by Lauren Layne
“I—”
“It’s not common knowledge,” Stacey said. “Or perhaps it is, but it’s not…out there.”
Stacey fiddled with a coaster, and Isobel brushed her fingers against the back of her hand before turning to Simon and Jordan. “Stacey’s father is a reverend just outside of town.”
“And not the forgiving, love-is-love type of preacher,” Stacey muttered, taking a large gulp of wine.
“No, he’s definitely more the brimstone variety,” Isobel said with a tight smile.
“Oh, honeys,” Simon said, reaching across the table and extending a hand to each woman.
Stacey accepted his hand immediately, Isobel with an eye roll and more reluctantly.
“I came out of the closet when I was nineteen, and my parents haven’t said a word to me since,” Simon said.
Jordan gave him a quick look. They’d been friends for years, and he’d never told her that. She knew that he and his family were estranged, but to be disowned because of whom you loved…
Jordan felt like a bit of an outsider as her three tablemates sat for a moment in silence, sharing something she’d never understand, but she didn’t mind.
Mostly her head was reeling, wondering if she’d missed signs, or if they’d just hid it that well, or…
“Okay, enough about it,” Stacey said, pulling her hand back and shaking out her arms as though wanting to rid herself of sad thoughts. “We’re not all the way open about it, but we like you, Jordan. Figured if you’d be friends with Simon here…”
“For the record, you’re the gayest person I’ve ever met,” Isobel said to Simon.
He patted her hand affectionately. “Just about the nicest compliment you could ever pay me.”
Jordan was still trying to process it all. Stacey obviously wouldn’t be a candidate to prance around in a bikini searching for her true love among a couple of dozen men, but she found she didn’t care as much about that as…
“Does Luke know?” she blurted out.
Then she winced, for both the irrelevance of the question and what it revealed.
The entire table gave her a surprised look, but then Stacey smiled knowingly. “You like him.”
Jordan swallowed. “He’s…”
“Hot.”
Jordan looked at Isobel in surprise, and the redhead shrugged. “What? I can like girls and still see it.”
“He is hot,” Jordan agreed, because…what was the point in fighting the facts? “But he hates me.”
“As someone who dated him for two years and nearly married the guy, no, he most definitely does not,” Stacey said firmly. “He’s got no idea what to do with you, but that’s a different problem altogether. And to answer your question, yes. He knows about Isobel and me.”
“Is that why you didn’t get married?” Simon asked kindly but bluntly.
Guilt flickered across Stacey’s face, and Isobel put a protective hand on her arm. “I’ve got this, hun. Yes,” Isobel said, turning her attention to Simon and Jordan. “Stacey told Luke the morning of their wedding that she couldn’t keep living a lie. He was good about it. I’ll always be grateful for that.”
“More than good,” Stacey added quietly. “He knew my parents wouldn’t handle having a gay daughter very well. He preserved my relationship with them by letting everyone assume it was him who’d broken it off. I hated the idea of making him a scapegoat, but I suppose the assumption was inevitable. I was already in my wedding dress by the time I got the courage to tell him—to tell myself.”
“The picture of the deserted bride,” Jordan murmured, even as she felt a stab of defensiveness on Luke’s behalf.
“I don’t love it,” Stacey whispered. “He tells me all the time that it doesn’t matter, that he doesn’t care…”
“Perhaps because he’d had some practice,” Isobel muttered into her wineglass.
“Hey,” Stacey said, just a tiny bit sharp. “You know perfectly well that the first wedding wasn’t what it seemed either.”
It was the opening she’d been waiting for, and Jordan took it. “You guys know why he left his first bride at the altar?”
“That’s not—” Stacey broke off when Isobel elbowed her. “It’s not my story to tell.”
Jordan slumped back in her chair as she tried to navigate everything Stacey and Isobel weren’t saying.
“Well, crap,” Simon said, sounding a little awestruck. “The first wedding’s not what it seems either. That’s why our boy doesn’t want to play the part of runaway groom. Because he’s not one. We’ve been chasing the wrong guy.”
“You’ll have to ask Luke about that,” Stacey said, her smile gentle but stubborn.
“Oh, believe me,” Jordan said, tossing her wine back and reaching for the bottle. “I fully intend to.”
Chapter 18
Simon ended up driving her to Luke’s house. She’d only had two glasses of wine, but she’d drunk them fast, and better safe than sorry.
“We’re here!” Simon said proudly, as though he’d just landed one of the Apollos instead of made a five-minute drive in which they’d literally not seen a single other vehicle.
And thank God for that. Simon was a dreadful driver.
“So, what’s the plan?” Simon said, turning to face her.
She stared at the darkened house. “It’s time Luke and I had a little chat.”
“Tonight?” he asked skeptically.
“He’s been holding out on me,” she mused, tapping her fingers against her knee. “He’s never once said that his runaway-groom reputation was unfounded.”
“Well, now, that’s shocking,” Simon said. “What with him being such a big fan of ours.”
“He kissed me,” Jordan blurted out. Not because of the wine so much as the need to tell someone.
