“And you, young lady.” Moira wasn’t done yet. She turned her attention to Becca. “You know exactly what this means.”
“That I don’t have to come to any more of your tea parties?”
Jake almost laughed out loud. His tiger didn’t stay down for long.
Moira was less amused. “No. It means you’ve earned yourself a one-way ticket back to Tranquility Ranch. I’ll have my driver escort you home to pack your bags. You have one hour.”
Becca shot to her feet. “I’m not going back there!”
“Oh, yes, you are. It’s one thing to act up for the publicity—I was willing to chalk last night’s activities up to nothing more than an indiscretion. But to physically assault Trish Callahan? You’re out of control, Becca. It’s for your own good.”
Jake found himself at a momentary loss. Tranquility Ranch wasn’t an empty sort of threat. It was the rehabilitation center of choice for the entire East Coast elite—spacious suites, soothing spa treatments, detox facilities...and bars on the windows. People didn’t go there unless they were serious about getting clean. But Becca was fine. Emotionally distressed, clearly, but imprisoning her wasn’t going to help her get over her loss.
“Drugs are not the problem here, Mom. They never have been, and you know that. Give me a test right here, right now. I’ll pee in all the cups you want.”
“Don’t be disgusting.”
“It’s the only way you’ll get me back there. You can’t force me without a court order.”
“She does have a point,” Jake said.
“Then she’ll self-surrender.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Yes,” Moira said firmly, “you will. Or I’ll revoke your trust and close up your apartment. We’ll see how long you last trying to figure things out on your own for a change.”
Jake reacted more strongly to her words than Becca, feeling the recoil of the threat on a personal level. As a man who’d been punished in just such a manner, he knew all too well that financial insolvency wasn’t a joke. And he doubted Becca had anything even remotely approaching real-world coping skills.
“I told you how hard it was for me the last time. I don’t think I can do it again.” Becca’s voice took on a keening edge. “Put down the phone. Please.”
Moira didn’t flinch as she held her cell phone to her ear. “Gerald? Yes. You’re needed around front. You’ll be escorting Becca to Tranquility Ranch this afternoon.”
“Mom.”
“You may need to get Sven to help you.”
“Mom.”
“No, I don’t think restraints will be necessary, but you might want to have them on hand just in case.”
“Moira.” Now it was Jake’s turn. He grabbed the phone from out of her hand and pressed the end button. “Stop.”
“You know I love you, Jake, but I think it’s best if you leave now.”
As if he would. As if he could. “What Trish said was out of line. You can’t hold Becca responsible for that woman’s lack of tact.”
“I can and I will. You have no idea the things my daughter is capable of, and as much as I appreciate you helping her out last night, this has nothing to do with you.”
No, it didn’t. He didn’t know Becca much beyond a few encounters at clubs and bars, the obligatory family dinners where she provided a much-needed burst of liveliness among his drab relatives. He didn’t have the authority to tell these women how to organize their messy, loud, overly dramatic lives.
But he did know what it felt like to be purposefully misunderstood by the people who were supposed to care the most. He did know that letting Moira whisk Becca away to that cold, sterile place with no hope of escape had the potential to subdue the tiger for good.
He didn’t know why he knew that, but there it was. Maybe it was in the tea leaves.
“Let me be the one to keep an eye on her.” Jake set the phone next to the tea tray, a note of finality in the gesture. “Don’t send her away. I can promise not to let her come to any harm.”
“Jake—” Becca began, but he silenced her with a motion of his finger to his lips. He could help her. He could fix this. And if she didn’t like it, she could rip up at him later. Hell, he’d probably deserve it.
Moira saw the exchange but shook her head in a stubborn refusal. “Thank you, but no. Controlling Becca is going to take much more than a well-meaning friend, and I can’t ask you to make the attempt. It’s not your job.”
“But she’s not my friend, and it is my job.” He almost smiled as the word crossed his lips. Job. What would Monty have to say about that?
“What do you mean?” Moira asked sharply.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you take my fiancée to rehab without my consent.” He smiled, enjoying the shocked look on both women’s faces. “Be the first to congratulate us, Grandmama Clare. Becca is my responsibility now. She agreed just this morning to marry me.”
Chapter Seven
“I know what you’re thinking.”
Becca stood, hands on hips, watching as Jake settled himself on her mom’s couch and spread his arms across the back. He spoke with a level of calm unheard of in a man who’d recently proposed marriage and been accepted. Kind of. Sort of. Not really at all.
“I highly doubt that,” she said.
He nodded at the chair across from him, commanding her to take a seat. There was no denying that the idea of sitting back and unwinding into the upholstery was tempting after the day she’d had. Hungover, exhausted and at her emotional wit’s end, she’d still had to spend a good half hour helping Jake calm her mother down after that casually dropped engagement bomb. Her mom was currently relaxing in her room with one Xanax under her tongue and a spare underneath her pillow.
The irony of that wasn’t lost on Becca. She never touched anything stronger than alcohol, but because Xanax came with a prescription, it was somehow okay.
