Ladies Man

by Katy Evans

  * * *

  We ride across a dirt path up to the crest of a hill, where we can see the rest of the Hill Country before us. As we ride, he talks about growing up here, about the first time he fell off a horse, and I keep telling him it’s so peaceful compared to Chicago. “You can almost hear your own thoughts here,” I say.

  “Yeah?” He raises an eyebrow, as if he intends to find out exactly what those thoughts are.

  He smirks devilishly, but I smirk back just as devilishly, my eyes silently promising him he’ll never know.

  We head up a trail between oaks and cedars, and Trent texts me as we park the horses in a field of wildflowers and sit down to take in the view.

  I need to see you.

  I’m not in the city

  When do you get back?

  I tell him to meet me at my place Friday evening, a week from today. That I want to talk. And then I tuck my phone away, dreading the conversation already.

  “Davis?” Tahoe asks as we fall back on the grass, boosted up on our elbows. He’s staring out at the horizon, his jaw working.

  “Yes.”

  That’s all I say, and apparently that’s all he needs to hear.

  BABY

  That afternoon, while at his parents’ house, I get a call from Wynn saying Rachel went into labor. I leave Livvy with the flowers we were pruning and run into the house. Tahoe’s charging out of his father’s office and he stops when we almost collide at the foyer.

  “You ready?” he asks.

  I nod breathlessly, smiling ear to ear.

  “Let’s go.”

  Eight hours later, Rachel gives birth to an eight-pound, healthy baby boy.

  Kyle Malcolm Saint.

  He’s got eyes that we all predict will stay blue, and a fuzz of light hair we assume comes from his mother.

  After talking about loss and death, Tahoe and I witness this miracle of life and we are the only ones aside from the parents with red eyes.

  Tahoe takes my hand in his, and then moves me closer in an instinctual gesture of comfort. His thigh barely touches mine, but I feel closer to him than when I’m physically closer to another guy. He looks down at me, and his infectious grin sets my own smile free.

  “Rachel is going to be such a great mom,” I vow on my best friend’s behalf.

  His voice is rough with pride. “Are you kidding me? Saint is going to kill it as a dad.”

  And I wonder if I will ever have a baby of my own to love and a husband I adore the way my best friend loves hers.

  And I know. I know what I’ve always known. That this aching, thrilling thing I have for Tahoe won’t ever go away. That I have never in my life wanted a man the way I want Tahoe “T-Rex” Roth.

  That I want the kind of love that Rachel and Saint have, and if I ever have a baby, I want to be so wildly in love with the dad that my only wish is for my child to resemble him as much as he possibly can.

  I’ve always told myself that Trent and I are good. That he’s sweet and I’m happy with him. But in the middle of the hospital, watching my best friend getting kissed by her husband as they hold their firstborn child, I say—fuck good.

  I want fabulous.

  I want every moment to feel like it does when I’m with the man I’m sitting next to right now. Even the sad moments, the hopeless moments, the silent moments or the funny ones, or the deep ones, or the surprising ones—simply every moment, I want that spark that is always there, the sizzle, the light, the joy, that comes with being near HIM.

  Maybe he will never want me in return. Maybe I’m a fool. But I also know that somehow, I’ve also been in a crystal box of my own creation for a while. And nothing has ever lured me out of my box but HIM.

  I’m in love with Tahoe, and Trent will never be him.

  I get to my feet and go text Trent, pushing up our meeting and asking him to come over to my place tonight.

  “I have to get home,” I tell Rachel.

  I kiss her on the cheek, tell her to kiss the baby for me when they bring him back from the nursery, then I say goodbye to Saint, Emmett, Wynn, Rachel’s mom, and Tahoe.

  I say, softly so that only he hears, “I have to go, thank you for Texas.” And when he smiles, I kiss his dimple and leave.

  WHEN GOOD IS NOT ENOUGH

  Back in my apartment, I fall into my couch and lay my head on the back as I wait for Trent to arrive. I’m nervous, both excited about my realization and pained about it too.

