Nobody's Princess

by Sarah Hegger

  “Yup.”

  “What do you think he’s doing in Utah?”

  “Dakota says he’s working in some sort of bike shop here. Works during the weeks and goes mountain biking on the weekends.”

  “Ah.” Now it made perfect sense. Thinking about Luke made her happy buzz waver around the edges. She hadn’t clapped eyes on him in seven years. Had he changed? Of course he’d changed, and she had, too. Luke would have loved this dress. Tiffany looked down at her dress and sighed. White and curve hugging, it clung in all the right places and ended short enough for her legs to do the talking. “He would have liked this dress.”

  “Any man with a pulse likes that dress.”

  “You say a lot of stuff like that. It’s making the ignoring part difficult to … um … ignore.” The tequila disintegrated her erase button. His shot sat on the bar and she snagged it. And then his wrist, and poured salt all over it. Salt scattered over the bar top and onto his pants. She didn’t care.

  Up went one of his eyebrows in a silent challenge.

  With a grin, she bent and lapped the salt from his wrist. He tasted yummy, salty, with a tang of warm skin. Warm man-skin on her tongue. “So, why do you say them, the dog things?”

  His eyes screamed danger, but the tequila laughed in its face. “I’m a man, we all think things like that. I say them.”

  “I noticed.” There it came again, the smile, the warning and the tequila smoothing away the edges.

  “And I think you’re hot.”

  “Yeah.” The pit of her stomach dropped. What a total disappointment. She wrinkled up her nose at him. Not to sound ungrateful or anything. She was glad she’d been born with her fair share of natural assets, but she liked it better when he called her smart, or a human calculator. She especially liked that one. “Yeah, but it’s not real.”

  “Say what?” His gaze roamed her from top to toe. “It looks pretty real to me.”

  “Nuh-uh.” She shook her head and signaled the barman. If she was going to have this conversation, she definitely needed more hooligan juice. “I mean, some of it’s natural, but not the rest.”

  His eyes sparkled down at her, his interest snagged. “Which bits?”

  “Botox.” She tapped her forehead.

  He frowned at her. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six, but it’s never too early to start.” She leaned forward. Oops, her balance seemed a bit iffy.

  He steadied her with one of his huge hands. He could get her whole breast in a hand that size. Which reminded her. She pointed at her chest. “Sweet sixteen present.”

  “No.” He eyed her breasts.

  “Great job, but fakes.” Sitting back a little, she let him get a proper look.

  “What else?”

  She tapped her nose.

  His eyes widened.

  “And that’s it.” She rapped the counter. The barman must be asleep. She needed him here with that next shot.

  The barman’s gaze drifted over to Thomas.

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Thomas cocked his head.

  “No.” She slapped her hand on the bar. “Another one.”

  He grinned and shook his head. “Okay.”

  “I don’t like being told what to do. Ryan does it all the time, and it’s okay when he does it because he loves me and he’s my fiancé.”

  His beautiful blue eyes chilled. “Almost fiancé.”

  “Tomahto, tomato.” She waved her hand at him. He seemed pissed and she had no idea why. The barman put down another two shots and she beamed her thanks at him. “Wanna do a body shot off me?”

  Thomas looked kind of primitive for a moment. She thought he might grab her and drag her off to his cave. The weird part being how on board she was with the idea.

  “No.”

  “Aw, come on.” She slung her arm around his shoulders and tugged him closer. He had such pretty eyes. And his mouth. His lips were kind of stern and sexy all at once. His bottom lip was full and biteable, his top lip clearly drawn in strong lines. “I thought you were a model.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re very good-looking.” She tightened her grip around his neck and his face got closer. Maybe he wanted to kiss her. She wouldn’t mind that. He was always telling her she was hot and stuff. He probably wanted to kiss her. That would be great. No. She sat up suddenly and released him. That would not be good at all. That would be very, very bad. “I’m engaged.”

  “Almost engaged.” He touched the end of her nose. “And you’re a sloppy drunk.”

