Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel)

by Novak, Brenda

  “Back at you. I honestly never thought—” She stopped, and he looked down at her.

  “Really?” he asked. “You never thought about us?”

  “No. I thought about us a lot. For at least a year straight, that was about all I thought about. But I never really thought it would happen. There’s just always been so much between us. You know?”

  “Yeah. What happened to Trevor?”

  “Trevor was hardly between us.”

  “He was the night I invited you to my Christmas party.”

  She blinked. “You mean…you wanted…?”

  “Of course I wanted,” he said. “There’s no way I thought you were actually bringing your boyfriend.”

  “But you acted—”

  “Like a total gentleman, because I am. And a nice guy, too.”

  “And modest.”

  “And a sex god, don’t forget that.”

  Their laughter faded and in the silence guilt was like a rat in her stomach.

  “Actually, I was talking about our parents.” The room was getting colder, the truth harder to avoid. “And our friendship and the fact that… we were so different.”

  “Meaning you were a genius would-be lawyer and I was a simple cowboy?”

  “No!” she snapped, furious that he would accuse her of thinking like that.

  He grinned. “Just checking.” The silence between them was not as warm as it had been. The past had been let in and the edges of this room, of their night, were growing cold.

  "You heading out to see your dad?" he asked, watching her through the flop of his hair as he zipped up his pants.

  "Not...yet." She'd need a few days after Dean to put together her defenses. Rebuild her walls. Around her father she'd need to be unbreakable. Because there was nothing that could break her like her father’s drunk indifference. Being the daughter he never saw had ground her down into a fine powder. And she’d spent all these years away from him trying to figure out who she was. "Have you seen him?" she asked, pretending like she didn't care, or that it wasn't important.

  But because this man knew her better than anyone else in her life, he wasn't buying it.

  "I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have even brought it up," he said, wrapping his arms around her. "Let's go get some breakfast. Or I could run down to Deckers and grab some—”

  "Stop.” This was the moment.

  "Okay."

  Trina held him hard for one more second. Memorizing every bit of him. The smell, the feel. The way his breath touched the top of her head and tickled.

  "Trina? You all right?"

  "Fine. I just…I need to tell you something." She pushed away from him, and then took a few more steps, hoping she'd find a bit more courage with some distance.

  "I should...I should tell you something, too."

  That made her look up, stunned. Anger, because she was her father's daughter, primed. That was always her first reaction to surprises. And she worked hard on that every damn day of her life. "What?"

  "You first."

  She imagined him married, but he wouldn't be married and spend the night with her. He wasn't that guy. And, other than that, she wasn't sure if anything he said would be as bad as hers.

  "I’m working for your dad."

  He recoiled, nearly laughing. "What?" he asked.

  "It's not a joke. Or anything. Your father, or rather I guess the company, has hired me as part of the legal team as they fight the pipeline.”

  "You're here because you're working for my dad?"

  "I wouldn't do it if it was just your dad, but we need to fight this pipeline and he's throwing big money behind it.”

  “You’re crazy if you think he’s going to fight that. It’s a trick somehow.”

  “I know you have no reason to believe your father wants to do something noble.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve been sucked in by his lies!”

  “It’s not. It’s real. It’s a real job, an important job, and I couldn’t—”

  “Turn it down. You said.”

  She nodded and braced herself for an explosion. Because Dean did not talk about his father without, at some point, exploding.

  “You know why he’s hired you, don’t you?” he snapped.

  “Because I’m very good at my job, Dean.”

  “Yeah, and there aren’t seven thousand other lawyers who could do the same damn thing, but no, he hired you. The daughter of the man who owns part of that land. The man he hates.”

  “Stop, Dean. Stop. No one else knows the area like I do. No one else knows the players.”

  “Right. The players being our parents. The land the small acreage they fought over for years. The same stupid piece of rock that drove them apart. And you’re going to tell me this isn’t your chance to come back and screw your dad once and for all? Make sure he notices you the way he never did?”

  “So what if it is?” she asked, shaking. “So what if this is my chance to hurt him like he hurt me? Like he hurt my mom.” Tears burned behind her eyes, so much anger. She’d thought she had this under control. She’d believed that, that she could come back here, do the job, relish slightly any discomfort it might give her father. But this. This was hot. And it hurt.

  “Right,” he said. He pushed his hands through his hair and paced the small room as she tried to get her breath back. Calm down her fury. “I need to tell you, that job I got last spring—it’s for your dad.”

  Trina reeled back and tripped over the edge of the bed. She caught herself before she fell, but she was unbearably unbalanced. “You’re working for my dad?”

  “He’s got the largest working spread in the area. And I know you haven’t kept in touch, but he needs help.”

  “Don’t you for one minute pretend that you’re not taking this job for any reason except you want to fuck with your father.”

  Dean stepped back, his arms spread out wide. “So what if I did?”

  “How’s it working out for you?” she asked.

  “Great!” he cried.

  “Oh my God, this is why you didn’t ask me why I was home last night. Because you didn’t want to tell me why you were home.”

  “Right. Because if I told you, last night would have never happened.”

