by Scott, J. S.
I watched Carter, his expression animated as he spoke to his sisters and brothers, and he did look happy.
It was kind of like déjà vu. I’d seen him like this across the room at a party, looking elegant and sophisticated in a tux, and back then I’d seen him as a fraud, just like me.
Now, he was still pretty damn comfortable in his own skin, but his eyes were far from cold. And he was genuinely enjoying his family.
“If I’m not with Carter, will you still stay in touch?” I asked.
Obviously the champagne was getting to me. I was feeling melancholy, and I was rarely that gloomy.
“Of course,” she said immediately. “But you’ll still be with Carter, won’t you? I mean, you two are perfect for each other, and I know he adores you.”
I gave her a weak smile. “I hope I will be. We haven’t really gotten it all figured out.”
“We’ll exchange numbers before you go,” Ruby insisted. “But I don’t think you’re going anywhere, except maybe to Hollywood. Do you have other traveling to do?”
“I’m on the road a lot,” I shared. “But I just got an offer from an enormous brand to produce my line of travel bags with them. If that gets off the ground, I probably won’t be globetrotting as much.”
“That’s fantastic, Brynn. Is it the bags you’ve been showing on social media? I follow you, and they’re amazing. I want one, but Jett says they haven’t been released yet.”
“I’ll send you some if I start getting them produced. What you saw were just the mock-ups.”
Her eyes left my face, and I could see her glancing at her fiancé occasionally. The love she had for him was evident.
Maybe on the surface, the beautiful woman in the startling red dress across from me seemed like an unlikely match for Jett Lawson. Just like Carter and I had seemed a bit like an odd couple. But they were clearly in love, and incredibly happy.
“I’d love that,” she said as she looked back at me. “Now tell me about your career. I’m just a pastry chef.”
I laughed for the first time that night. “I’m not sure if I can be friends with somebody who makes pastries. You’re dangerous. I love sweets, but they don’t love my ass.”
“I have to watch it,” she said, commiserating with me. “I like to taste my own stuff. I made the cake.”
“I saw it. It’s spectacular,” I complimented her. “And I’m having a piece whether it’s on my healthy diet routine or not.”
“Here comes Carter,” she said enthusiastically. “I think he’s missing you. He’s looked over here about a hundred times. Come see me before you leave. We can chat when you have time. I can put you to work with me if you want to help at the shelters, and I want one of those bags.”
I nodded automatically, and then turned to see that Carter was already beside me.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine. Ruby and I were just chatting.”
He folded his arms. “You tell her everything, Ruby?”
“Only the good stuff,” she shot back.
“I need to go taste that cake. You did a great job,” Carter told Ruby.
“Thanks. Let me know what you think,” the younger woman requested, grinning as her fiancé reached her side.
“You’ve never baked a pastry that I can stay away from,” Carter told her as he took my hand and pulled me to my feet.
He didn’t let go of my hand as he led me to the pastry table. Not only had Ruby done a cake, but every single pastry laid out on the massive buffet.
“What do you suggest?” I asked Carter politely.
“Since I know you’ll only do one, I’d go for the cake.” He cut a piece, put it on a plate, and handed it to me.
I tossed back the rest of the champagne in my hand and gave it to a passing waiter.
“Let’s go outside,” he said beside my ear. “It should be quieter there.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me along behind him.
Carter
Something was wrong with Brynn, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out exactly what was bothering her.
From the moment I’d picked her up, she had been careful and polite.
Not the woman I knew who cracked jokes, and the female who could seem to find something amusing in almost any situation.
She’d hardly spoken on the way here, and she’d only given me one-word responses for the entire car ride.
Maybe it was her meeting. Maybe it hadn’t worked out that well. But her chilly demeanor seemed to be directly related to me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her as we stepped onto the large patio of Jett’s penthouse.
I took up a corner that was deserted. There were only a few other people outside because it was unseasonably chilly.
“Nothing,” she denied. “I’m fine.”
I watched her take a few bites of her cake, and then she set it down on the table beside us.
“Bullshit! You’ve been quiet all night, and being silent isn’t exactly like you. You’ve drunk way more glasses of alcohol than you usually do, too. Something’s up, and I want to know why you seem so sad. I don’t like it. Did the meeting not go well?”
“On the contrary,” she said. “It went really well. They want to buy the entire line, and they’re offering to give me creative control. Nothing would be released without my approval.”
“Did you agree?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” she answered coolly.
I’d wolfed down my own cake, and set my empty plate beside hers. “Then let’s talk about why you’re not acting like yourself.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “I think maybe we should back off just a little on our relationship. It’s been too much, too fast for me, Carter. I think we should take a break.”
I looked at her, completely dumbfounded. “What? Are you serious?”
Jesus Christ! There was no stepping back with her for me. It was full speed ahead with every damn engine running, and it wasn’t speedy enough to satisfy me.
