Nobody's Princess

by Sarah Hegger

  “Why?”

  “I owed you.”

  He looked up sharply. “You owed me?”

  “After what I did to her.” Tiffany nodded. “After what I did to us.”

  Luke’s dark gaze searched her face. What did he see when he looked at her? The urge to fidget rode her hard, and the silence built like a scream in her chest. “I didn’t come here to pick the scabs off,” she said.

  “Then why?”

  Tiffany shrugged. She didn’t have all the answers. “It seems like there’s a lot I didn’t say and I should have. I did a lot of things wrong. And if you think this is easy to say, then you’re nuts, but it needs to be said.”

  He frowned a bit, as if he were thinking about it.

  “We … I didn’t do so well with the marriage thing.” Way to go with the euphemism, Tiffany.

  He dropped his gaze and gave a harsh laugh. “You had some help with that.”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened that night?”

  Tiffany blinked at him. That’s right, they’d never spoken about it, because Luke had packed his bags and left. Well, here she stood and there he stood, and for once they weren’t screaming. “I saw you at a club that night.” This bit still had claws. “And you were with another girl.”

  He frowned. “What girl?”

  “I don’t know what girl, Luke. Does it really matter?”

  He closed the distance between himself and the Miura and stood there gazing at her. “I suppose not. So you saw me with the girl and trashed the car?”

  There was a bit more to it than that. “I was driving home, crying my eyes out.” Crying so hard she could barely see the road. “And that Carrie Underwood song came on the radio. The one about the guy being a cheater.”

  Luke shook his head. “I don’t know it.”

  Luke was more of an alternative rock guy, but it didn’t matter. “It’s about this girl that trashes her boyfriend’s car when she catches him cheating.”

  “So you trashed my best girl?” Luke rubbed the back of his neck. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “I couldn’t believe you had your hands up some girl’s skirt.”

  His eyes flashed fire for a second, then he grimaced. “Fair enough. We were young.”

  “And stupid.” Stupid enough to act without thinking, and stupid enough to both run away without talking about it.

  Luke shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the car.

  “The keys are inside.” Tiffany couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. “I’m going to have to ask you to drive me home, though. Or I could call Thomas to come and get me.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said.

  Tiffany gave a half cough, half laugh. “That’s a first.”

  “Yeah.” Shaking his head, he trailed his fingertips reverently across the seam of the door, down toward the handle. “I loved this car.”

  “I know. It’s why I did what I did.”

  “I know.” His caressing hand reached the handle and he popped it open. The door swung open on a soft hiss. Horns of the bull. Luke bent to peer inside. It took a while and then his head popped out again. “You fixed it all.”

  “Yes.” Tiffany took a careful step forward. “Even the busted fuel gauge, and I had nothing to do with that.”

  “It must have cost a bomb.” He shook his head.

  “It did,” Tiffany said. “I got a job.”

  He raised his eyebrow. Okay, she’d give him the skepticism. “Not much of a job. Working with a photographer as his assistant. I paid it off bit by bit.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask Daddy?” His lip curled up in a faint sneer.

  She couldn’t let him drag her into another insult fest. She’d had enough of those, too. “It didn’t seem right.”

  The shutters closed over his expression and his face went so cold it made her shiver. Back the fuck up, screamed her instinct. She took a step closer to him anyway. “I don’t want to fight.”

  “So you said before. What do you want?”

  “I want to give her back to you. Call it a bribe if you want. I want you to come back to Willow Park and get our divorce. Then we never have to see each other again.”

  “And if I don’t want her back?”

  Tiffany stopped and stared. She almost started laughing. The Miura had been Luke’s passion. He had loved that car almost as much, in fact more, than he’d loved her. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m being a dick.” He dropped his chin onto his chest and folded his arms. “Of course I want her back.”

  Tiffany’s head reeled with relief. The thought of the Miura going to someone else made her stomach knot and her chest ache. She loved that car. Really loved it.

  “But I don’t know if I want to keep her.” He stared at her as if trying to see right down to her heart. “Why did you do it? Fix her.”

  The question she really didn’t want to answer. Like peeling off her skin and leaving her nerve endings exposed. “I owed you.”

  “That’s bullshit.” No anger. The truth. His eyes silently asked her for the truth.

  Tiffany took a deep breath. Luke was probably the only person who stood a chance of understanding because he’d been right there with her through their crazy ride together. “She was us.” Tiffany let the words come. “She was everything that we were to me, all the passion and the excitement. All the incredible craziness. Most of it bad, but some of it so good.” She was utterly alone as she met his gaze, like something hanging out in the desert to die. Tiffany shivered and crossed her arms over herself. But the cold came from inside and it didn’t help. “You, me, her, we were free.”

  Luke moved suddenly. He came toward her and stopped. A slow burn seeped into his expression. “Who’s this guy you’re going to marry?”

  “Actually, I’m not so sure I’m going to marry him now.” She and Luke, they’d seen each other at their worst. She didn’t have to pretend to be anything with him.

  “You love him?” Luke cocked his head.

  “My father thinks he hung the moon.”

