He reached down to anchor my hips against his, aggressive hardness nudging into a lush, intimate ache. I quivered and began to breathe in long sighs. Remembering what it had been like – the way he had filled me – I was overcome with disorienting heat, and all I wanted to do was sink to the floor with him and have him take me right there. I welcomed the stroke of his tongue, opened for it, and a groan resonated in his throat. His hand slid to my breast.
Dimly realizing that the situation was about to blaze out of control, I struggled and pushed at him until his arms loosened. Panting, I wrenched free. Just as he reached for me again, I held up a staying hand, my fingers trembling.
“Wait… Wait…” I was breathing as if I’d sprinted a hundred yards. So was Joe. I made my way to a big upholstered chair and sat on the arm of it. My legs were weak. Every nerve shrilled in protest. “I don’t think we can talk without a buffer zone. Please, just… stay over there and let me say a couple of things, okay?”
Sliding his hands in his pockets, Joe gave me a nod of assent. He began to pace slowly.
“Just to be clear,” I said, my face throbbing hotly, “I was more than satisfied that night. You’re great in bed, as I’m sure a lot of women have told you. But I want an ordinary guy, someone I can be sure of, and you… you are not that guy.”
The pacing stopped. Joe gave me a confounded glance.
I licked at my dry lips and tried to think over the clamor of my pulse. “You see, it’s like… a long time ago, my mother wanted a Chanel bag for her birthday. She taped a magazine picture of it to the fridge and never stopped talking about it. My stepfather bought it for her. She kept it on the top shelf of her closet in the special protective cover it came with. But she never carried the bag. So a few years later I asked her why the Chanel bag had always stayed in the closet, and why she’d never taken it out. She said it was too nice for every day. Too fancy. She didn’t want to worry about it getting damaged or lost, and besides that, it didn’t go with any of her clothes. It didn’t fit who she was.” I paused. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
Joe shook his head with baffled annoyance.
“You’re the Chanel bag,” I said.
His scowl deepened. “Let’s drop the metaphors, Avery. Especially ones where I’m in a damn closet.”
“Yes, but do you get what I —”
“I want a real reason for why you won’t go out with me. Something I can understand. Like you don’t like the way I smell, or you think I’m an asshole.”
Looking down at the fabric of the chair, I traced the geometric pattern with the tip of my fingernail. “I love the way you smell,” I said, “and you’re not at all an asshole. But… you are a player.”
An unaccountably long pause followed before I heard his bewildered reply.
“Me?”
I lifted my head. I hadn’t expected him to look so stunned.
“Where did you get that idea?” he asked.
“I’ve been with you, Joe. I’m a personal witness to your hookup skills. The conversation, the dancing, the way you knew exactly how to play it so I’d feel comfortable with you. And when we were in bed, you had a condom conveniently ready, right there on the nightstand, so there was no pause in the action. Obviously you’d figured out every step beforehand.”
He shot me an affronted glance, color heightening his tan to a shade of rosewood. “You’re mad because I had a condom? You’d rather have done it without one?”
“No! It’s just that the whole thing was so… so practiced. So smooth. A routine you’ve perfected.”
His voice was quiet but biting. “There’s a difference between having experience and being a player. I don’t score women. I don’t have a routine. And setting my wallet on the nightstand doesn’t make me fuckin’ Casanova.”
“You’ve been with a lot of women,” I insisted.
“How are you defining ‘a lot’? Is there a number I’m not supposed to go over?”
Stung by the note of scorn, I asked, “Before last weekend, had you ever slept with a woman the first time you met her?”
“Once. In college. The rules were understood beforehand. Why does that matter?”
“I’m trying to make the point that sex doesn’t mean the same thing to you that it does to me. This was the only one-night stand I’ve ever had, not to mention the first time I’ve slept with someone since Brian. You and I have never even been out on a date. Maybe you don’t think of yourself as a player, but compared to —”
“Brian?” He looked at me alertly.
Regretting my slip of the tongue, I said curtly, “My fiancé. I was engaged, and we broke it off. That’s not important. My point is —”
“When did that happen?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I stiffened as Joe began to approach me.
“When?” he insisted.
“A while ago.” I stood from the chair and took a step back. “Joe, the buffer zone —”
“When was the last time you slept with him? With anyone?” He reached me, taking hold of my arms as I shrank back. I ended up against the bookshelves, crowded by his big frame.
“Let go,” I said faintly. My gaze ricocheted as I tried to look anywhere but directly at him. “Please.”
Joe was ruthless. “One year?” A pause. “Two?” As I kept silent, he stroked my upper arms, his warm hands bringing up gooseflesh. His voice turned gentle. “More than two years?”
