A Fairbanks Affair (An Odds-Are-Good Standalone Romance, #3)

by Katy Regnery

  He takes a step forward, his tongue darting out to slicken his lips as he continues to stare at me, and I feel it in my gut and in my hot, sluicing blood: a dizzy sensation—like spinning or falling, but without moving. It’s all happening on the inside of me, and it’s...divine.

  Kiss me.

  My eyes flick to his lips, and I step closer to him.

  Kiss me, Trevor. Please.

  My breathing is shallow and erratic, making my chest puff and fall quickly. My pulse races, and my heart thunders in my ears. I lean my head back, my eyes still laser-locked on his.

  “Trevor,” I whisper. “T.”

  He freezes, blinking at me. “Faye, I...”

  “It’s okay,” I tell him, my voice low and breathy, my face still upturned toward his.

  “No. It’s...um...I...I can’t.” He clenches his jaw, and his eyebrows furrow.

  “O-Oh.” My God, was I practically begging him to kiss me! A potential business partner! Have you lost your mind, Faye? I take a step back, shaking my head in embarrassment. “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says. His eyes are darker now, dilated, wide, and troubled. “The timing’s just...”

  “No need to explain.” I clear my throat. “It’s for the best.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. I’m still hoping to acquire you.” Heat flares behind his eyes, and I realize the unintentional double entendre in my words. “No, no! Not you. I—I mean...your company.”

  His shoulders relax, and he tilts his head to the side, giving me a small, teasing smile. “That’s too bad.”

  “Why? Because I won’t end up acquiring either?” I tease back.

  “You never know, Faye.” He searches my face, his gaze intense for a moment before he gestures to a set of stairs. “You haven’t seen the tasting room yet.”

  “Lead on.”

  As I follow him out of the distillery and into the adjacent tasting room, I try to figure out what just happened between us. I know I’m not the most experienced woman, but I am ninety-nine percent certain he was about to kiss me and then he...didn’t. And when he didn’t, he said, “I can’t.”

  Why? I wonder.

  The timing, he’d said.

  But why is the timing bad? Because we may go into business together someday? Or because he’s not over Marlena’s betrayal yet? Or perhaps because there’s someone else in the picture?

  There’s someone else in your picture too, my brain points out, reminding me of Mr. Fairbanks.

  Something inside of me twists painfully when I think of my New Year’s date. To give myself so willfully, so intimately, to a man about whom I feel nothing...am I really okay with that decision? Because right this second, and for the first time since I answered his ad, it doesn’t feel okay.

  I want to lose my virginity. I do. And losing it to Mr. Fairbanks, when I had no other prospects on the horizon, felt like a good solution. But now that I’ve met Trevor? I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel like such a great solution anymore.

  Maybe I’ve made a mistake in minimizing the importance of feelings in this equation.

  Maybe it doesn’t matter how old you are when you lose your virginity; maybe it shouldn’t be lost to someone about whom you feel nothing.

  But most of all, I think I’ve been very wrong to treat the loss of my virginity like a transaction, rather than a once-in-a-lifetime event that’s irrevocably bound to my heart...whether I like it or not.

  Trevor holds the door to the tasting room open for me, and as I pass him, I inhale his clean, masculine scent. It sends a tremor of longing from my brain to my belly, pooling there, creating these breathtaking flutters of want, of lust, of desire.

  Crap. Oh crap, crap, crap.

  I wish I had someone to talk to—a wise girlfriend or an older sister who could guide me through these new and confusing feelings. But the absurdity of a thirty-year-old woman being unable to navigate attraction and arousal isn’t lost on me either. There isn’t anyone to talk to. I need to figure this out for myself.

  “I assume you’d like to do a tasting?” Trevor asks me.

  “Oh! Um, yes. I’d love to.”

  He gestures to the open stools at the bar as he steps behind it. “Take a seat and I’ll get you started.”

  Pushing my bewildering thoughts and feelings to the side for the time being, I sit down and look up at him expectantly.

