Nobody's Princess

by Sarah Hegger

  She hung up before he could speak again. Her phone rang almost immediately. Her hand hovered over it. She should pick it up. Her heart pounded so fast, she thought she might throw up. She didn’t want to pick up. Not picking up, though, was only going to make him madder.

  “Are you coming?” Thomas yelled through the door.

  “Just wait.” She shoved her phone deep into her bag. It stopped ringing and she breathed a sigh of relief. Her phone started up again. She kicked the bag under the bed and ran for the shower.

  *

  Tiffany inched out of her room and into the hideously bright day.

  Thomas greeted her with another of his big smiles. “You okay?”

  Dakota pretended she didn’t exist, which, given her state that morning, was fine by Tiffany.

  “No.” She avoided Thomas’s knowing look and jammed her sunglasses on.

  “Hey.” Thomas snagged her arm and tugged her in front of him. Blue eyes, kind, warm, and caring, soothed the jangled edges of her nerves.

  “I think I might have sort of broken up with my boyfriend.”

  “What?” Thomas jerked his head back. “I was asking about your hangover, but this is a lot more serious. How do you sort of break up with your boyfriend?”

  A small huddle of men surrounded the trailer with the Miura. Legs akimbo, arms across their chests as they discussed the car loudly. A couple of small boys stood beside the men, miniature versions of their bigger counterparts.

  “What year is she?” a man called out.

  “Seventy-two,” she said.

  “Back to the boyfriend.” Thomas turned her face back to him. His hand pressed warm against her chin. “Either you broke up with him or you didn’t.”

  She shivered under the intensity of his blue-eyed gaze. “I got mad at him. He said I had sides, I said I didn’t, I had bits and some of them were messy, so he could deal.”

  Thomas’s grip on her arm tightened a bit. “That’s it?”

  “I’ve never spoken to him like that.” Tiffany’s head reeled a bit. Might have been the hangover, but probably more the conversation with Ryan. “I told him I might not want to marry him anyway.”

  “And he said?”

  “I don’t know. I hung up.” Her phone started ringing again.

  Thomas looked down at her bag. “You going to get that?”

  “Nope.”

  “What kind of torque does this baby have?” a voice called out from the fan club.

  “Almost three hundred pounds,” she called back.

  The fan club clucked that over in their huddle.

  Thomas tugged her a step closer. “That doesn’t sound like a breakup to me.”

  “I said I wasn’t sure if I wanted to marry him.”

  “And how much of that is the tequila talking?”

  “None of it.” He stood there, looking all self-righteous, just like Ryan. “None of it was the tequila talking. Last night, okay, tequila all the way, but this morning, I was sober.” Suddenly, Tiffany had a gut load of men and their crap. All of them. “You’re all the same, all of you.” Dropping her chin to her chest, she deepened her voice. “I’ll tell you what to think, Tiffany. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that because you’re not so good at thinking, anyway. Let me do that …” Tears crept up on her. Damn, stupid things.

  Big arms wrapped around her and pulled her closer. “Whoa.”

  The fight bled right out of her and she leaned her cheek against the hard expanse of his chest. He smelled of man and laundry detergent, his tee soft against her skin. “Too much?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  She sighed into the warm comfort he offered.

  “What happened last night?” His voice rumbled through his chest. “I left you and you went to bed.”

  “Nothing.” Swift heat rushed up her neck and over her face. “I called him and he got mad.”

  “What about?” Broad hands swept the skin of her back and took the tension away with them.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  His nose brushed against her ear. “Tell me.”

  “Why?” She squirmed inside. This could get so humiliating, but tucked up against the strength and heat of him, she ached to confess all her secrets.

  His laughter vibrated against her. “Because I like you, Tiffany.”

  That thrilled her right to the toes of her Jimmys.

  “And because there’s a little something going on between us. If you’re engaged and ready to marry this guy, then I’m not going to step on anybody’s toes. But if this guy is the jerk I think he is, then you deserve better.”