  He arrives with a hopeful look on his face.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey.”

  I lead him into my living room.

  “So,” he says, clasping his hands together and raising his brows as he takes the couch opposite mine.

  I bite my lips for a moment, dreading what I have to say. In all of my life, I’ve never been the one to leave someone. I may be snarky or bitchy or grumpy or a thousand things, but I’ve never been the one to say I’m moving on. After being hurt so badly myself, it gives me no pleasure to hurt anyone else. But this includes myself too.

  I don’t know what’s happening with Tahoe. Actually nothing is happening with Tahoe, but I have feelings for him that I can no longer deny.

  I have been trying to find pieces in Trent to love. And there are so many sweet things about him. But what I deeply fear is that I’m not just looking for pieces of him to like. I’m looking for Tahoe in him.

  I search for the words, finding it harder than I thought. I want to tell him that Tahoe likes me with or without makeup. That he nudges me back when I nudge him. In fact, he nudges me first. I want to tell him that I always dream that I’m sleeping naked, facedown, and there’s a man above me, and he’s licking my spine. That I wake up with a start and when I turn around, blue eyes are staring back at me.

  None of these things will matter to Trent.

  I hug my knees to my chest and smile sadly at him. “I wanted to change me by giving myself a chance with you. But that wasn’t the recipe. I should have focused on accepting me. I don’t need to change who I am for you to love me. I shouldn’t,” I say.

  “Not everything, Gina, but making an effort for your partner—”

  “I’ve fallen in love with someone,” I interrupt. “It’s hopeless and I don’t think he’ll ever be able to respond, but I can’t keep on lying to myself about it, and you don’t deserve me lying to you.”

  “Who is he?” he asks, leaning back. He almost looks calm about it, disbelieving, as if I couldn’t possibly have found someone better than him.

  I smile. “Someone who likes my ponytail.”

  There’s not much more to say, I guess. In the end, he hugs me and kisses my cheek, and I do the same, and at least our smiles feel genuine when we say goodbye.

  HALLOWEEN

  I’m not ready to tell my friends that I broke up with Trent.

  Rachel is so busy with Kyle. Wynn may start pressuring me to go after Tahoe. I know her. She always believes that there’s hope in everything. But I just don’t know that there is. One kiss doesn’t change anything. Tahoe kissed me and it was epic and red-hot sparks fired up as if everything inside me went haywire. That doesn’t mean he wants more—that doesn’t mean he can give me more. I now know why he’s not interested in that sort of commitment, but that also doesn’t change the fact that every time I look at him I think, you are so loved by me, you lovely, wounded beast.

  He’s been calling these past weeks since Trent and I broke up. It’s almost as if he can sense I’m available. He can’t stay away—neither can I. We talk constantly, he takes me out for coffee, or I stop by his office, and on many of those occasions, he looks at me with his blue eyes that pierce the space between us and say both a thousand things and nothing at all.

  I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to push for more too aggressively. I sense he needs time to adjust to whatever ways our relationship is changing, and if that’s what he needs, I am willing to wait it out.

  On his birthday, I really wanted to kno
ck on his door with nothing on beneath my trench coat, and just stand there, and let him see me, let him want to take me.

  Instead, I hear he spends it out of town. No partying for Tahoe Roth this year. Which his social media seems to find odd.

  No bash this year @Tahoe Roth? People keep tweeting.

  I tweet him: Happy Birthday @tahoeroth

  He tweets back: Won’t sleep until I figure out what you got me this year ;)

  I reread the tweet a thousand times, feeling different things each time. Amusement, excitement, outrage, arousal. I threw myself at him last year and what…he expects me to do that again this year?

  Does he want me to do it again this year?

  I decide he’s just teasing me—as usual—and try to calm down my hormones.

  To stay busy and keep saving up for my future apartment, I send a mass email to my friends the following week, telling them I’m free for any work they may have, including odd jobs.

  My phone rings almost instantly.

