Hung Up on You

So this wasn’t about problems at the home, but about a man.

“A man,” Ari said, the statement akin to a curse.

That made sense.

Men did tend to muck up things.

Look at Simon…and Collin. They were certainly making a mess of her life, so it figured that a man was responsible for her grandmother running away from the home.

Ari wasn’t quite sure she understood the tie between running away and dancing, but she certainly sympathized with the man part.

“Problems dear?” Bubbi asked, obviously picking up on Ari’s distress.

“I lost my job at the institute, and Collin broke up with me,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry about the job, but not about Collin. I never did like him. Just like I don’t like Hiram. Taunting me by asking me to dance.”

“You ran away because a man asked you to dance?”

“Look at this thing.” Bubbi gave her walker an annoyed little shove. “Do I look like dancing material? He’s just mocking me, that’s what he’s doing. And I won’t take it. I asked to be moved to some other area of the complex, but they say there are no more open rooms. So, I’ve left.”

“Bubbi, maybe he just likes you,” Ari said.

“Likes to tease me.”

“But—”

Bubbi didn’t let her finish her protest. She simply said, “Can I stay?”

“Of course.”

What else could she say?

Ari couldn’t kick her grandmother out onto the street. And she did have a spare room.

“Fine,” Bubbi said. “You can go to the home and pack a bag for me. Give them my two weeks’ notice.”

“But Bubbi—”

“Actually, don’t just pack a bag, pack it all. They’ll probably be searching through everything, trying to decide where I’ve gone. I don’t want strangers pawing through my things. While you do that, I’m going to go take a nap, then I’ll make you dinner.”

“I—”

Again Bubbi interrupted. “Don’t tell me no, young lady. I may not be as fast as I used to be, but I can still pull my own weight. I’m cooking. No lip from you. I’m in a mood.”

“I see that, and I wouldn’t dream of talking back.”

“Good.”

Without another word, Bubbi wheeled off down the hall to the guest room.

Ari knew better than to fight with her grandmother when she was like this.

Sensing she was defeated before she’d even really started, she grabbed her keys from the hook, ready to head to the retirement home to collect her grandmother’s things.

Despite her grandmother’s order, she wasn’t going to bring everything back. Just enough for a few nights. Hopefully they’d be able to make some arrangements for her.

Thinking about Bubbi’s problems was actually much easier than thinking about her own.

Ignoring the newest issue of the Rag that Collin had left behind, Ari headed to the door. She was thankful to have something to keep her busy, something to keep her mind off her problems like being unemployed, unengaged and a sudden tabloid darling.

She realized that things just couldn’t get any worse.

The only place left to go was up.

Feeling a bit better with that positive thought, she opened the door.

Simon Masterson stood there, finger poised at her doorbell.

Her momentary optimism didn’t just fade, it instantaneously evaporated.

Things could indeed get worse.

SIMON STOOD outside the door to Ari’s South Philadelphia apartment, not wanting to ring the doorbell. Not wanting to face her because when he did he was going to have to admit he had been wrong. He hated that.

Hated being wrong.

Hated admitting it even more.

And to be honest he wasn’t wrong often so he didn’t have much experience with it, or admitting it.

But boy, this time he’d been so wrong.

Horribly wrong.

Undeniably wrong.

But maybe he wouldn’t have to actually say the words I was wrong. He’d simply tell Ari that she was right, then ask for her help.

Yes, saying she was right would be so much easier than saying he was wrong.

Sometimes semantics could be everything.

He was about to press on the doorbell when the door flew open.

Ari scowled when she spotted him.

“You,” she said, making the word sound more like a curse than a simple pronoun.

“Me,” he agreed. “May I come in?”

“No. I’m on my way out.” She walked through the door, slammed it behind her and started down the front stairs without looking back to see if he was following her.

Simon sighed as he hurried after her. She’d practically hit the sidewalk running, flying past the brick row houses and apartments.

“Fine,” he said as he caught up. “Then, I’ll walk with you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. We have nothing to say to each other. I wrote your retraction…fat lot of good it did you, or me for that matter.”

“It didn’t work. You were right.”

There. He’d said it.

He might have been wrong about the retraction, but he was right about saying Ari was right being easier than saying he was wrong.

It was fuzzy logic at best, but with the way things were going Simon would take what he could get.

Ari stopped dead in her tracks and looked him directly in the eye. “My being right makes you…?”

“Disappointed?” He suddenly knew there was no escaping it. She was going to make him say the words after all.

It was as if she’d read his mind and decided to torture him.

This might only be the second time he’d met her, but he knew that Ari Kelly was a difficult kind of woman. The kind who would enjoy sticking it to a guy who’d made one tiny, little innocent mistake.

She just shook her head, folded her arms and waited.

Giving in to the inevitable, Simon said, “Wrong. I was wrong. There. I said it. Are you happy?”

“Yes, you were wrong, and no I’m not happy. Not happy at all. You have no idea what your little mistake has done to me. Done to my life. You’ve turned it upside down. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it right side up.”

She turned her back on him and started walking down the block again.

“Just where are we going?” he asked, walking alongside her.

