At my words, he whistled. “That much?”
“Yeah. I don’t know why, either.”
“She’s been hurt.” Mackenzie hunched his shoulders. “Don’t have to be an expert in women to see that. You’ve always been a champion.”
It was my turn to hunch my shoulders. “Maybe.”
“No maybe about it,” he said with a snort. “Anyway, just take it nice and slow and you won’t mess things up. Your money won’t turn her head, even if she does live in the pits.”
“It was hard leaving her there tonight.”
“You did right. Anything else and she’d have felt pressured.” Mac shot him a look. “I hope you make it work, kid. But, saying that, when haven’t you made something work when you put your mind to it?”
There was pride to his tone and it had me perking up, just as it had when I was nineteen and floundering between my job at Giorgio’s, training, classes, and my software.
More memories flooded me—not necessarily bad ones, but they just made me tired. Remembering those days, I also remembered just how damn exhausted I’d been too.
“How’s Eileen?” I asked softly, realizing I hadn’t asked over her in a few days.
“She’s good. She’s invited us over on Sunday, by the way. She’s making pot roast.”
I perked up at that. “She is?”
“Yeah,” Mackenzie said with a laugh. “I’m sure she’d like to meet Jessica.”
Silence fell at his suggestion. “You don’t think it’s too soon for that?” I asked, somewhat hesitantly.
It had never mattered before, I realized. Whether a date worked out or not with a woman, it hadn’t bothered me. And, I felt like I shit when I figured out why…
Because if it hadn’t worked out with that particular woman, there were a dozen more who’d leap into her place.
Fuck, was I as bad as my VPs?
No. I had never, and would never, force myself on a woman. Would never make them feel they were obliged to do things for me or to me. I respected them as much as I could, but I had taken them for granted.
I felt bad, though. Really, really bad. Like my eyes had been opened to a side of my nature I didn’t particularly appreciate.
It didn’t excuse shit that I was busy and that those women knew the score. I’d meant what I’d said earlier to Jessica—some women were normal and others weren’t. She was normal, in that she wanted normal things. Others were greedy and grasping, only wanting what they could get out of a man, not caring for anything other than his wallet.
She wasn’t like that, and that was why I was different around her.
Since college, with my rep on the field and the gossip being that I’d be drafted by the NFL at some point, chicks had flocked to me. They’d all wanted the tight end, then the businessman, and finally the billionaire.
They hadn’t wanted Max Greene.
Shit, Jessica hadn’t particularly wanted Max Greene today. I’d had to coax the date out of her!
So, no, she was night to their day and that was why she triggered these feelings in me.
“I don’t see why it would bother her. It’s not like she knows how close we are as a family, is it?”
I blinked at Mac’s words; family… I had one of my own, even if we were scattered over the States now. We still kept in touch, and were as close as the distance would allow, but I had a family of my own making now.
Alex and Derek, Eileen and Mac… they were family, I realized, even though I’d never particularly thought of them that way. Not that that came as a surprise. I didn’t think that way anyway. It just wasn’t how my brain was wired, but now he’d said the words? Now he’d said it out loud? I knew Mac was right.
“Did she call Alex and Derek?”
Mac snorted again. “What do you think?”