Naked Love

by Jones, Lisa Renee

  And the woman who made them this way.

  Our eyes meet, and she lifts her chin. The deal is off, those shrewd eyes tell me from across the room. No amount of book restorations or carving installations will save us now. No amount of money will repair the trust we’ve broken.

  I should have let her go, but I imprinted early on humiliation.

  “Wait,” I tell her, wiping my cheeks, useless because they must be streaked with black. “I’m sorry. Don’t judge them by this, please. It was a bad night. A strange night.”

  “I’m not judging them,” she says, her voice as stiff as starch. “I’m judging you.”

  “Yes,” I say, pleading now. “It’s my fault, not theirs.”

  I don’t actually know whose fault it is or if blame is a thing we can own. It doesn’t matter, because my heart is with Christopher and his ambition. My heart is with Sutton and the wild horse he tamed. My heart is in that library, but even that I was willing to give up for these two men. Of course it’s love. Only love could hurt this much.

  “I was young once,” she says. “So I’ll tell you this. Sometimes you need to walk away. Maybe you don’t see it right now, but those boys are dangerous. They will tear apart anything in their path to get what they want. Even you.”

  14

  Mr. Valedictorian

  Blue offers to take me back to the hotel, but there’s a pretty young woman with tired eyes and a large, pregnant belly who waits to the side, so I tell him no. Penny also offers to escort me back, but Damon Scott kind of terrifies me, which is saying something considering the two men who fought each other in front of me.

  Sutton’s lip has been split, but when I reach up to hover over it, he doesn’t flinch. Still in shock, maybe, like he’s fallen into the bay and been dragged out. Or maybe he’s fought too many times in his life to be shocked anymore. “I’ll take you home,” he says.

  I swallow hard. “I’m not… I’m not the kind of girl that men fight over.”

  He shakes his head, a quick dismissal. “That says more about us than it does about you. And nothing good, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to apologize to him?” Christopher stands only six feet away from us, leaning against the curved stone edge of the fountain, staring out at the city’s skyline. It shouldn’t be possible to see his expression in this darkness, but I can tell from the set of his shoulders that he’s melancholy. It makes me long for the hard-edged, cold Christopher.

  The one who breaks my heart but doesn’t look melancholy.

  “No,” Sutton says. “But I’m not going to punch him again. Not tonight.”

  “I suppose that’s the best I can do, but I can’t leave him like this. I’m pretty sure he drove here.”

  Hard blue eyes study the solitary figure. “We can call him a cab.”

  When did it become Christopher against me and Sutton? Maybe from before I even met Sutton. I would have aligned myself with anyone against Christopher. Does that mean what I have with Sutton, this connection, the invisible string that draws me toward him, isn’t real?

  “I can’t leave him here,” I say finally, resigned that I won’t figure out the secrets of the heart tonight. “The way he is now. There’s too much history.”

  A sleek black limo glides into the courtyard. Sutton’s limo.

  I put my hand on his arm, feeling the restraint in his muscles, the heat of his body. “It’s okay. I’ll take an Uber with him. You don’t have to do anything.”

  He looks increasingly remote, the more I try to reassure him. “Bring him.”

  Into the limo? Sutton may have promised not to punch Christopher again, but I’m not sure putting them in a closed metal box going eighty miles per hour is the answer. “We couldn’t.”

  An impatient wave of his hand. “It’s the fastest way. The safest, too.”

  I can’t argue with those points, and I don’t really relish waiting for an Uber in the dark, making small talk with a random stranger—or Christopher, who seems like a stranger.

  He looks up at the stars as I approach him, unmoving even though he must hear my heels on the cobblestone, the red carpet rolled up and put away until there’s another show.

  “Come on,” I say softly. “Let’s get you home.”

  “I’m not drunk,” he says, gesturing to the sky as if that proves a point.

  “Well, you’re not sober.”

