“Is there a way to refuse without appearing rude?” Alisha asked the staff member who was holding the menus.
“Refuse?”
“Yes. Is there a problem with my original table? Could I still sit there?”
Across the room, Brandi stood and waved. “Alisha.”
Alisha waved back, but directed her comment to the staff member. “I’d love to join them another night, but not tonight.”
“That party?” In scanning the room, the receptionist saw the woman waving to Alisha, and said, “That’s not where I was told to take you.”
Thank God. Alisha felt awful thinking it. She normally loved getting to know new people, but this was her week to escape. To hide. She could have stayed home if she wanted to pretend to be happy. She wanted to simply be by herself for a few days and not have to worry how anyone else felt, what they thought, or if they considered her responsible for anything.
No guilt. No expectations.
Just me.
“Okay, then, lead the way,” Alisha said. She made an apologetic face toward Brandi and motioned that she had to follow the staff member.
The woman led her to the far corner of the dining room and up a wide, curved glass staircase. Alisha paused at the top to appreciate the floor-to-ceiling windows that provided a panoramic view of the ocean. All the tables were empty, and only one was set. “Are you sure this is the right table?”
“Miss Coventry?”
“That’s me.”
“Then, yes, this is the right table.” She led her to the table and a waiter rushed over to hold the chair out for Alisha.
After taking her seat and putting the napkin on her lap, Alisha scanned the empty room again. “Is it because I’m traveling alone?” This could be an overflow section.
The woman smiled politely without answering, then walked away. The waiter coughed as if covering a laugh, then asked if Alisha would like something from the bar.
A drink sounded like the perfect way to make it through her solitary meal on the top floor of the dining room. “Yes, but I don’t know what. Surprise me,” she said.
The waiter nodded and stepped away.
“I’m glad you like surprises,” a deep male voice said, and Alisha gasped as Brett took the seat across from her.
Brett.
Not imaginary Brett from the hallway. Unless I’ve completely come unhinged.
“How . . . why . . . what are you doing here?” Alisha asked in a strangled voice.
He placed his napkin on his lap and smiled. “Could I convince you that I was in the neighborhood?”
Alisha gripped her hands on her lap. Seeing him again shook her. She’d tried to tell herself that she’d imagined the effect he had on her, but there was no denying the flush that spread up her body or how she could barely breathe. “This isn’t a joke to me, Brett.”
His expression turned serious. “Nor me. I’m here because you’re here. It’s that simple.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the gift he’d picked up from the jewelry store. “I couldn’t let you leave without giving you your third gift. I had it made especially for you.” He placed it on the table between them. “Open it.”
I can’t open it. I can’t go down this road. I promised Rachelle I wouldn’t. I told myself I was stronger than this.
My mother chose a man over everything that should have mattered more to her. She let him ruin her life, my life. Why? Because she felt like this?
I won’t do it. I won’t risk losing a lifelong friendship over a man.
Even this one.
“No,” she said weakly, then cleared her throat and pushed the box back toward him. “Thank you, but no.”
The return of the waiter with a bottle of champagne provided a short reprieve during which Brett attempted to process her response to his appearance. He wasn’t an egomaniac. It was conceivable to him that a woman might not find him attractive, but that wasn’t the case with Alisha. He was experienced enough to recognize desire in a woman’s eyes, and it had been there. When he’d first appeared, the look she’d given him had made him want to haul her to him and carry her off to the nearest bed.
In fact, she was still looking at him with hungry, take-me-now eyes. There was something else, though. An anger he couldn’t understand. Is she angry with me? My family?
She stood. “I should go.”
“No.” He was at her side in a heartbeat, taking her hand in his. That touch, innocent as it was, sent flames of pleasure through him. “Have dinner with me.”
Her hand trembled in his. “I can’t.”
His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “That’s better, I suppose, than ‘I don’t want to.’”
“What I want doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
She blinked several times, pressed her lips together briefly, then said, “You’re not making this easy.”
“Good.” He pulled her closer and wrapped an arm around her waist. She melted against him. Ever so slowly he traced the curve of her collarbone, the exposed length of her neck, then cupped the back of her head. This. This is what I’ve been waiting for. “Because not being with you is slowly killing me.”
When he claimed her mouth, it was everything he’d imagined it would be. Fire leapt inside him, burning away all sense of where he was or who might be watching. There was only her mouth, eagerly opening to his, and the sweet taste of her. Fuck food. She was what he hungered for. Her hands landed on his chest beneath his jacket. The feel of her beneath the thin material of her dress. He wanted it all. Right there if he could pay the world to disappear around them.
She writhed against him, and his cock throbbed with need. Her hands moved upward to encircle the back of his neck as she arched against him. He adjusted his stance to take her more fully into his arms and knocked over a glass on the table.
She broke off the kiss and pulled out of his arms, covering her mouth with her hand. He moved to touch her, but she stepped away. Their ragged breathing drowned out the hum of conversation from the restaurant below. “We can’t do this,” she said, looking close to tears.
“Why?” he demanded.
She brought her hands beneath her eyes as if to wipe away any smeared mascara, then let out a long, shaky breath. “I promised to stay away from you.”