  A small sound squeaked out of her throat. The blood roared through her ears. “You’re hitting on me.”

  “Not right now.” His arms tightened. “So tell me.”

  He scared the crap right out of her. The words were one thing, but there was no denying how much she liked hearing them. And she really shouldn’t because things were way, way messy enough. She wrenched out of his dangerous hold and stalked over to the men surrounding the Miura. “I’m not talking about this anymore. Or ever.”

  Tiffany spent the next fifteen minutes discussing specifications with a rapt audience. She tried to ignore Thomas, but he didn’t make it easy by standing there watching her. He also didn’t move too far away from Dakota the entire time. That situation wasn’t getting any easier either.

  They got on the road a short while later. Dakota gave them the address of the shop where Luke worked.

  Tiffany wished she could swap places with Dakota and hide out in the back. The bellowing bass coming off Dakota’s headphones made short work of that idea.

  She sipped the coffee Thomas had bought her and ate tiny pieces of her muffin (also procured by Thomas). Her belly roiled and her head pounded with a combination of anxiety and hangover. The muffin was the wrong side of fresh and tasted like it had been pounded out with another ten million just like it, but she ate the entire thing anyway. And enjoyed it.

  “How’s your hangover?” Thomas broke the silence between them. A smug smile curled around his mouth.

  Tiffany cursed the heat creeping into her cheeks. She’d hoped they could go the entire day without having to discuss any of this. At least this way, she wasn’t obsessing about seeing Luke. Or Thomas’s latest confession. She threw a surreptitious glance over her shoulder to make sure Dakota wasn’t listening. “Not so good.”

  Dakota glanced up and gave her the death stare.

  “My head is fine.” Thomas’s smile grew bigger.

  “Okay.” She sighed. Smug so didn’t suit him. “Get it over with.”

  “What?” He looked genuinely confused.

  Tiffany glared at him. “Don’t be a dickhead.”

  “What?” Surprise morphed into injured.

  “You know what I’m talking about. Me going on and on about my stuff.” She waved her hand over herself. “Making a complete ass of myself, getting tanked on tequila and throwing myself at you.”

  “That was you throwing yourself at me?” He made a noise of disbelief in the back of his throat. “And here I thought you were just a friendly drunk. If I’d known you were throwing yourself at me, I definitely would’ve paid closer attention.”

  “Seriously?” Tiffany shook her head. He was going to compound her humiliation by making fun of her. She took a huge gulp of coffee and scalded the back of her throat.

  “Come on,” he said with a laugh. “You had too much tequila, Tiffany. Nobody got hurt, nothing stupid happened. Lighten up a little.”

  Easy for him to say. She folded her arms across her breasts. Lighten up? Was he kidding her? She’d gone and made a total idiot of herself. She’d like to see how he’d feel if he had done the same. Actually, try as she might, she couldn’t see him making a big deal about it. What she could see was him flashing that big, beautiful grin and making a joke out of the whole thing. Maybe, and at the very most, looking a bit sheepish. “I feel stupid.”

  “Sure you do
.” He shrugged one big shoulder. “But it’s over now.”

  “Really?”

  He made a face. “Hey, if it makes you feel any better, remember I was the one that said I’d give my left nut to sleep with you.”

  Actually, it made her feel a lot better. “We were drunk,” she said. “I think we should agree to discount anything the other one said.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You were drunk. I was lightly buzzed and I still want to sleep with you. I think I made that clear earlier.”

  Her mouth dropped open and she had to shut it fast. “You can’t say things like that.”

  Dakota’s head was down, his music still going as he tapped into his phone.

  “Sure I can. And when you quit ducking and diving, you’ll admit you feel the same way. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen or anything, just like to put these things out there.” Thomas shrugged. “Anyway, how do you want to go about looking for Luke?”

  “I don’t know.” Her brain cycled to catch up with the subject change. Clearly, Thomas thought the other part of their conversation was over, and she sure as hell wasn’t going back there.