I thought about her about fifty times a day, and when I wasn’t thinking about her, I was with her.
She put a light hand on my upper arm. “I think it’s all happened too fast. You have your career, and I’m leaving in a few days to go do a shoot and a commercial in California. Maybe it’s our chance to step back and evaluate what kind of relationship we have. If nothing else, maybe we could be friends.”
I saw red, and the hue didn’t get any lighter or prettier the longer I contemplated her words. “What the fuck, Brynn? What happened between the time I saw you last night and tonight? You didn’t feel this way yesterday. I know you didn’t.”
She looked away. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
Mine. This woman was fucking mine, and I was not about to let her walk out of my life.
Problem was, I wanted her to be happy, too, even if it would fucking kill me to let her go.
“You can’t tell me that you don’t want me, Brynn. I don’t fucking believe it.” I took her shoulders and shook her lightly—like that would suddenly bring back the Brynn I knew.
“Lust can’t keep two people together, Carter,” she said in a reasonable voice that made me want to smash my fist into a wall.
“This hasn’t just been lust, and you know it. You can leave if you want to, but you’ll break my goddamn heart. I love you, Brynn. I think I have since the minute you told me off over the elevator incident. I was an asshole, but you changed me. You fucking healed me. Everything was black and white in my life until you came and made me see that there was color in everything. You made me see life as it really is. And nothing will ever be the same if you walk out,” I said with a growl. “You’d be leaving me. Not the other way around. I thought we trusted each other.
I can’t be your friend, Brynn. It’s not possible.”
I’d sooner get dumped than try to pretend that I don’t fucking need her so much that I can barely breathe because of it.
I almost caved when I saw a tear hit her cheek.
“We did trust each other,” she said in a distressed tone. “But I’m just not so sure of anything anymore.”
“Are you drunk?” I asked roughly, trying to jump at any excuse as to why she’d suddenly changed.
“No,” she answered flatly, but the tears continued to leak from her eyes. “I’m sorry. I have to go. I’ll grab a cab.”
“Take the car,” I demanded in a graveled voice.
Hell, even if she was dumping me, I wanted her ass to be safe.
I followed her inside, and watched as she weaved her way through the crowd and to the door.
Ever the good guest, she stopped to quickly say good-bye to Jett and Ruby before she hightailed it out the door.
I ducked back outside. I wasn’t in any mood to face the party, which was starting to wind down. I found a chair in the quiet corner and sat down, still too stunned to put my thoughts together.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there before I realized that one of the couples on the balcony was actually Mason and Laura, but I turned my back on them and stared across to the Space Needle that was prominently on display.
“I think you need this,” Jett said as he came and plopped his ass down beside me.
I took the generous glass of whiskey he was holding out and downed half of it in one gulp.
“What happened? Ruby thought that Brynn had been crying,” Jett said.
“I have no fucking idea,” I told him honestly. “Yesterday, we were fine. And today she wants to step back and look at our relationship, which pretty much means that it’s over. She said we can be ‘friends,’ for God’s sake. I can’t be her goddamn friend. I can’t keep my hands off her, and I don’t want to. She. Belongs. With. Me.”
“Any idea what brought all this on?” Jett questioned.
“There was nothing. No disagreement. No fight. Just the good-bye.” I chugged back the rest of my drink, hoping to hell something would ease the pain.
“So that’s it?” Jett asked in a somber tone.
“Hell, no, that’s not it. Would you have let Ruby go that easily?” I grumbled. “I’ll give her some space tonight, but I’m not going anywhere. I promised her I wouldn’t, and I’m not. Something happened, Jett. And I’ll figure out what it is. Brynn is it for me, man. There isn’t going to be anybody else. I love her.”
“I would follow Ruby through hell if she had to go there,” Jett said in a grim, serious tone. “I had a feeling you weren’t going to just write the whole thing off.”
“I’m not. But I have to admit that I don’t know what the fuck to do.”
“I think you’re right. Give her a little space, but not too much.”
“She’s getting tonight. I’ll be back at her door tomorrow. She’s leaving in a few days for work. We’re going to work this out before she goes. If we don’t, I’m going to fucking lose it.”
“Go home and get some sleep. The party is over,” Jett advised.
“I didn’t mean to be a damper on the festivities,” I told him.
“You’re my brother, Carter. If you need me, I’m here for you. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are at the time.”
I slapped him on the back as we stood up. “Glad your women troubles are over.”
Jett shook his head and shot me a cheeky ass grin. “I hate to break it to you, but women are…complicated. You’ll fight. But the make-up sex is worth it.”
“I’d rather skip the fight and have regular sex,” I grumbled as I followed him inside.
I was going to take my ornery ass home, but I already knew there would be no rest for me tonight.
Laura
I knew I’d had way too much champagne and cake, but I wasn’t quite sure what order I’d had them in.
