by Niecey Roy
Jeremy and I never had that, not even close.
“I don’t think it’s that bad of a decision,” Gen said.
“Of course it’s a bad decision,” Catherine scolded. “It’s only been a couple of weeks since she ran out of her own wedding. She can’t be rushing into another relationship.”
“I am not rushing into anything with anyone,” I stressed.
“It’s not ‘rushing’ with Leo. They have history. He’s good for her.”
“He broke her heart, and she was a mess.” Catherine cooed to whichever baby was in her arms now.
I didn’t need the reminder. It was all I’d been thinking about ever since the pool incident.
“They were kids,” Gen argued.
“She shouldn’t be Frenching him right now.”
“Why not?” Gen demanded.
“Because,” Catherine said.
“Who died and made you the boss of Frenching?” Gen asked. “Don’t listen to her, Lex. You can French Leo anytime you want.”
“She’s not ready for another relationship yet,” Catherine insisted.
“Leo is a good guy,” Gen said. “And need I remind you, the two of you were pushing dates on me as soon as I broke up with Brent.”
“Yes, well, you weren’t engaged to be married. You didn’t run out on your wedding.”
“Thanks for the reminder, Cat.” I would never live it down. I’d be known as the runaway bride for the rest of my life. I looked down to the empty glass in my hand. I’d have to call room service back, which I hated to do for a glass of tea. It wasn’t smart to travel too far from the bathroom—I had a feeling I might throw up again. Soon.
“Lexie and Jeremy weren’t in a good place for months before that. They were practically broken up before the wedding.”
I straightened too quickly and winced against the pang in my head. “We were not practically broken up before I ran out of our wedding.” But she was right. I should have seen it. I whispered, “I thought everything was okay.”
Gen sighed. “I’m sorry, Lex. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
“See, she’s too fragile right now,” Catherine said. “The best thing for you right now is to not stick your tongue down anyone’s throat until you’re a little more…stable. Just ogle him. Ogling is great therapy.”
She clearly had no idea what it was like to be around Leo—alone with Leo. It was impossible to keep a safe distance when there was some weird electric current drawing me toward him.
“But we should all be in agreement that if she wanted to she can French anyone she wants. Because she no longer has any feelings whatsoever for Jeremy. At all.” When I didn’t answer right away, Gen said into the silence, “Right? You aren’t still in love with him? I mean, you wouldn’t go back to him after what he did to you.”
“Not a chance in hell.” I shuddered.
“Of course she’s not going back to him. He wanted to divorce her for money. That weasel,” Catherine seethed.
“Exactly. Moving on, that’s what she’s doing. And maybe Leo is just the guy she needs to—”
“No!” Catherine and I exclaimed in unison.
I nibbled at a carrot stick. “Listen, you two. As great as it is to hear your voices and listen to you arguing about whose mouth my tongue should or should not be playing around in, you’re making my hangover worse.”
“You called us,” Gen reminded.
“You were nuts to have flown off on your own. What were you thinking?” Catherine scolded.
I jumped to my feet and winced at the piercing pain in my head. Pressing my fingers to my temples, I whispered, so as not to hurt my head any worse, “My being crazy is not relevant to this conversation. The point is that he is here, I am here, and I don’t particularly like men right now.”
“Really?” The whispered words made me shiver, and I stiffened as Leo’s lips hovered just a breath away from my ear lobe. “I thought you liked having a roommate last night.”
My breaths were shallow spurts as I willed myself to relax. Impossible—not with him standing right behind me.
“Listen here, Alexis Anne Gorecki,” Catherine huffed. “Did you want to give your parents a heart attack by gallivanting off to the Caribbean alone, unchaperoned? Mom and Dad can sleep at night knowing he’s there. Seriously, Lexie, you should have stayed here with your family instead of running off.”
I stormed away from Leo and didn’t dare look in his direction as I paced the patio. “I didn’t exactly choose all the shit that’s happening in my life, Catherine Lynn. Deborah has decided to ruin me. I’ll probably have to move. Out of state.”
