Take Me Tender

by Christie Ridgway

  Love me.

  The two words broke her heart.

  It cracked like a raw egg—she found out it was just that fragile. In those post-orgasmic moments, all sorts of pent-up emotions spilled out: blame, shame, guilt, fear, loneliness, but there was no way to fill it up again without taking in Jay’s scent, Jay’s warmth, Jay’s command. “Love me.”

  She wouldn’t. She didn’t.

  Instead, she resisted with everything she had, even as her body complied with his movements, letting him turn her against him, two tethered spoons in the damp drawer of his bed.

  He nuzzled her hair.

  She tasted the lingering acidity of the lemon at the back of her throat and took it as the final signal she’d been waiting for. Closing her eyes, she felt Jay press a gentle kiss near her ear.

  She’d always known the end would be bittersweet.

  The telephone on his bedside table woke Jay. Bleary, he blinked, turned, squinted at the clock beside the ringing receiver. One fucking A.M.

  “I’ll get it, cookie,” he mumbled over his shoulder. Then his head rolled left, his whiskers scratching the cool pillowcase. Christ. The other side of the bed was empty.

  He snatched up the phone. “Nikki? Baby?”

  The sound of a blurred voice did that creepy goose waddle down his spine. “’s me. Sh’nna.”

  Sitting up, he shook his head, trying to will alertness. “Shanna? Is Nikki with you?” Putting out a hand, he discovered the sheets on her side were stone cold.

  “No. No one. No one with me.”

  “Crap,” he muttered.

  “No one wants me.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re drunk, Shanna. Go to bed. Sleep it off. You’ll have a hell of a hangover in the morning, but them’s the breaks.” In the last few months she’d called like this at least a dozen times, her voice thick with booze or tears or both. Leaning over the side of the bed, he found the hem of one pants leg and snagged it, reeling in the garment to get to his cell phone.

  “Not jus’ drunk.”

  He ignored Shanna’s reply. Where the hell was Nikki? Why would she run off in the middle of the night? Fuck, he’d known he should have talked to her before having sex, but…

  He looked down at his wrists. Somehow she’d untied the scarf without him waking. And she’d unknotted herself, leaving not even a thread of yarn behind.

  Damn it, damn it, and double damn it.

  “Took pills, too,” the voice slurred again through the line.

  “Say again?” He was staring at his cell phone screen, annoyed—not panicked, no, not that, not yet—that it showed not one missed call, not one voice mail message from the woman he’d just tied up and trusted.

  Damn it, he had trusted her! And she’d run out on him!

  She’d run out on the man who was contemplating compromising his simple, confirmed bachelorhood.

  A chill wafted over his skin. Compromising his bachelorhood?

  “Took pills. Mom’s. Oxy…Oxy…thing.”

  The chill on his skin froze over. “What?”

  “Oxy…vodka an’ oxy.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t wanna die,” Shanna said. “Was dumb to wanna die.”

  Oh, Christ. His gut clenched. “Shanna. Shanna, sweetheart. Where are you?”

  “Nex’ door. No. Nex’ door nex’ door.”

  Oh, God. “I’m calling nine-one-one.”

  “No!” Panic sharpened her voice. “No p’lice. Dad. Public’ty. Gossip.”

  “Shanna.” His mind raced, understanding she didn’t want the tabloids in on the story, but Christ! “Where are you?”

  “Nex’ door nex’ door. Call…call Smitty.”

  Adrenaline focused his mind. “Smitty” was their old pal, Thomas Smith, now Thomas Smith, M.D., who headed one of Malibu’s twenty-six licensed detoxes-by-the sea—nearly one for every mile of coastline. “Nex’ door nex’ door…” He remembered now that her father had bought the place on the other side of Shanna’s marble palace.

  “I’m coming, sweetheart,” he said, already thumbing through his cell’s address book for Smitty’s number. “Stay put.”

  It took a few minutes, but he got to Smitty. He convinced Shanna to hang up so he could dial her back on his cell phone, and he managed to get dressed while keeping the slurring woman talking. Then he ran out the back door, nearly tripping as he spied that long blue scarf abandoned on the floor.