  “Ah.” Luke stepped closer and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. It was such a familiar gesture it twisted her heart. “Don’t do it, Tiff. We imploded, but the girl you were with me—in the Miura, hair streaming in the wind, laughing like the world was ours to bend—that girl was special. The kind of girl a man wants to keep forever.”

  Her heart kicked up an uneasy rhythm. She drew in a shaky breath. Citrus, leather, and man hit her in a familiar sensory tsunami. The smell of him used to drive her crazy. She used to bury her head into the place where his neck met his shoulder and draw it inside her in great gulps. It was the smell of wild, crazy, off-the-charts sex that left both of them wrung out.

  “Tiff.” His voice grew husky. He knew how it affected her. His voice said he still knew and he felt it, too. “Don’t bury all that passion. It’s one of the best parts of you.”

  She couldn’t meet his gaze. Wild Tiffany stirred inside, responding to the want in Luke’s voice like she always had.

  “Babe.” Warm hands on her arms.

  Tiffany closed her eyes. One touch from Luke and her knees grew weak. Luke, touching her, drawing her closer until his chest pressed against her breasts, reminding her of how it felt to be truly alive. Beneath all the anger had always been this. Hot and needy. She tipped her head back and he took her mouth. She braced for the onslaught of blistering heat.

  His tongue slipped into her mouth and she tasted Luke. The taste of freedom and desire, coursing through her like a runaway train.

  Except—not so much.

  It was a great kiss. Luke could kiss any girl out of her panties, and there’d been a little interest from the girl bits. But no raging flood. More of a fitful trickle.

  Luke lifted his head. A small frown creased the skin between his eyes. “Tiff?”

  “Yes.”

  He closed the distance between their mouths again.

  Huh! Same thing. Luke
’s kiss was loaded with memories, sweet, breathless memories, but still—memories. She pulled away from him and looked up.

  “That was …” He frowned down at her.

  “Different.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed softly. “Not what I was expecting.”

  “Nope, me neither.” She stepped away from him and his arms dropped. “You still give one hell of a kiss.”

  “Thanks. You got a little something going there, too.” He snorted and shoved his hands into his pockets. “This is weird.”

  “Not really.” The relief nearly made her giddy. A weight lifted off her chest and she breathed free and clear. She finally got the closure thing. “It’s over.”

  Luke’s head whipped up and his expression went speculative and finally, softened. He got it, too. They were both free. “Yeah.”

  “Great.” Thomas’s voice dashed across her in an icy wave. Both she and Luke jumped and turned. He stood between them and his truck. “Is he coming back to Willow Park?”

  Tiffany looked at Luke. “It’s time.”

  “It’s time.” Luke nodded.

  Thomas glared at Luke like he wanted to rip him to pieces. He yanked his stare away and stalked over to her. “Great. You done here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Luke lifted an eyebrow. Tiffany’s cheeks burned. No man had ever used that tone on her, and she wasn’t about to let one start now. She walked over to where Luke stood.

  Thomas and his bulk were suddenly between them.

  Tiffany threw him another look and neatly stepped around him. “Thank you, Luke.”

  “We both know we should have done this years ago, Princess.” His use of his old pet name caused a sweet pang in her chest, and she smiled at him. He had picked it up from Daddy, but Luke used it differently, like a silent joke between them.

  Luke raised his hand and touched her face. He leaned in toward her.

  “No more kissing.” Thomas honest to God growled the words.

  The look Luke shot her made her laugh. Then he raised her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Some of it was fun, Princess,” he said. “Most of it was a pain in the ass, but there was some fun in there, too.”

  “Truck.” Thomas stalked over to the truck and threw himself behind the wheel.

  Tiffany gave Luke a hug. Thomas could bark all he wanted, she was leaving when she was done.

  “I’ll come around and see what to do about Dakota tomorrow,” Luke said. “I think we’ve all had enough for one day. The big guy included.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tiffany was ready to rip Thomas a new one by the time they arrived back at the motel.

  Thomas’s jaw looked fused in place. Unlike Luke, he was a silent fumer—anger simmering below his skin. Ryan had another take on anger. Ryan looked disappointed and then calmly and rationally pointed out why he was right and she should have known better. Screw Ryan. And screw Thomas Hunter, too.

  All of his moody, silent fuming scratched her raw. With him, you couldn’t tell what he was thinking. And she needed to get inside his head and understand what the hell was happening. She could do with a touch of Luke here—let it rip and the consequences be damned. She knew how to handle that.

  Thomas turned the truck engine off.

  Sitting here in a shivering puddle wasn’t her thing. “You going to tell me what has your panties in a knot?”

  His jaw actually got tighter. “I saw you kissing Luke.”

  Well, she’d guessed that much. She might not have read as many books as him, but she wasn’t entirely clueless. “And?”

  “I didn’t like it.”

  Him admitting his jealousy was kind of cute, so she gave a tiny bit. “It was a good-bye kiss.”

  “I heard that.”

  Okay. She sat for a moment more. Now she really didn’t get it. If he knew it was the end, shouldn’t he be feeling okay about this? “So?”

  “I’m jealous.” He forced the words through his gritted teeth. “I’m jealous and I have no right to be and it’s not making me feel any less jealous.”