Simon’s eyes went wide before he gave her a not-so-gentle punch on the shoulder. “You sly dog, Carpenter! Was it hot and against the wall? Please say yes.”
She turned her head away, and he laughed. “Oh God, it was! I was joking, but it totally was. Oh, this is delicious, darling.”
“Just…” Jordan reached for the door handle. “Can you be here in an hour to pick me up?”
Simon stuck his tongue into his cheek and studied her. “How about I wait until I get your text? Give me twenty minutes’ notice; I don’t want to rush my bath.”
She rolled her eyes and pushed the door open, stepping out into the quiet night. “Fine.”
“I wish hetero sex didn’t gross me out,” he called after her. “I’d love to be a fly on the wall when he pushes you up against it again.”
She slammed the door, thumping her palm on the hood in a Go away gesture.
She was not having sex with Luke. Not up against the wall, not anywhere. She was here for answers. Answers about why the hell he hadn’t just told her that he wasn’t a candidate for the stupid show, because he wasn’t a stupid runaway groom.
It wasn’t until Simon drove away that she realized how truly quiet the night was. Luke had only a handful of neighbors, and it was too late in the summer season for evenings on the deck sipping wine. The only noise came from night bugs and the quiet crunch of her heels as she made her way along the dirt path to the tired-looking mailbox with Luke’s address.
She’d only been here through the door facing the lake, but Stacey had been surprisingly easy to coax into handing over directions and Luke’s address.
Stacey.
Not so much the jilted bride as…
The one who’d left him.
Hurt him?
Had Stacey broken his heart when she told him she couldn’t marry him? Had the first bride?
Luke’s situation was nothing like she’d assumed, and suddenly Jordan was feeling rather…off-balance.
His house was mostly dark as she made her way toward his front door, and it occurred to her that she hadn’t even considered calling first to see if he was home. The small-town lifestyle—where the unannounced drop-by was the norm—was appar
ently rubbing off on her.
She didn’t know what she wanted to say, only that she was buzzing with…something.
Not the wine—that had more or less faded. But she needed to see him. Needed to lay eyes on the man now that she knew he wasn’t a heartbreaker so much as a…
Really hot, really nice firefighter.
Damn it.
She punched the doorbell, wincing when the sound was met immediately by Winston’s frantic barks.
A second later, Luke opened the door with his right hand, his left holding the collar of the squirming, enthusiastic golden retriever.
Jordan registered the surprise on his face, before taking the coward’s way out and kneeling to greet the dog, who looked a heck of a lot more excited to see her than his owner did.
“He’ll knock you over,” Luke muttered, a second before he released the collar.
Winston didn’t knock her over, but it was a close call, his big body colliding with hers and rocking her back a bit. She recovered, though, and gave him a good rub with both hands before kissing the top of his head and standing up again.
She met Luke’s unreadable gaze. “May I come in?”
He hesitated a second before moving aside.
Jordan stepped into the foyer, first hearing the distant chatter of the television, then catching a waft of tomato sauce and onion from the kitchen.
“Sorry to intrude on your night,” she said.
She expected a sarcastic response, but he merely studied her. “Everything all right?”
Jordan had been taking in the parts of his house she hadn’t seen on her last visit—the wide wooden staircase, the natural-stone floor of his entryway, the usual absence of art and knickknacks that proudly declared its bachelor status.
A status that apparently wasn’t entirely by choice…
She lifted her face to his and went for it. “Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t ditch those women at the altar?”
Luke didn’t move a single muscle, even when a still-excited Winston banged against his shins.
A long moment of silence stretched between them before he crossed his arms and spoke. “What makes you think that?”
“I just had drinks with Stacey. And Isobel,” she added pointedly, after a pause.
He winced—barely, and had she not spent the past weeks studying the nuances of this man’s face, she might have missed it. “Ah.”
“Yeah. Ah,” she said.
He nodded his head toward the kitchen. “I need a beer.”
It wasn’t exactly an invitation, but neither had he told her to get the hell out, so Jordan followed him into the kitchen.
Her nose was right on. There was a pan of lasagna sitting on the stove, a healthy portion gone.
“Homemade?” she asked.
He pulled two beers out of the fridge, popped the caps off both, and offered her one without asking.
She accepted it though she didn’t really want it.
“It’s one of the few things I can make, though I admit this is my first time attempting a vegetarian version,” he said, gesturing his bottle at the pan before taking a sip. “Hungry?”
Her lips parted; her heart beat faster. “You made vegetarian lasagna. You didn’t even know I’d be coming by.”
He grinned. “How’d you know it was for you?”
Again she was feeling a little off-balance. Men might cook to get laid, but they didn’t go out of their way to cater to specific food preferences unless they cared about a woman. Hoped she might stop by…
Did they?
She swallowed, her thumbnail playing with the label of the beer bottle, trying to remember why she’d come here in the first place.
She wanted answers, even though she knew she wasn’t owed them. Not really. She and Luke weren’t lovers. They were barely even friends. It was just…
“You could have told me, you know. It would have gotten me off your back.”