  “Oh well, thank God we both got laid before the truth came out.”

  “You’ve never been reasonable about your dad.”

  She gasped. “Oh! And you are?”

  “My dad’s a manipulative bastard.”

  “And mine is a drunk who ignored me my entire life. Why are we playing who had it worse? Look.” She took a deep breath. “This isn’t about our dads. It’s business. This is the pipeline.”

  “Right. Sure. Who cares who you screw as long as you get to save the world?”

  “Yeah? And who cares who you screw as long as you get back at your dad?” She gasped, her eyes going wide, the implications of what she’d said hitting a bull’s-eye in her chest.

  Oh God.

  Oh God, she’d never expected this. It hurt. It hurt so bad.

  “No,” he said as if he’d read her mind. “Last night had nothing to do with getting back at my dad.”

  She took a deep breath. Another one. But the pain didn’t go away.

  “It sure is convenient, isn’t it?”

  “Nothing about you has ever been convenient. Ever. I’m not doing this to hurt you.”

  All this time she’d been so worried about betraying him, but a wound had opened in her stomach. Her heart.

  She turned, searching for her coat. Her hat. Purse. Her dignity. Her heart. The last of her self-respect.

  “You can work for whoever you want, screw whoever you want, but it won’t ever get you what you want.” She pulled out the longest, sharpest weapon she had to use against him.

  “Don’t, Trina,” he breathed, but she ignored him.

  “You still won’t be good enough. Not for him. Not ever.” He went white. Even his lips were colorless, because she’d hurt him. She’d hurt h
im so bad. And the guilt and the remorse was just as bad as her anger. Her own hurt.

  “You think your dad is finally going to realize he loves you when he finds out you’re working for my father?” he asked, wounding her with his own swords, impossibly sharp with his knowledge of her. Of her relationship with her dad.

  They both looked away, the words like some awful violent act happening right in front of them. They couldn’t go back from it. The night, their friendship, it was all shattered and broken, and if they moved or breathed too deep, they’d bleed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. But it was useless. They’d said too much. Way too much.

  She grabbed all of her things in her arms. One of her boots. Her purse and coat. She wrapped her scarf around her neck, her eyes stinging with tears.

  “Trina, don’t leave like this.”

  “How am I supposed to leave?”

  “We could talk.”

  “I think we’ve said enough, don’t you?”

  His silence pounded, and the air between them vibrated. Her ears ached from the pressure.

  “Wait,” he said from directly over her shoulder. She stopped, but she didn’t turn around. “Do you have someplace to go?”

  He was worried about her. After everything they’d just said to each other, he was still worried about her.

  Don’t be touched. Don’t be moved.

  And in the end, it was easy not to be. It was what she was good at, after all. Keeping herself removed. Alone.

  “I have a house in Durande,” she said. It was a town a few miles away. Forty miles from her father’s house. She’d looked it up on a map, stared at the distance between the dots, wondering if it was far enough away.

  “Are you okay to drive?” he asked.

  “Fine.” It was a lie. She wasn’t fine. But she could drive a damn car. She could drive a car away from him.

  She slipped out the door.

  “Merry Christmas, Trina,” he yelled after her.

  She flipped him her middle finger.

  Right. Just another awful Christmas in a long line of awful Christmases.

  December 24, 2011

  10:22 PM

  Dean fought it as long as he could. And he had a lot of fight. He was used to long, drawn-out battles over many years. He was very comfortable with trench warfare. He could—very easily—pretend last night never happened. And when he ran into Trina at the grocery store or the post office, he could pretend. Pretend to be casual. Pretend not to care.

  He was so damn good at that, after all. He’d been pretending with her most of his damn life.

  But quite suddenly, and all at once, he didn’t have any fight left.

  And he called Trina. Or he called the cell phone number she’d given him in the bar last night.

  Predictably, it went to voice mail.

  “You’ve reached Trina, leave a message.”

  Beeeeep.

  For a nanosecond he nearly hung up. But this morning had been a life-changing event. Her in his house. In his bed. Him inside of her… He wanted that. Had wanted that forever.

  And that too was worth fighting for. And he figured it was about time he fought for what he wanted.

  “Hey, Trina. It’s…uh. It’s me. Dean.” Awesome. Starting with a bang. “Sorry to call so late, but I’ve just…I just feel really bad about the way things ended this morning. I said some stuff I really don’t mean. And,” he laughed. “I’m hoping that’s true for you too. That you didn’t mean some of the stuff you said.” This was not the direction he wanted to go. “Anyway. This morning, last night… it was…” the best night of my life. “Really good. And I want to see you again. I mean, we’ll probably see each other anyway, in town and everything. And I don’t want it to be awkward. And…” He took a deep breath. “And it wasn’t just a casual thing for me. With you. It could never be casual, with you. And I want to see you. A lot. So, I’m going to call, and keep calling, and sooner or later I figure you’ll get sick of that and call me back. Okay…ah…well, merry Christmas, Trina.”

  He hung up and threw the phone down on the bed.

  He wished he could feel good about that, like he’d made a wrong step right. But he knew Trina. And he had a really good sense that she would not call him back.

