WHEN A MAN ❤️s A WOMAN Chapter 2 Deferred

Nah

She’s Too Young,

She's Too Much, and She's Dangerous.

Winston Valoir was used to men approaching him about his twin sister.  So, when Michael introduced himself on the airplane, he knew immediately that it was about Willow.   Willow was rarely interested in any of these guys, but this time he knew she was attracted to Michael Kane.   Still, he wasn't about to let this American, whom he hardly knew, get any closer to his sister until he could check him out.  

“So,” he said, “you want a beer?”

“Sure.”

Winston handed him a Bud Light and a small dish of beer nuts.  Michael thanked him and took a swig.  Winston took a slow drink of his own beer while he studied the man sitting across from him.  Fit.  Very fit.  The kind of body that came from years of discipline rather than good luck.

 

Michael wore black running pants, a matching jacket over a white T-shirt, and black Nikes.   His shoulders filled out the jacket, but his waist was narrow.   His beard was neatly trimmed, his dark brown hair long and loose, and his gray-blue eyes seemed to take in everything without lingering on anything.   Tall.  Broad shoulders.   Strong chest.  Nothing extraordinary. 

 

But Winston recognized an animal magnetism in the guy that women would find appealing.   His brother Josh had it too.   Josh had it in spades, especially with that mole on the left side of his mouth.  

Winston thought of the self-assuredness emanating from Michael Kane as American arrogance, as did so many other Europeans.  Despite that, though, Winston liked him.  He couldn’t guess his age.  The guy could be anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five.   An alpha male, he thought, used to being top dog.  

“So, Michael.  What do you do?”

Michael smiled.

“Why do I look unemployed?”

Winston laughed.

“You look familiar.”

“Perhaps you've seen some of my movies.”

Winston's eyebrows rose.

“You're an actor?”

“I am.   These days, not so much.   I own a production company called ELL.   I direct more now, but I still perform occasionally.”

“ELL?”

“Eat Well.  Live Well.  Love Well.”

Winston nodded.

Then Michael added, almost casually, “I know a Josh Valoir.  He's my investment banker.   You wouldn't happen to know him?”

Winston stopped with the beer halfway to his mouth.

“My brother?”

Michael blinked.

“Josh is your brother?”

“Yes.”

“The Josh Valoir I know is African American.   I think.”

“Afro-French.”

Michael frowned slightly.

“Really?”

Winston smiled.

“Our mother is white.   Our father was African.”

“Was?”

“He’s deceased.”

“And Willow?”

“Same parents.  We're twins, remember?”

Winston saw something change in his expression.

Recognition.

“Oh.”

Michael looked at Winston.

“I see it now.”

“You see what?”

“The eyes.”

Winston smiled.

“And the beauty marks?”

Michael laughed.

“That too.”

Winston touched the corner of his own mouth.

“Josh has one.”

“I remember.”

Michael hesitated.

“I'm sorry about your father.”

“Thank you.”

For a moment, neither man spoke.

 Then Winston set his beer down.

 “So, tell me something.”

 Michael waited.

 “How do you feel about Willow being biracial?”

 Michael stared at him.  Then he laughed.

 “Listen, man.   I don't care if your sister is Martian.   I still like her.”

Winston's eyebrows rose.

 "Like her?"

 Michael seemed to realize he'd said more than he intended.

 He cleared his throat.

 “Would it be all right if I stopped by her apartment?   I'd like to ask her out.”

 Winston studied him.   A man could say anything.  The question was what he did afterward.

“Sure,” Winston said.

 He wasn't about to send a stranger upstairs to his sister's apartment.  Not yet.

 “I'll call her.”  He pulled out his phone.

 Willow answered on the second ring.

“Hey.”

“Come down.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

A pause.

“I'm in the bath.”

Winston glanced at Michael.  Michael was trying very hard not to smile.  Winston shook his head.

 “Fine.   Michael wants your number.”

 “Give it to him.”

 Winston looked at Michael.

 “You heard her.”

 He wrote the number on the back of a business card and handed it across.  Michael looked at the numbers, then slipped the card into his pocket.  He stood.