  “I think we should go straight to the store. If we get lucky, we’ll run into Luke. If not, we might find someone who knows him.” He went silent for a moment. “You guys going to be okay?”

  “Luke and me?”

  “Yup. Last I heard, you couldn’t be in the same room without making the walls shake.”

  “I’ve grown up since then.” Sort of. He had a point, though. Those last months with Luke had been one battle after another, both of them drawing as much blood as they could. Luke had a vicious mouth on him. She did a mental flinch. She hadn’t exactly done herself proud with her comebacks. The demolition job on the Miura being number one on that list. “I’m going to calmly explain what I want and get him to come back with me. Then I’m going to give him back the Miura and we can be on our way. It sounds like your business with him is going to be a hell of a lot more serious.”

  “Yeah.” Thomas grimaced at the windshield. “I have a whole lot that needs saying when I see Luke, and he’s not going to like any of it.” He paused. “How do you think Luke is going to react to his brother?”

  Tiffany dared another glance at Dakota.

  His fingers whirred across his screen. From this angle, it was the only sign of life.

  “Dakota adored Luke when he was a kid. He really looked up to him.”

  “And Luke?”

  “Luke took care of him,” Tiffany said. “He didn’t have a lot going for him. I know it’s hard to see now, but he was the cutest kid.” She kept her tone low in case Dakota could hear anything through the raucous pounding his ears were taking. “Lola never had a lot of time for him, and their dad …” She didn’t know how much Luke had told Thomas.

  “He’s in jail, right?”

  “Right.” She breathed a sigh of relief. This would all be easier if Thomas knew everything. “Embezzlement. Lola had her own money tied up, so it didn’t touch her. But even before that, their dad was not really the kind of dad who noticed his children much. When Luke was a kid, their father used to keep filling up his bank account, and other than staying out of his hair, that was all their father did for them. Luke’s parents were divorced, but his mother was great.”

  An old sadness gripped her. It wasn’t long after the death of his mother that things with Luke had changed. “After his mom died, Luke seemed to want to spend more and more time with Dakota. Like he was all that Luke had.”

  And that was what had just about killed her. She had wanted, no, needed Luke to turn to her for comfort. Instead, he had virtually cut her out, spending as much time with his brother as he could. Always polite to her, but cold and distant. That was when she learned how to push his buttons. And push them she did.

  Looking back now, it was hard to believe that was her. She’d pushed and Luke had struck back. In the beginning they had used sex to keep the connection alive, but soon the verbal skirmishes grew too awful for even that. Then Luke had turned to other women to ease his pain. She couldn’t say any of this out loud. It burned enough to even think about it.

  “How do you want to handle the drug thing?” Thomas turned off the main road onto a quieter street.

  Tiffany blew out her breath. “It’s not like either of us really has any say in how Dakota lives his life and what he does,” she said. “And he sure doesn’t want to know what I think about his life.”

  “You have a point.” Thomas gave a wry smile. “But I can’t leave it at that. I’ll try talking to him.”

  “Good luck with that.” Traffic slid around them. Normal people having a normal day, with no idea of the time bomb ticking down in Thomas’s truck.

  “Whatever happens, we’ll have to tell Luke,” Thomas said.

  Tiffany shook her head slowly. Luke’s day was about to slide into the toilet.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tiffany kept her gaze on the streets as they wound between strip malls and quiet suburbs. They stopped at a pedestrian crossing for a family on bicycles. Mom, Dad, and their two kids happily pedaled down the road.

  “Are we there yet?” Dakota took off his headphones. He straightened in his seat and looked around him. His mouth tightened in a grim line.

  “Almost,” said Thomas.

  Almost there. Almost at the store where Luke worked. Almost with Luke. Tiffany’s belly twisted inside out. Best case scenario, Luke wouldn’t be too pissed to see her. They all got worse from there, so she stopped thinking about his reaction and looked at the small dot that was them moving across the GPS map.