She had a brisk pace for someone so much tinier than he was. She couldn’t be more than five-four, which gave him seven inches on her.

Ari Kelly was tiny, but fast.

“To the Broad Street subway station. I have to go to Shady Pines to pick up some things for my grandmother.”

“My car’s just up here,” he said, pointing to the next block.

Parking in Ari’s neighborhood was horrendous. He’d been lucky to get this close to her building.

“I could drive you,” he offered.

She studied him, suspiciously. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you want to drive me?”

“Because I’m a helpful sort of guy?”

Again, she just stood there and waited, watching him.

Simon sighed. She’d defeated him not once, but twice, with just her look.

“Because I have a plan to save our behinds,” he said.

“My behind doesn’t need to be saved.” She whipped around and started down the street, her brisk pace even faster than before.

Simon watched the woman as she presented him with an entirely new view of herself.

Actually, her behind didn’t need anything. It sashayed back and forth in a tantalizing sort of way as she strode angrily down the street.

Wow.

The first time he’d met her Simon had been so focused on the article and what it could mean to his company, that he’d totally ignored the fact that Ari Kelly was gorgeous.

Even today, he’d been so worried about admitting he was wrong, that he’d overlooked her looks until right this second.

She was a babe.

Beautiful.

It had taken him well into his second meeting to realize what a looker she was.

What kind of man did that make him?

How could he not notice that this tiny woman packed a mighty big wallop?

A totally, breathtaking sort of wallop.

Her hair was shoulder length and brown. But the word brown didn’t quite describe it. There were these light streaks that really showed up this afternoon as the sun hit them.

And her eyes were brown as well. The way they’d bored into him today guaranteed he’d noticed that.

What he hadn’t really thought about until now was that brown didn’t adequately describe them.

Brown sounded plain and ordinary.

Her eyes were anything but. They sort of sparked with her anger, and he had seen her intelligence in them.

They were the color of brandy, more than just brown.

Warm and dusky.

They made a man think of sex.

Okay, it might have taken him a while to get around to it, but he was thinking of sex now—hot, wild sex.

Celia, his personal nag, had warned him he was spending too much time locked up with the Cindy program, that he needed to leave his computer and mingle with real people.

He argued he knew all the people he needed to know, that he enjoyed his solitude.

Solitude was one thing. But if it took him until his second meeting to notice that Ari Kelly wasn’t just a thorn in his side, then Celia had a point. Because Ari was all woman. A gorgeous woman at that.

She wasn’t just a means to save his company.

Yes, he was forced to admit Celia was right.

Which meant he’d been wrong.

Again.

Darn.

See, once a man admitted he was wrong even once, he ended up admitting it more and more frequently.

He realized that Ari had turned the corner while he stood staring at her, lost in a daze of thought.

Damn.

“Hey, Ari, wait up,” he called.

He was practically jogging as he hurried to catch up with her.

“You’re still here?” she asked, looking less than pleased when he reached her side.

“Just hear me out,” he said, a bit breathless from trying to catch her. “Listen, I’ll drive you where you have to go and tell you my plan. If you’re not interested, at least you’ll have saved on the cost of the subway.”

For a moment, he thought she was going to argue some more. But then she sighed and said, “Fine.”

“Not exactly enthusiastic,” he teased as he led her back toward his car.

“Definitely less than enthusiastic. I told you that your retraction idea was stupid, but you didn’t listen, and now look where I am.”

“Just where are you?”

“A tabloid queen. Disengaged. Unemployed. Rooming with my grandmother. The only reason I’m letting you drive me to the home to get her clothes is that I don’t think things can get any worse.”

Simon felt a stab of sympathy for her.

Oh, he wasn’t going to take the blame for all of Ari’s bad luck, but maybe some of it was his fault.

The tabloid queen part at least.

Well, he’d make it up to her.

He was thrilled she was coming with him because though Ari had been right that his last plan was anything but foolproof, this one was better. It was a plan that would save them both.

He led her to his car. Even opened the door for her.

Rather than looking impressed at his manners, she glared at him.

Convincing Ari to go along with his plan wasn’t going to be easy.

Not easy at all.

WHAT ON EARTH was she doing?

Ari had packed a small—a very small—suitcase for her grandmother, and as Simon drove her home, she’d listened to him extol the virtues of his new plan.

His foolproof plan.

Foolproof?

Ha!

She’d already fallen victim to one of Simon Masterson’s foolproof plans and all it had gotten her was into a worse predicament.

She wasn’t placing the blame for Bubbi moving in on Simon. At least not yet. Maybe down the road she could figure out a way to tie that to him.

He continued to talk about his plan as they drove down Broad Street.

Ari shook her head and was surprised she couldn’t hear the rocks rattle in it. There had to be some clanking around in there, because here she was listening to Simon Masterson again. Simon’s new, improved, insane plan.

Listening to his idea to discredit her good name wasn’t worth the saved subway fare.

“Another study?” she finally asked. “After all the trouble that last study got me into, you want me to voluntarily do another study with your new computer system as the subject? You must think I’m as nutty as you are.”

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