  “Listen...I’m sorry about before,” he says, placing a shot glass in front of me. “Especially after the asinine way I behaved on Christmas Eve.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Nothing happened.”

  “It almost did,” he says softly, his voice rough.

  Be sensible, Faye. Try to be sensible.

  “An attraction between us isn’t so surprising. We’re both young and decent-looking. We share similar passions and interests. We’re both ambitious.” I give him a polite smile. “The key, I guess, is not to give in to it. Mixing business and pleasure is never a good idea. I’m sure you agree with me.”

  “I do.”

  “So that’s that,” I say. “But, you know, we could still be friends.”

  “That would be great,” he says, then purses his lips. “Except, I generally don’t want to kiss my friends.”

  A flash of something almost unbearably wonderful courses through me and it takes an enormous amount of strength to remain impassive.

  “If we ignore it,” I suggest pragmatically, “I’m sure it’ll go away.”

  “Has that worked for you in the past?” he asks me, taking bottles of North Star vodka and North Star vanilla vodka out from under the bar and placing them between us.

  “I’ve...” I stare at the bottles, admiring the cream-colored silk scarf on the label of the vanilla bottle and wondering why no one else has done that yet. My eyes slide from the bottle, up his chest, to his face, and I answer him honestly: “I’ve never been in a situation like this before.”

  “This is a male-dominated business. You must meet men all the time, all over the world.”

  “I do. I’m just not...” attracted to them.

  He stares at me intently before asking, “Why is this different?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know for sure.” He pours a bit of the vodka in the shot glass, and I toss it back expertly, savoring the burn on my tongue and throat. “Delicious.”

  “Thank you. Please answer my question,” he insists.

  Fine. You want to talk to someone, Faye? Talk to him.

  I place my elbows on the bar and lean forward.

  “You make my favorite vodka, and I met you by chance, in a Chinese restaurant, on Christmas Eve. You came back to apologize for being such a jerk, and I almost threw up on your boots. We realized over Christmas dinner that we were already on one another’s radars, and we’re both struggling to connect, or reconnect, with siblings we’ve lost along the way.” I gulp softly, searching his eyes. “Choose one reason, Trevor. Choose them all. We connected. It just...happened. This situation—you and me—isn’t typical or ordinary. It’s been...exceptional. Right from the start.”

  “And your answer to something this exceptional is for us to be...friends?” His tone is just short of angry, and I start to wonder if addressing our attraction head-on was wise.

  That said, I try to stay the course: Sensible. Pragmatic.

  “My answer to labeling a relationship between two people who met by chance, enjoy one another’s company, may enter into a business agreement, but have no possible future together?” I nod. “Yes. I think friends is generous. I think anything else would be foolish.”

  He inhales sharply. “No possible future?”

  I blink at him. “What?”

  “You said that we have no possible future together.”

  “I don’t see one...do you?”

  “I don’t like being sidelined before I start problem-solving.” He purses his lips, and I think he might be pouting. “Being asked to be your friend sounds like forced cast
ration.” I gasp softly, and he shrugs. “I’m just being honest.”

  I blink at him. “As you pointed out, the timing is—”

  “Something we can deal with.”

  “And working together?”

  “Isn’t guaranteed.”

  “So what are you saying?” I ask him.

  “I don’t know,” he says, picking up the vanilla vodka with one hand and running the other through his thick, dark hair.

  Alcohol. I need some.

  “Trevor, I’m incredibly out of my depth. Pour the vanilla, please.”

  He does. He fills the shot glass in front of me, then reaches under the bar for another and fills his own.

  “Do you want a ride to the Chalet Blanche when we’re done here?” he asks, flattening his hands on the bar, his mint-green eyes boring into mine.

  “Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “Will you come to my place for dinner tomorrow night?”

  Yes!

  “It’s not a good idea,” I tell him.

  “I don’t care,” he says, raising his glass. “Will you come?”