  “Go on ahead. I’m not good company tonight.” A humorless laugh bounces off the stone and water of the fountain. And abruptly falls silent.

  I put my hand on his arm, feeling his muscles—so different from Sutton. Sleek where he’s bulky. Tense where Sutton is deceptively casual, reserving his strength for when he needs it. “I don’t have a red and white life preserver, but there’s a limo that will work just as well.”

  He glances over. “Don’t think Sutton would appreciate that.”

  “It was his idea.”

  Christopher remains still, considering. I wonder what scales are in his head right now, weighing the cost of being near me and Sutton. Weighing the return on investment of a ride home.

  I take a step away, hoping he’ll follow. “Remember what you said to me? Can you climb? I need you to climb right now, Christopher. One rung at a time.”

  His eyes are as deep and fathomless as the bay was that night. There might have been sharks in that depth. Or it might have been my imagination, running wild. In the end he stands up and runs a hand through his hair. “We didn’t hurt you,” he says like a statement, even though it’s a question.

  “I’m fine.” That’s a lie, but there are no bruises on my skin. Nothing he can see.

  On the inside I’m hurt in ways I didn’t know were possible.

  It’s natural for me to lie, I almost believe the words myself. From the time I was little I had to tell Daddy I was fine or risk losing my mom. I had to lie to Mom or watch her fall apart. Lying is how I keep the world together. It’s how I survive.

  Sutton has the door open for us when we walk up. He stands a few feet to the side as we get in, both Christopher and me in the very back. Sutton slides in toward the driver, facing us. A rap on the roof, and then we’re driving through downtown Tanglewood. We start the drive in almost-silence, only the muffled sound of the tires on the road to soothe us.

  “How much of that champagne did you drink?” I finally ask.

  “Damon Scott has his own bartender,” Christopher says. “Who kept refilling my drink. And I kept drinking it, which is damn stupid of me. I’ve done a lot of stupid things.”

  “Okay, Mr. Valedictorian. Clearly you’re a sad drunk. That’s something I didn’t know about you. And now that I know it, you aren’t allowed to have liquor.”

  “He’s never held it well,” Sutton murmurs from the other seat.

  “Really?” I ask, curious about this lightweight side of Christopher.

  Sutton looks at me, his blue eyes dark across the limo. “It’s not something he does often. In fact this is only the second time I’ve seen him get drunk. The first time—that was the night we met.”

  “Hell,” Christopher says. Only that.

  “We were at the Den,” Sutton says. “He told me about this woman he knew.”

  My throat goes tight, because I know which woman he’s talking about. Which means that Christopher was as messed up about me as I was about him. Part of me had suspected that, but it was easier to think of him as an unfeeling robot-monster instead of a flesh-and-blood man.

  There’s no jealousy in Sutton’s blue eyes—well, maybe a little. But mostly understanding. He wasn’t clueless when he stepped between us. Definitely not clueless when he bent me over the library counter and spanked my ass with a book.

  “What do we do now?” I ask, sounding lost to my own ears.

  It’s Christopher who answers, his voice bleak. “What we’ve always done. We work. We fix what’s broken. We fight for every goddamn penny.”

  “Your choice,” Sutton says, softer.
“It’s always been your choice what you do here. Whether you go or stay. And which one of us you bring home.”

  I swallow hard, because I already know what I’m going to do. For tonight, at least. Christopher has been a rock of ambition the entire time I’ve known him. Whatever the reason, tonight broke him. I’m not going to leave him alone to face this himself.

  The limo pulls up to a high-rise condo. I know from the sleek glass and the stiff bellhop who lives here, even before Christopher pushes out of the seat. Where does Sutton live? Maybe not somewhere as rustic as a ranch, but I know he must be able to open a window. Must be able to feel the sun and the wind on his face.

  Christopher walks away from the limo without a backward glance. He doesn’t expect me to follow. Maybe he never wants to see me again.