“Thanks, man.”

They shook hands.

“It was a pleasure meeting both of you.  I'll give her a call.  Later, Winston.”

****

 

On the way home, Michael sat in the back of the limousine, watching Chicago slide past the window.  The city should have held his attention.  It usually did.   But not this time.

 

He'd been in Paris on business, but he'd squeezed in dinners, parties, and time with a woman he'd met the previous year while filming a movie.  He had spent several days with her.  Several nights, too.  Now, sitting in the car, he couldn't remember her name.  He frowned.  How was that possible?  He had kissed her.  He had slept beside her.  And now—nothing.

 

Not her name.  Not her voice.  Not even the color of her eyes.  Michael looked down at the card in his hand.  Willow Valoir.  He read the name again.  Willow.  He leaned his head against the leather seat.   Was this what people meant by love at first sight?

 

The thought almost made him laugh.  He didn't believe in that.  Not really.  And yet...A memory surfaced.  A nightclub.  Josh Valoir laughing with his wife, Catherine.  Michael remembered Catherine immediately—Haitian, striking eyes, beautiful lips, long red dreads spilling down her back, a beautiful heart-shaped face.

And beside them—A girl.  No.  Not a girl.  A young woman.  Long reddish-brown hair.  Bright under the lights.  Beautiful.  He remembered thinking that much.  He remembered the crowd around her, too.  Young men.  Too many of them.  They'd hovered around her table, competed for her attention, leaned in when she laughed.  Michael had barely noticed her at the time.

 

Now the memory sharpened.  The hair.  The eyes.  The face.  Willow.  That was her.  Michael sat forward.  He had seen her before.  He simply hadn't known who she was.  And now that he did, the memory of those men around her took on a different meaning.  He pictured one of them touching her arm.  Another leaning close.  Another making her laugh.  His jaw tightened.

“Damn.”

He looked out the window.  Chicago passed in a blur of bright lights and high-rises.  But Michael wasn't seeing it anymore.  He was seeing Willow.  And for the first time, he understood why every instinct in him had gone on alert the moment he'd heard her name.

 

****

 

Three weeks.  Michael stared at the name on his iPhone.  Willow Valoir.  His thumb hovered over the contact.  He could call.   He could say something simple.   Hey, how are you?   I was thinking about you.  Instead, he locked the phone and tossed it onto the leather seat beside him.  “Absolutely not.”  He started the car.

 

Ten years.  That was the number he kept coming back to.  Ten years older than her.   Ten years that suddenly seemed less like an insignificant difference and more like a canyon.  And Willow was a college student.  A beautiful, confident, impossibly young college student who probably had half the men on campus trying to get her attention.  Michael laughed under his breath.

 

“Compete with twenty-year-olds?   Right.”

 

At the next red light, he reached for his phone again.  He stared at it.  Then put the phone face down again.  Someone had warned him about Willow.   Many men have tried.   Many men have failed.  Michael took the warning as permission to walk away before he became one of those pathetic, faceless men.  Besides, he had plenty of women in his life.  He didn't call her.

He didn't delete her number, either.  Instead, he went on with his life.  But every so often, usually when he least expected it, Willow Valoir slipped through the carefully locked door of his mind.

 

Michael's days rarely belonged entirely to him.  Acting had been his first love, and nothing had changed that.   But plenty of other things competed for his attention.  His forty-foot yacht was one of them.  He’d grown up on the West Coast, where the ocean had been part of everyday life.  Chicago had no ocean, but Lake Michigan was close enough.

 

On summer evenings, he often stood barefoot at the helm, a drink in his hand and the wind in his face.  Sometimes friends came along.  Sometimes a woman.   There was always laughter.  Music.  Food.  He had no shortage of company.  Yet sometimes, standing beneath the stars with Chicago glowing in the distance, his mind wandered somewhere else entirely.

To Willow.

He would grip the wheel a little tighter.

“Ridiculous.”

Then he'd turn up the music.

 

Cooking was another escape.  Michael could spend hours in a grocery store.  He'd run his fingers over produce, inspect fish, argue with himself over olive oil, and come home with twice as much food as he needed.  His mother had taught him that food could turn a house into a home.  His high school friends hadn't understood it.  A guy his size, standing in a kitchen with an apron tied around his waist, had been an easy target.