  He turned off the lights and stretched out in the sheets of his bed that still smelled like her.

  Chapter Four

  December 24, 2012

  5:45 PM

  Was it her or were the numbers on the gas pump clicking over more slowly than usual? They were frozen, like the rest of Dusk Falls.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Trina muttered, stomping her feet to keep them warm.

  Still slow. Forget this. She’d wait in the car.

  The engine of a large truck thundered to a stop on the other side of the gas station out on the edge of Dusk Falls. She turned, catching sight of the driver before diving into the relative warmth of her car, and looked right into Dean’s startled eyes.

  Her stomach crashed into her feet so fast she forgot about the cold.

  She forgot about everything.

  Dean.

  As if she were looking through a pair of binoculars the wrong way, she watched him put the truck in park and mutter something to himself.

  She hadn’t seen him once in the last year. Granted, she spent a lot of the year in Fort McMurray, Alberta. But every time she was in town she braced herself for running into him like this. At the gas station, or the grocery store. Holly’s.

  Somehow it never happened.

  In her more paranoid moments, she imagined he’d been avoiding her.

  But that was ridiculous. After last Christmas, he’d called her five times. Five.

  She had each voice mail message still on her phone. Long rambling, chatty messages that when she was alone in Canada, living out of a suitcase and feeling like there was a world spinning on without her, she’d listen to.

  They stopped at the end of summer. The last message from him had been September 2. He’d been busy. And his voice sounded tired, defeated. And when he hung up, she knew it was the last time he’d call her.

  Finally, she called him in November. On his birthday. And the message she left was awkward and awful. She didn’t say anything about his messages, or last Christmas Eve. She’d sounded like a nervous stranger. He didn’t call her back, and she wasn’t even surprised.

  The whole thing was shameful, she owned that. Cowardly, too.

  Which made this moment incredibly awkward.

  He stepped out of the car and tipped his hat to her. His lips moved but the wind was howling so loud through the pumps, over the open land, that she couldn’t hear him.

  “What?” she yelled.

  “I said, Hey Trina,” he yelled.

  “Right!” Oh wow, she was such an idiot. She gave him her widest, brightest smile, perfected by the last year working with his family. “Good to see you.”

  He pointed to his ears and shook his head before he took the gas pump and flipped the lever so hard she flinched.

  This is ridiculous, she thought. We’re grownups. We were lovers and we’ve been friends our whole life.

  She walked across the cement over to his truck.

  He wore a shearling coat with the collar pulled up. He’d very recently shaved, and that skin on his cheeks, near his ears, was pink. She wanted to put her fingers against it, protect it from the cold. “Hi,” she said. “Seems ridiculous to yell.”

  “I guess so.”

  “It’s good to see you,” she told him.

  “You too,” he said with about the most insincere smile she’d ever seen him smile.

  “How have you been?” she asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Cold night,” she said.

  He just watched her. And part of her wanted to say goodbye and leave, but she’d done that already. Too many times. Not tonight. Tonight she wasn’t going to run.

  “Are you heading out to the party?” she asked. Over the edge of hi
s coat, she saw a flash of red. A tie.

  “Mom asked, I couldn’t say no. I’m stopping out at your dad’s first.” He aimed the casual words right at her.

  “Why?” An icicle slid down her spine. She sounded defensive to her own ears. Even when she didn’t mean to.

  “Because it’s the holiday. Because that’s what you do. Because I haven’t seen much of him lately.”

  “Don’t try and make me feel bad,” she snapped.

  “I’m not.”

  The implication was that she didn’t need his help. But she didn’t need to justify anything to him.

  “You going to the party?” he asked into the snappy, crackly silence.

  “No,” she said.

  “Really? As an employee I would have figured attendance was mandatory.”

  “I’m heading up to Fort McMurray, Alberta.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Well, I’m making some stops, along the proposed path of the pipeline, but—”

  “It’s Christmas Eve.”

  There was a hard stone in her throat. “It’s just another night, Dean.”

  She made the mistake of looking up and meeting his eyes. And in the wide white and blustery world, his eyes were hot. Points of light, directed her way. The heat there—in him, in his face—cut through the cold. Cut through the past. Through the silence and all her prickly discomfort. It sliced right into her shame. Her guilt.

  Only to reveal her longing for him stretched and threaded through nearly every moment in the last year.

  I’ve missed you, she thought. So much.

  “I’m sorry I waited so long to call you back.” The words flung themselves from her mouth, like convicts taking advantage of a sleeping guard and an unlocked door. And they were wrong. All wrong. Totally wrong. Not at all what she wanted to say, or how she wanted to say it. But the cold and the heat—the care in his eyes, no matter how much he didn’t want to show it to her—was making her short-circuit. “It’s just been so—”

  “Come on,” he said, and he grabbed her elbow.

  “What? Where?”

  “Get in the truck. I’m not having this conversation out in the cold.”

  He opened the driver side door of his truck, and she climbed in and slid across the bench seat to the passenger side. He got in behind her and shut the door. The silence was loud.