  Our situation, which I was trying to diffuse, has only grown more volatile in the last ten minutes, and I feel that spinning and falling sensation inside of me again, though I’m not certain of what it means or what its outcome will be.

  I don’t know what’s happening between us because it’s never happened to me before.

  I don’t know if we’ll end up as friends or business associates or—God help me—in bed together.

  I only know two things for sure:

  1. I cannot say no to Trevor Starling, and

  2. I must cancel my date with Mr. Fairbanks on Friday.

  I lift my glass and clink it softly against his. “Yes. I would love to come to dinner tomorrow night.”

  Chapter 8

  Trevor

  The drive from the Chalet Blanche back to my house is almost half an hour, so I have plenty of time to think after I drop her off.

  I don’t want to have or develop feelings for Faye Findley.

  Tough shit, my heart whispers. Too late.

  I don’t know how she’s gotten so far under my skin in three days, but she has. So far, in fact, that I have to seriously reconsider what I’m about to do with Faith Crawford this weekend. I stopped myself from kissing Faye in the distillery because I still feel a sense of obligation to Faith that predates my acquaintance with Faye, but when I said that “bad timing” is something that can be dealt with, I was thinking about canceling on Faith.

  God knows how much I want to have sex. And Faith is a prearranged, drama-free, no-strings-attached, guaranteed fling. It couldn’t be easier. It’s a sure-fucking-thing. But—fuck me five ways from Sunday—I don’t think I want to sleep with Faith.

  In a twist of fate I never, ever could have imagined, I think I’d rather hold out for Faye Findley.

  The language of my ad couldn’t have been clearer: Zero chance of love. So what’s Faye Findley, then? She’s the less-than-zero chance. Because she’s making me feel things that I haven’t felt since those early, precious days with Marlena.

  She’s making me feel again.

  So what exactly is my responsibility to Faith Crawford?

  A live, in-person apology, for sure, and remuneration.

  I don’t know where she’s coming from, but presumably, she’s purchased an airline ticket to make the trip. She may or may not have taken time off from work, but I probably should assume she has. I prepaid the five-hundred-dollars-a-night suite at the Chalet Blanche, and I’ll transfer the reservation to her name so that she can stay if she wants to. Additionally, I’ll prepay a thousand dollars at the spa so that she can schedule whatever services she’d like. All in? I probably owe her five thousand dollars in travel and lost wages, in addition to whatever I’ll end up paying the Chalet Blanche. About eight thousand dollars.

  It’s a large amount of money, but not beyond my means.

  And something tells me that it’ll be the easiest check I ever wrote.

  That said, showing up at the Chalet Blanche on Friday night to cancel our plans in person is going to suck. But once I do? I’m free. I’ll be free to do whatever I like with Faye Findley.

  Not that she’s left anything on the table. I grunt in frustration, recalling both her offer to be friends and her assertion that we have no possible future.

  And both piss...me...off.

  But Faye Findley doesn’t know yet that I’m a man who appreciates a challenge. That, and I’m just as driven as she is. When I see something I want, I figure out how to make it mine. And what I want...is her.

  ***

  I shower, shave, and dress in jeans, a white T-shirt, and a black cashmere V-neck sweater, hurrying myself along so that I’m in my car by four thirty to pick up Faye. I check myself out in the bathroom mirror, considering my appearance and deciding I look okay.

  My goal for tonight is to spend time with Faye Findley without actually making a move on her. And I don’t kid myself that it’ll be easy. I’m not sure I’ve ever been as attracted to anyone like I am to Faye. I’m longing to take her hair out of that tight, thick bun and run my hands through it. I’m dying to watch her dark eyes widen with pleasure. I want to see it. I want to make it happen.

  Adjusting myself behind the zipper of my jeans, I remind myself for the hundredth time that nothing should happen tonight. Not until after I’ve spoken to Faith Crawford tomorrow evening.

  But that doesn’t mean I’ve skimped on preparations.

  On my way to the garage, I stop in the kitchen to check on dinner.