  She almost took offense. Maybe if he had looked like it bothered him even the teeniest bit, she might have. Instead, he looked like he thought the whole thing was a hoot. “No.” She held up her index finger. Then she cupped the end of his lovely, strong chin. With a chin like that, she bet he made up his mind in a big way. “I am a horny drunk.”

  “Good to know.” He grinned. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  “Oh, no, no, no, no, no.” She reeled back. Unfortunately she misjudged her momentum and went too far back.

  He caught her around the waist. He had those biceps that looked like they wanted to bust free of the arms of his T-shirt. Nice. She blinked at his totally hot arms. Were they as strong as they looked? She gave them a squeeze. Oh, boy, a girl could sink her teeth into those. Maybe she shouldn’t. Of course she shouldn’t, which brought her back to where she was before he made her look at his arms. “I’m not going to bed with you.”

  “I’m heartbroken.” His arms tightened around her waist as he pulled some cash from his pocket and dropped it on the counter. “And I didn’t ask you to go to bed with me. I said we should get you to bed.”

  He edged her off her bar stool.

  She wavered on her feet for a moment. It was the Manolos. Great shoes, but they didn’t go well with tequila. “What exerts more pressure per square inch when walking, a one-hundred-pound woman in heels, or a six-thousand-pound elephant?”

  His eyebrow shot up as he steadied her against his wide chest. “Is the elephant wearing heels?”

  “No.” She snorted a laugh and his expression softened.

  “Damn, you even make that sexy.”

  “Do you know?” She patted the rigid line of his chest.

  “Pressure is defined as force over area,” he said. “Pressure being directly proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the area. So, given that the area of the tip of a high heel shoe is so small, and an elephant’s foot is so much larger and it walks with two feet on the ground at once, I would say the woman in the kick-ass shoes wins hands down.”

  He got it right. Tiffany beamed at him and stroked his chest. His mind was as sexy as the rest of him. Nice. Her feet didn’t want to stay under her. “You don’t want to sleep with me?”

  “I never said that.” He took her weight and half carried her to the door.

  “So, you do want to sleep with me.”

  “Tiffany.” He stopped suddenly and turned her toward him. Her Manolos tried to run away again and he tightened his grip. “You’re loaded right now, so you probably won’t remember this. I would give my left nut to sleep with you, but you would have to be sober at the time.”

  “Oh.” That made her feel a lot better. She took deep breaths of the sticky night air as he propelled her down the walk to her room. The crappy motel looked a lot nicer at night, warm and welcoming.

  He propped her up against the wall while he opened her door. “Here we go.”

  “Thomas?”

  “Yup.”

  “If you gave your left nut, would you still be able to sleep with me?”

  He gave a short bark of laughter.

  She might not be smart, but he thought she was sexy and funny and he knew numbers like she did. It made her feel like one of those people in the movie Cocoon, all glowy and stuff.

  He pushed her gently into the room. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “I might need help getting into bed.” She leaned toward
him and giggled.

  He caught her and steered her back into her room. “I think that’s a horrible idea.”

  The door started to close. Grabbing the edge, she tugged it out of his grasp. She leaned toward him, but lost her balance. “Thomas.”

  He caught her against his chest. That, too, was a whole lot of lovely. His head seemed a very long way up, so she grabbed his T-shirt and tugged until he brought it down to her level. She plastered her mouth over his. His lips were soft and firm at the same time. She pushed him away before her tongue gave way to the impulse and went for it.

  He looked a little mussed and a lot frustrated.

  Good. I am woman, hear me roar. She’d read that somewhere and she thought it sounded rather good. “Thanks for a lovely evening.”

  She shut the door and leaned her weight against it. Her nipples tingled against the stretch of her dress, standing up and waiting to be noticed. Except there was nobody to notice them. Nobody but her. She brought her hands up to cup her breasts.

  Thomas had noticed her breasts. She looked at the door again. Nope. She shook her head and stumbled over the edge of the carpet. Going out there again was a bad idea. She ran her hands down her torso to the apex of her thighs. Heat pulsed through the thin fabric of the dress. Her breath caught in a soft gasp as she pushed her fingers against her mound. She could give herself relief, but she didn’t want that.

