the previous men in her life onto him, but, hell, he’d opened this can of worms. Pushed her too far, too fast. Needled her about her on-hold relationship and demanded she give him a chance she wasn’t ready to give.
Would he still get that chance now? Or had he blown it completely?
“I think asking you over here was a bad idea,” she said.
The answer to his silent question became painfully clear.
He’d blown it, all right.
Big-time.
THE LAST THING Hayden felt like doing on Sunday night was attending a birthday party for a wealthy entrepreneur she didn’t even know, but when she’d called her father to try to get out of it, he wouldn’t have it. He’d insisted her presence was essential, though she honestly didn’t know why. Every time she socialized with her father and his friends she ended up standing at the bar by herself.
But she didn’t want to let down her dad. And considering how she’d left things with Brody on Friday night, maybe it was better to get out of that big penthouse and away from her thoughts.
It was just past eight o’clock when she neared the Gallagher Club, a prestigious men’s club in one of Chicago’s most historical neighborhoods. It had been founded by Walter Gallagher, a filthy rich entrepreneur who’d decided he needed to build a place where other filthy rich entrepreneurs could congregate.