“You're supposed to be playing football, Kane.”

“Put that spoon down and get on the field.”

Then they'd tasted his cooking.  The teasing stopped.  After that, they always showed up hungry.  Michael still smiled when he thought about it.  There had been a time when he thought he might become a chef.  Then movies came along.  Movies won.

 

But his mother's lessons never left him.  Neither did the memory of what happened when his father walked away.  Michael remembered his mother's face when she sat at the kitchen table surrounded by unpaid bills.  He remembered the quiet conversations with her dad after she thought he and his brother were asleep.  He remembered her counting money.  Again.  And again.  Until finally she pushed the bills aside, lifted her chin, and said, “We'll figure it out.”  She did.  She always did.

 

Michael had spent his adult life making certain he would never have to sit at a kitchen table wondering whether there would be enough money to keep a roof over his family's head.  Real estate came first.  Apartment buildings and homes in New York.  Residential properties in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, Lake View, and Gold Coast neighborhoods.  Commercial holdings in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.  And always, always, he made sure his mother never wanted for anything.

Then came ELL.

Eat Well.

Live Well.

Love Well.

He built the streaming network around what he believed made life worth living.  It worked.  So did the chain of fitness clubs he eventually opened across the country.  He called them Workout to Wellness.  Never gyms.  Clubs.  Michael liked the distinction.  But none of those things meant as much to him as the causes he quietly supported.

 

Veterans.  The sick.  The hungry.  The homeless.  Children growing up without fathers.  When someone needed help, Michael rarely asked how much it would cost.  He simply wrote the check.  Two causes touched him more deeply than most.   Deserted, an organization that helped women with children whose husbands had abandoned them, and the Center for the Cure of Multiple Sclerosis. 

 

In high school, Michael had fallen hard for a girl who was later diagnosed with MS.  He'd never forgotten watching the disease take pieces of her life away.  Money could not change everything.  But it could change some things.  So, he gave.  His time.  His name.  His money.  Whatever he could.

 

When Michael thought about home, he didn't picture one of his elegant Chicago properties.  He pictured San Francisco.  He could still smell the salt air.  Still hear the ocean.  Still see his mother's old beach house with its peeling paint and crooked floors before she transformed it.

After Charles Kane walked out, Marie Kane had taken what little money she had, borrowed what she could from her parents, and bought the most run-down beach house she could find.

 

Then she went to work.  She cooked.  She catered.   She scrubbed.   She painted.  She repaired.  And her two boys and their friends helped.  And somehow, little by little, she turned that battered old house into a place where Michael and his brother felt safe.   

There were beloved dogs underfoot.  Friends coming through the door.  Family crowded around the table.  Food everywhere.  And fireplaces.  So many fireplaces.  Michael could still see his mother sitting in a big chair in front of one while telling stories and laughing, her eyes sparkling.

He could still hear her laughter.  Those nights had been warm.  Not because the fireplaces crackled.  Because she was there.  Because they were together.   Because they laughed and felt safe.   Because home had felt like something you could touch.  Years later, Michael realized he'd been chasing that feeling ever since he left.

 

He'd found money.  Success.  Beautiful houses.  Beautiful women.  But not that.  Not home.  For five years, he had tried to build it with Blair Bianca.  He'd loved her.  At least he thought he had.  

She was beautiful and so graceful!  He loved her long, flowing tresses and the way she moved in bed.  She could do things with her body that drove him wild.  They'd shared life, a home, holidays, a bed.  But Michael had wanted more.  One night, he'd finally said it.

“I want children.”

Blair had looked up from her wine glass.

“Michael…”

“I mean it.”

She shook her head.

“Pregnancy would ruin my career.  You know I love dancing.  Ballet is my life.”

He'd stared at her.

“You don't want children?”

“Not now.”

“And later?”

She hadn't answered.  Michael had waited.  Then waited some more.  Eventually, there was nothing left to wait for.  One day, Blair left him for a woman she said she loved.  All he could think of was his father walking out on his mother.  On him.  On his brother.  