  Irritably she yanked off her sandals and tossed them across the room. Well, she had a fiancé, right? Almost. Screw that. Tiffany dug her phone out of her bag and hit Dial. “Hello, baby,” she purred as Ryan answered.

  “Tiffany?”

  “How you doing, babe?” Delilah came out to play.

  Silence met her for a moment. “Are you all right?”

  “Ryan.” She sprawled across one of the two beds in her room and arched her spine like a cat. She ached and she wanted to make it feel good. “You know what we’ve never done?”

  “Tiffany, have you been drinking?”

  “Yup, I have. We’ve never had phone sex. I think we should change that right now.”

  “You know I don’t like it when you drink.”

  “You’ll like it just fine in a minute, baby. Ask me what I’m wearing?”

  “No, Tiffany, I am not asking you what you’re wearing, because I’m not playing this ridiculous game. Sleep it off. I have work to do.”

  The phone went dead in her ear.

  “Ryan?”

  Silence.

  “Fuck.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Tiffany cracked open an eyelid and moaned. Tequila waited until the next morning to make you suffer. The sneaky bitch. Pounding reverberated through her head. Not her head, the door.

  “What?” She worked her tongue off the roof of her mouth to get some moisture going. Yuck. Her teeth had fur on them.

  “Rise and shine, princess,” Thomas called. “We’re burning daylight here.”

  “Okay.”

  Sweet baby Jesus. She’d planted a drunk, sloppy kiss on Thomas last night. Shit, and she hadn’t stopped there. Bloody tequila—there was a reason she didn’t drink the stuff. She’d told him about her boob job and nose job and the Botox. She dropped back onto the bed with a groan. Maybe she could stay here for the next sixty years of her life and he’d get tired of waiting.

  “Don’t go back to sleep.” He almost hammered the door right off its hinges.

  “Okay.” Face him she must.

  Here came another day of staring at Dakota’s sullen face and angry eyes. Dakota used to follow her and Luke around, his little face alive with curiosity, chatting as fast as his mouth could move. He’d adored his older brother to the point of hero worship.

  Luke loved Dakota right back. Nothing was ever too important for him to drop it and deal with Dakota. And Dakota needed a lot of dealing. She’d been jealous as hell at the time. But Luke had been gone for seven years. So who had been listening to Dakota chatter in those years? Not Lola, that was for certain.

  Lola. Tiffany snorted. Debbie Wilson from Iowa had a lot of explaining to do. After Luke’s father was jailed for embezzlement, Daddy had advised her—very strongly—to keep her distance from Lola. With her own money intact, Lola got on with her life, single in all the ways she needed. Luke left, Tiffany drifted, and Lola launched into her life as a socialite. So what had happened to Dakota? He’d gotten lost in the shuffle.

  “Are you up?” Thomas went at the door again, dragging her out of her misery. “Don’t make me come in there after you.”

  He’d do it, too. She’d made enough of a dick of herself. Having him come in there and see her would be the final insult. If she felt this bad, it stood to reason she wouldn’t be an oil painting this morning.

  “I’m coming.” She fell out of bed and staggered into the bathroom.

  Her reflection greeted her and she shrieked. Her sexy sundress hung around her like a rumpled dishrag. Michael Kors would slit his wrists if he saw what she’d done to his dress. Leftover mascara gummed her lashes together and made track marks under her eyes and down her cheeks. She laughed. That was no princess blinking back at her. Ryan would need a clinic to recover. Ryan. Shit. He’d have plenty to say.

  She ran warm water and did some damage repair. Her phone pinged. She didn’t need to check caller display to guess who that was. Best get it over with. After washing and drying her face, she went to find her phone. It was halfway under the bed, lighting up like a Christmas tree with the calls from Ryan.

  She hit his number and waited.

  “Tiffany,” he greeted her.

  “Hi there.” She tried to keep it light. A threatening silence loomed back at her. “So, um, last night.” Time to get this out in the open. “I had a bit too much to drink.”

