Free Mr. Wonderful Lies by Kaitlin Maitland

sexy is all well and good when you’re out looking for a good time, but it generally doesn’t come with any strings attached. Or none that last anyway.”
    “So you’re saying sexy can’t be reliable or responsible, is that it?”
    I was suddenly aware that the word sexy had just been given a double meaning of some kind, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. “I’m just saying that I’ve found the best way to sort through the potentials is to completely leave out guys that don’t make the list.”
    “And you’re not concerned about whether or not you marry a man you find attractive?”
    I pushed a gallon container of Windex to the far back corner of the cabinet. “I didn’t say anything about attractive, Jared. I said sexy.”
    “Don’t the two sort of go together?”
    “No.” I reached blindly for the dish soap, wishing with every fiber of my being that he would drop this topic and leave. “You’re confusing physical attraction with everything else.”
    “Then what do you do when you find someone sexy and attractive at the same time? Just cross them off your list?”
    My head pounded with a thousand things I wanted to say and a million things I didn’t. Instead, I leapt to my feet to face Jared.
    His outward appearance was calm, collected, but I could tell he was seething inside. “What if you meet someone attractive and sexy and he’s perfect for you? What then? Do you just keep looking elsewhere?”
    Desperate to end the conversation, I latched onto the only thing I could. “It doesn’t matter what I find anymore, Jared. I’ve got Ollie. I don’t need to keep looking!”
    “Oh, that’s right. You’ve got Mr. Wonderful. How could I forget? Next time you should call him to fix your sink.” Jared grabbed his tools in one hand, arm bulging from the weight, and jingled his keys in the other. “See you later, Megan. I’ve got to go.”
    Mouth open in shock, I watched him leave with energetic steps. He tossed everything in the tiny trunk of his low-slung blue sports car and sped off in a whirl of squealing tires and engine whine.
    Watching him disappear around the corner I had the inane thought that this was what was wrong with sexy. It never made a damn bit of sense.

 
     
     

Chapter Five
     
    I was still thinking about Jared’s bizarre mood swings the following day when I met Anna for lunch. She’d picked a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant not too far from my townhouse. Their food is to die for. We eat there at least twice a month.
    The unseasonably warm weather had turned bitterly cold sometime during the night, so I drove the five blocks. Parking in the tiny lot across the narrow street, I zipped up my quilted pea coat and dashed to the doorway. Assaulted by freezing pellets of something that couldn’t decide if it was rain, sleet or snow, I managed to navigate the route without falling on my ass.
    Anna was already inside. Ensconced at a warm corner table out of the drafty air coming from the doorway, she was reading the real estate page of the Post Dispatch. She wore stiletto heels, a straight black skirt that came to the middle of her shapely thighs, a trendy jewel-toned blouse, and a designer jacket. Her long, white cashmere coat was carefully draped over an extra chair.
    I navigated my way back to her, taking special pains to avoid the jumble of brightly colored sombreros, cacti, chili ristras, and clay statues that decorated the tightly packed restaurant.
    She looked up from the paper when I started taking off my coat, careful to put it on the back of my chair to avoid the perfection of her white cashmere. I didn’t need a mirror to know I didn’t look a fraction as put together as Anna did. My hair was curling wildly all over the place, having escaped the bun I’d secured that morning, and any makeup that still remained on my face was in streaks. Then there was the difference in clothing. My blue jeans, layered T-shirts, and Docs were coated with a layer of