“I think I have a pretty good idea.” He nodded again. “Sit. You’re making me nervous.”
“Why? Are you afraid I’m going to attack you next?”
“Yes. And this is a brand new shirt. I’d hate for it to wrinkle.”
Oh, she’d wrinkle it, all right. She’d wrinkle it so much he’d have no choice but to take it off. The cool, composed man who’d brought her so much comfort last night was only ticking her off something fierce now. She’d pretty much opened her veins and bled out onto the ikat rug earlier, and he had the audacity to sit there and act like all was well with the world.
The world was not well, dammit. The world was a seething pit of suckitude.
“Then tell me.” She squared her stance, determined not to let this moment go so easily. He’d promised her a chance to fight someone. In the absence of a more appropriate sparring partner, he would have to do. “What am I thinking right now?”
He propped one leg carefully on the opposite knee and tilted his head. God, he looked unfairly delicious when he did that—stern and in control, the perfectly chiseled features of his face cut as if of marble. She was used to associating with attractive people—it was one of the perks of being young and wealthy—but few men were able to carry off Jake’s classically attractive looks with such aplomb. He was freakishly fastidious about his clothes, his lips were a touch too full for pure masculinity, and there was a delicacy to his lean strength that would have made many men seem weak.
But not Jake. He made every other man on the face of the planet seem like heavy, awkward clumps of flesh.
“You’re wishing I’d let you tell Trish Callahan off on your own terms,” he said, as casually as if they were discussing where to go for dinner. “You’re pissed as hell that I made up that story about us being engaged. And you’re wondering what’s in it for me.”
“Nope.”
He laughed. “Nope? That’
s it? That’s all you’re going to give me?”
It was until he offered her something in return. She wasn’t after much—a hint of humanity, a chink in his emotional armor, some sort of sign that she wasn’t the only one in the room with a heartbeat. She was fairly easy to please that way.
Since he didn’t seem to be forthcoming with a pulse, she took it upon herself to find one. Playing coy, she dropped her voice to a huskier, more obvious tone. “Why? What else do you want?”
His brows lifted a question at her, so she answered. Dropping to her knees, she helped herself down by bracing a hand on each leg. The tensile strength of his thighs under her fingertips felt raw—which was exactly how she felt right now. Raw.
But also good. And alive. Alive was a big one. Despite everything—Sara’s death and all the drug rumors and the seedy photographs and Tranquility Ranch—she was still very much alive and kicking.
No one ever wanted to give her credit for that one.
“Um, what are you doing?” Jake asked as she slid her hands farther up each of his thighs.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m attacking you.”
His brows didn’t come down, but he didn’t try to stop her either. If anything, he was watching with a curious kind of detachment, almost as if he was conducting a scientific experiment. How Far Becca Will Go in Her Mother’s Sitting Room. The Mating Habits of the Fucked-Up Elite. But no amount of detachment would be able to alter the fact that he liked it. He liked it a lot.
She reached higher, her knuckles grazing the rapidly hardening erection no amount of expensive tailoring could hide. She reached for his belt buckle, her movements purposefully jerky as she pulled it open. He seemed to enjoy the fumbling roughness, hissed when her fingers scraped along the front of his fly.
“Are you sure this is what we should be doing right now?” he asked.
“Why not? Isn’t this what fiancées do?”
“Becca.” His eyes grew serious as they bored into hers. “You know we’re not really engaged, right? I only said that to stop your mom. She was about to have you committed.”
She stuck her lower lip out in a pout and began swirling her thumbs in a hard, circular pattern up his inner thighs. “My fiancé is kind of grumpy. I wonder what I can do to help him relax.”
“You can stop doing that, for starters.”
She complied—and then promptly lifted herself from the ground and settled herself in his lap instead. Her short skirt rode up both legs as she straddled him, and she had the satisfaction of feeling his erection harden the rest of the way against her.
“I mean it.” He gripped her thighs, but not with the intention of running his hands all over them. He was holding her in place, preventing her from moving against him. “I need to hear you say that we’re not really engaged. I need to make sure you understand this situation.”
He was seriously sucking all of the pleasure out of her triumph. “I’m an emotionally unstable media whore, Jake. Not an idiot.”
“Say it anyway.”
“So stern.” She dipped her head down and kissed his jaw, soft with the fine stubble that only redheads seemed to grow, smelling of a heady mixture of sandalwood and rose. “So commanding. I like it. What else should I say? Do you want me to tell you how naughty I’ve been and call you Big Papa?”
His laughter hit her ear in a warm, intoxicating whoosh. “Please don’t.” Then, when she landed another kiss at the edge of his mouth, “Although now you have me curious. What did you have in mind? How naughty have you been?”
“Oh, Big Papa, you have no idea how bad. I’m so dirty. So depraved. I need a strong hand to hold me down and teach me a lesson.”
He held his palm level and tilted it side to side. “So-so. I was hoping for more specifics.”
