by Beth Andrews
And he was just a man.
She opened her breakfast and frowned down at the dry toast and scrambled eggs. “What’s this?”
“I thought you might want something bland. To settle your stomach.”
She eyed his omelet, loaded with cheese, peppers and sausage. “Why would I want something bland?”
“For your hangover. And you should drink more,” he said, nodding toward the bottle of water he’d set by her elbow. “It’ll help with the headache.”
She laughed, the sound light and sunny. “Please. I’m Irish-Mexican. You insult my ancestors by such slander. I’m not hungover. I can handle my alcohol. I just...shouldn’t have handled quite so much of it last night.” She shoved her food aside and pulled his plate closer to her. Dug into his omelet. “Mmm...good, but needs hot sauce.”
And she hopped down. He couldn’t help but notice her dress riding up a bit so he turned his attention to his breakfast. Sighed, then switched it with hers.
Although he did scoop some of the hash browns onto his plate.
She came back, added enough hot sauce to her food to get his eyes watering—and he wasn’t even eating it—then tucked in to her meal as if she feared it’d disappear if she didn’t shovel it into her mouth as quickly as possible.
“That last shot of tequila hadn’t been such a good idea,” she said around a mouthful. She wrinkled her nose. “Well, the last two shots, really. Hindsight and all that, you know? Just once, I’d like to have a bit of foresight. An inner sense of worry or a niggling of doubt that warned me the wonderful, brilliant plan that popped into my head was really only misery in the making. Some sort of sixth sense to stop me from following said course. One to give me a moment’s pause, time to sort through all my options and work out what I should do next. That would be wonderful and, I imagine, come in quite handy.”
“You wouldn’t listen to it,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t like being told what to do. By anyone. Not even yourself. It’s one of your flaws.” He softened his words with a wink.
“I prefer to think of it as an independent streak. But you’re right. I wouldn’t have listened to any inner sense telling me not to drink, but I may have at least limited myself to two margaritas. Three, tops.”
Margaritas, too? He wasn’t even going to ask how many she’d had. “Sounds like you had a busy night. What with those men buying you drinks and all. But you still didn’t have to accept them,” he pointed out. “Unless they poured the alcohol down your throat?”
“Nothing like that. But they were nice. And it would’ve been rude to decline, right? Anyway, the only reason they were buying drinks was because of this dress. If I’d showed up in jeans and a T-shirt without the makeup, they wouldn’t even have noticed me.”
He doubted that. But she was right about the dress. She looked all curvy and soft in that little bit of silk. “We men are but simple creatures.”
“No kidding.” She poured the entire container of syrup over the half stack of pancakes he’d been looking forward to. “That’s why we womenfolk love you guys so much.”
He used his fork to slide a pancake from the bottom of the pile onto his plate. “We aim to please. So tell me...” he said, wondering about something he hadn’t yet gotten a clear answer on—a question that had become extremely important to him. Or at least, her answer to it had. “Why did you come here? And before you tell me it was only to use the bathroom or because it was closer and you were too tired to sit in the back of a cab for the ride to your place, remember I am an attorney and therefore have learned how to spot lies.”
Picking up a piece of toast, she avoided his eyes. “You want the truth?”
“That would be an interesting twist to this entire experience.”
She nodded. “Okay, here it is. I came here for you.”
* * *
DAPHNE NIBBLED ON a triangle of toast as Oakes stared at her, mouth open, eyes wary. Huh. Not so thrilled with the truth now, was he?
“What do you mean?” he asked, brave man that he was. But he looked as if he was bracing himself for her answer.
He wasn’t doing much for her ego.
He’d said he wanted the truth and she’d given it to him, but now one of life’s greatest, deepest and hardest to answer questions played in her mind.
Continue with that whole honesty thing or...?
Or lie like a dog on a hot summer’s day?
She set down her toast. Yeah. She was going with option number two. Though she wasn’t against combining the truth and a lie for something in between. It was easier to keep track of a fib if you threw a bit of fact in there as well.
“Let me tell you a story,” she began.
He raised his eyebrows. “I’m going to need more coffee for this,” he muttered as if listening to one of her entertaining tales was some hardship.
“Hey,” she said as he stood up, handing him her cup to refill as well. “I’ll have you know my stories are very well told.”
“They are,” he agreed, pouring coffee into their cups and rejoining her. “They’re also long. And are filled with repetitive, and at times, irrelevant information.”
She waved that away. “Now, don’t get all lawyerly on me. No one likes that. Sit back and relax and drink your coffee. You wanted to know why I came here, but before I can get to that part, I have to start at the beginning.”
“I already know all that. Your cousins tricked you into going out to dinner then forced you to go to a club where several men—”
“Several? I’m flattered. But it was only the two.”
“Where two men vied for your attention—”
She snorted. “Believe me, it wasn’t my attention they were vying for.”
He frowned and she noticed his fingers had gone white on his cup. She hid a smile behind her own mug as she lifted it to take a sip.