I had never felt more vulnerable or mortified. Too much of my past had just been revealed, along with an avalanche of self-doubt and naïveté. As I wilted in the heat of exposure, it occurred to me that I may have judged him differently from how a more emotionally secure woman would have.
I threw a longing glance at the door, desperate to leave. “We have to get back to the party —”
Joe pulled me against him. I writhed in protest, but his arms tightened, restraining me easily. “I understand now,” I heard him say after a moment. Although I wanted to ask what, exactly, he thought he understood, I could only stand there in a trance. A minute passed, and another. I began to say something, but he hushed me and kept holding me. Clasped securely against the rise and fall of his chest, steeped in his body heat, I felt myself relaxing.
I was filled with the bittersweet knowledge that this was the last time he would ever hold me. After this we would cut our losses. We would put the memory of that night behind us for good. But I was going to remember this embrace, because it was the best, safest, warmest feeling I’d ever had in my life.
“We slept together too soon,” he said eventually. “My fault.”
“No, it wasn’t —”
“It was. I could tell you didn’t have much experience, but you were willing, and… hell, it felt too good to stop. I wasn’t trying to play you. I’m —”
“Don’t apologize for having sex with me!”
“Easy.” Joe began to smooth my hair. “I’m not sorry that it happened. Only that it happened too soon for you to feel comfortable with it.” He bent his head and kissed the soft skin around my ear, making me shiver. “It wasn’t casual,” he murmured. “Not for me. But I would never have let it go so far if I’d known it would scare you.”
“It didn’t scare me,” I said, nettled by the implication that I was behaving like some terrified virgin.
“I think it did.” His hand went to the back of my neck, kneading the small muscles gently, easing the ache into pleasure. It was all I could do not to arch and purr like a cat.
I tried to summon more indignation. “And what do you mean, you could tell I didn’t have experience? Did I do something wrong? Was I a disappointment? Was I —”
“Yeah,” Joe said, “it’s a hell of a disappointment when I come so hard, I see stars. It was such a downer that I’ve been chasing after you ever since.” He braced his hands on either side of me, gripping the edges of the bookshelf.
“It’s over now,” I managed to say. “I think we should chalk it up to – to a spontaneous mome
nt —” I broke off with an incoherent sound as he leaned forward to kiss my neck.
“It can’t be over when it never even started,” he said against my skin. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, brown-eyed girl: You’re going to answer the phone when I call. You’re going to let me take you out, and we’re going to do some talking. There’s too much we don’t know about each other.” He found a pulse, and his lips lingered on the tiny, rampant rhythm. “So we’re going to take it slow. I’ll get to know you. You’ll get to know me. And then it’s up to you.”
“It’s too late,” I managed to say in between shivering breaths. “Sleeping together ruined the getting-to-know-you part.”
“It’s not ruined. It’s just a little more complicated.”
If I agreed to go out with him again, I was asking for heartbreak. Begging for it. “Joe, I don’t think —”
“No decisions right now,” he said, his head lifting. “We’ll talk later. For now…” He retreated a step and held out his hand. “Let’s go back out there and have dinner. I want a chance to prove that I can behave around you.” His hot gaze chased over me. “But I swear, Avery Crosslin… you don’t make it easy.”
Dinner was an elaborate six-course affair, with a piano-and-violin duet playing in the background. The tent had been decorated in black and white, with white phalaenopsis orchid centerpieces, all of it a perfect setting for the art auction. I sat with Joe at a table for ten, along with Jack, Ella, and a few assorted friends.
Joe was in a relaxed good mood, at times casually resting his arm at the back of my chair. The group was chatty and animated, making small talk with the ease of people who did it often, who knew exactly how to keep the conversation fluid. As the Travis brothers exchanged quips and good-natured jabs, it was obvious that they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company.
Joe recounted a recent road trip he’d taken to do photos for a Texas magazine’s “bucket list” issue, featuring activities and places that no Texan should miss during his life, among them to go two-stepping at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, eat chicken-fried steak topped with white gravy at a particular diner in San Antonio, and visit Buddy Holly’s grave in Lubbock. Ella volunteered that she didn’t like white gravy on her chicken-fried steak, at which point Jack half covered his face. “She eats it dry,” he confessed, as if it were blasphemy.
“It’s not dry,” Ella protested, “it’s fried. And if you ask me, battering and deep-frying cube steak and drowning it in biscuit gravy is the worst —”
Gently, Jack laid his fingers over her mouth. “Not in public,” he cautioned. As he felt the shape of her grin, he promptly removed his hand and kissed her.
“I’ve eaten chicken-fried steak for breakfast,” Joe volunteered. “With two fried eggs on the side.”
Jack gave him an approving glance. “That there’s a real man,” he told Ella.
“That there is a cardiovascular tragedy waiting to happen,” she retorted, making her husband grin.