She reached between them and slid her hand down the front of his pants, fisting the length of his erection, back and forth, up and down, eliciting nothing more than his calm, careful appreciation as he watched.
“Hmm. Okay. How about this?” She tossed her hair over one shoulder and continued her movements against his cock. “Sometimes, late at night, I like to touch myself and remember the way you took me up against a wall. Hard and fast. A man who knew exactly what he was doing.”
He murmured his appreciation as she flicked a finger over the tip of his cock. “I like where this is going.”
“And when that’s not enough to get me wet, I like to imagine there’s another guy in there with us. He’s beefy and takes turns plowing us from behind.”
This time, his murmur was less like appreciation and more like a man who didn’t care for male-on-male action. Good. She’d finally succeeded in tipping his stupid serenity on its side.
She stopped her movements as suddenly as she’d started. It seemed as good a time as any to clear the air.
“I know we’re not really engaged, so you can stop freaking out. I’m not planning an intimate wedding for our families and five hundred of our closest friends. I’m not imagining our adorable, redheaded, two-point-four children summering in the Hamptons. You were coming to my rescue. I get it.”
He grabbed her wrist and held it firm. She looked down at where her skin grew white under the pressure—not in pain, but curious. Why was he taking this all so seriously? Jake never took anything seriously.
“Don’t worry about it so much,” she said lightly. “I appreciate your timely intervention more than you realize. Tranquility Ranch was awful.”
“That’s where you were before.” It wasn’t a question.
She answered anyway. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard it’s pretty luxurious.”
“The sheets were nice.” So was her huge suite, the clawfoot bathtub, the yoga instructor who’d once run one of the top studios in Los Angeles. Daily massages and five-star dining didn’t hurt either. It was all on their website.
He didn’t respond, just sat there and leveled her with his startlingly blue stare, as if he was sending subliminal messages to get her to open up. But she wasn’t sure what else he expected her to say. Did he want to know why she went in the first place? Why it was awful? Why the idea of going back there, where they locked the doors at night and lights-out was strictly enforced, made her want to scream?
“I didn’t take Sara’s suicide well.” That about summed it up.
She could have told him more—about how the catalyst for everything had been the Haldol the paramedics used to sedate her at the scene of Sara’s death, and how the tabloids took that as evidence of drug abuse and ran wild with it. She could have told him about the terrible nightmares she couldn’t seem to shake, daily reminders that she hadn’t tried hard enough to save her friend.
She could have also told him about how both of those things meant people watched her out of the corner of their eyes, as if she was one vodka tonic away from joining Sara in the grave.
But what was the point? People didn’t care about the realities of her life. They never did. She was an emotional wreck, an object of derision, a great headline. Her best friend in the entire world had died, and all her family did was toss her into rehab for three months, hoping to get her out of the limelight and cure her of her sorrow, as though it were a disease or an addiction.
“That really sucks,” Jake said simply. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She felt her eyes water. For all her expensive recovery activities and therapy sessions, few people remembered to say that.
“Thank you.” She blinked rapidly, refusing to let any tears fall. Jake was not the sort of man on whom tears had any efficacy—at least, not unless the goal was to send him running as fast and as far as his legs would take him. “It’s been a tough year.”
He looked like he wanted to say more, but he settled for a firming of the mouth as he glanced around, gaze skimming over the surfaces of a ro
om Becca had never found terribly comforting, even when she was a kid. “Want to get out of here?”
“Yes, please.” She jumped out of his lap, grabbing his hand and giving it an insistent tug. It didn’t work, and he got to his feet at his own leisurely pace. “Believe me when I say this is not where I envisioned spending the day of my engagement.”
When she saw the panicked warning in his eye, she laughed. “My fake engagement. My fake engagement I have no intention of forcing you to see through to the end. God, Jake. You make it so easy. You should see the look of terror in your face right now.”
He ignored her, taking her by the elbow and leading her toward the door. “Where do you envision spending the day of your engagement?”
“On my back.”
He almost tripped on the edge of the carpet. “Is there a second choice?”
“There are lots of them. New York is such a great place to be young and in love, don’t you think? We could rent a rowboat in Central Park. Climb the Empire State Building together. Book a couples massage...”
He did a much better job of hiding his horror that time.
“Or we could pinch a bottle of tequila and sneak into the backstage area of the Artista Theatre. I like to watch them rehearse sometimes. It’s all in Spanish, so I have no idea what they’re saying.”
Jake raised an amused brow. “And they let you?”
She shrugged. “Sara and I used to break in there as teenagers. The janitor would chase us out with his broom, but then he’d leave the backstage door unlocked so we could return when no one was looking.”
“Sounds charming. Should I wear all black and carry a lockpick?”
And he would. In Jake’s world, breaking and entering was preferable to romance. Jail time probably was too.
She decided to take it easy on him. “We should be good. When Sara died, I gave them a pretty big chunk of money in her name. They only chase me out half the time now.”
When I Fall Page 8