by Tawna Fenske
“It’s okay, hon,” Mark said, planting another kiss along her hairline. “It’s your party, you can cry if you want to.”
“Cheeseball,” she said with fondness, smacking him on the arm. “You want to dance?”
“I’d love to.” He pushed back from the table and stood up. “You okay here, Jenna?”
“Actually, I think I’m going to get some fresh air. Maybe call Aunt Gertie to check on her.”
“Tell her I wish she could have been here,” Mia said as her husband lifted her to her feet. “I hope she feels better.”
“She thinks it’s just a touch of food poisoning, nothing to worry about. It’s also possible she just wanted a few hours alone to get some work done.”
“Still, there’s a nasty stomach bug going around. You can’t be too careful with older folks.”
“I’m watching her closely,” Jenna said, picking up her wineglass as she stood. It was still half full, so she carried it with her as she moved toward the door of the banquet room. She glanced back over her shoulder to see Mia melting into her husband’s arms, her face glowing with happiness. Something twisted in Jenna’s gut, and she turned back toward the door.
The instant she stepped into the hall, she breathed a little easier. The Spanx weren’t helping, and she considered slipping into the bathroom to remove them. She decided against it and moved toward the hotel lobby. She started in that direction, then spotted a sign beside the stairwell.
Roof.
A much better place for privacy, and there’d be plenty of fresh air up there. She pulled open the door to the stairwell, then bent down and yanked off her high heels. Gripping them in one hand and her wineglass in the other, she trudged up the stairs, her dress riding up her thighs as she counted her way past the third floor, fourth floor, fifth floor, and onward.
She was breathing hard by the time she reached the top. She pushed through the door and into the bright wash of daylight. The sky was milky, but it wasn’t raining, and the sun shone oddly bright through the film of clouds above. Late August weather in Portland could be unpredictable, and she’d heard there might be thunderstorms in the forecast.
A gust of wind tugged the hem of her dress as she stepped barefoot onto the warm tar surface of the hotel roof, dropping her shoes at the corner of a giant fan.
A stray piece of paper skittered across her path as the breeze carried the scent of cottonwood trees and food from a street fair in the park below. She took a few steps forward, letting the door fall shut behind her as she reached into her purse for her phone.
She froze when she spotted him. A lone figure sitting cross-legged on a bench beside the ledge. She had to squint at first, her eyes fighting to adjust to the glare of light through filmy clouds, but she would have known that body anywhere. He had a laptop open in front of him, and a half-finished sandwich on a tray off to the side. His dark hair was cut short, but spiked a little in the front like he’d been running his hands through it.
She must have gasped, because he looked up then. He blinked, motionless for what seemed like an eternity, green eyes locked on hers.
“Oh,” Jenna said, and spilled wine down the front of her dress.
“I’m not an expert on wine,” Adam said, jumping up to hand her a wad of napkins. “But I think the object is to get it into your mouth and not your cleavage.”
His hand brushed hers as she took the napkins, and he felt something electric in his knuckles. He was close enough to feel the heat from her arms as she looked down in horror at the bloom of liquid on the front of her dress.
“God, I’m glad I’m drinking Pinot Grigio and not Merlot,” she muttered, mopping at the space between her breasts. “Hopefully this won’t stain.”
Adam watched, noticing the way the tops of her breasts glistened with spilled wine. He felt his brain spin and fought the urge to sit down.
“Here, let me grab the salt,” he offered, hurrying back to his lunch tray.
“Now’s not the time for margaritas.”
“It’s always time for margaritas, but that’s not what this is for.” He snatched the shaker in one hand and turned back to her. “This is how you get wine out of linen. That is linen, right?”
“Right. Ugh, I’m going to be sticky.”
“Could you stop touching yourself like that? You’re turning me on.”
Jenna looked up, her cheeks flushed, her dark hair pulled back in some sort of complicated twist that Adam ached to unravel with his fingers. Instead, he plucked the sodden napkin out of her hand.
“Seriously, stop rubbing it,” he said, handing her the saltshaker. “You’ll set the stain. Just cover it in this and wait ’til it dries.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” She pulled the fabric away from her body, then let it fall back against the curve of her breasts. All the blood remaining in Adam’s brain vacated the premises.
“It’s not exactly a flat surface,” she pointed out.
“I noticed,” he said. “I’m grateful.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on, what do I do? Should I just shake some on the stain or what?”
“Here, let me help.”
He reached for the saltshaker again, fingers grazing hers as he took it from her. He plucked the fabric away from her chest, trying to be as clinical as possible about the whole operation, but how the hell was he supposed to do that with his finger dipping into the warm hollow between her breasts? He’d managed to stay professional all week at Belmont, not letting his libido surge at the sight of Jenna or his anger surge at the sight of his ex-wife. But now—
“What on earth are you doing up here, anyway?” she asked.
“Working.”
“On a Saturday? On a hotel roof?”
“Hotel rooftops are only for midweek work?” He plucked at the damp fabric again, admiring its determination to cling to her breasts. “I think better with a little fresh air, so I followed the signs from my room to the roof.”
“When did you change hotels?”
“Two days ago. Hold still, will you?”
He tipped a little salt onto the liquid, rubbing it in with his knuckle. A little more, his finger grazing her breast again. Christ, it was hot up here.
He cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to take off the dress?”
“Nice try. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I’ll just go back downstairs and do it. Hopefully there’s something in the hotel lost and found I could change into.” She nodded and stepped away from him. “Thank you for the salt.”
She turned and started to walk toward the stairwell, but Adam called out to her. “There’s one problem with that.”
She pivoted back to look at him. “What’s that?”
“You just trapped us up here.”
She stopped, hand outstretched toward the doorknob, bare feet lovely on the dirty roof. “What?”
“See that piece of paper?” He nodded toward the sports section pinned against the ledge, one corner fluttering in the breeze. “I’d shoved it into the latch so it wouldn’t lock while I was up here. It fell out when you came through the door.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “How is that possible?”
“See for yourself.”
He waited to see if she’d take his word for it, not surprised when she didn’t. She gave the door a hard yank, her body jerking as the latch failed to give.
She turned back to face him, expression accusatory. “Why would a hotel have a door that locks people on the roof without some sort of warning?”
“Security. Besides, there was plenty of warning. Didn’t you see the signs?”
“Signs?”
“They were on every landing.”
She shook her head, eyes flashing with something that almost looked like sadness. “I’m abysmally bad at noticing the signs. In case
you hadn’t noticed.”
He watched her, trying to grasp the turn they’d just taken in the conversation. “Are we still talking about the stairwell?”
She sighed and stepped away from the door. He thought she was going to walk back toward him, but instead she sank down onto the bench beside what was left of his ham sandwich. He walked over and moved the tray aside, sinking down into the space next to her. When she looked up, her eyes seemed a little wild.
“How the hell did I not know you were Mia’s husband?”
Those last two words hit him like a punch to the solar plexus, and he waited for the pang of annoyance to ebb. “Ex-husband.”
“Still, I knew your name was Adam. That should have tipped me off.”
“There are more than 500,000 men named Adam in North America,” he pointed out, wondering if it was geeky or impressive for him to know that. “How were you supposed to realize you were knocking boots with the Adam who swapped rings with your best friend?”
She flinched, and Adam regretted the flippancy of his words. It was an engrained habit, this tendency to spout humor or data in uncomfortable situations.
What’s making you uncomfortable? The memory of your ex-wife, or the knowledge that you’re awkwardly attracted to her best friend?
Both. He’d spent a long time eradicating Mia from his life, or at least eradicating the anger that came with remembering her. But working with her again, and finding himself unable to resist the allure of a woman who’d probably heard all the ugliest stories from his marriage—
He frowned, forcing himself to cut the self-analysis bullshit and stay in the present. The present wasn’t so bad, really. The scent of Jenna’s perfume was sweet and warm, and there was a spicy hint of fall on the breeze. He leaned back against the ledge, stretching his arms out behind him. One rested a few inches behind Jenna’s shoulders, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Look, I have my phone,” he said. “This isn’t some chick flick where we’re trapped on the roof together for hours until I ravish you up against the wall. I can call down to the front desk and have us out of here in five minutes.”
Neither of them moved, and for a moment, Adam wondered if she wanted to stay up here with him. The thought almost made him smile, but smiling didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Not yet, anyway. When she turned to look at him, her expression had softened.
“Why did you change hotels?” she asked. “This obviously isn’t where we—” she paused, glancing away. “Where we met up last week.”
“Belmont likes to woo consultants with the nice digs up front, but for long-term contractors, this place makes more sense. Better weekly rates, and all the suites on the tenth floor have kitchens.”
Jenna sighed and leaned back against his arm, and Adam tried not to revel in the softness of her shoulders. “You know, I knew that about Belmont. About which hotels they use. Also a sign I should have picked up on, right?”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Jenna. We both could have been a little more inquisitive about each other’s identity.” He hesitated, knowing he should probably pull out his phone and dial the front desk, but not wanting to make the move until she did. “Why are you here, anyway? You look like a refugee from a garden party.”
She shrugged, studying her hands. When she looked back at him, her expression was guarded. “Mia’s wedding reception.”
He waited for the words to slice through him the way they might have two years ago. There was a dull ache in his gut, but it might have been the ham sandwich. Too much mustard. Or hell, maybe he was still affected by the thought of his ex-wife with another man. With the man she’d—
“I thought Mia was already married,” he said, interrupting his own thoughts.
“They got married in Kauai a few weeks ago—at Mark’s parents’ place. Private, only immediate family. They’re having a reception here to celebrate with the people who couldn’t be at the wedding.”
Adam nodded, letting the words sink in, feeling nothing. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He felt something, but he wasn’t sure he could name what it was.
Some counselor you are.
“That’s smart,” he said, sticking with the basics. “Having a smaller, more intimate ceremony. I wish we’d done that the first time.”
She met his eyes and nodded. “I heard the first wedding was quite a show.”
“More than four hundred guests. Most of them friends of Mia’s mother. It was a nightmare. We wanted to serve chicken because several people in my family don’t eat red meat, but Sally—that’s her mother—insisted filet mignon was more high-class.”
“So she talked you into it?”
“Worse,” Adam said, surprised to feel anger swelling in him after all this time. “Sally called the caterer herself and changed the order the week before the wedding. We never knew until we all sat down to dinner under this big expensive canopy she also ordered without our knowledge.”
“I’ll bet Mia was livid.”
He shrugged, remembering the way his new bride had put her hand on his arm and whispered for him not to make a scene.
“Appearances are important to her,” Amelia had murmured, glancing around nervously at her assembled family. “Let’s not make a big deal. Besides, she is paying for it.”
It wasn’t the first time Adam had realized the price that came from letting someone else control his financial future, but it was the moment he vowed never to do it again.
He’d busted ass over the years to make sure of it, working extra hours at the law firm to get ahead, to provide for Mia so she’d get out from under her mother’s thumb. He remembered how much she’d wanted to go to Hawaii, how he’d scrimped and saved to surprise her with a vacation at Christmas.
He’d had the tickets in his briefcase that day. The day he’d come home early to find her and Mark—
“Is this weird for you?” Jenna asked, jarring him back to the present.
“Is what weird?”
“Knowing I’ve probably heard every dirty detail about your marriage and divorce,” she said. “Women talk, you know. I heard about the time you got busted after she talked you into sex in a hotel pool. I know about your camping trip to the Grand Canyon when you fought the whole time about whether or not to have kids. I know you were there for her when her father died, and that you had a big disagreement about whether to visit your parents in Africa after they joined the Peace Corps.”
The string of memories she’d just laid out made him want to punch something. Not a person, of course. A soft pillow, maybe a stuffed animal.
Dude, you’re losing it.
He didn’t care what Mia had said about him. It was water under the bridge, ancient history.
Only he did care. He cared that Jenna knew only one side of the story. One side of him—Mia’s version of events, of the marriage gone sour, of the ex-husband she’d chosen to leave.
He shook his head and gave a shrug he hoped conveyed indifference. The wind caught a stray lock of hair that had escaped her updo, and it tickled the back of his hand. “Weird,” he repeated, returning to her original question. “Weird is the right word. Not sad, not angry, it’s just weird.”
She smiled. “That’s the clinical term?”
“Exactly.” He smiled back, breathing in the soft, floral scent of her perfume. Something like lilacs, maybe, with a hint of lemon. “Years of training as a counselor make me highly qualified to diagnose weirdness.”
The light flickered back into her eyes, and Adam felt the mood shift from awkward to playful in the span of two heartbeats.
“I enjoyed watching you work this week,” she said. “You might have even made some progress with the team.”
“You mean after I disarmed the CEO and suggested the ER manager might want to consider addressing people by name instead of as twatwaffles and ass-hats?”
“That
was progress. What was that technique called again?”
“It’s based on some of the principles of Imago theory,” he said, shifting on the bench so his leg was scant inches from hers. “It’s a form of relationship and couples’ therapy based on collaboration, understanding, giving, and responsibility.”
“Couples’ therapy? You’re handling a feuding staff like a bunch of pissed-off spouses?”
He grinned, relaxing back into the conversation now. “That’s pretty much what they are, right? Minus the sex and the arguments about who farted under the covers.”
He felt her shiver beside him and wondered if it was the mention of sex or the breeze. Or maybe the fart joke. Not exactly classy. He should probably call the front desk, just get them out of here and on with their respective lives.
But Jenna settled back against his arm again, and any urge to flee evaporated into the late-summer breeze.
“Tell me more about this couples’ therapy stuff,” she said. “How’s it going to fix our screwed-up team dynamic?”
“Well, next week we’ll work on Imago Dialogue.”
“Is that a form of dialogue that doesn’t involve yelling and throwing things?”
“That’s the funny thing about dialogue,” he said, fingers brushing the loose strand of hair again. “People think it’s two people talking, but it’s actually meant to be one person talking and the other listening. We’re going to work on listening techniques with the group—something called mirroring—to ensure people are feeling heard.”
She nodded, her expression intrigued as she leaned a little closer to him. “Do it to me.”
Adam’s breath caught in his throat, and he fought the urge to reach for her. “Pardon me?”
“I want to understand how it works,” she said, laughing as she turned her whole body to face him, drawing her bare legs up between them on the bench so her knees touched the side of his thigh. “Come on, Imago me.”
“I’m not sure Imago is meant to be a verb, though it sounds pleasantly dirty when you say it like that.” Adam cleared his throat and wondered if he should remind her they still hadn’t dealt with the wine on her dress. He should probably do that, get some more salt on the stain, or call the front desk to—