The Closer I Get to You (Cochran/Deveraux Series Book 8)

by Melanie Schuster

  “Paris, honey, the last time I saw you, you were looking very put together and absolutely radiant on the arm of that ridiculously good looking man. Now here it is a few hours later and you’re tipping in here looking like who-did-it-and-ran. Are you sure you don’t want to talk?” Ruth’s face didn’t look condemning or amused; on the contrary she looked wise and comforting. Without even questioning her actions, Paris found herself going to the breakfast table and sitting down across from Ruth.

  “This has been the worst night of my adult life,” she admitted. “I told a man I loved him after making what I mistakenly thought was mad, passionate love with him. Unfortunately, as soon as it was over he politely informed me that we’re all wrong for each other and going to bed together was a mistake,” she said in a dull monotone.

  Ruth surprised her by reaching across the table to pat her on the hand.

  ”You poor child. You must have really laid it on him for him to act a fool like that,” she said in her disarmingly frank way.

  Paris’s lower lip trembled briefly but she bit down on it hard; she wasn’t about to dissolve in tears like some sniveling soap opera queen. “I wouldn’t know. My experience in that arena is limited to this very evening,” she said dryly.

  Ruth put her elbow on the table and propped her chin in her hand as she stared at Paris. “I see. And I take it your young man had no idea he was your first love. Probably scared him witless,” she said in an aside. She moved her head slowly from side to side. Her big green eyes were full of concern as she addressed Paris.

  “Are you okay, honey? The first time at sex can be rather traumatic if it’s not handled right. Quiet as it’s kept it can take years for a couple to get it right. Great sex doesn’t always just happen. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  Paris was shocked, not by Ruth’s blunt words, but by the ease with which she could talk to the older woman. She answered her honestly, not even blushing as she told her. “At first it hurt, just for a minute or so. But he was so gentle, so loving he made everything good. And then it just got to be amazing! Now I know why people are so obsessed with sex, it’s wonderful,” she confessed. She covered her face and dropped her head as Ruth laughed gently.

  “Look, don’t be ashamed of enjoying sex. Sex is a major part of life; you wouldn’t be here right now if somebody hadn’t engaged in the art of making love. And it’s not just for procreation, either. A healthy sex life is a beautiful thing, especially when it’s with your partner, your soulmate. Lovemaking is a precious gift to a loving couple, it’s something to be gloried in and it shouldn’t make you feel shame.”

  Paris raised her head and looked bleakly at Ruth. Her eyes filled with tears, which she dashed away with the heel of her hand. “Yes, but that’s just it, Aunt Ruth, I’m not part of a loving couple. I shouldn’t have gone to bed with Titus because he was right, we’re all wrong for each other. We’re not soulmates, or some perfect couple, and we never will be. I made a huge mistake, thinking he cares about me.” She looked stricken as she uttered the words.

  Ruth patted her on the hand again. “I’m making you some tea right now,” she said as she rose from the table to fill the kettle with water. “You sound awfully convinced of what you’re saying, Paris. What exactly did he say to you, if you don’t mind telling me?”

  Paris ruffled her hair, which was still a tangled mass, as she hadn’t taken the time to comb it properly. With a deep sigh, she told Ruth word for word what Titus had said after their interlude. “So, the bottom line is that he’s this loner who gets together with women for no-strings sex and that’s all he wants. He doesn’t want marriage and children and the whole family life thing. And I’m not going to settle for anything less. If I was made differently, I suppose I could just have a pointless affair with him but the fact is that’s not how I plan to live my life. So it’s over. Over before it got started, really.”