He never would have believed it possible, but he instantly stopped feeling anything for her.  He didn't hate her; he just didn't care about her any longer.   The Hollywood gossip machine did the rest.  Michael heard the whispers.  The jokes.  The cruel little comments.  

He'd learned exactly how quickly a person's private life could become public entertainment.  After that, he became careful.  Very careful.

 

Women wanted him.  He knew that.  He saw it in the way they looked at him across restaurants, in the messages waiting on his phone, in the invitations that arrived without him asking.  But the women who wanted him didn't seem to interest him.  And the women he wanted?  Those were the dangerous ones.

 

Willow was dangerous.

 

He wasn’t up for dangerous.   He could have filled his bed with women who were willing to be there.  But when he closed his eyes, he saw Willow.  That beauty mark at the corner of her mouth.  Them there eyes.  That face.  He would lie in bed staring at the ceiling, annoyed with himself.

“She's a college kid.”

He'd roll onto his side.

“Too young.”

Onto his back again.

“Too beautiful.”

He'd close his eyes.

“Too much trouble.”  And then she'd appear in his mind again.

He opened his eyes.

“Damn it.”

He wanted her.

That was the part he didn't want to examine too closely.  Because wanting Willow didn't feel like wanting other women.  It felt deeper.  More dangerous.  And after Blair, Michael had no intention of making himself vulnerable again.  He wanted women.   Lots of women.   

Women who wouldn't ask for forever.  Women who wouldn't make him build a future around them.  Women who wouldn't have the power to break him.  Willow had the power to do all three.   That alone was enough to keep him away.

 

****

 

Michael owned a private supper club with two other investors, and the kitchen was one of his favorite places in the building.  He could disappear there for hours.  He'd stand beside the chefs, taste a sauce, adjust a seasoning, ask questions.  Sometimes he'd grab an apron and join them.

“You're supposed to be the owner,” one of the chefs teased him.

“I am.”

“You're washing dishes.”

“I own the dishes, too.”

The chef laughed.  Michael smiled.

For a while, he forgot about Willow.  Then he'd see a woman across the dining room.  Reddish hair.  Slim figure.  A familiar tilt of the head.  His heart would jump before his brain caught up.  Not her. 

He worked out four days a week.  He directed movies.  He accepted acting roles.  He sailed.  He cooked.  He went to dinners, parties, and meetings.  His calendar was full.  His life was full.  

And still, every day, a moment came when the thought of Willow stopped him cold.  It happened one afternoon as he drove past Lake Shore University.  He saw her before he realized it was her.

Willow.

Walking beside a tall Asian man.  The man's arm was draped casually around her neck.  She laughed.  Michael's foot came off the accelerator.  For one stupid second, he simply watched.  The man leaned closer.  Willow laughed again.  Michael's jaw tightened.

“Who the hell is that?”

He knew it shouldn't matter.  It wasn't his business.  He wasn't her man.  He hadn’t even called her.  Still, something hot and ugly twisted in his chest.  He drove on.  But that night, he lay in bed staring at the ceiling.  The image returned.  Willow laughing.  The man's arm around her.  He turned onto his side.  Closed his eyes.   Opened them again.  At two in the morning, he sat up.

“Get over it.”

He got out of bed and poured himself a drink.  At three, he was still awake.  At four, he was still thinking about her.  And that was when Michael finally understood the real problem.   It wasn't that Willow was too young.  It wasn't that she was too beautiful.  It wasn't even that she might be difficult.

The problem was that he wanted her.  And he'd spent five years learning exactly how dangerous it was to want someone badly enough to need them.  He took a long swallow of his drink. 

“No.”

He said it aloud this time.

“No, I'm not doing this.”

He would date other women.  Enjoy himself.  Keep things simple.  No complications.  No promises.  No heartbreak.  Willow Valoir would stay exactly where she belonged.  At the very back of his mind.  He put down his glass.  Turned off the light.  And lay awake aching for her.

"When a man loves a woman

Can't keep his mind on nothin' else"—Percy Sledge—1966

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© 2020, Jade Love

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