by Jessie Cooke
Christo laughed maniacally at her tipsiness, trying to cover his very own. “Why, Bella Ryan, I do believe you are besotted.”
Bella looked around as if Christo were speaking to someone else, and then it dawned on her what he had said. She broke into giggles that swayed her body and flushed her already blushing face.
“I think I am,” she said. “But if I am, then you are. We had the same number of glasses. I counted.”
“What will we do if we win?” Christo said as he lay his head back on the sofa cushions. They had feasted on their prime rib and potatoes, and each of them boasted a full little belly as they reclined, their feet up and their heads back.
“We’ll come back here to see our paradise completed. Can you imagine?” Bella asked.
“No. This is gonna be big. I mean huge,” Christo said, and then broke into giggles again. “I want to win so badly,” he admitted. “But not for me. For you.” He turned to her when he said that.
“That’s so sweet, Christo,” Bella said, tears stinging her eyes. “I want us to win, and I believe we have a shot. This would be such a boost for my career. Maybe I’ll even press for a senior-level position if I do.”
“I want to win for Simon, too,” Christo said, as if he were still contemplating his previous comment. “I want to bring him here. He’d love this place. He’d love this place with our design.”
“If we win, he’ll have to come. Hands down.”
“I miss him,” Christo began, and the sound of his voice alerted Bella that they’d reached the weeping time of the wine, when Christo became quite vulnerable and cried and cuddled and then cried some more. “I’ve never missed someone so much it ached. Have you, Bella? You know what I mean? But it’s kinda good too. Like when the dentist pulled your tooth? Ever have that happen?”
“The dentist pull a tooth?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. Plenty,” Bella was trying to follow, but the wine was muddling her thinking, and she knew she would need to go to bed soon to be fresh for the next day.
“You know how you know it’s gone, but you keep sticking your tongue in there to feel it, and it kinda hurts, but it kinda feels good at the same time? That’s what missing Simon feels like. There’s a hole I have to keep reminding myself is there, and when I do, it hurts and feels good. I never thought I’d meet anyone like him, Bella. Have you ever had that, though?”
Bella couldn’t help but laugh at Christo, whose head was lolling around on the sofa, his eyes squinting slightly.
“I don’t know if I’ve had it as intense as you do,” Bella admitted. “But I know one thing: I miss Reece.”
“I know you do. Bella and Lukey sitting in a tree. K-i-s-s-i-n-g. Do you think you’ll marry Luke?”
“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. We just recently consummated our relationship, for crying out loud.”
Christo perked up on that bit of news. “Ooohh. Do tell! How was it? Is he as dreamy in bed as he is at everything else? He’s gonna be the perfect man, isn’t he? Just gay-ish enough for you to have a blast with, but straight so you can take him like you want him.” Christo punctuated what he’d said with a tiger’s roar and a pawing of the air.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Bella said. She stood and stretched and took her wine glass to the kitchenette to rinse it off.
“That’s not a good sign,” Christo said disappointedly. “Usually that means his performance was not up to par. Am I to assume he got no gold star for his presentation? What’s wrong—his show piece wasn’t blue ribbon worthy?”
Bella swatted at Christo with a dishtowel. “What is all this competition and award talk? Is the pressure getting to you, man?”
“Oh, that’s it isn’t it? He could rise to the occasion but then couldn’t last to perform. He got stage fright; too much pressure.”
Bella threw up her arms in exasperation. “If you must know, he was more than able to perform. It was just . . . his performance was a little lacking, I guess.”
“Oh, no! Travesty!” Christo put a dramatic hand to his head. “But the first time’s always the hardest.”
“It was weird. I got the impression it was truly his first time.”
“You mean, you think he was a virgin?”
“I don’t know. It was . . . short-lived and . . . well, sophomoric in style, to say the least.”
“What I hear you saying is, you didn’t get off.”
“To put it bluntly, yes.”
“But you miss him.”
“Sure, but I don’t think I miss him like you miss Simon.”
“Speaking of my man, I’m going to give him a call before hitting the hay. Good night my Bella Luna.”
She kissed his cheek to head to her own bed, anxious for sleep to take her away from her thoughts and mixed feelings regarding Luke.
She awoke to a knock on the door the next morning—their breakfast being delivered. She noticed a bottle of champagne with the orange juice and moaned, her head slightly throbbing from her overindulgence the night before.
“Man, these people don’t play!” Christo said as he entered the common area, sunny and chipper and picking up the bottle of champagne to check it out.
“Oh, there’s a note.” Bella noticed. It was their schedule for the day, part of which included zip-lining on the far side of the island, one of the many adventure sports included at the resort.
They sat down to a decadent breakfast of farm fresh eggs, potatoes, bacon, and sausage with bowls of granola, fresh fruit, and yogurt.
“So, I have a little something to discuss with you,” Christo said tentatively as he served them coffee.
“This doesn’t sound good,” Bella mumbled.
“I didn’t even catch it until I was replaying our conversation in my head,” Christo admitted.
