Captivation

Captivation Part 24

Both men were silent for a few seconds. Jared tugged at his ear and than ran his hand across his jaw line as his reasons for seeking Caitlin out that first time they had met resurfaced with a vengeance. It was stupid for a grown man, with years of hard earned experience, to fall so easily for a woman out of reach. He was not the type to succumb to the stuff of dreams. Fanciful dreams. But for one fraction of a second, he had nearly believed that his dream was within reach. It was possible. He had nearly believed that men like him deserved women like her in their lives.

"Why did you tell her to back off?" Douglas asked quietly and then pushed again. "Why seek her out, why go to all that trouble just to tell her to back off?" It had taken Douglas this long to figure why Jared had warned Caitlin off. He should have figured it out sooner. All he'd had to do was put himself in Jared's place, then things would have made sense a lot sooner. But instead he had been so caught up in why his friend, a usually amiable man, had been deliberately rude, now on more than one occasion, to a young slip of a girl. Jared's years of experience had taught him how to handle groupies. He was usually kind and gentle when he let them down, he usually did the 'it's not you, it's me' routine in such a way that everyone thought he was affable and likable.

"What the fuck do you mean, why?" Jared got to his feet and turned his back on Douglas. Jared braced his arms by plantings his palms on the balustrade and looked out into the inky blackness as he murmured. "It's bloody obvious why!" Self-preservation being the key. Though he was loathe to voice that element.

Douglas took the two steps that took him to standing alongside his friend. "Not to me, it isn't!" He said quietly as he leaned his hips against the balustrade.

"What's it matter?" Jared hedged not bothering to look at Douglas, and instead just staring out into the ink dark night. Jared should have known that Douglas would see through him, even with so little light to help. He should have known that they knew each other inside out.

"You've never warned any woman off in the past." Douglas reminded quietly. Now as he heard the undercurrent in Jared's voice, now Douglas was pretty sure he knew why Jared had spoken to Caitlin. But he wanted to see whether Jared was going to be honest about it or continue to hide his reasons and pretend it was the right thing to do. "So why start with Caitlin Fonseca?"

Jared said nothing. He felt stupid for taking that risk back then, knowing as he did that the possibility of a woman like Caitlin genuinely wanting to date a man with Jared's background would be slim.

Douglas ignored the silent message his friend was sending him. Douglas continued. "My take is that you, like me, know that women like her don't get involved with men like us! They aren't the type to hang out with guys like us. We definitely aren't the type that mummy and daddy would want their little princesses to be with? Let alone get involved with for the long haul. "

"Well, if you know that, why the fuck are we having this conversation?" Jared grumbled.

Douglas ignored that question as he continued to put into words something both men knew but had never spoken about. "She's unobtainable. The kind of woman who is everything, that if we were honest, we want in our lives, but given our backgrounds, we know we can't have because we don't think we deserve them!"

Jared exhaled silently. Both men were quiet. What Douglas said was spoken from the heart. Jared could not dispute Douglas' statement for he shared that view. It was a bit like looking at an up market magazine on fancy home designs and knowing that while you now had the money you'd never have the class to live with something similar. He and Douglas may have gone from being poor children, to having enough money to cater for most of their whims. But deep down they still felt like outsiders because their background had left them believing they did not deserve the kind of women they aspired to wanting in their lives. Women from Caitlin's world were highly unlikely to hook up with guys with their background. Yeah, they'd flirt. Maybe go on the odd date just so they could tell their friends about the date. But have a long-term relationship? Unlikely. Marry? Not a chance.