Later, as Ella and I walked to the restroom together, I remarked, “There is no shortage of testosterone at that table.”
Ella smiled. “It’s the way they were raised. The oldest brother, Gage, is just the same. But don’t worry: Despite all the brawn and bluster, Travis men are pretty enlightened.” With a rueful grin, she added, “By Texas standards.”
“So Jack helps with things like household chores and changing the diapers?”
“Oh, absolutely. But there are certain man-rules, like opening the door, or holding your chair, that are never going to change. And since Joe is obviously interested in you, I’ll tell you right now, don’t bother trying to split the check when he takes you out. He’d sooner commit hari-kari with a steak knife.”
“I don’t know if Joe and I will go out,” I said cautiously. “It’s probably better if we don’t.”
“I hope you do. He’s a terrific guy.”
We exited the tent and walked along the flowered pathway to the house. “Would you say he’s a player?” I asked. “A heartbreaker?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.” After a pause, Ella said frankly, “Women like Joe, and Joe likes women, so… yes, there have been one or two who wanted more of a commitment than he was willing to give. Let’s face it, a lot of women would snap him up right away just because of the Travis name.”
“I’m not one of them.”
“I’m sure that’s one of the reasons Joe likes you.” We stopped beside an outdoor steel sculpture made of thick plates almost fifteen feet high, its edges curved and shaped in organic lines. Ella’s voice lowered. “The Travises set quite a store by normalcy. They want to be part of the real world, experience it like everyone else, which is practically impossible at their level. Most of all they want to be treated like regular people.”
“Ella… they’re not regular people. I don’t care how much chicken-fried steak they eat, they’re just not. The money, the name, the looks… nothing about them is normal, no matter how they pretend otherwise.”
“They’re not pretending,” Ella said thoughtfully, “it’s more like… a value they want to live by. Trying to erase the distance between themselves and other people. They keep their egos in check, and they try to be honest with themselves.” She shrugged and smiled. “I figure they deserve some credit for making the effort… don’t you?”
Ten
A
t nine o’clock on Monday morning, Ryan Chase arrived at the Crosslin Event Design studio, determined to do or say whatever was necessary to “solve the problem” and move on. Except that a wedding wasn’t supposed be a problem, it was supposed to be joyful. A union of two people who wanted to spend their lives together.
However, at this point in my career, I had learned that some weddings didn’t match the fairy-tale template. So the goal in this case was to figure out what was possible. What might be appropriate for a bridegroom who viewed his wedding as an obligation.
I welcomed Ryan into the studio and introduced him to Sofia, who would be the only other person present at the meeting. I had told everyone else, including Steven, not to come in until noon. As we showed Ryan around, he seemed pleasantly surprised by the studio, looking closely at our renovations, the rows of factory windows left intact. “I like this place,” he said. “I thought everything was going to be pink.”
Sofia and I laughed.
“We have to live here,” I said, “so it had to be comfortable and not too fussy. And on occasion, we do plan events other than weddings.”
“It’s nice that you kept some of the industrial elements.” Ryan glanced up at a couple of exposed pipes overhead. “I do a lot of restoration projects. Old courthouses, theaters, and museums. I like buildings with character.”
We sat on the blue sofa, while a video monitor played a photo stream from past weddings that the studio had planned and coordinated. “Ryan,” I began carefully, “I’ve given a lot of thought to your circumstances. Every wedding comes with a certain amount of built-in stress. But when you add the stress of Bethany’s pregnancy, and the drama Hollis brings to the table, it’s going to be…”
“A nightmare?” he supplied.
“I was going to say ‘challenging,’” I said wryly. “Have you considered talking Bethany into an elopement? Because we could arrange something simple and romantic, and I think it would be much easier on you.”
Sofia shot me a startled glance. I knew she was wondering why I would risk the loss of a huge opportunity for our business. But I had to bring up the idea of eloping – I couldn’t have lived with myself otherwise.
Ryan shook his head. “There’s no way Bethany would ever go for that. She told me she’s been dreaming her whole life about a big wedding.” He relaxed a little, his blue eyes warming several degrees. “But it was nice of you to mention it. Thanks for taking my feelings into consideration.” This was said without a trace of self-pity, only a matter-of-fact friendliness.
“Your feelings are important,” I said. “And so are your opin
ions. I’m trying to get a sense of how much involvement you’ll want in the wedding-planning process. Some men prefer to take part in every decision, whereas others —”
“Not me,” he said flatly. “I’ll leave all that to Bethany and Hollis. Not that I’d have a choice, anyway. But what I don’t want is for the wedding to turn into something…” He paused, trying to think of the right word.
“Una paletada hortera,” Sofia supplied. At our questioning glances, she said, “There’s not really a phrase for it in English… the best translation is ‘a shovelful of tacky.’”