  He didn’t shiver alone in my cabin after pulling me out of the bay.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice low in the back of the limo.

  Sutton’s blue eyes flash. “You’re going with him.”

  Part of me wants to reassure him—I’m not going to sleep with Christopher. I’m only going to make sure he drinks a glass of water and falls asleep in a bed. But I don’t owe that promise to Sutton. And I can’t be one hundred percent sure I’ll keep it.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I say instead, four words that mean four thousand things. They mean there’s something between us, Sutton and me. Something deep and sensual and ancient. They mean I’m loyal to him, as much as I can be, but the debt I owe Christopher is even older than that.

  Sutton’s grip tightens on the leather enough that it creaks under his hold. He’s a mythical beast, barely held by social constraints. “Let me take you to L’Etoile. Or back to my place. Hell, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  Except being with Christopher is where I need to go tonight.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I say again, softer now. This time the words mean something different. I’m sorry. That’s what they say.

  Sutton accepts my apology in cold silence. He steps out of the limo to help me stand, offering his hand when my ankle wobbles on the pavement. Even in anger he won’t let me fall.

  * * *

  I’ve contemplated where Christopher Bardot lives more times than I care to admit. The depths of hell, I would have said once. Looking at the sterile high-rise condominium with its glass surfaces and its black leather, I think I had it right.

  In the fridge I find old take-out containers and a bottle of champagne, unopened, that someone must have given him. It takes some searching to find a drawer with some medicine. I pour him a glass of tap water and hand him two Advils. “Take this.”

  He swallows it without looking at it close or thinking too hard about it. This Christopher is a stranger, one who does what I ask and apologizes for being a bastard. “Thanks.”

  And says thank you, apparently.

  I study his dark eyes, wondering if he fell over the side of the balcony when I wasn’t looking and hit his head. “Are you sure you’re okay? Sutton didn’t knock something loose in the fight?”

  He laughs, a little distant. “Deserved it, if he did.”

  A curved leather couch takes up most of the living space. Christopher stumbles over to it and lies down, and I realize then that I probably won’t have much luck moving him. So I follow him over and sit down by his head, moving a lock of dark hair out of his eyes.

  “You scared me,” I say, soft and serious.

  He looks up at me. “Same.”

  That shakes a silent laugh out of me. “Okay, but I wasn’t the one acting crazy.”

  “No, you were the one holding his hand. The whole damn play, that’s all I could see. There could have been an explosion on that stage, and I wouldn’t have noticed.”

  My cheeks feel hot. “That’s a shame, because it was an amazing play. About love and betrayal and redemption. About doing what’s right, and all the ways we pay for it.”

  “That’s what I saw, too.”

  He’s talking about Sutton holding my hand. Is that the love or the betrayal? Maybe it’s the redemption, being saved from the terrible pattern we were in.

  “I didn’t come to your condo to have sex with you.”

  He smiles a little, his eyes closed. “Didn’t think so. You restrained yourself plenty of other times when I didn’t smell like liquor and hadn’t just ruined your nice business deal.”

  “You couldn’t hear that from the back.”

  “No, but I saw the way Sutton looked. What did you have to promise them?”

  “Some book restorations. Saving the carving behind the library. It doesn’t matter now. She looked pretty pissed about the fight.”

  “We’ll push the deal through.”

  “How?” I ask, almost soundless.

  He hears me anyway. “I don’t know.”

  “If you’re fighting the rich old ladies of the historical society, who’s going to buy the designer purses and overpriced shoes when your mall opens?”

  He doesn’t answer, and I realize he’s fallen asleep. A lightweight, my Christopher. Or maybe he just drank his weight in vodka in that box.

  The linen closet looks downright pathetic with only a spare sheet and a mismatched blanket. I take them both because I’m already shivering in the condo. The thermostat looks like it would require an airplane pilot to navigate, so I cover Christopher with both of them.