  Tahoe Roth.

  Quelling the kick I get in my heart, I answer.

  “Don’t do that, Regina,” he chides. “Odd jobs. Do you know how many things popped into my mind to ask you for?”

  “No, I don’t want to know. Not everyone’s mind is as filthy as yours.”

  He sighs. “How much do you need?”

  “What? I’m not taking your charity.”

  “Fine. Do my face then.”

  Suddenly, all sorts of X-rated ideas pop into my head too. “Excuse me?”

  “I have this black-and-white masquerade tonight. Do my face. I don’t wear masks, they bug the shit out of me. So you might as well paint it on me.”

  “Oh, ah, okay. Well I have to be done by ten, I have plans with my coworkers.”

  Silence.

  “Eight?” I suggest.

  “My place,” he says.

  At eight, I’m wearing my long white Halloween angel gown with a cute golden halo when I’m taking his elevator. I like Halloween. It’s the only time of the year you get to be anyone but yourself.

  I walk into his place and head down the hall into his bedroom, then I pause and catch my breath at the door. Tahoe is wearing a black turtleneck and black slacks. He’s running a comb through his damp hair when he turns to the door and greets me with a bleak frown.

  Ah. He’s clearly still displeased about my “odd job” mass email.

  “You know you can call me whenever you need anything, right?” he asks, his lowered eyebrows menacing.

  “Yeah.” I bring my makeup kit in and set it down on his bathroom counter. He has the biggest bathroom I’ve ever seen, with a long black granite slab consisting of two sinks spaced out by yards of smooth surface.

  “Not mass email the whole city,” he specifies as he fills the bathroom doorway behind me.

  “It wasn’t the whole city and I want the jobs.” I grin then wave him in and ask him to sit on one of the two leather stools under the granite counter. “So what, did you think something kinky?” I nudge him as I prod him to sit.

  “Very kinky.” Our eyes meet in the mirror.

  “You’ve got sperm in your head, I swear.” I’m laughing, then our eyes hold in the mirror again and the floor starts to feel like quicksand under my feet. All in black, he is the epitome of a dark knight tonight, and if I were the kind of girl to swoon, I would swoon right now. He smells like pine, and soap, and man.

  “So what’s this masquerade…?” I ask as I open the bag with my face paints.

  “First tell me what your plans are.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want you to come with me tonight.”

  “Ooooh…no, no, no.” I shake my head as I start opening all of my kits in search of my black pencils, and Tahoe is staring at me intently.

  “Odd jobs, huh?” he asks then, thickly.

  “I’ll never know what else I’m good at until I try, I guess.”

  His lips curl. He reaches out and strokes one finger down my jaw, his voice oddly tender. “You’re good at hiding.”

  “Me?”

  His finger traces the same path down my jaw again, the touch tingling over me. “All that makeup hiding that beautiful face.” He raises his hands and cups my cheeks and turns me so that our eyes are meeting, not with the mirror between us anymore. He’s looking so deep inside me, I realize no makeup can shield me from this man. Not anymore.

  “You’re even better at it,” I accuse, softly. “You hide in plain sight. Life is all a big amusement park for Tahoe Roth, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.” He smirks and lets go of me, the connection gone. “Regina, come with me tonight.”

  His voice is coaxing and oh, so very sexy. God. There isn’t even a word for the things this guy’s voice does to my stomach.

  “Yeah? Why?” I ask, annoyed on behalf of my body as I lean over him and pick a dark liner.

  “I need you.” His whisper bathes warmly over my face.

  “You always need me,” I bluff.

  He grabs my waist and squeezes as I set the pencil against his forehead. “That’s right. Make yourself unavailable to your coworkers and available to me.”

  I ignore him and scan his features and plan my art. “I’m thinking of a black mask. Also, I forgot to mention that if you want my fabulous makeup artist services, it’s sixty an hour.”

  He pats my waist, but his hand is so big that half of it ends up patting the top of my butt. “Tell you what. I’ll add a zero to that, just because.”