“Who? Spencer? He knows about us.”
Alisha shook her head and picked up a napkin to dab at the corners of her eyes. “There is no us. There can’t be an us.”
Can’t wasn’t a word he’d encountered many times in his life. “Who did you promise?” A man? The idea that she might have a man in her life that he didn’t know about was a sucker punch to his gut.
“Rachelle.”
Relief flooded him. “She’ll get over it.” He went to pull her back into his arms, but Alisha took another step back.
“She won’t. She blames me for Spencer finding out about his father. It was my fault. He wouldn’t know if I hadn’t gone to see your grandmother. Now he’s hurting. Your mother is hurting. Rachelle is trying to hold them all together. Rachelle has been my best friend for most of my life. Stephanie has been more of a mother to me than my own. I can’t risk hurting any of them more than I already have. I love them. I’m sorry. Nothing I feel with you is more important than making sure they’re okay.”
And just like that, Brett felt like a complete and utter asshole. She was putting the happiness of his family before her own. She was easily a million times better a person than he’d ever been.
How do you fuck that?
You don’t.
More than anything, he wanted her to understand that there was no reason for her to feel guilty. Not about going to his grandmother. Not about him. “Rachelle will realize that Spencer would have found out either way. It would have come out when he received his inheritance.”
She gripped the back of one of the chairs to steady herself. “I guess it would have. I just hate how it happened.”
“There was no way you could have known
. Rachelle will see that when things calm down. My mother will, too.”
Alisha nodded, then smiled sadly and looked around the empty room. “You arranged all this? Just to have dinner with me?”
He smiled ruefully and then tried to make her smile by saying, “I was hoping for more than dinner.”
She threw her napkin at him. “That’s—”
“Honest,” he supplied.
She blushed an adorable shade of pink that made him want to kiss her all over again. “Are you staying on the ship?”
“That was the plan.” Although, he was beginning to see that when it came to Alisha, nothing went as planned.
There was a pause while they both gathered their thoughts.
“And now?” she asked with a mixture of longing and sadness in her eyes.
“I could attempt the swim, but I should probably wait until we reach the first port and fly back from there.”
She stayed silent for a long moment, seemingly torn between sadness and apology. “I feel horrible. If I did something that made you feel—”
“Not everything that happens is your fault, Alisha. Don’t take it all on. Sometimes shit just happens, and all we can do is make the best of what we’re dealt.” It was a philosophy born in the realization that he couldn’t protect his family, especially when the betrayals occurred within it.
She cocked her head to one side and frowned. “Really? I had you pegged for more of a control freak. Not freak. But you know what I mean.”
He chuckled, although there was little about their conversation he found amusing. “I do. And I was, but lately I’ve come across several situations no amount of money can fix. That used to be my solution. If I threw enough cash at a problem, it went away. This has been quite the humbling summer for me.”
Alisha looked down at the table and then met his eyes again. “You probably don’t want to have dinner with me anymore, but since we’re both here . . .”
Brett pulled out the chair for her. It took every bit of control in him not to kiss the curve of her neck revealed as her hair fell forward. He pushed her chair in with more force than he’d meant to, and she let out a small surprised sound. “Sorry, still getting my sea legs, I suppose.”
She watched him cautiously as he took his seat across from her. “Just because we’re sharing a meal doesn’t mean that I’ve changed my mind. We can’t . . . I don’t want you to think . . .”
What he’d once seen as indecision was now tangible evidence of her loyalty to his family. As much as he wanted her, he also wanted her to stand strong with her principles. It was a confusing place to find himself. Never in his life had he ever imagined uttering the next words that came out of his mouth. “We have two days at sea before we reach the first port. Let’s be friends. We can spend time together with no expectations of more. Would you like that?”
“Yes.”
He groaned. It figured that she’d chosen then to finally say yes without first saying no.
Chapter Fifteen
After gulping down a fruity glass of liquid courage, Alisha asked Brett if he liked what he did for a living. She expected to see a return of the cocky man she’d met when she’d accompanied Spencer to face the “dragon.”
Instead, he sat back and took a moment to consider his answer. “I’ve never thought much about that. I knew I’d be the one to take over the company for as long as I can remember. It was never a question of if, but how well I’d do when I did.”
She studied his face for a hint of how that made him feel, then guessed based on how she would have felt. “That’s a lot of pressure.”
“The price of being born wealthy,” he said, with a hint of humor in his eyes.
There were layers to his answer that Alisha might have missed had she not spent most of her workday assessing the emotional state of those in her care. Five-year-olds were unfiltered versions of who they’d be later. She liked to think that understanding them gave her a deeper insight into adults who tried to conceal all the same basic drives—hope, fear, anger, pride, along with a desire to be loved and belong. She could read most people, but Brett was a confusing mix of nature and nurture. His confidence bordered on arrogance, but there was another side to him that made her wonder who he would have been had he not been raised with money. “If you weren’t you and you could do anything, what would you do?”