“Do you do that?”
“What?”
“Replay our conversations?”
“Sometimes, but that’s beside the point,” Christo said. “Now, listen carefully, because neither one of us was last night when we were talking.”
“Okay.”
“Remember when I was talking about missing Simon and the tooth analogy, all that stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“And I started asking you if you’d ever missed anyone like that, so much it hurt but felt good at the same time, all that stuff?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, you proceeded to tell me that you hadn’t missed anyone like I miss Simon, but that yes, you missed Reece.”
“Reece?!”
“That’s what you said.” Christo took a long sip of his coffee as he let his news settle in.
“Why would I say Reece? That doesn’t make any sense. No, I remember that conversation, and I said that ‘sure, I miss Luke.’”
“No, you said that later in the evening, but at first I’m pretty certain you said Reece. I just assumed you said Luke, and I went from there, but when I was thinking back over it, I heard you say it in my head as clear as day: Reece.”
Bella’s heart was racing as if she’d been found guilty of harboring some state secret.
“I think you have some feelings you haven’t dealt with yet,” Christo was saying. “I think maybe you really do miss Reece. Maybe you even miss him like the missing tooth.”
Suddenly, Bella couldn’t eat anything. The sight of the food before her turned her stomach, and she felt her body temperature rise quickly.
“There is no way I’m missing Reece like a tooth. No sir, no way, no how. Not even possible. Have you forgotten this one itsy bitsy piece of intel? The part where he knocked up my best friend and didn’t even tell me about? Let me go off to South Padre for a weekend with him? Let me think I was falling for him, not knowing that all along, he was hatching a plan to go back to Dallas and raise a kid with someone he pretended he didn’t even love? Oh, who just so happened to be my best friend? Did you forget that part?!”
Bella’s cheeks and neck were flushed and tears were stinging at he
r eyes, but she had vowed not to spend another tear on this situation. She was as mad at herself as anyone else involved, but she was trying—unsuccessfully—to move on with her life. She took a deep inhale and let it out slowly and shakily.
Christo put his coffee cup down and went to hug Bella. “I didn’t forget all that, Bells. Sometimes, though, we miss people we shouldn’t. We fall in love with those who don’t deserve it. It happens. I think last night you actually told the truth, but we both were a little too drunk to process it at the time.”
“Well, I didn’t mean it. I meant to say ‘Luke’. I do miss Luke. There’s a lot of potential for a great relationship there, and it wasn’t built on sex with a stranger. It’s built on mutual respect and attraction way before sex ever came in to the picture. I miss him. I do.”
But Bella wasn’t sure whom she was trying to convince at the moment.
28
“I knew you’d come back.” Reece’s russet eyes twinkled when he opened the door to Bella.
“How did you know?” she asked pointedly.
“Because, Bella—it’s easy to see that we are meant to be together. We fit together in every way. We were drawn together before we even knew each other. Don’t you think that accounts for something?” Even now his body was drawing nearer to hers and hers was responding with an electric zinging from head to toe. She could feel everything within her crux being pulled to him, his force a magnet to her own.
Reece swept a stray hair away from her face, allowing his fingers to stray, outlining the edge of her cheekbones.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” she confessed.
“Yes, you do,” he said.
“Everything within my head is telling me this is a mistake. You’re gonna be a father . . . with my best friend.”
“Details that don’t have anything to do with me and you,” Reece said as his other hand came up to run the rim on the other side of her face.
His touch made her feel more alive, like when the sun breaks through the thick clouds of an oppressive storm, yet the storm still raged within, between her head and her heart.
“Sometimes, I think I hate you,” she said softly.
“But there’s a thin line between love and hate,” Reece returned. “If you hate me, I’ll take it. That means you’re just this side of loving me, and I will spend the rest of my life winning your love, if that is what it takes. If you’ll just let me.”
Bella pushed back, her hand on his solid chest. “I don’t know,” she said as she shook her head trying to disentangle the warning voices that were calling to her from within. “Nicky will always have something I don’t have; she’ll always be the mother of your first child. How am I supposed to live with that?”
“We’ll get through it together, Bella,” Reece promised. “Let me show you how you’ll live with that.” And his muscular arms wrapped around her protectively as he drew her into a crushing embrace. His lips moved upon hers, and his familiar taste made her hot. Without even thinking, her arms encircled his neck, and her hands caressed the back of his head as their tongues danced with each other in a mad dash to get all that they could, unsure when this would happen ever again.
He picked her up and carried her to his bedroom where he gently lay her on a wide king-sized bed clothed in the softest of silk sheets. Immediately his hands were on her, sliding across her body. She found herself naked except for the white cotton tank and beige boy-cut panties she’d donned earlier in the day, not knowing she would find herself in this predicament.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “If I’d have known, I would have put on something sexier.”
A copper–colored head arose from low between her legs, and eyes of envy green smiled seductively at her.
“You couldn’t look any sexier if you tried,” Luke said and his trim beard tickled between her legs as he returned his attention to her.