  Ruth busied herself making the tea, bringing a steaming mug of it to the table along with a plate of Lily Rose’s arrowroot biscuits and a small jar of cherry jam. Placing the tea and cookies in front of Paris, she smoothed the younger woman’s hair and gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder before resuming her seat. “Honey, you sound so final and fatalistic about the whole thing! I wouldn’t count Titus out. He’s confused, that’s for sure. I’m sure that finding out that he was your very first lover was a startling experience for him. There aren’t a lot of women who have enough self-respect to remain celibate these days. It had to be a shock to his system, for one thing. For another, I think he’s probably stunned at how deeply he cares for you. I’ve been watching the two of you and in order for him to fake the way he reacts to you he’d have to be a better actor than Don Cheadle or Denzel Washington. The way he looks at you and touches you, just the way he smiles when he’s around you, all of those things tell me he’s quite smitten with you and he’s just handling it badly. Give him a little time, he’ll come around, I promise you.”

  Paris took a grateful sip of her tea. It was Constant Comment, one of her favorites, and the spicy orange flavor was soothing to her throat. She put the mug down on the table and smiled sadly at Ruth. “I wish I could agree with you, Aunt Ruth, but I don’t think anything remotely close to that is going to happen. One thing I’ve learned is that people don’t change, not unless they really want to. He is the way he is and there’s not a thing I can do about it,” she said firmly.

  “I believe anything a man tells me,” she said, smiling at the reaction on Ruth’s face. “I do. If a man says he’s not good enough for me, I believe him. If he says he’s not the man for me, I believe him. If he says he’s going to hurt me and I should stay away from him, I believe him and I do what he says. I’m not getting sucked into that trap of thinking I can change a man, once he sees how good I can cook and how loving I am or whatever. Everybody is entitled to have what they want out of life, if they can get it, and that includes me. I want what my cousins have, I want a happy marriage to someone who loves me and I want lots of babies. So I need to have a man who wants the same things and Titus has made it abundantly clear that he’s not that man. At least he had the decency to be honest with me,” she said bravely, even though she was unaware that her voice was shaking.

  Ruth couldn’t hide her admiration for Paris. “I have to say you’re the most level-headed young woman I’ve known in some time. You remind me of Benita in that way,” she said thoughtfully. Benita Cochran Deveraux was married to Paris’s cousin Clay Deveraux and the comparison was high praise to Paris’s ears. But she was too honest to accept it without sharing something with Ruth.

  “I’m not all that level-headed. I was lucky enough to have a very calm and steady father, and since my brothers were such firecrackers I always had to be the voice of reason,” she said with a fond smile. “But right this minute I’m doing a good job of fronting. I’m going to bawl my eyes out as soon as I get in the shower. The only reason I’m not doing that right now is that I can’t stand for anyone to see me cry. And I’m seriously considering calling my friend Chastain back home to make me a little voodoo doll. Chastain’s into all that crazy stuff and she’d be happy to supply me with a Titus replica complete with those danged eyes of his,” she said defiantly.

  Ruth laughed, but Paris couldn’t even muster a smile. “I really do feel like a prize fool, you know. If I’d had any real idea of how this would turn out, I never would have gone near Titus Argonne, not in this lifetime or any other.” She looked bleakly at Ruth and to her intense shame, the tears started to flow.

  ***

  After Titus left the suite to get Paris a cup of coffee, he stopped cursing himself long enough to take a deep breath. Punching the button for the elevator, he still couldn’t believe how badly the evening had gone. He entered the elevator and gave the lobby button a vicious jab. Badly, that was putting it mildly. It was also inaccurate; the events of the evening, while unexpected, were stupendous. An involuntary tremor rippled its way through his body, so strongly that he had to stop
pacing in mid-stride to shake off the feeling. This was positive proof that strange things were afoot. Titus couldn’t remember the last time he’d reacted to a woman the way he had to Paris. The feel of her silken skin, the taste of her, the look of her, the explosive way she’d responded to him all blended together in an erotic haze that rendered him unable to think clearly. Surely that would explain his behavior afterwards. The elevator doors opened and he stepped out into the lobby. Looking around in vain for an open restaurant, he exited the hotel and walked to the rental car. As he crossed the parking lot, he glanced at the upper floors of the building where Paris waited.

  Opening the car door he slid into the driver’s seat and started the car, pulling out of the lot into the late night traffic, scanning the well-lit streets for an open café. He still couldn’t believe how stupidly he’d reacted to the fact that Paris was a virgin. If anything he should have been honest enough to tell the truth, that he was stunned and ridiculously pleased to be the first man to touch her beautiful body. He should have told her that she was the first woman to confess love for him so freely and honestly, without an agenda of any kind, and he should have told her how those words made him feel, how they excited him almost as much as feeling her surround him, hot, moist and yielding. And he certainly should have told her that she was the most passionate partner he could ever remember being with in his life. No one had excited him like Paris in years. He laughed with bitter irony. If she could arouse him like that on her first time, there’s no telling what she could do when she got in some practice. Paris Deveraux was an incredible woman; it was as simple as that. She might be young, but she knew how to handle herself.

  He spotted a Tim Horton’s, the ubiquitous coffee and doughnut establishment that blessedly was open twenty-four hours. While he was waiting in line at the drive-through, he leaned back against the head restraint and continued to rake himself over the coals. He’d been an idiot, a total fool about the whole thing. For one thing, he should have realized that Paris was inexperienced. For the past few years all she’d ever done was blush and stammer every time she was around him. He’d known she was shy around him and he should have realized the source of that shyness. He’d seen how open and outgoing she was with other people; Paris was only tongue-tied when he was in the vicinity, and he thought it was cute, never bothering to try to figure out why. Besides, since she’d embarked on her new career, she was like a new woman. He’d seen the change in her at the wedding reception of Alicia Fuentes and Adam Cochran. It was the first time she’d been relaxed and comfortable around him, the first time she was able to converse with him without turning puce with embarrassment. From that time on, they had been enthusiastically flirtatious with each other. The dates they went on were thoroughly enjoyable and seemed the perfect prelude to passion. If he was going to be honest about it, he’d had a lot more fun with Paris than he had with any of the women he dated and there had been plenty of them in the past.

  He thrust a twenty-dollar bill through the drive through window and took the large café mocha and the small black coffee he’d ordered, along with his change. His mood got even worse as he recalled with unerring clarity the way Paris had reacted to his pompous post-coital statements. She didn’t scream, cry or rail at him; she didn’t beg him or argue with him. Instead she looked at him without batting an eye, looking more seductive than any woman he’d ever seen with her incredible breasts bared and her hair tousled and tossed. When she got out of the bed and calmly walked across the room completely nude, the image had burned itself into his brain. He couldn’t recall ever seeing a woman, especially one as young and inexperienced as Paris; behave with such elegance and dignity. She let me off light. She should have thrown something at me, screamed at me, threatened me, anything but that, he thought morosely. He knew, even as he formulated the thought, that if she’d done any of those things it would’ve been easier to forgive himself. If she’d started howling and blubbering it would have instantly confirmed his notion that she was too young and they weren’t right for each other. But no, she didn’t do any of these things.

  She was upset, that much was obvious. And she should’ve been upset. I was being a total jerk. No, I was being a pompous jerk, a pontificating, proselytizing jackass. She showed me, though. She’s a hell of a woman, he admitted. She was, after all, a Deveraux, and they didn’t put up with much crap from anybody. They knew, and she obviously knew, how to deal with idiots. Suddenly he groaned aloud, remembering, as though for the first time, that Paris was the first cousin of his best friend, Martin Deveraux. He and Martin had been friends since law school and he knew for a fact that Martin and his brothers loved Paris like a little sister. What in the Sam Hill is wrong with me? When I decide to lose all control with a woman, why did I decide to pick the one woman in the world I need to keep away from?