His eyes twinkled, and she knew exactly what he’d thought and held back. It was that gentle humor that made their strong attraction less scary. He wanted her and knew she wanted him, but was playfully respecting her decision. In place of the innuendo, he said, “If I weren’t me . . . I hope I’d be like Spencer. He is building his company from the ground up and doing an amazing job at it. His WorkChat truly has the potential of changing how business is done. He’ll leave his mark on history, and I admire that.”
Alisha’s heart constricted at the sincerity of his appreciation for what his brother was doing. “Have you ever said that to him?”
His features tensed. “I should have. He’s never wanted my input. Recent events have amplified that sentiment. Too little, too late . . . Isn’t that what they say?”
Moved by his concern for Spencer, Alisha reached across the table and gave his hand a supportive squeeze. “He’ll come around. He always felt like he’d been left behind, and discovering he had a different father must make him feel like that was why.”
Brett laced his fingers through hers. “We all felt left behind. Although I didn’t know that Mark was Spencer’s father, I knew my mother had been the one who had cheated. It was why I chose to stay with my father, but I’ll admit that the ease with which she left Eric and me there had a bit of a sting to it.”
Her heart ached for him, and she sought the right words to lessen his pain. “You were older. She might have thought you didn’t need her as much.”
He smiled sadly. “For a long time, I would have agreed with her.”
It was impossible not to fall a tiny bit in love with him right then. A strong man, raised to work for his family, struggled to connect with them. She’d always viewed the separation of the Westerlys from Rachelle’s side and thought it was sad for her, but it now felt unnecessarily tragic all around. He loved them. They loved him. How could that not be enough? “Is that what you discovered this summer? One of the things money can’t fix?”
Appetizers arrived, and the moment was lost. They took in the glass tower of jumbo shrimp placed between them.
“Does one even need a meal after this?” he asked, looking relieved.
She decided to drop her earlier question and simply enjoy what was turning out to be a delightful evening. “I’m willing to find out.” She dunked a shrimp into the sauce, then bit a large chunk of it off with exaggerated enthusiasm.
He laughed and reached for one. “You are a joy. I’m used to women who are so obsessed with how they look that they don’t eat.”
She froze.
He froze.
She waited.
He swallowed hard, then smiled with pride as if he’d just solved an impossible equation. “Luckily, you naturally have what they work for.”
She tried not to smile back, but gave in to the charm of his attempt. “Good save. But it’s not easy for me, either. You’re looking at the product of three to five workouts a week.”
His gaze roamed over her appreciatively. “Looking is the easy part. Not touching is where the challenge is.”
“You got that right.” A blush warmed Alisha’s cheeks at her brash remark. She’d never considered herself a particularly flirtatious person, but he made her exquisitely aware of her sexuality. Even as she said no, he drew her to him.
“Was that a compliment?” Laughter mixed with desire in his eyes.
She dipped another shrimp into the sauce. “Do you need to hear one?”
His smile widened. “Maybe. What does it for you? My strong jaw?” He turned his head so she could appreciate his profile, then turned back and flexed beneath his expensive suit. “My
build? Abs like mine require a committed effort. They’re quite impressive if you change your mind and decide to feel them for yourself.”
She popped the shrimp in her mouth and chewed it before answering cheekily. “I’ll take your word for it. Did you need extra luggage to bring that oversize ego with you?”
“I bet it’s my ass. I’ve been told I have a good one.”
Alisha laughed. “You sound so serious.”
He frowned. “I am.”
She laughed harder. “I can’t tell if you’re kidding.” When he didn’t smile, she was sorry that she’d made fun of him. Most people, even good-looking people, were insecure about how they looked. She felt awful. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. You know you’re gorgeous.”
His smile returned, and he winked. “I knew I could get you to say I’m gorgeous.”
It was impossible not to smile back at him. “You’re so bad.”
He wiggled his eyebrows up and down. “You have no idea.”
She shook her head and laughed again. “I didn’t picture you being this much fun.”
His smile faded. “People don’t tend to describe me that way.”
She instinctively gave him the same encouraging smile she used on the first day of school with new students. “Then you should let them get to know this side of you. Your whole family is naturally very funny. Spencer is quick with a joke. Rachelle’s humor is dry like yours. Nicolette has a cutting wit your mother is always trying to rein in.” She paused as she realized what she was doing. “I’m sorry. I’m explaining your own family to you. It’s not like you don’t know them.”
He reached over and took her hand. “Alisha, you are by far one of the nicest people I’ve ever known, and yet I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve apologized since we’ve met. Stop. If I have a problem with something, I’ll say it. Trust me, speaking my mind has never been an issue.” He caressed the inside of her wrist with his thumb. “But this is about you. What are you sorry for that makes you feel everything else is your fault as well?”
No one had ever looked beyond her “good friend, good person” reputation and asked her that. Certainly never a man. And she had never trusted people enough to let them bear witness to her private shame. There was something about Brett, though, that made her want to be honest with him. He’d taken care of her when she was sick, come to see her when she was sad. What they had, whatever it was, deserved that much. “My father was a sporadic and abusive presence in my life. My mother took what he dished out, and so did I. I never stood up to him. My mother died without ever doing that, either.” She looked down at their linked hands. “Sometimes I wonder if it would have all been different if I had turned him in. It might have been enough to break my mother free of him. I’ll never know.”