Page 13 of Be My Temptation (Temptation 2)
Brock kept a straight face while looking at the full house he held in his hand. Poker night at Tyler’s place was a welcome reprieve from what had otherwise been a crappy week. Chris, Mike, Tyler, some cigars, a few beers, and just enough money on the table to make things interesting.
“I’m out,” Mike said and laid his hand down, but he smiled as he did.
Chris raised an eyebrow and joked, “Mike, you understand that’s a bad thing, right?”
Tyler took a puff of his cigar, then said, “His wife is sleeping with him again. You could probably take all the money out of his wallet and he’d still look that pathetically happy.” He took a second look at Brock. “Whereas there is no telling what Brock has in his hand because he’ll look that miserable even if he has a royal flush.” He tossed a twenty onto the pile of money on the table. “I’ll see your ten and raise you ten.”
Chris threw his cards down. “Too rich for me. I’m out. So, Brock, what happened with you and Kate?”
Brock threw in a twenty and said, “I’ll see your twenty, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Tyler thumped his chest. “She broke his heart.”
“Fuck you.”
Tyler smiled at Brock’s response. “He leaves presents on her doorstep every day, even though she won’t answer any of his phone calls. It’s kinda sad. And am I the only one worried that he now smells like a girl?”
Brock gritted his teeth. “The perfume was a gift from Kate.”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Do you think she was fucking with you? Because, dude, that’s a woman’s perfume.”
Mike sat back in his chair and said, “It is, Brock. Angie told me all about it. Kate bought it as a joke. You should stop wearing it.”
Brock put his cards down. “What do you mean as a joke?”
Mike looked away. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Angie will kill me.”
Brock stood up. “What do you know?”
Mike let out a long sigh. “Everything. Too much, really. I give you credit for having the balls to do what you did, but you really fucked it up at the end.”
Tyler leaned forward, laying his own cards face down. “What did he do, Mike? You have to tell us.”
Chris made a skeptical face. “We’re talking about Brock here. How bad could it have been?”
Mike said simply, “Let’s just say we don’t know Brock as well as we think we do. He has a whole other side to him.”
“I can’t believe you’re not going to tell us,” Tyler said, stubbing out his cigar. “I would tell you.”
The other men at the table said in almost perfect unison, “We know.”
Brock sat back down. “Mike, I don’t care what your wife told you, it goes no further than that. I’m serious about Kate. I intend to marry her. But I do want to know what you meant about the gift being a joke.”
Mike gave him a sympathetic look. “When Kate found out you hadn’t been completely honest with her, she and Angie decided to screw with you a little. Angie told me it was supposed to get you to confess. I guess that didn’t work out.”
Tyler interjected. “Confess what? You guys aren’t going to say anything? You’re fucking killing me here.”
Rubbing his chin, Chris asked, “You really love her, don’t you?”
Brock’s hands clenched in fists. “Yes, I do. But nothing I’ve done so far has been able to convince her of that. I might have blown my only chance with her.”
Mike added, “Don’t repeat this, but Angie says Kate is really sad about the breakup. She thinks Kate loves you, so you still have a chance.”
With disgust, Tyler said, “I’m taking back all of your man cards. You gossip like a bunch of women. What happened to you?”
Brock looked at Tyler and shook his head. “Half of what you say is a bullshit act, Tyler. I know because I was you until recently. But I don’t care about any of that anymore. Everything changed when Kate came into my life again. I don’t want to go back to one-night stands. I want Kate. I want a family. Help me fix this or shut the fuck up. Your choice.”
After a long moment, Tyler said, “What have you tried so far?”
Brock shrugged. “Calling. Texting. Bringing her a gift every day, like you said. I don’t know if she even liked what I gave her.”
Mike said, “She hasn’t opened them.”
“Fuck.” Brock grimaced.
Tyler pushed up his shirtsleeves. “Don’t worry, as the only intact man at this table, I will come up with a plan.”
When Chris and Mike started to say something, Brock cut them off and said, “Let him speak. Even if it’s for comic relief, I have to hear what Tyler thinks I should do.”
“Thank you,” Tyler said with some sarcasm, then cracked his knuckles as he got down to business. “You have two problems. One, she won’t open your gifts. That’s easy enough to fix. Don’t wrap them.”
Brock looked around the table. Tyler’s suggestion made sense in a strange, the-world-is-upside-down kind of way.
Tyler held up two fingers and said, “Two, even though you won’t say what you did, it sounds like it was a royal fuckup. Those require big apologies. Huge. Usually in public. Lucky for you, Valentine’s Day is in two days. If you really want to win her back, you need to do something so over-the-top sappy she has no choice but to forgive you. I even have an idea for that part, but you’re not going to like it.”
Brock looked around the table again and said, “Nothing I’ve done so far has worked, so maybe I should try his ideas.”
Tyler asked, “So you fold?”
Brock nodded.
Tyler reached forward and gleefully scooped the pile of money toward him. Amidst protests, he merely smiled and said, “Great, here’s my idea.”
Chapter Ten
The next morning, Kate heard her doorbell ring. She opened her front door to a find an iPad, with a video playing on its screen. She bent closer and saw Brock’s friend Chris listing all the reasons why he thought Kate should give Brock a second chance. He talked about how long he had known Brock and what a good person he was. A moment later, Angie’s husband, Mike, was reciting almost the same message. The video cut to Tyler, who sounded sincere as he said the only person he could imagine Brock being with was someone as classy as Kate, and that anyone who could get Brock to wear women’s perfume for a week was someone Tyler had to respect. Linda, Brock’s sister, talked about what a great family man Brock was. Even his parents chimed in to say they missed her.
Kate was near tears by the time Brock came on the screen. He looked tired, but he smiled into the camera as he spoke directly to her. “I reserved a table at Henri’s for tomorr
ow night at six. I’ll be there, waiting for you. If there is any chance you can forgive me, meet me there. Don’t decide right now, Kate. Go inside. Open my other presents. They are proof that I mean it when I say I love you. There has never been anyone else for me, Kate, and there never will be.”
Kate stopped the video and took the iPad inside. She moved Brock’s gifts from her hallway into her living room and sat down beside them on the floor. She took a deep breath, reached for one of the boxes, and held it on her lap for a moment. If I open this, I’m opening my heart to the possibility of Brock again. I’m giving him a chance to hurt me again.
What am I so afraid of?
That he’ll treat me the way Wayne did?
Wayne never cared enough about me to do anything as crazy as pretend to be a naughty elf. Brock is not Wayne. I have to stop comparing the two.
Brock says his proof is in these presents.
Please let him love me the way he says he does. Please don’t let me be wrong twice.
Kate tore the paper off the first present and smiled at the simplicity of its contents. It was just a small pocket calendar with a puppy decorating the cover. Unthreatening. Sweet. She opened the calendar to the first page and read the message he had written there. “When you decide you’re ready to see me, please check the calendar for dates when I’ll be available.” She flipped through the pages and saw that he had highlighted every evening and every weekend. On each day he had written the same word: “Available.”
Corny. Cute.
Kate reached for the next package. Wedged between two pieces of cardboard was an old, tattered piece of construction paper. Kate took it out and held it up, and tears started running down her cheeks. It was a drawing she had made of the two of them back when, as children, they had spent the summer together while his father had worked on her mother’s house. She’d drawn them holding hands and smiling and had written:
