No public nudity. Rule number one.
“When is tea being served?” he asked congenially, turning to face them with his hands deep in his pockets. He had offered to be a buffer between the Clare women, rising to the challenge and saving Becca from the passive-aggressive wrath of a mother who meant only the best. He might as well earn his keep. “I’m famished.”
It was the right thing to say. Moira, a widow of two decades, had only daughters—four of them in all, his stepmother Serena the eldest at thirty-four, Becca the youngest at a decade less than that—so she took a keen maternal interest in the appetites of men. “Of course you are, poor lamb.”
Like all the Clare women, Moira was slim and dainty and slightly washed-out, her features well-preserved but all the more unremarkable because of it. Unlike Becca, whose casually green eyes sparkled with humor and life, Moira boasted irises that were an unnaturally sharp shade of green that made him feel he was gazing at a jewelry case.
“You’re too thin,” she said, and led him to the seating area. “You and Monty both. I’ve always preferred a man with a little something to hold on to.”
“Like a decadent piece of chocolate cake, perhaps?”
“Oh, no.” Moira frowned, the expression leaving very little impression on the lines of her face. “Don’t say that. Men should never be compared to desserts.”
“Now you’ve stepped your foot in it. Unlike me, my mother requires that her food analogies stick to strict gender stereotypes. Only women can be desserts, because they’re sweet and smooth.” Becca flashed him a provocative smile. “And sometimes moist.”
He coughed, glad he and Becca had decided against attending this function without proper undergarment support. If she didn’t intend to behave properly, they needed every extra layer they could get.
“You know how I feel about that word, dear,” Moira said. “Say damp. Or saturated.”
“Saturated? Right, because that’s so much better—no man can resist a little after-dinner saturation.” She caught Jake’s eye with a twinkle of humor. “And please don’t go force feeding him sandwiches. Between you and Mean Max and dessert analogies, he’s going to start developing a complex about his manly physique. I think he looks fantastic.”
“Who’s Mean Max?” Moira asked.
Jake ignored the question and helped the older Clare woman to the couch, trying not to show how much Becca’s compliment affected him. He’d been called a lot of things in his lifetime—some of them more complimentary, some of them decidedly less—but the unaffected way the word fantastic fell from her lips made him feel like an asshole.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever complimented her without some kind of ulterior motive. She was a goddess of the night when he wanted to fuck her, Cinderella when he wanted to get her home, a potential roommate when he needed her coattails. Thinking back on all the things he knew about her—the lurid stories, the scandalous pictures, the way the world talked about her in hushed tones—he wondered if anyone ever just complimented her and meant it.
“Max is my personal trainer,” Becca explained. “And he’s very mean. He made me throw up two times today.”
Her mom looked horrified. “What on earth is he training you for?”
“Life.” Becca didn’t care to elaborate further. Max—exhausting, pushy, in-her-face Max—was one of the best things that had ever happened to her. She wasn’t giving him up. “Oh, I think I hear the Callahans. Did you remember to get the oolong loose leaf tea I recommended? I find it’s much more accurate than chamomile.”
She tried to avoid looking at Jake, since she was sure he had a mocking sneer in place, but he merely offered a quirk of a grin and rose to greet Trish Callahan and her perfect paragon of a daughter. That was nice of him. This whole thing was nice of him—uncharacteristically so. Jake Montgomery wasn’t the sort of man who put himself out for others, especially if he wasn’t getting sex out of the bargain.
Though he could have sex. Lots of it, and with a woman who was growing increasingly turned on with every hour spent in his tightly restrained company. She was having a hard time deciding if the reason she wanted him so much was because he was determined not to have her, or if there was more to it than that.
She hoped there was more to it than that. No one wanted to be the child crying at the candy store over a box of chocolates she couldn’t have but didn’t even like in the first place. It was a waste of tears. Life was hard enough without making an effort to seek out sadness.
Becca knew that firsthand. Sadness would always find its way to you on its own. It was dependable that way.
Her mom’s housekeeper showed their guests into the sitting room. Trish, a long-standing acquaintance of her mother’s, looked the same as she always did, her hair a shellacked helmet of wrought-iron strands, her suit an original vintage Chanel. Her daughter Lulu had changed quite a bit since the last time Becca had seen her. They were the same age and had often played together as kids, but Lulu had not only graduated the top of her class at Sarah Lawrence, but she’d also just returned from a six-month mission to dig wells in Somalia. Her tan was fantastic, even if she was wearing a shade of orange that did nothing to set it off.
Becca preferred her own schoolgirl plaid, worn primarily to provoke both Jake and her mother—though with widely divergent outcomes in mind.
“I’m surprised you’re willing to show your face in public, Rebecca dear.” Trish leaned down to kiss Becca on both cheeks, her lips barely a whisper on either side. “Though I suppose this sort of thing makes no difference to you—you positively invite scandal. Lulu and I were just discussing how it doesn’t seem to matter where you are or who you’re with. Some part of you is always exposed.”
Becca smiled sweetly, though her fingers itched to get hold of this woman’s teacup. The last time she’d read for Trish, there’d been a huge clump of leaves opposite the handle—a clear sign of trouble not of her own making. Since everyone knew her husband had been screwing the newest Lancôme model at the time, Becca had assumed it indicated imminent divorce. Of course, she’d refrained from saying so out loud.
It was cruel to bring attention to someone’s worst moments in public. Obviously.
She turned to Lulu, expecting another set of false kisses and backhanded insults, but the younger woman seemed too nervous to offer so much as a hello. Lulu was, in addition to a digger of wells and sun goddess, a statuesque beauty with dark hair that tumbled down her back. She perched on the edge of the chair, looking regal and condescending, her legs crossed tightly at the knee. You couldn’t squeeze a camera up there even if you wanted to.
“It’s nice to see you again, Jake,” Trish said, taking over the conversation as per her usual custom. “I noticed you also made an appearance in this morning’s paper.”
“I looked quite dashing, didn’t I?” he asked. Even though he had a dainty bone china plate balanced on one knee, he looked competently masculine as he ate his watercress on rye. “I usually do. The trick is to turn in profile whenever you see a bulb flash. It’s the dead-on photos that do the most harm.”
“Is that so?” Trish asked, taking his sarcasm at face value. Lulu also seemed to perk up as she accepted a proffered cup of tea. “I had no idea there was an art to it.”
“Oh, there’s an art to everything. Eating. Dancing. Sex.” He flashed a disarming grin and took a bite of his sandwich that was so contrived, it might have been the nibble of teeth on rounded female flesh. “Especially sex.”
“Jake!” Her mother slapped at his leg ineffectively. Becca hadn’t been kidding when she said older women loved Jake. They drank in his casual naughtiness as if they were dying of thirst. They’d probably bathe in it if they could, like the blood of virgins to keep them from aging.
Lulu seemed less interested in Jake’s naughtiness and more interested in his technique. “How did you learn that picture trick
?”
“I’ve had plenty of practice. Here—I’ll show you.” With a disarming grin, Jake scooted closer to Trish, so close their knees practically bumped. He lifted the older woman’s chin and tilted her head to the side, examining her as a connoisseur. “See what I did there? A slight lift smoothes the skin. Elongate the neck and voilà! Your mother is a Raphaelite.”
Trish lifted a hand to her face as if she expected the skin of a baby’s behind to have replaced her own. The man was downright shameless. If he wanted, he could have Trish dancing a striptease down to her girdle right there in the middle of the room.
“Yes, well. Not all of us had time to preen beforehand,” Becca said. “I was a little busy at the time.”
She swirled her cup and frowned at the amber liquid. There weren’t very many leaves in there. It would be hard to see anything, which was a pain, since she wanted to follow up on her horoscope from the morning. If she was going to solicit Jake’s help in figuring out this big-picture-Sara stuff, she needed a better understanding of the role he was supposed to play.
“Did you know they were there, Becca?” Lulu asked. “The cameras?”
“Of course she didn’t know,” her mother answered for her, unconcerned with the truth. “She would have kept things wrapped up if that were the case. We’re all just grateful Jake was there to keep her from doing anything irreversible.”
Jake chuckled good-naturedly. “I hardly think it was irreversible. It was a minor altercation at a private club. It happens more often than you might expect.”
“Surely not at a place like Ma Petite?” Lulu looked at them through wide, alarmed eyes, as if she couldn’t imagine such a thing happening at a place she might frequent someday, as if Becca herself was responsible for all the depravities of their social set.
Point taken. She had no self-control. She balked at propriety and binged on excess.
Before she made the mistake of saying something irreversible, Jake continued, “Oh, you wouldn’t believe the trouble we get into. Love affairs gone awry. High-end escort services. Blackmail. Every now and then you’ll get a good, old-fashioned bar fight.” A small smile danced on his lips, as if none of those things were beyond him. “But the cameras only capture the Rebecca Clares and Jake Montgomerys in the thick of it all. Not the Lulu Callahans. Never the Lulu Callahans. That, unfortunately, is the price of being worth reading about.”
“If that’s how much it costs to be famous, then I’m glad Lulu doesn’t carry the right currency.” Trish sniffed and turned her attention to Moira. “I don’t know how you stand for it. One of these days, you’re going to wake up to find Becca on the front page of the Times instead of that gossip rag.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Moira hedged. “You know how careless young people are.”
Moira turned to Jake, her eyes pleading with him to step in. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure what she wanted him to do. Short of hauling these awful women out the front door and leaving them on the sidewalk, his hands were tied up in platitudes. What kind of a tea party was this? He’d assumed it was going to be all air kisses and scones and love life predictions. This was a witch hunt...and the witch in question was sitting right there, growing increasingly rigid as the conversation progressed.
Couldn’t they see the warning signs? Didn’t they know Becca was reaching the limits of her tolerance?
He opened his mouth to direct the conversation to more neutral territory, but Trish interrupted.
“You’re right, Moira. Of course I know how careless young people are—and you know who else does? Peter Yarrowgate. If you aren’t careful, that’s exactly who you’ll become. No one was surprised to see his daughter wind up dead in a hotel room, enough pills in her system to open a pharmacy.” Before anyone had a chance to get a word in, she turned to Becca, her movements prim and triumphant. “Didn’t you two used to travel in the same circles?”
The speed with which Becca flew out of her seat to land in front of Trish was nothing short of miraculous. At least, it seemed miraculous until he caught sight of her face, which carried the same wild-eyed look she had when she’d attacked Dana the night before. He’d felt enough of her fury under his fingertips to know that adrenaline transformed Becca into some kind of superwoman.
“Say that one more time.”
Trish’s mouth opened and closed and opened again, leaving her gaping.
“Say that about Sara one more time.”
Trish was able to close her mouth long enough to speak. “I don’t see what you have to get so upset about. She took her own life. It was her choice.”
The ringing slap of Becca’s hand on the older woman’s cheek was a sound Jake wouldn’t soon forget. Nor would he be likely to erase the image of Becca’s face, pale with fury, twisted up in so much pain it was a wonder they didn’t all suffer a contact high.
“How dare you.”
“How dare I?” Trish looked to Moira as if for confirmation that this was really happening—that Becca was standing in front of her, seething, assaulting, about to do it again. “You might be able to get away with this kind of thing in your trashy clubs, but—”
Jake felt it would be timely to intervene.
Before Becca made the mistake of saying what she thought—or, worse, tackling this horrible woman to the floor—he came up behind her and pressed his hand on her waist. She hissed in a sharp breath, but the direct pressure as he dug his fingers below the hem of her short silk top worked as a deterrent, and she stilled under his touch, a tiger calming beside him.
The ramifications of this cause-and-effect weren’t lost on him. Between last night and today, it was becoming clear that he was able to influence this woman’s direct actions. If she flew off the handle, he could stop her. If she approached scandal, he could reel her back in.
He could, in a sense, control her.
His head rationalized this as a good thing, acknowledged that becoming Becca’s keeper was a great way to make himself indispensable to her. But his gut warned him that bad might be a more apt term. Jake was not a man to be trusted with this kind of power.
“I think we’ve overstayed our welcome, Becca,” he said, not lifting his hand. “What say you and I head back to your apartment? Maybe we can call Max and have him come help you work out some of that extra aggression.”
She stood poised between rage and retreat, as if unsure which held more appeal.
Moira chose for her.
“Rebecca Louise Clare, you’ll apologize to Trish right this minute.” She set aside her teacup and stood to defend her guest. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s come over her—”
“I do.” Trish stood and brushed the crumbs from her pink suit skirt, gesturing for her daughter to do the same. Lulu rose on unsteady legs, her hand pressed to her mouth. “If you ask me, it appears your daughter’s last trip to rehab didn’t take.”
“I’m not on drugs.” Becca stiffened until he thought she might snap, so he spun her to face him.
“Just breathe,” he murmured, forcing her eyes to meet his. They flashed dangerously, but he could still see her in there, lost and hurting and betrayed. “She’s not worth the effort. She’ll pull your hair and give up too easily. We can maul the next one, someone who’s an actual challenge in the ring.”
A reluctant sob-turned-laugh escaped Becca’s throat. “Do you promise?”
“I’m a man of my word. But you have to stop this nasty habit of physically assaulting everyone you dislike.”
“You heard what she said about Sara. About the awful way she died.”
He’d heard every unfortunate word. He was also starting to put some of the pieces of this puzzle together. Unless he was very much mistaken, Sara Yarrowgate, a notorious party girl whose father ran one of the largest tech security companies in the country, had died from a potent mixture of antidepressants and vodka
a few weeks before Becca had been shipped off to rehab.
Oh, fuck. They’d been friends. Her friend had committed suicide. Of course she was a mess.
“Sara doesn’t deserve to be spoken of like that,” he said, and wrapped an arm more firmly around her. “No one does.”
He directed her to the now-vacated couch, hoping to keep her from noticing where Trish and Lulu stood near the door, sharing a heated discussion in undertones and making not-so-vague gestures toward them every few seconds.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked as she settled in. He took the seat opposite her, leaning on his knees so that he could see her face where it drooped down.
“No.”
“Want to cry about it?”
“Is yelling an option?”
“I’d like to say yes, but I don’t think now’s the time. Your mom’s headed this way and she looks as if she’s about to murder the first person to blink. I’m sorry to say it, but that won’t be me. I have exceptionally saturated eyes.”
Becca released a strangled laugh.
“Well, Grandmama Clare?” Jake rose to his feet in an attempt to divert some of the incoming firepower. “You certainly throw one hell of a tea party. I’m disappointed I don’t get invited more often. I never turn down an opportunity to watch women brawl.”
“Don’t you try to sweet-talk me, Jake Montgomery. I blame you for this. What did she take?”
“She was fine when we got here,” he said mildly. He allowed himself a brief glance at Becca’s face, fearful she was about to attack her own mother next, but she just looked tired and small and...Christ. Sad. She looked sad. “Might I suggest the company was at fault?”
“Not if you want to remain on my good side. I don’t know what your father would say if he knew what you were up to, but I can’t imagine this is how he encourages you to behave.”
Jake kept the smile firmly in place. That was where Moira was wrong. This was probably the first time in his life he was doing something his dad would approve of. John Montgomery the Second was a large proponent of supporting the downtrodden, of standing up for the persecuted. Staying in this room while Becca was being ripped to shreds by her female acquaintance was one of the few decent things Jake had done.
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