  They arrived at the store that screamed “boys and their toys.” Massive TV screens rolled image after image of men throwing themselves over cliffs, under towering walls of water, down ravines, and up fortresses of rock. All of the men wore neon and little more than a cool headband.

  “Help you?” A young guy shuffled toward them, long hair and tattoos, with the sort of stringy shape you got from hours spent sweating up and down mountains under the Utah sun. A chin lift in Thomas’s direction said she’d obviously been identified as the least likely buyer.

  “Yeah.” Thomas looked up from the mountain bike he was admiring. He’d look at some lucky girl the same way some day. “Cool bike,” he said. Then he seemed to remember what they were doing there. “Actually, we’re looking for Luke.”

  “Luke?” The shaggy-haired salesman shoved his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts. Those shorts would hit the ground if he kept putting pressure on the pockets like that. They seemed to be barely saying hello to his hip bones. “He’s not here right now. Can I help you with anything?”

  Her head spun for a moment. Momentary reprieve. She got a mental hold of herself. There would be no wussing out now, when she’d come all this way.

  “Is this a hardtail?” Thomas wanted to talk bikes? Tiffany stared at the side of his head.

  Dakota slouched over and ran reverent fingers over the bike’s handles.

  “No, dude.” The salesman’s scraggly beard parted to show perfectly white teeth. “This is way, way more than that. Check this out.” As one, they crouched to stare at the frame of the bike. “This is a new feature Specialized are putting on their bikes. Totally righteous, man. This little baby is going to give you the sweetest ride.”

  And they were off.

  Toward the back of the store, another bike stretched over a sort of rack thingy as another long-haired outdoors type spun the wheels. She studied the other salesman. She really didn’t get the “pants on the ground” thing. What was the point in having half your underwear hanging out? In her opinion, one of the best parts of man watching was butts and thighs, and those hanging pants gave you nothing. Thomas wore his faded jeans low on the hip, but curved to the butt. Not tight, but not too loose and hiding his prime ass. His T-shirt of the day left her clueless—There’s no place like 127.0.0.1—but it rode up as he crouched and showed a strip of tanned waist. His thighs pull
ed the faded denim to straining point.

  It would’ve been better if he’d never said that thing about wanting to sleep with her. Her head kept going back there. It must be her low-level hangover still making white noise in her head. She forced her gaze to some snowboarder on the screen carving up a vertical rock face with his board.

  “So, he’ll be here tomorrow?” Thomas asked.

  “Should be.” The salesman shrugged. “Today is riding day. So unless he lands his ass in hospital, Luke will be here tomorrow.”

  “Cool.” Thomas nodded, casting another loving glance at the bike.

  “You wanna take her for a sling?” The salesclerk recognized a brother when he saw one.

  Thomas’s entire being lit up. “Can I?”

  “Sure.” The guy unracked the bike with a practiced flick of the wrist. “Just give me your car keys and some ID.”

  They all looked at her, Thomas with open pleading in his blue gaze. Would any woman be able to resist that look? “Go ahead.”

  They hit the front of the store. Thomas threw his leg over the bike. The huge parking lot stretched behind the building. When they’d arrived, Tiffany had been glad they could get the trailer in without hassles. Now she saw the full reason for the large parking lot as Thomas stood on the pedals and shot across the empty space.

  The salesman sidled up beside her. “That is not a Miura?”

  And they thought their bicycles were cool. Tiffany turned to look at the salesman with a smile. “It sure is.”

  “Righteous.” He breathed and headed for the car.

  Thomas pulled tight turns at the other end of the parking lot.

  Beats back in place, Dakota propped himself up on a cement bollard.

  “Luke said he had one of these.” The salesman stared at the Miura like he’d had an epiphany.

  “He did and he still does,” Tiffany said. It was going to be hard saying good-bye to her baby. Maybe Ryan was a little bit right about all of that after all. Her lip curled back from her teeth. Except she was mad at Ryan and didn’t want to think fair. What the hell kind of man turned down phone sex? And then went on to make such a big, stinking deal about it?