  This afternoon, while Baz manned the office and tasting room, I made reindeer meatballs with a Swedish cream sauce. They’ve been simmering in my Crock-Pot for hours and make my house smell awesome. I’ll complement them with some homemade highbush-cranberry jam—the Alaskan answer to lingonberries—made by my mother. I have red-eye potatoes cut up and seasoned, waiting to be put on a cookie sheet and broiled, and for dessert, I stopped by the Fudge Pot and picked up an assortment of local fudges. My favorite is bright purple, colored that way because it’s made with Alaskan blueberries, and hand to God, it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. Especially when paired with blueberry vodka, something I’ve been working on for the last few weeks and want to share with Faye tonight.

  Rubbing my hands together with anticipation, I head downstairs, jump in my car, and pull out of the garage to make the drive to the Chalet Blanche. En route, my phone rings, and without looking at the console, I press answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Trev! Don’t hang up.”

  I’d know my brother’s voice anywhere. Even after six months of not speaking.

  I clench my jaw and crack the window, breathing deeply.

  “What do you want, Cez?”

  “We, um...we missed you at Christmas.” He clears his throat. “Mom says you stopped by the farm yesterday.”

  I don’t say anything. I’m not going to make this easier for Cez by encouraging him.

  “Um...and she said that when she mentioned Marlena, you didn’t...I mean, you didn’t leave or get pissed or...”

  It’s starting to snow, so I turn on my wipers. I’m still waiting for him to say something that needs or deserves an answer.

  “Trev? You still there?”

  “Mm-hm. But I’m going to lose you in a second.”

  “Heading out of town?”

  I sigh loudly. He doesn’t need to know my plans. “Is there something you needed, Cecil?”

  “I just...I hate how things are. I miss you. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I want...I want you to know I’m sorry. Marlena’s sorry. We didn’t mean to...”

  “What? Fuck each other? Fuck me over?”

  “Trev,” he whispers. “Please.”

  “Please what?”

  “Please forgive me.”

  My eyes water. I hate it that they do, but I can’t help it. They burn, and I blink them furiously, opening the
window a little more.

  “I have to go.”

  “Please, Trev,” he whimpers, and suddenly, I remember him as a little kid—maybe three or four—falling out a of a tree and breaking his arm. Get Mama. Please, Trev. I hurting.

  He’s hurting again now. I can hear it. I can feel it.

  But I’m hurting too. And he was the one who broke my heart.

  “I’m...not ready to talk yet,” I say, the words rough and raspy because I’m swallowing back tears.

  My little brother clears his throat, likely doing the same. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. I, um, I understand.”

  “Another time,” I say. “Maybe.”

  “Another time would be good,” he says, hope infusing his voice as he sniffles once, then sighs.

  “Bye, Cez.”

  “Take care, Trev.”

  I hit the End button on the console, staring at the road in front of me.

  It’s the first time since that terrible night in Portland that we’ve spoken. Not that he hasn’t tried to contact me since, but I haven’t picked up or answered his texts.

  It hurt to hear his voice. It hurt to hear him say he wants forgiveness, but it still makes me angry to hear him apologize. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I want you to know I’m sorry. These words ring phony to me. I’m not ready to believe them. Not yet.

  And yet...

  I miss Cez.

  While Baz is thoughtful, sensitive, and introspective, Cez is easygoing, carefree, and fun. I remember Faye’s question from yesterday about Cez and Marlena getting together being a “best-case scenario” for me, and suddenly, a memory surfaces from last Christmas.

  My mom put on the Will Ferrell movie Elf, and I rolled my eyes as the theme song started, relocating from the TV room to the kitchen with my laptop. While I built a spreadsheet comparing the first two years of holiday sales, Cez and Marlena sat side by side on the couch, drinking beer, throwing popcorn at each other, and laughing their asses off at Buddy’s fish-out-of-water elf antics.

  At the time, I’d noticed their carrying-on with affection, chalking it up to future in-laws bonding, but maybe it was just...joy.