Luke went very still, then set his beer on the counter. “Let me see if I’m hearing you right,” he said quietly, coming toward her with slow, angry purpose. “You think that I’d sell out the secrets of two women I cared about—was going to marry—to get some ambitious city slicker off my back?”
She put her own bottle down with a thump. “No. I just meant—”
“That I’m not worth your time unless I’m a complete jackass,” he said, still moving toward her.
“Would you stop putting words in my mouth!” she shouted, temper snapping at the way she’d gone from feeling like the wronged party to feeling like she was on the defensive—at the realization that he might be right.
“Sucks, doesn’t it?” he said, his voice cool even as his eyes blazed anger. “Having someone assume the worst of you without giving you even the slightest chance to defend yourself.”
“Okay, that’s too far,” she said quietly. “I may have made assumptions, but don’t even try to pretend that you haven’t had plenty of chances to set the record straight. You want to get really pissed at someone? Get pissed at yourself, because you could have avoided all this by replying to my very first email, letting me know not to bother. Then you’d never have met me. Just what you want, right?”
Luke’s jaw worked as he stared at her hard. The room seemed to go deathly quiet—Winston’s relentless barks, the cat’s irritated meow, the soft prattle of the television falling away altogether until it was only him and her, with nothing but the sound of their breathing, the tension of their want.
“No,” he said finally, as he reached for her. “That’s not what I fucking want.”
Jordan went into his embrace without a moment’s hesitation, her arms twining around his neck as one of his arms cupped her head, the other wrapping low on her waist, tugging her flush against him.
The kiss was both angry and inevitable, equal parts greedy and generous. Jordan’s nails clung, her body arching into his in a restless hunger she didn’t recognize.
She’d had her fair share of boyfriends, had a handful more of casual hookups, but though she’d hardly thought of herself as frigid, this thing with Luke was new. It was dangerous, and wonderful, and all-consuming.
Jordan wanted more. She wanted all of him, consequences be damned. And there would be consequences for sleeping with someone she was supposed to be recruiting.
She shoved the thought aside at the same moment she dropped her hands to his waist, slipping fingers beneath his T-shirt.
They both gasped as her fingers collided with the warm skin of his back, and Luke’s fingers tangled in her hair, tugging her head to the side so he could drag his lips and tongue over the column of her neck in torturous kisses.
Jordan gave it right back, nails scratching lightly along his spine as she tilted her hips against his in unmistakable invitation.
Luke’s palm slid up from her waist to cover her breast at the same moment Winston wedged his big body between theirs, outraged at being ignored.
They broke apart, and Jordan let out a self-conscious laugh that died in her throat at the raw desire written on Luke’s face.
He shoved his dog away before plowing his fingers into her hair again and resting his forehead against hers. “Come to bed with me.”
Had he asked, sense might have leaked in. She might have considered all the reasons why sleeping with Luke Elliott was certain career suicide.
But he didn’t ask. He wanted; he intended to take.
And she intended to give—and do some taking of her own.
Jordan lifted her eyes to his. “Okay.”
His fingers flexed in victory against her scalp before he stepped back and reached for her hand.
With the exception of a couple of high school backseat make-out sessions, most of Jordan’s sexual experience had occurred in Manhattan, where even the swankiest apartments were tiny, so the walk through Luke’s house and up the stairs to his bedroom felt endless.
The wait was worth it.
Jordan let out a little gasp as she released his hand an
d walked through the darkened room to the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“You’ve been holding out on me,” she murmured, as she took in the picturesque sight in front of her.
The higher floor gave his bedroom a breathtaking view. It would be gorgeous during the day, but at night it was pure magic, the nearly full moon hovering just over the trees to illuminate the entire lake.
“I hold out on everyone,” he said quietly, coming up behind her.
His hand found her waist, but he didn’t immediately pull her toward the bed. Instead, they stood there for a long moment of companionable silence, which Jordan relished for its quiet intimacy—and feared for the very same reason.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
His head dipped forward, lips brushing over her neck. “Not exactly the Manhattan skyline.”
Jordan swallowed. He was right. It wasn’t the twinkling lights of the big city she’d always loved, and yet…
“I don’t want to talk about that,” she murmured, turning toward him.
Don’t let me think.
His lips captured hers in a kiss that was gentler than before but no less erotic. City boys didn’t kiss like this. Luke’s kiss was hotter, and a hell of a lot more skilled.
She ached for his hand on her breast, to pick up where they’d left off in the kitchen before the dog interrupted, but he made her wait, fingers idly drifting over her back as he savored her mouth as if it were fine wine—or perhaps, in his case, a cold beer on a hot day.
Jordan’s hands slipped under his shirt, delighted at the way she could feel every muscle of his impressive abs.
His breathing grew harsher as her hands grew bolder, and he reached back to pull the shirt over his head with one impatient tug.
She barely got a chance to take in the magnificence of shirtless Luke before he nudged her backward toward the bed.
Luke’s eyes locked on hers as he slowly lowered to his knees in front of her, as he defiantly removed her boots. His fingers wrapped around her ankle. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since I saw you in those damn high heels that first day.”