“You got drunk,” he continued in what she assumed must be his professional voice. Laying out the facts as he knew them in a deep baritone. “The cousins who took you to said club all left you alone to your own devices. You had enough sense to get a cab, but had to go to the bathroom and didn’t want to travel the distance from the club to your apartment so you, in a moment of clarity, gave him my address. Have I summed up your previous statement clearly?”
She blinked. God, but he was so freaking cute with his courtroom tone and wide shoulders. Smart, funny and good-looking. Was it any wonder she was stuck on him?
“That was very concise and, yes, that is accurate,” she said, turning to face him then crossing her legs. His gaze dropped, briefly, to the movement before he brought his attention back to her face. “But what I didn’t tell you was the reason my cousins got it into their tiny brains that I needed a night on the town, one that preferably ended with wild, kinky sex with a stranger.”
“Your cousins wanted you to hook up with a stranger?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Well, not all of them. Two were for, two were against. Nadine and Steph were hoping I’d meet my soul mate. But they all agreed that I needed a night out, that I needed to put myself out there.”
“Because?”
This was the tricky part. The embarrassing part. “They think I’m heartbroken over Ricky.”
“Ricky? As in your ex-boyfriend?”
“Ex-fiancé,” she corrected primly. They may not have been engaged all that long but he had proposed and she had worn the diamond he’d given her. That made him her fiancé—even if only for a few short months. “He’s back in town.”
She watched him carefully but there was no stiffness to his shoulders. No jealousy tightening his features.
Too bad. She could use some encouragement here.
“Has Ricky contacted you?” Oakes asked, again in lawyer mode. “Does he wa
nt to get back together?”
“He’s contacted me,” she said slowly, “but not to get back together.” Though when she’d broken up with him six months ago, she’d imagined him trying a bit harder to get her back. Guess she was easy to get over. “We met for coffee the other day and he told me he’s getting married.”
“I see.”
“I’m fine,” she told him because he was looking at her with sympathy. As if she was someone to be pitied.
Well, why wouldn’t he pity her? He thought—as everyone did—that Ricky had been the one to call off their engagement.
Probably because that’s what she’d told them all.
“I’m sure you are,” Oakes said quickly. Too quickly to be believed. “But if you need anything,” he said, giving her hand a pat, “you know I’m here for you, right?”
Her throat tightened. She did know that. It wasn’t just because he cared about her. It was because he was that kind of guy. The kind who was always there for people, for his family and friends, someone they could count on, could lean on.
And she was going to take horrible advantage of that very trait, one she found super sexy and one of the many reasons she was attracted to him.
And she was almost certain he was attracted to her, too—he just needed some help realizing it. And if that took a teeny, tiny bit of manipulation, a few half-truths and some serious acting chops on her part, then so be it.
She sighed, hoped it was the long, drawn-out sigh of the brokenhearted. “Thank you. I know I shouldn’t be upset about Ricky moving on, it’s just...it was a shock.” Partly because she’d never thought he’d return to Houston from Dallas, where he’d moved after their breakup. Or that he’d find someone else so quickly. Someone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with after he’d begged her to come with him. When she’d told him she couldn’t marry him, he’d acted devastated. Had insisted she was his one true love and he’d never get over her breaking his heart.
She’d felt horrible. Ricky was a great guy and she’d hated hurting him but it seemed he’d managed to rebound nicely from his heartache.
“The worst part,” she continued, “is that he and his new girlfriend—fiancée—are getting married in a few weeks and, if you can believe this, he invited me.”
“That’s very...”
“Movie-of-the-week, I know. I don’t think he did it to be vindictive or to rub my nose in it, though.” She chewed on the inside of her lower lip thoughtfully. “I mean, he said all the right things, about how he knew it might be awkward, but that he still cared about me and hoped we could be friends and still be a part of each other’s lives...”
“You don’t believe him?”
“I believe he believes it. The only logical conclusion I could come up with was that Jenny—his fiancée—thinks Ricky and I need the closure that my witnessing their wedding to him would provide.”
Oakes grinned. “Glad that psychology degree is paying off.”
“Hey, if I can’t psychoanalyze ex-fiancés, what’s the point?”
“You’re not going to his wedding, are you?” Oakes asked.
“I don’t want to,” she admitted. Fact was, she’d rather pour hot sauce in her eyes than attend. “But I’m afraid if I don’t, Jenny—or worse, Ricky—will think I’m not attending out of spite. Or because I’m still in love with him.”
Oakes studied her, his gaze intense and searching. “Are you?” he asked quietly.
“Of course not.”
“All I’m saying is it’s only been six months since he broke things off—”
“Us splitting up was for the best,” she said, realizing she sounded like a jilted lover trying to act as if she was fine and dandy with being dumped. Guilt pricked her about not clarifying who, exactly, had done the breaking up, but she couldn’t tell Oakes the truth about her and Ricky. Not without giving too much away. “We weren’t meant to be. It happens.”
Oakes took her hand in his, held it lightly. “No one would blame you if you still had feelings for him.”
“Oakes, I said that I’m over him. I’m twenty-three years old—old enough to know my own feelings.”