  “Oh?” Thomas of the Zen outlook and maddening calm having a childish, green-eyed fit. There was no end to today’s surprises.

  “I have never been jealous,” he said to the windshield. “Okay, maybe when I was a kid when Dominique Frazer had a crush on my brother, Josh, and I wanted her to have a crush on me instead. But that was the ninth grade.” He turned to look at her as if she could shed some light on the matter and winced. “No, that’s not entirely true. There were a couple of girls after who had crushes on Josh.” With a shrug, he went back to staring out the windshield. “You had to get used to it when you were Josh Hunter’s brother.” Tiffany sat and waited for more. So, his brother was hot stuff and the girls went for him big-time. There had to be something more.

  “We should talk,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “But not here.” He nodded as if they’d settled it and reached for his door handle. He stopped and turned to her. “Are you okay? With giving the car back, I mean.”

  “I’m going to miss her,” Tiffany said.

  He totally disarmed her with the genuine concern on his face. Tension still came off him in waves, but the question was real. He took her hand and placed a soft kiss against her fingers. “You did well. That took a lot of doing.”

  Her fingers tingled from his mouth and her insides tingled from the compliment. When Thomas gave a compliment, he really gave a compliment. The man was 100 percent genuine. He didn’t use a pat on the head as a launching point for his next foray into what she needed to change. “Thanks.”

  “Come on.” He jerked his head toward the motel. “Let’s go and see what our juvenile delinquent is up to.”

  “Are we good?” Tiffany stepped out of the truck.

  “I guess.” He stopped and turned toward her. “I’m being a jerk.”

  “Oh.”

  He stalked away from her toward his motel room. The door shut behind him while she stood next to the truck like a fool. Now that was being a dick, right there. Tossing out half bits of explanation that added up to a big, fat zero. And did his goddamned ass have to look so fine in those jeans? She still didn’t get the jealous thing. That is, she got it, but she didn’t get it. Thomas liked her. He’d told her often enough that he did. But he didn’t do anything about it. Even that time she was wasted, he let her kiss him and put her to bed. Alone.

  In her experience, men didn’t do shit like that. If they liked you, they made a move. Thomas got jealous of her kissing Luke. Still nothing. He’d had a little minor shit fit and gone in to see Dakota.

  Now, there was another crappy talk session on her day’s agenda. Sure, he was a pain in the ass, but she couldn’t dump Dakota there and leave him to fend for himself. She rapped on their door.

  Thomas answered her knock. Behind him, Dakota stretched out on the bed.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t that my line?”

  “About Dakota.” Actually they had a lot of talking to do, but one snarl at a time.

  His eyes gleamed down at her. “You want to talk about Dakota?”

  “And then we can go and have a talk about the other thing,” she said.

  He grinned his challenge at her. “Other thing?”

  “You know what other thing.” She called his bluff.

  “Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I think I owe you an explanation.”

  “You do.”

  His smile broadened into an appreciative grin. “Finding your inner ballbuster?”

  “A little.” A lot. Time for a girl to jump off the emotional roller coaster.

  Dakota glanced up at her and went back to watching the television. She didn’t know how Thomas could stand it that loud. She was pretty sure Dakota’s eardrums were so deadened by his music he could barely hear anything anyway.

  “Hi.” She edged closer to Dakota. He kept his star
e glued on the television. “So, I took the car back to Luke.” Dakota actually flicked his gaze in her direction. The honor almost went to her head. “And he’s agreed to get a divorce.”

  “He should have got rid of you years ago,” Dakota said.

  She bit back any snappy comeback. Dakota was like a mad dog; if he sensed fear, he would attack. “Yes, he should have. Luke said he would come around tomorrow and we could talk about what to do with you.”

  “Yay.”

  Tiffany took a deep breath and sat on the other bed. Thomas’s bed, some part of her brain registered. “Before Luke gets here, though, I wanted to ask you what you wanted to do.”

  Dakota actually took his attention off the television to glare at her. His eyes glinted behind the heavy black eyeliner. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would you ask me? You don’t give a fuck what I think anyway.” And there it came, all the hurt and the confusion.

  “Dude.” The bed dipped beneath his weight as Thomas settled beside her.

  She stayed pressed close to Thomas’s side. Things always felt more manageable when he was near.

  “What dude?” Dakota snarled.

  Thomas opened his mouth and Tiffany pressed his knee with hers. “I do care. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “Whatever.” Dakota shrugged and turned back to his television program. Not surprisingly, there seemed to be a lot of dismembering happening on the screen. Tiffany winced as somebody lost an arm and jets of blood squirted all over the wall.

  She snagged the remote and turned the TV off. “You know, if you want some say in what happens to you, it helps if you actually say something.”

  “Really?” Dakota glared back at her, venom arcing out of his brown eyes, eyes so like Luke’s it was uncanny. “Because I did before, and I’m still fucking stuck with you two.”

  “Only until tomorrow,” Tiffany said. “Then Luke is coming and you can go where you want.”

  “You’re so full of shit.” Dakota knifed into a sitting position.

  Tiffany recoiled physically. “You’re going to have to explain that one. Maybe without calling me names,” she said.