  Like a signpost to lead him to Nikki? Or like a river on which the love of his life had sailed away?

  His mouth went dry, so he said the vow inside his head. I’m coming for you, too, cookie. No way am I letting you go.

  Twenty-one

  You make me want to be a better man.

  —JACK NICHOLSON, ACTOR, IN AS GOOD AS IT GETS

  Though for the time being, Jay’s silent promise was long on feeling and short on follow-through. In the light of an overhead fixture, he found Shanna in the living room at the old Pearson place, sitting on the floor with her back to the wall. Holding his breath, he pushed wide the double doors to rid the place of the acrid stink of new paint mixed with spilled booze.

  “Dropp’d it,” she said, her hand making a feeble wave at the shards of a crystal decanter spread across the scarred hardwood near her feet. “Didn’t want more.”

  “Good.” Jay checked his watch. How long had Nikki been gone? How long before Smitty arrived to take over as white knight? “You’ve already had too much.”

  “Here, take ’em,” Shanna said, fishing under one hip. She held out a plastic bottle. “The oxy. The oxy…whatamacallit.”

  As Jay snatched the pills from her hand, a few rattled against the plastic, and his stomach roiled again. He glanced down at the label. Oxycodone, she was right about that. “Jesus, Shanna. What were you thinking?”

  “Wasn’t anything—wasn’t anyone—without Jorge.”

  He hunkered down beside her. “You don’t need Jorge. You don’t need any man to be someone.”

  She nodded. “Know that. Now. Not then. Not next door. But here…” Her hand waved again.

  Jay glanced around. He’d peered inside the dirty windows a few times when walking down the beach, and the junk that had been stored inside and out on the deck then was gone. The paint was fresh and the glass of the French doors polished. “You had the place fixed up.”

  “Me. I fixed it. Fixed it myself.”

  Surprised, he looked over at her. She held out both hands and he could see her fingers were denailed and paint stained her cuticles. “You did the work?”

  She nodded. “Almost all me. Paint. Hauled garbage. Left the photos, though.”

  “Good.” He had no idea what photos, but that didn’t matter. She was half-lucid and Smitty had said to keep her talking. “They’re nice photos.”

  “I’m in ’em. Happy photos. Happy me. Happy here.”

  “Great.” He checked his watch again and let his mind leap back to Nikki. Why the hell would she have left after that spectacular bout of sex? How could she have left after that spectacular bout of sex?

  Damn, it made him want to tear out his hair. He knew he should have had it out with her before they hit the sheets. So it was his own damn fault that she was gone, but that didn’t stop him from being pissed off at her.

  Worry always pissed him off.

  As soon as Smitty showed, he was on the hunt. To find answers, to find her.

  Except then Smitty showed, and shit, Shanna suddenly showed a resurgence of her previous fixation on him.

  “Stay with me, Jay.” Smitty was going to take her to his clinic where he said they’d pump her stomach and then feed her activated charcoal to absorb any leftover toxins. She’d be there at least for the next few days so they could monitor her for liver damage, and assess her emotional needs as well.

  Her hand lifted toward him in entreaty. “Don’t leave me, Jay.”

  Hesitating, he stared at her thin, outstretched fingers.

  Stay with me.


  Don’t leave me.

  Women had said similar words to him before, and he’d closed his ears to them. Going in, he’d always reasoned, they’d known he wasn’t the staying type. He was a leaving kind of man.

  Meaning he’d always opted for the charming smile and the speeding feet when words like that reached his ears.

  Stay with me.

  Don’t leave me.

  But the one saying the words now was Shanna, his childhood friend. Shanna, his careless fling.

  What a mess he’d made with that.

  A mess he’d love to walk away from now.

  And he had himself to consider, didn’t he? Nikki to find.

  Damn it, where was she? How could she have done this to him? Instinct he’d never acknowledged or been in touch with before told him he had to find her, and find her fast, before she walled herself off from him.

  Shanna’s voice broke through his anxious thoughts. “Jay?”

  He closed his eyes and rubbed his palm over his face, trying to think clearly. To think of himself and what was best for him. What was best for Hef Junior, the randy adolescent inside himself, Malibu’s selfish bachelor who had never once looked over his shoulder to acknowledge any hurt he’d left behind.

  When he opened his eyes, it was to realize that it was time, finally, to grow the hell up. At whatever the cost to himself.

  “I’m right here, Shanna,” he said. “I’ll stay with you as long as you’d like.”

  Hours later, she was as pale as the clinic’s sheets. He was seated on a chair beside her bed, his hands trying to warm one of her cold ones. Her pale eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks.

  “Tell me again,” she murmured. “Tell me again how I don’t need Jorge.”

  He squeezed her fingers. It wasn’t the first time he’d repeated the words. “You don’t need Jorge. You don’t need any man to be someone.”

  A smile lifted the corners of her chapped lips. “That’s right. When I went back to my house tonight—the little house, did I tell you I’m buying it? I told my father my plan and he sputtered, but I was adamant—I realized that if I could redo that house and if I could stand up to my dad, well, I could be comfortable in my own skin. I could be woman enough to live without a man in my life. Even Jorge.”

  On the heels of her words, the man in question ran into the room. His clothes were rumpled, his boots dusty, his face unshaven and bristly. “Madre de Dios!” he exclaimed. “What the hell is going on?”

  Smitty showed up next, his ponytail flying behind him. “Shanna, he said Jay left a message on his cell phone about where you were. We couldn’t stop him at the desk.”

  Her eyes were wide, darting between their faces until they landed on Jay. He shrugged. “I called him. Told him on the off chance he might want to know.”

  “Might! Might want to know!” Jorge followed that up with a string of Spanish that had Jay a little concerned about where his head might end up before the morning was over. “I had to race to Mexicali—”

  “Your grandfather?” Shanna lifted onto her elbows. “Was it your grandfather?”

  “Sí, sí. Before dawn yesterday morning he goes missing and no one can find him. I think I can get there, get back for your party, okay, maybe a little late…but the pobre cell phone service across the border means I can’t tell you where I am. Even once we find my grandfather and settle him back in the house safe and sound.”

  “The landline—”

  “I don’t know your landline number, I don’t have any cell reception to call it with anyway, and even if I could have gotten through to U.S. information—which I finally did—your father has it unlisted!”

  It was the longest, most impassioned speech Jay had ever heard his friend make.

  As if it was all too much, Shanna collapsed back to her pillow.

  “Shanna.” Jorge rushed toward the bed and Jay made way for him by ducking out of his chair. The other man dropped into the seat and took Shanna’s now-free hand. “Pobrecita, I’m so sorry. But how could you have done this?”

  “It was stupid. I was stupid.”

  “How could you imagine I don’t love you? That if something happened to you, it wouldn’t kill me, too?” Jorge’s accent thickened as feeling filled his voice. “How could you not realize I couldn’t go on without you? That I wouldn’t be anyone without you?”

  Jay shuffled back, embarrassed by the other man’s very Latin, very emotional outburst. He almost held his breath, just like he did when he got in an elevator with someone who was sneezing. Shit like that might be contagious.

  Shanna was smiling at the sap, though. Some color had returned to her face. “You’d go on without me, you know you would.”

  “No, no—”

  “Shh.” She reached out to put her hand over his mouth and he held it against his lips for a kiss. “Tell him what you told me, Jay.”

  Jay started. “Huh?”

  She nodded at him. “Tell Jorge what you’ve been telling me.”

  Ah. He looked over at his friend, meeting the dark eyes that seemed wet—God, the other man wasn’t near tears, was he? “What I’ve been saying, Jorge, is that you don’t need any man to be someone.”

  “What?” Jorge’s brows slammed together. “Of course, I don’t need a man. You know damn well I’m straight.”

  The drama of the scene must be upsetting Jorge’s thinking processes. Jay laughed. “What I mean is, I’ve been telling your woman that she doesn’t need any man to be someone.”

  Still looking confused, Jorge turned to Shanna. “But you want me, yes? You love me.”