That Oakes thought she didn’t was another blow to her ego and one of the reasons she couldn’t admit to her feelings for him. He’d never believe her. Would think this was a continuation of the crush she’d developed on him as a teenager or that he was some kind of rebound.
“Seems to me you said the same thing when you got engaged.”
Her face heated. No fair throwing her own words back at her. “I loved Ricky—at the time—and thought marrying him was the right thing to do. Turns out I was wrong.”
“I hate to say I told you so—”
“Not as much as I hate to hear it,” she said in a faux sweet tone.
“But I did suggest you might be rushing things with him. You were too young to make such a huge commitment.”
“I wasn’t too young. But I did let it happen too fast.” She and Ricky had met at the end of her junior year at Rice, where he’d been a teaching assistant. Being with him had been easy. Maybe too easy. Too...comfortable. When he’d proposed on Valentine’s Day she’d thought it cheesy and romantic and had let herself get swept away with the idea of being in love.
And she had loved Ricky. Just not enough. And not in the way a woman should love the man she’d agreed to marry. When he’d accepted a position at a small, private college in Dallas and asked her to move there with him, she’d realized her mistake. She’d broken off their engagement but had told everyone he was the one who’d ended things between them.
It had seemed the lesser of two evils at the time. Her family and friends were all very supportive, very sympathetic. But she hadn’t fibbed to get sympathy. She’d done it to protect herself.
If the truth came out, she’d have to explain why she broke up with Ricky. And it wasn’t as simple as her making a mistake in accepting his proposal in the first place.
She’d done it for Oakes.
She’d realized that if she went with Ricky to Dallas, if she let herself get swept along with wedding plans and building a future with him, she’d have to give up her dreams of being with Oakes.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let Oakes go. Not without knowing, for sure, whether or not they were meant to be.
She squeezed Oakes’s hand then slid free of his grasp. She didn’t need his pity, even if Ricky had moved on rather quickly. “Not that I don’t appreciate your advice—”
He snorted. “You don’t appreciate my advice.”
“True. Mainly because I don’t need it. What I need is a favor.”
“Why am I suddenly nervous?”
“Don’t be such a baby. I’m not asking for a kidney. I came up with the perfect solution to my problem. In order to stem any gossip or speculation, I attend the wedding...”
“That’s your perfect solution?” he asked after a moment. “I have to tell you, I really thought you’d come up with something a bit more...inspired. Or at least interesting.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“You stopped talking.”
“I was pausing for dramatic effect.”
He leaned back, waved a hand. “Then by all means. Continue.”
“As I was saying, I go to the wedding...”
“You want me to do a drumroll?”
“No need. I’m imagining one in my head. Anyway, my point is, I go with you as my date.” She lifted her arms in a gesture of ta da!
“You want me to take you to your ex-boyfriend’s—”
“Ex-fiancé.”
“—wedding?”
Men. So clueless. “Yes. If I go alone, I’m either the humiliated, sad, pathetic ex, there to weep over the loss of the groom, or I’m there to win him back. Neither option is a
ppealing. But if I show up on the arm of one of Houston’s most eligible bachelors—”
“I thought we agreed to never mention that again,” he muttered.
And he was blushing. Gorgeous, smart and humble? He really was a dream come true.
“It’s not like I’d bring along copies of the article or anything.” Last winter a local magazine had run a piece on the city’s hottest bachelors under thirty-five. Oakes, to his chagrin, had come in at number two. “Though I might bring it up in conversation. Only if there’s an opening.”
“Daphne,” he said in warning.
“I’m kidding.” Sort of. “Look, if you go with me, it helps me save face and gives both Ricky and me closure.”
No one would ever doubt she was over her ex if she showed up with Oakes. Including Ricky and Jenny.
But more importantly, it would be a great chance for her and Oakes to spend some quality time together.
He studied her, as if trying to sense any hidden meaning behind her request. She kept her gaze on him, her expression open. Hopeful.
“If you think it will help,” he said, “then sure. I’d love to take you to your ex’s wedding.”
She gave a soft whoop of delight. “Hooray! Thank you, thank you, thank you. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you have a good time.”
“I don’t doubt that.” He began clearing the bar. “And I’ll do my best to play attentive date. Just tell me when and where to show up.”
“The ceremony and reception are both taking place at the Sam Houston Hotel the day before Christmas.” She got to her feet and set her silverware on her plate. Noticed his frown. “What’s the matter?”
“I can’t go with you,” he said, sounding regretful. “Kane and Charlotte are getting married that same weekend.”
“Oh,” she said, wondering why she hadn’t known the date of his brother’s wedding. Probably because she wasn’t invited to it and Zach had never mentioned it was taking place on Christmas Eve.
The depth of her disappointment surprised her. It wasn’t as if she’d never see the man again. But her spontaneous plan had been so perfect. She’d take Oakes as her date to the wedding, saving face with Ricky and spend a lovely evening with Oakes as nonfriends. The romance of the wedding, she was sure, would help loosen Oakes’s inhibitions where she was concerned.