  By now he was back at the hotel, taking the elevator back up to the suite, where he was both longing to see Paris’s beautiful face and dreading another confrontation. When the elevator doors slid open, he had to acknowledge two inescapable facts. One, he’d behaved badly to Paris and he owed her a huge apology, and two, she meant more to him than any other woman he’d ever known. Somehow she’d slipped past his radar and gotten deep inside him before he knew what was happening. Carefully balancing the small black coffee on top of the café mocha, he used the card key to open the door. He pushed it open, his lips starting to form the sincere apology he owed her. Paris deserved that and much more from him, from any man lucky enough to be blessed with her company and he at least needed to tell her sincerely how sorry he was for his behavior. The door had barely closed behind him before he realized the true meaning of the phrase, “too little, too late”. The suite was empty. Paris had left him.

  ***

  True to her word, Paris had a long, awful cry in the shower. A few tears had escaped while she was having tea and sympathy with Ruth, but she meant it, she couldn’t stand for anyone to see her cry. But when she had parted from Ruth and made her way to the guest room where she was sleeping, she got into the shower and bawled like a small child. She hadn’t felt pain like this since her mother died. The tears fell faster and harder until she thought she might not be able to stop. Leaning against the ceramic tile of the shower stall, she forced her breathing back to normal and made the tears slow down to an occasional trickle. The one thing she didn’t want was to wake her cousin Angelique. She and Angel, as almost everyone called her, were as close as sisters and if she were to see Paris in this condition it would mean death and destruction for Titus Argonne. The thought of Angel’s retribution actually put a smile on Paris’s red, swollen face. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was better than the alternative, more tears. Angelique Deveraux Cochran didn’t play when it came to her family and friends. If someone she loved was hurt or wronged in any way, Angel would go after them like a juggernaut. Paris shuddered at the idea of Angel seeking vengeance on Titus and turned off the shower.

  Wrapping herself in a big bath sheet, Paris got out of the shower and made a horrible face as it dawned on her how very messy the situation could become. Titus wasn’t just the man in front of whom she’d humiliated herself; he was the best friend of her cousin Martin. If that weren’t enough, his firm was in charge of corporate security for The Deveraux Group. Even worse, his offices were in the complex owned by The Deveraux Group. It was a huge complex, but it wasn’t big enough to keep their paths from crossing. There were bound to be times when they’d see each other, just like they had in the past. She sat on the side of the bed and sniffed, remembering how much she’d loved the times when she’d seen him around the complex. He would come to her office once in a while, just to say hello. And a couple of times she’d spotted him in the back of the studio when her show was taping, something that always gave her a special thrill. Well, those days were over.

  She patted herself dry and applied a generous layer of her favorite lotion. The soothing pearberry scent comforted her senses as the thick, emollient substance soothed h
er skin. She only hoped that Ruth was right. It had occurred to Paris that her friends and even her family knew she was dating Titus and in very short order, it would become obvious that they were no longer involved and they’d wonder why. Ruth had put her hand over Paris’s and given her the best advice she’d ever heard.

  “Honey, one thing about getting older is the realization that you don’t have to answer a question just because someone asks it. Your personal life is your own business and you don’t owe anyone an explanation of anything you do.”

  She finished applying the lotion and added a light misting of the body spray. Her Aunt Lillian had taught her to always go to bed smelling nice because it made for sweet dreams. After slipping on a short cotton gown with spaghetti straps and a tiny floral pattern, Paris brushed her hair and got into bed. She wasn’t counting on any sweet dreams tonight though. She reached into her tote bag, which was on the floor next to the bed and pulled out her journal. She never went to bed without writing in it and tonight was no exception. In her beautiful handwriting, courtesy of the nuns from her Catholic school days, she began to write.

  This was the best day of my life, and the worst. I found out two things today that I’m never going to forget. One is that making love is the most wonderful, most intimate experience two people can share. And the other is, when your heart breaks you can actually feel it. There’s a horrible sharp pain and then a little ‘pop’ that feels like something ruptured. Then there’s a gush of hot agony like someone spilled acid into your bloodstream, and you know you’ll never feel anything again.

  Chapter Five

  Paris looked up from her computer screen into the face of her dear friend and art director Aidan Sinclair. He was looking at her with a mixture of exasperation and concern, which was borne out by the first words out of his mouth.