  “Rotund no, T-Rex. But thank you.”

  Before I begin drawing, I spot a black mask past the open door, haphazardly tossed on his bed. “You have a perfectly good mask there. No need for makeup, Tahoe.”

  “I don’t wear masks. I told you. Now come do me.”

  Come do me.

  Oh god! I cannot think straight anymore.

  I scowl and shake my head, but bend down again and set the tip of my pencil to his forehead. “I don’t buy it.”

  “Do you buy that I wanted a reason for you to be here?” His voice turns husky and deep.

  I lower my face and find myself inhaling for balance. “You don’t need a reason. We’re friends.”

  “Are we?” His voice is so soft, it’s the merest break in the silence between us.

  “I don’t know what we are anymore,” I say honestly.

  He remains silent and I raise my eyes. His blue gaze hits me like a Taser, so electric I hear my pencil clatter to the marble floor.

  I curse.

  He slowly bends over and picks it up for me.

  His eyes start sparkling over my expression of frustration, and he passes me the pencil, raising his brows. He smiles a little sardonically, looking into my eyes.

  I hold the pencil tightly. I hold his gaze, hold my breath, hold on to this moment. The seconds tick by to the throbbing beat of my heart when he whispers, “Go on, Regina.”

  Tahoe’s voice is lower than usual, his drawl noticeable.

  He smiles a little and then when he reaches out to rumple my hair, keeps smiling with his eyes the way he usually does, as if I amuse him. Exhaling, I straighten my halo, gather myself, and start to paint him.

  He watches me as I lean in with a dark pencil.

  I draw the outline of a mask across the top of his face. I ease back to survey my handiwork. I’ve been studying his face for minutes when I become aware of that intense gaze of his, crystal clear, fixed on me.

  My breath keeps leaving me.

  It’s not just how gorgeous Tahoe’s eyes are—it’s how they stare so unflinchingly at me.

  I lean close enough to apply the paint and he smells so good I feel lightheaded. His breathing changes a little bit as I apply the black paint slowly to his face, around his eyes, over his skin. I change sides, and he inhales deeply as I lean over again, applying more paint. His hand comes up to grip my waist, and he shuts his eyes and just holds me as I add his mask, the moment exquisitely intimate.

  “Wh
y do you even need a mask when you wear a mask all the time?” I whisper.

  “’Cause you can’t go showing people the worst parts of you. They don’t deserve it, and neither do you deserve to be judged for it.” He looks at me very deeply for the following moment. “You would know, Regina.” He tugs my costume dress. “Who are you?”

  “An angel. Don’t you see my wings?” I turn around, grinning. “They’re invisible. What about you?”

  He shrugs. My smile fades a little when he looks at me.

  I picture him as the Phantom of the Opera. But his scars are not on his skin.

  Silently, he grabs my waist again and pulls me closer so that I can continue drawing his mask. And I think of the Phantom, who thought the girl he loved, Christine, would end up with some other guy named Raoul, because the Phantom wasn’t worthy of her.

  I ache for this beautiful, wounded man that I’ve fallen so hopelessly for.

  For twenty more minutes, I work in silence. But sometimes when my fingertips touch his face to hold him still, I sense him tense, his brows set in a straight line, jaw squaring, lips pinched as if he’s controlling some unnamable force within him.

  When I’m done, he rises to his feet, obviously restless. I watch him walk to his bedroom and put on his black cape, his fingers tying it expertly. I don’t know why I helped him dress up, because all I want is to undress him.

  As I try to quell the desire he causes in me, I hide in his bathroom, storing my makeup. When I come out with my bag, Tahoe is sitting in a chair, watching me, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees.

  I step into the room. “I broke up with Trent,” I blurt out without thinking.

  There’s a long pause, as if the Earth stopped moving.

  He narrows his eyes. “Do you want me to say I’m sorry you broke up with him? I’m not.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I didn’t come here to talk about my failure in relationships.”