  He snores. Not very loud, but enough that I notice. A rumble in his chest. That’s an intimate piece of knowledge I never had before, not even when we shared a bed that first night. I was too out of it after my dip in the bay to wake up. Or maybe I heard him and just didn’t remember.

  It’s possible that I snore, that he heard me do it that night.

  This was his fall into the ocean. Not a literal tumble with a splash in the salt water, but a fall nonetheless. The lowest I’ve ever seen him. How could I not help him back up?

  Part of me wants to search his cabinets and drawers to ferret out his secrets. The other part of me realizes that there wouldn’t be any lying around. He’s a man who holds it all behind those dark eyes, locked behind a thousand doors, each as opaque as the next. What would it be like to get behind them? Maybe I’m only now resigned to the idea that I won’t ever know.

  His bed is just as modern and impersonal as the rest of the condo, a low-slung floating platform that feels like a boat adrift on the ocean. That’s where I curl up beneath a heavy down comforter. The pillow smells like him, something ineffable I recognize even if I can’t name it, and I drift asleep to the comfort of it.

  15

  Hollow Victory

  The shine of the boardroom table reminds me of the flat white of canvas. It’s a place with promise, where something can be made that wasn’t before. Money, usually.

  The first time I was here I was too busy being pissed at Christopher to appreciate the room. In the half hour that Sutton makes me wait for him, I have the time to study the cherrywood table that matches the walls. Made from the same trees, I think. I have the sudden sense that they were built by hand—by Sutton’s hand. That he sawed and sanded these boards. Put whatever this glossy stuff is on top so a sheet of paper can fly all the way across, no friction, all inertia.

  There’s a kind of romance to that idea, that he would have carved this boardroom himself.

  He’s angry at me, something I would know even if he hadn’t given me the message through the receptionist that he would be handling an important phone call before joining me. Even if he didn’t enter the room with his blue eyes flashing and his body vibrating with tension.

  I would know he’s angry because of the way I left him. The way I chose Christopher. At least that’s how it would have seemed to him, and maybe that’s how it is.

  He drops something on the table, and just like that, it glides a little. Magic. “Our construction permit which has been on hold for two weeks, finally got reviewed. And denied.”

  Of course it did. We pissed off some of the most imp
ortant people in the city last night, as well as each other. So much for diplomacy. “Did you by any chance make this table yourself?”

  A frown. “Safety concerns, at least that’s the claim. I figure if we address them, they’ll just come back with something else. The reasoning is just a technicality.”

  “Because I have to wonder, if you did make the table, then you must have made the walls. And who does that? Making walls with their bare hands?”

  “We had the construction crew on hold while we tried to push through the review, and now we’re going to have to tell them to wait longer. Indefinitely, maybe. Are you going to actually discuss this with me or just talk about the damned walls?”

  “The transportation of walls has become something of a personal interest.”

  He wants to say something about the construction crew that will no doubt be important, but he looks over at the wall and blinks. “You move walls the same way, whether you make them yourself or not. With a truck.”

  And that wraps up Sutton in a single sentence. With a truck. Something idealistic enough in him to want an office built by his own hand. And something practical enough not to wonder how it will be done. The grin on my face, I couldn’t stop it for anything. “You’re amazing.”

  He studies me. “Did you and Christopher keep drinking all night?”

  “Slept like a baby, even though his mattress is hard.”

  As soon as I say the words, Sutton’s blue eyes turn to frost. I wish I could take the words back, or explain that we didn’t do anything, that Christopher wasn’t in bed with me. Except that there’s voices coming from the reception area. And then Christopher stands between us.

  “Good morning,” he says, his gaze detached and his suit impeccable.

  He was gone when I woke up this morning, leaving me in his apartment. There was a cup of lukewarm coffee on the counter made with sugar and extra cream, exactly the way I drink it, which was the only sign that he knew I was even there. I ordered an Uber to L’Etoile, where it took a very long shower to feel human again.