My stomach was slightly upset, and I’d stepped out to get some air, totally oblivious of anybody else on the patio.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
“What in the hell are you doing?” a deep, gravelly voice asked from the corner of the balcony.
“Breathing,” I answered as he approached me and stopped beside me as I stared at the lights of the city.
I looked at the voice since watching all those fuzzy lights were making me slightly dizzy.
I was startled to see that the man beside me was Mason Lawson, the man I’d lusted after at the charity benefit where Brynn had first seen Carter.
He looked just as yummy as he had that night.
“We breathe all the time,” he grumbled. “I don’t think you really need to try. And you were doing it pretty loud.”
“Did I disturb you?”
“No.”
“Am I bothering you?”
“No.”
“Then why do you want me to stop?” I knew I sounded like a total idiot, but in my alcohol-covered brain, it didn’t matter.
“I just asked why you were breathing so hard.”
“I ate too much cake, and drank too much champagne. That almost never happens to me.”
“Then why did it happen tonight?” he questioned, sounding displeased.
Or maybe Mason was always displeased. It wasn’t like I knew his normal demeanor.
It was a good question. Why had I drunk too much, and binged on cake? Now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure I’d scarfed down some of the pastries, too.
“I think I was trying to escape my own thoughts,” I confessed because I didn’t give a damn what I said to who at the moment.
“What were you thinking about?” he asked, like he was interrogating a witness to a crime.
“I want to have a baby,” I happily admitted to him. “I’m getting old, and nobody really wants me and a baby. Well, I’m sure somebody would marry me because I’m a supermodel. Okay, I’m a plus size model, but I have money. Sometimes, when you make a lot of money, you’re never sure why a guy wants to be with you. Do you know what I mean? And the right guy has never wanted to be with me.” I was rambling, but I couldn’t seem to shut up.
He let out a bark of laughter that sounded like it was rusty, and that he didn’t do it much.
“How old are you?” he demanded to know.
“Thirty-three. My biological clock is ticking, and I want to be young enough to still play with my kids. If I have kids. Plural. Although I’d be really happy if I had one. But being an only child is lonely.” Nobody knew that better than me.
“So how do you have a child if you don’t have a man in your life?” he asked, sounding confused.
I slapped him on the arm. “Women don’t need men anymore, silly. Well, not the actual man. But we do need a sperm donor. So I guess we kind of still need them. But I don’t have to put up with one all the time. I just need his sperm.”
“Are you trying to say that you want to have a test-tube baby?” he asked gruffly.
I nodded so hard that I made myself dizzy. “Yep. My egg, his sperm, and I’d never even have to meet the guy. I think it’s better that way.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that someday, that child is going to want to know something about his father?” His expression was grim.
“I’d love him or her enough to make up for the child not having two parents,” I argued.
But yeah, I had thought about that, and that was probably the reason I’d cut loose and tried to forget about it at this party.
“You have time. You’re beautiful and successful. You’ll find somebody to do it the normal way,” he said, his voice icy.
“Are you always this grumpy?” I asked.
; “Are you always this chatty?” he shot back.
“As a matter of fact, I’m not. I think I’m just drunk. I guess I’d better get home.”
“Do you know where it is?” he asked dryly.
“Of course I do. And you don’t have to be so mean to me just because I want to have a kid. Women are doing it every day.”
“I thought I was being nice,” he said hesitantly. “I’m talking to you.”
If he thinks he’s being nice, I’d hate to see what his crabby moods are like.
“Well, thanks for the chat then,” I said as I started to turn around to find my way back inside.
“Wait!” he commanded as he grabbed my arm. “I really wasn’t trying to be mean.”
I turned back to him. “It’s okay. You don’t know me, and I probably sound like a crazy drunk lady.”
“Are you really trying to have a child?” He grilled me as hard as he had a moment before.
“I am. I’ve always wanted to have a family.” I felt the tears well up in my eyes, but because I was hammered, I didn’t even try to control them.
He put his enormous hands on my shoulders. “You’ll find somebody. You can give it some more time. Hell, I’m thirty-four and I haven’t even thought about having kids. Or a wife, for that matter.”
“You’re a man. You can father kids until you die. I can’t. My clock is ticking.”
“It’s not ticking that damn loud,” he snapped.
I was beginning to think that Mason Lawson had no idea how to be nice. But he was listening.
God, he was a handsome devil. His hair was dark, but his eyes were a smoldering gray, which I found pretty damn sexy.
“It is loud.” My words came out terribly slurred. “Loud enough that I’m considering going to a sperm bank. I turn thirty-four in a couple of months.”
“Have you ever considered using somebody you know? Somebody who can at least give you a medical history and a background? A guy who the kid can visit when he comes of age?” His voice was still chilly, and his eyes were focused directly on my face.
“Oh, God no. I don’t know any man who’d be willing to do that.”