Actually, moving sounded like a great idea. Why hadn’t I thought of moving before? Just close my boutique and reopen somewhere else. Another state wouldn’t care about how I’d humiliated the Buchanan family. Another state wouldn’t care about the Buchanans at all. Deborah would forget about me. Moving definitely had a nice ring to it. The wheels in my head turned surprisingly quick, despite my hangover.
“Move? You are so dramatic,” Catherine said, and I pictured the eye roll. “You left your fiancé at the altar. His mom hates your guts, and she’s a psycho. Happens all the time.”
“Oh? How often?” I asked. “I want statistics.”
“The day Lexie stops being dramatic is the day we know she’s been abducted by aliens,” Gen said.
Leo chuckled. I paused for a second in my pacing to give him a glare. My annoyance didn’t seem to bother him one bit, and didn’t wipe the smile from his lips. He now lay sprawled out in a chaise lounge, his arms propping his head up so he could watch me pace. The tank top strained against his pecs, and it was a nice view, so I averted my gaze.
I took my sisters off speaker phone and put the phone to my ear. “Enough with the aliens. This is serious.”
“I know, I’m just saying,” Gen said.
I stopped to lean against the beam of the pergola. The ocean was a breathtaking view. I’d never seen anything like it. “You know, it’s like eighty degrees here all year round? Maybe I should stay.”
“This will all blow over,” Catherine said. “She only went on television because she thinks it’ll help Gerard win the election. Once that’s over with, she’ll leave you alone and forget about you.”
“Eighty degrees year round? Serious? That’s amazing,” Gen said.
“You’re not helping. Shush up,” Catherine told her.
“I’m going in to take a nap. I was up all night because of a lush, and this conversation is too intense for a vacation.” Leo strolled past me and into the villa.
I couldn’t take my eyes off his back; the cotton of his tank top molded to him like a second skin.
He called over his shoulder, “Don’t go anywhere without telling me.”
“I don’t need a damn babysitter,” I snapped after him.
“Sure you don’t,” he answered and shut the patio door on me.
Last night I’d needed more than a babysitter. Maybe a good spanking…
I snapped out of that train of thought, but then he fell back onto the king sized bed and my imagination stirred up again. The filmy cream canopy drapes were open, cinched at all four posts. He looked comfortable—gorgeous—in the bed. Like an open invitation for all things naughty. I turned my back on the villa.
“You’re right. This will blow over. She didn’t want me in their family anyway.”
“I wish there was something we could do,” Gen said, a frown in my twin’s voice—it matched the one on my lips.
“Me too, Gen.” I sighed and closed my eyes. Hangovers made me tired. My eyes felt like sandpaper.
“Roxanna called her,” Gen said, and I held my breath, waiting for her to elaborate.
“Who?” I asked after too long a pause, even though I knew who she spoke of. I pinched my fingers to the bridge of my nose at the corners of my eyes.
“The She-Devil,” Gen said. “Roxanna was pissed after you left.”
I let out a breath of air a
nd waited. And waited.
“Tell her,” Catherine said, but Gen remained silent. “Oh jeez, I’ll tell her. Roxanna told Deborah to back off.”
“I’m guessing she didn’t appreciate that,” I said. If it were as simple as that, I’d have called her myself. The fact she’d gone on live television to stomp on me was a clear sign—bold and in all caps—that she didn’t plan on making things easy for me. I’d embarrassed her, embarrassed their family, and may have ruined Gerard’s campaign.
No, me telling her to back off—anyone telling her to back off—wasn’t going to sway a woman like Deborah Buchanan. She was pure evil.
“No, she only laughed,” Gen said. “But she mentioned there was a way for you to fix all of this.”
I stiffened. “What? How the hell can I fix anything? She’s the one who did this to me. What the hell does she want from me?”
Catherine cleared her throat. “She wants you to make a public announcement that you ran out of the wedding not because of anything the Buchanans or their son did to you, but because you suffer from a borderline multiple personality disorder.”
My mouth dropped open.
“And she wants you to admit you have rage issues on national television,” Gen added.