  “Of course. I do.” She caressed his whiskery cheek with her palm. “But a woman can be happy without a man. I could live without you.”

  “But I don’t want to live apart.” Jorge’s face registered alarm. “You must marry me. You must say yes.”

  Christ. Marriage?

  Jay took another step back. The man was going all out here. But Shanna’s smile was tender, and if happiness was a color, it was that dawn-pink staining her cheeks. “Yes, yes, I’ll marry you. But the point is—Oh, I’ll explain it to you later. Right now, I need a kiss.”

  Grinning, Jay took that—finally—as his cue to leave. He could turn his attention to himself now. And to his chef with benefits.

  Smile dying, he recalled with a chill Shanna’s almost-last words: A woman can be happy without a man.

  Did that include Nikki?

  Summer’s end was nearing, and as Nikki inched her way up PCH it was clear from the multitude of cars around her that everyone wanted to spend it at Malibu, while all she wanted was to be out of the place. Still, she’d had to make one final trip beachside, even though she was careful not to glance at Jay’s house as she passed. By now he’d probably woken to find her gone, and as much as she knew he loved her coffee and though she expected he very much enjoyed the sex they’d shared, in his heart of Hef Junior hearts, she figured he was glad she’d made the first move and left him.

  “Love me,” he’d said last night, the ass. No wonder women followed him around like hungry cats after the smell of salmon. When a golden-haired, silver-tongued professional bachelor like Jay Buchanan whispered “love” in a bed partner’s ear, who could blame most for not detecting the distinction between “love you” and “love me?”

  Even she had almost fallen for it, and though she’d drawn herself back from the brink, her heart had still suffered. Damn man. If she ever came across him again, she’d give him a piece—No, she never wanted to come across him again.

  A sudden red light made her stomp on the brake pedal. Ow. Ow ow ow ow ow. Pain radiated in a sharp sunburst from her injured knee, and though the A/C blasted like an arctic wind, sweat popped on her forehead.

  Yesterday had proven to be the end of something else, too. The self-concocted myth that she could make a private chef career despite her bum joint was now officially debunked. Whether it was the result of Jenner’s shove and her fall, or just the accumulation of wear-and-tear de
spite the more relaxed kitchen work of late, the swollen size of her knee and the pain it was producing testified to the truth.

  She’d lost her last hope to continue a culinary career.

  Shoving that thought from her mind, she turned into the driveway shared by the café and Malibu & Ewe. There were a few cars clustered around the eatery, but it was much too early for knitting shop hours, just as she’d planned it.

  Limping toward the front door with a basket under her arm, she breathed in one of her last breaths of Malibu summer. There was ocean in the air, of course, and the delicious, greasy smell of Gabe’s fish and chips. She’d been attempting to wheedle the recipe for the batter from him, but so far without success. He seemed the sort of man well-armored against female sweet talk.

  Even Cassandra could rarely get any emotion out of him besides annoyance…or outrage.

  Nikki bent to place her burden on the welcome mat outside the door to Malibu & Ewe.

  “Little sister,” Cassandra said from behind her. “This is a surprise.”

  Making a face, Nikki took a long time straightening up and then turning around to confront the other woman. She’d so hoped to ditch and dash. But now she was caught, and Cassandra was playing the little sister card again.

  It wasn’t going to get to her, Nikki promised. It wasn’t. Not when she was here to break her last ties to Malibu.

  Her eyebrows lifted to emote a very casual interest. “So how much younger am I than you?”

  “Two years.” Cassandra stepped around her to lift the basket from its place. “What do we have here?”

  “A parting gift, I’d guess you’d say. There’s those knitting books you let me borrow earlier in the month and a few other things I thought you might enjoy.”

  “Your creations,” Cassandra said, peering into the basket with its plastic-wrapped packages.

  “All vegetarian. Some muffins, two kinds of cookies, and a container of vegetable chowder. It’s frozen, and will keep for weeks.”

  “Thank you.” The yarn shop owner drew out a set of keys from her pocket and unlocked the door to push it open. “Will you come in for some tea?”