“Luke? What? What just happened?”
He looked up again, concern in his face. “What do you mean?”
“I . . . I thought you were . . .”
“Reece?”
“Yes?” His voice from the other side of the room made her turn, and Bella realized that he stood there, completely naked and standing by.
“Isn’t this what you really want?” Reece asked as he approached. “Be honest. You want us both, but you’re too scared to really say it.”
Bella felt the sheen of sweat break out on her body, and she rubbed her own fingers across the nipples underneath the white tank top.
“It doesn’t seem to me that either one of you mind that,” she laughed. “And so, what’s wrong if I do?”
Both the men were on the bed by now. Reece’s hands and lips were stroking all the right places: across her hips, her breasts, her neck, her lips. Luke had his own lips preoccupied between her legs, and she had no complaints as she began to rock her hips to match the thrusts and licks of his tongue.
Reece kissed her deeply, but when he drew away, he was suddenly Luke, and she looked to see Reece’s brown-haired head between her legs.
“What is going on?” she thought. “Am I in such a state of frenzy that I’m blacking out?”
“We can love you that much,” their voices blended, and she arched her pelvis as the waves of rapture bolted through her body over and over.
Then, she sat straight up, her entire body shaking with the fervor it couldn’t contain.
She looked around bewildered.
She was at home. In her own bed. In the spasm of a dream.
The sweat was real, and the wetness was real. She looked down to see her nipples straining through her chemise and realized that all of that was real . . . but none of the other stuff was.
Except perhaps her subconscious desire for both men.
She kicked the covers off, half-disgusted and half-amazed at herself. Then, she wandered through her apartment for the fourth time that night. It had to be about the twentieth time this week that she’d found herself out of bed and flitting around her house in the wee hours of the morning, unable to sit or lie still, unable to concentrate on a book, too impatient for television, and too angst to draw or write. She’d even tried surfing the net—trolling around on Facebook—only to become too aware of how lonely she was to continue.
Christo had tried to talk with her again on the trip about her Freudian slip when she mentioned missing Reece instead of Luke, but she didn’t want to hear it. Was it because she didn’t want to admit to it?
She had avoided Luke for days out of guilt, and she knew he was beginning to question her and what was going on. Sooner rather than later, she would have to do something. She couldn’t keep him at arms’ length forever. Obviously—were she one to believe in the language of the subconscious—she had strong feelings for him as well as for Reece. And that was easy to understand. Luke was a good guy. The type of man who still believed in chivalry. They shared personal interests and enjoyed each other’s company, and there was mutual respect for the other. Theirs was a relationship built first and foremost on friendship.
It was all opposite with Reece. She’d screwed him twice before she ever even knew his name. She felt their relationship had been one big masquerade, and he was still trying to hide who he really was by not being honest with Nicky or Bella. Did Reece Hamilton even know himself?
“Questions for another day,” Bella told herself. She thought about returning to her room and finding her trusty vibrator, but the frustration at which image she’d use in her fantasy pushed her away from feeling the need or desire for any fulfillment it might provide.
Instead, she opened up the freezer and dug out her emergency pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chubby Hubby, content that, for now, these were the two men who would bring her the most pleasure this evening.
29
“Get your work visa ready, darlin’, because we are going to Haiti!” Bella shouted into the phone when Christo answered.
“What?”
&nb
sp; “We won!”
“We won?”
“WE WON!”
Squeals of excitement were exchanged, and this was another of those times Bella really wished she still lived with Christo. A fun dance would always ensue upon good news, and this was such big, wonderfully awesome news that it would be a dance to top all dances, and she wished they could have that moment together.
“These last two months have been torturous,” Christo said. “I thought they’d never end. Every day I was crossing off my calendar; one day closer to finding out if we were winners or losers.”
“Hey, what did we agree upon? We would not have lost had we not won,” Bella scolded. “But it doesn’t matter now because WE WON!”
“Bella, if this doesn’t get you a sure junior position with the firm, then I don’t know what will.”
“We’ll have to worry about that later. For now, we have a lot of work to do. Visas will have to be expedited, so get on that pronto. We need to pack everything for work and play to last us two months. The construction is moving ahead quickly, and they’ll have one set of villas ready by the time we get there. That’s where we’ll stay as we oversee all the rest of the interior work up to the grand opening.”
“I can’t believe this is happening!” Christo declared. Bella could tell from the sound of his voice that he was getting emotional at the whole idea.
“I never could have done it without you,” she smiled as she talked into the phone. “And I certainly wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else but you.”
“Bella, you are one wonderful friend. Thank you for bringing me along.”
“Thank you for making my job easier . . . and my dreams come true.”
They disconnected after some preliminary plans about packing, and Bella sat in her office and glanced around at the room. She would be leaving a lot these files and portfolios behind when she went to Haiti, so there was little in her actual office that she would need.
A brief knock on the door interrupted her examination. She looked up into smiling green eyes, and immediately felt herself grinning back.