I sat down in a lounge chair so I wouldn’t collapse from the shock of it all. I couldn’t wrap my head around the extent of Deborah’s crazy.
“All before the election.”
“You’re kidding. No way in hell am I doing any such thing,” I breathed. “Tell me Roxi recorded the conversation. Please.”
“Um, no. But she regrets that she didn’t. A lot. She kind of called her up on a whim of anger and Roxanna drama. You know how she gets.”
My vision blurred as I stared at the still water in the pool. “Well, it was nice of her to try. Tell her thank you.”
Multiple personalities and rage issues. RAGE issues. She was a monster. A crazy, evil monster. Deflated, I lay there, staring up at the sky through the pergola beams.
“If it means anything, I don’t think she was serious. I think she was taunting Roxi,” Gen said.
“Yeah, I don’t think it would help Gerard’s campaign to have been such a bad judge of character to let their son marry a woman with multiple personalities and rage issues,” Catherine added, and I smiled.
“No, I don’t suppose so.” I definitely needed more aspirin. “I wish I would have made her give me a signed copy of that contract,” I said on a sigh. “I just wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“No, because she ambushed you,” Gen seethed.
“It doesn’t matter now. Without it, it’s just my word against hers. Like anyone would believe me.” I rolled to my back and gazed up at the blue sky. “I’m going to take a nap now. I’ll talk to you two later, okay?”
“Wait, Lex,” Gen said, and I paused from ending the call.
“Yeah?”
“Listen to Leo, okay? He’s there to make sure you’re safe. I was watching a documentary and—”
I laughed. “I’m starting to think you should be cut off from television.”
“I mean it,” she said on a huff. “Freakish things happen to people on vacation all the time.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll listen to him. Mostly. If he’s being reasonable.”
I ended the call and stood up, beat. Inside the villa, I hovered over the empty side of the bed and contemplated whether to get in or not. Not like I’d jump Leo’s bones or anything. Not after making a complete fool of myself in front of him last night. Not that jumping his bones would be unpleasant. Exhaustion made the decision for me, and I scooted under the covers and lay so close to the edge, I was barely on the bed. Sleep didn’t come easily, not with a guy like Leo beside me.
Chapter Six
The sheets smelled like Leo. The entire villa smelled like him. His cologne hung in the air, even with the windows pulling in the ocean breeze. Now that I was alone in the room, I lay in the middle of the bed, staring at the wall, then the clock on the night stand, then back to the wall.
He’d gone in search of the guest store and a bottle of shaving cream. I didn’t even want to picture what he’d look like with a few days of unshaven scruff. How was I supposed to find the peace and clarity I’d come here for with Leo walking around looking like sex on a stick? Jeez.
I was being unfair, sure. It really wasn’t Leo’s fault he looked the way he did. Or that his voice was like a coat of warm honey sliding down my backbone. Or that every time his skin brushed against mine, goose bumps shot down my arms. The problem was me. Even when I ignored him, awareness made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
His suitcase, sitting against the wall, stared at me like a big fat elephant in the room, so I closed my eyes. Then I got a flash of my body draped around his in the pool, the gentle sway of the water pushing the insides of my thighs against his slick wet skin. His mouth over mine…
I shivered and turned into the pillow, groaning frustration. My skin tingled, my breathing ragged as my imagination ran wild. He wasn’t a stranger, which made him being here complicated and confusing. He’d been my first everything—first kiss, first love, first person I’d ever slept with. I still remembered the way he’d made love to me, how innocent we’d both been exploring each others’ bodies, learning together what passion really was. But he was a man now. Everything about him was so much bigger; I had no doubt sex with this grown up version of Leo would be mind-blowing.
This is not about being hung up on Leo. It’s about sex. I repeated that a few times until I was satisfied with that explanation. The truth was, it’d been awhile since Jeremy and I’d had sex. Why was that, anyway? I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d been so busy stressing about the wedding, and he’d been busy at the law office with a high profile case. There hadn’t been time for intimacy. And you didn’t think there was something wrong with that?