  “You know how I feel about drinking.” Ryan sighed. The weight of his disapproval settled across her shoulders and she sat on the edge of the bed. “Last night took me by surprise. I have never known you to get drunk like that.”

  “I was just a bit buzzed,” she said.

  “I think the more important question here is where you are, Tiffany.” Ryan continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “What?” Her mouth dried up. Ryan had that I know something tone.

  “After last night, I was concerned about you. I did a bit of checking around. Your father said you were at a spa, but I called and you’re not at any spa you normally frequent.”

  Frequent? Tiffany took her phone away from her ear and glared at it. Who spoke like that? He sounded like a banking commercial. “No, I’m not,” she said. “I needed some time to think, so I went somewhere different.” She glanced around her expressionless hotel room. Way, way different, in fact.

  Silence stretched between them as Ryan waited for her to tell him more. No way was she doing that. His clipped tone could’ve cut glass. “Are you going to tell me where?”

  “No.” Her stomach tightened. He wasn’t going to like that, but telling him the truth was so not an option. “I wanted to be alone to think, and I went somewhere nobody knew me.”

  “Is this still about the other night?” Ryan sighed, bending the phone lines with his heavy exhalation. “Your father said you were upset. Is that what getting drunk and behaving out of character is about? I thought we’d settled this, Tiffany.”

  “No, it’s not, we have, I’m okay about that. I just had too much to drink.” She was babbling and she shut her mouth.

  “The issue isn’t how much you drank, it’s why you felt the need to do it. The call, I put down to the drinking. We’re not going to even talk about that. It was a symptom and now I want to hear the cause.”

  “Tequila?” She giggled.

  “Don’t be flippant, Tiffany.”

  Oops. She dug her toes into the rough pile of the carpet. Ryan would turn this into a big deal. He wasn’t one to let things roll. Her bright red nail polish stood out against the beige carpet. She’d drunk dialed and tried to get her almost fiancé to have phone sex with her. Ryan
acted like she’d run naked down the Magnificent Mile. “It was just a stupid call.”

  “Don’t trivialize this, please,” he said, frost tightening his clipped vowels. “You upset me with that so-called stupid call, and I believe I’m entitled to an explanation.”

  Ryan never yelled or got mad. He got meaner and sharper. She scrunched her toes together, yanking back on the urge to shout back like a thirteen-year-old. Ryan made her feel like a child, and it was bullshit. He was mad because she wanted to have phone sex. How dumb was that? Most men she knew would’ve liked a call like that.

  Thomas would’ve played. She shoved that thought away. Facing him and that sloppy kiss still loomed in her future. “You know what, Ryan,” she said, done with this conversation and squirming, “you’ve got your explanation. I got drunk, I get horny when I’m drunk, and I called you. End of story. Done.”

  “This conversation is not done.”

  “Ah-ah.” So deliciously and childishly satisfying. “This conversation is done.”

  “Tiffany.” His composure sounded a little frayed around the edges. “Do not hang up this phone. We have to talk about this. I need to—”

  “You know what, Ryan? You do a lot of talking. I’ve really had enough of your talking.” This beat the crap out of phone sex. Almost.

  “Tiffany.” His voice rose. “I don’t like this side of you at all.”

  “I’m not a polygon, Ryan.”

  “What?”

  “A polygon.” She took a note from Dakota’s book and drew out each sound with a silent “idiot” hanging on the end. “A plane figure with at least three straight sides and angles, and typically five or more.”

  “I know what—”

  “Well, I’m not one of those. I don’t have sides. I’m all one big piece, and some of those pieces are wonderful and others are messy. Deal with it.”

  “This isn’t the girl I’m going to marry speaking,” Ryan said.

  Hot anger jabbed through her gut. “You aren’t going to marry me because you never asked.” She relished how her voice bounced off the walls. “You assumed I would say yes. Well, what if I don’t say yes? Did that even occur to you? No, it didn’t. Well, Ryan, think about this. I might not want to marry someone who thinks a drunken call is a federal offense. Think about that.”