The clock ticked past the hour. How long could it possibly take to walk to the guest store? And why did I care? We weren’t here together—I’d been adamant in pointing out that fact. Maybe he’d stopped by a bar on the way back. Maybe, while I lay here agonizing over sharing a villa with him, he danced the salsa with a big-boobed heiress, not a care in the world. What the hell is wrong with you?
For someone who wanted nothing to do with the man, I stressed over him like some teenager with a crush. I scooted to the edge of the bed and rose to my feet. This is all the more reason to stay clear of him. I couldn’t think straight around him. His reappearance in my life was just another mess to navigate through.
I stalked to the closet and threw the doors open. Didn’t he know what his being here did to me? Didn’t he get how off the wall it was for him to be here? I didn’t hate him or anything. There’d been six years for me to get over the heartache Leo had left behind, but it didn’t change the fact there was still the unanswered question of why he’d broken up with me in the first place. The last thing he’d said to me before leaving for Iraq was ‘I love you.’
Him being here brought the question up to the surface to gnaw at me. There’d been no explanation, only a letter telling me to move on because he was. Short, harsh, and to the painful point. What kind of answer is that? Not a good one, that was for sure.
No, I didn’t hate him, but I didn’t get him either. He and I sharing a bed, even if we weren’t having sex, should bother him on some level. It didn’t seem to affect him at all, though. Like him being around again was no big deal.
I pulled a blue cotton dress over my head as I padded through the room to step out onto the patio. I closed the door behind me and looked out to the dark ocean. The sky was a sea of endless stars and a glowing, round moon, lighting up the horizon where the ocean met a blue-black sky. With every step, my feet sank into the warm sand. The ocean lapped quietly against the shore, and I stopped just before the water caressed my toes. Music played at a soft hum from somewhere down the beach. The Big Dipper caught my attention. I held up my hand and traced the stars with my finge
r, and whispered, “I still can’t see the Little Dipper.”
“You never could.”
His voice startled me. I whipped around, my heartbeat a fierce pounding in my chest. “You startled me.”
“Sorry. You weren’t in bed. I wasn’t sure where you’d gone.”
Turning back around to face the ocean, I said, “Really, Leo, this place is safe. You don’t need to worry so much.” And then I added, “But…thank you for worrying.”
I was mesmerized by the way the black waves of the ocean shimmered under the light of the moon. It wasn’t until he sat down beside me that I looked away, down to where he rested back into his arms propped in the sand. After a moment, I sat down beside him.
“I brought you a sandwich. It’s on the coffee table.” He glanced over at me. “Turkey and sprouts.”
“Thank you, I am a little hungry.” The sand warmed my toes; I dug them in and sat with my knees to my chest, my arms wrapped around my legs. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you remembered what I like on my sandwich.” I smiled at him. “Since you’re a private investigator now, and all.”
He shrugged. “I have a good memory. Dad takes the credit. Good genes, he says.”
The smile tugging at the corners of his lips was so boyishly wicked; the butterflies went crazy in my stomach.
“I also had them add mayo and tomato.”
Those kinds of details were probably stored away in his memory as effortlessly as a manila envelope in a filing cabinet. How much about our past did he reminisce over? Did he think about us as much as I did of late?
Our gazes locked together, and there was so much I wanted to ask him. So much I couldn’t get my lips to speak. Why are you really here? It has to mean something. A man didn’t follow a woman across the ocean to make sure she was okay. Right? A simple phone call was just as effective.
After a moment of heavy silence, I turned my gaze back to the stars.
We hadn’t sat alone together like this in so long; I’d forgotten how easy it was to be with him. I closed my eyes and remembered the day our relationship had changed from my one-sided teenaged crush, to something more. Back then I used to write about him in my diary, did the Leo-plus-Lexie-forever kind of thing teenaged girls do when infatuated with a boy. For years he’d never given me any reason to think he cared, until one day he tugged on my hair in the school parking lot. I’d had enough of his teasing by then, because I loved him and he didn’t love me back and it hurt. I turned to sock him, maybe yell, scream at him how big of a jerk he was. Before I could say a word, he pulled me to him, caught me in his arms and kissed me senseless with his friends cheering him on.