Northern Rebel: Daring in the Dark

by Jennifer Labrecque

  “She was hot and sexy and so different from the other women in New York, I thought she might cure me.”

  She’d been a bloody cure?

  Simon pushed to his feet and walked over to the window overlooking the street, needing to look at something other than the friend he wasn’t sure he knew any longer. Elliott had always been a bit self-absorbed, but this...

  Outside, Manhattanites shared the sidewalk with tourists. Customers thronged from the electronics store across the street to the corner falafel stand and the shops in between. A cabbie flipped off a delivery van that cut him off.

  Like a strip of negatives laid out before him, he saw in his head photos, moments in time committed to memory. He’d wagered the more he was around Tawny, the more he knew of her, the more his attraction would diminish. Instead with every encounter he’d found himself increasingly drawn to her, discovering that her spirit, her wit, her spunk, ran even deeper and surer than her physical beauty.

  And he’d held himself increasingly aloof. Afraid he’d betray himself with a careless glance, a misplaced remark, he hid behind sardonic comments. He’d still held out hope for himself, for a recovery, even after Elliott proposed. He’d get over her.

  It had been the photo shoot, the day he’d spent photographing Tawny, at Elliott’s request, that he knew he was deeply, irrevocably in love with her. He gripped the windowsill and rocked on the balls of his feet, looking inward instead of at the busy street outside. It was the only time he’d ever spent alone with her and he’d glimpsed something so sweet, so elusive, that to end that day had bordered on physical pain.

  And she’d been a bloody cure for Elliott. He turned around to face Elliott, struggling for an even tone. “And was asking her to marry you part of the cure or did you consider yourself cured at that juncture? I’m a bit confused. Is this a twelve-step program?”

  “Does it make you feel good to be such a sarcastic bastard?”

  “Not particularly.” Simon felt a foreign urge to pound Elliott’s head against the cinnamon-colored wall. “You asked her to marry you when you knew you felt this way? When you knew you were attracted to men?”

  Elliott colored at Simon’s censure. “But I’m also attracted to her. I thought if I threw myself into the relationship enough these feelings would go away.” He stood and shoved his hands into his pockets. He began to pace the room.

  “But they didn’t and you cheated on Tawny?”

  Elliott squared his shoulders defensively. “Just once. Last night. You know Richard, the acrylics painter we’re featuring? I’ve caught him looking at me, watching me a couple of times. Anyway, we were working late last night, shared a bottle of wine and one thing led to another.”

  Perhaps this was one big mistake Elliott was blowing out of proportion through guilt. Elliott was also a bit of a dramatist, and guilt distorted the clearest picture, as Simon well knew. “Did you have too much wine? Were you drunk?”

  His blue eyes solemn, Elliott shook his head. “No. That’d be an easy excuse. I wasn’t drunk. I was intrigued. I thought I’d try it and know for sure, one way or the other.” He scrubbed his hand over his forehead. “I liked it. I have feelings for Richard.”

  Simon squelched a frown of distaste. This shouldn’t be any different than listening to Elliott talk about a woman. But it was. Vastly different. Simon held up a staying hand. “I neither want nor need details.”

  “I wasn’t offering them. That was merely by way of clarification,” Elliott said, clearly put out. “I’ve got to tell Tawny. She deserves to know.”

  “Bloody right she deserves to know.” The risks associated with homosexuality slammed him in the gut. Concern for both Tawny and Elliott sharpened his tone. “I hope you used a rubber.”

  “Of course I did.” Elliott slumped into a chair and dropped his head onto the back. “That’s just one of the reasons I need to tell her. If we stay together—” that knife twisted in Simon’s gut “—she has to make an informed decision.”

  “You like sex with Richard but you’re going to sleep with Tawny?” Simon said.

  Elliott creased a sheet of paper between his fingers. “I love her. What’s not to love? She’s sexy, smart, warm and generous. But we’re not setting off any fireworks in the bedroom. I’m attracted to her, but it’s not as exciting as it is with Richard.”

  Elliott had just handed him far more information on several fronts than he’d ever wanted. And he was driving Simon mad, fidgeting with that piece of paper. “Would you put the paper down?” Elliott shot him a look but tossed it onto the desk. “So you don’t want to break off the engagement?” Simon asked, his head beginning to throb from tension.

  “I don’t know. She’s a great woman. I need some time to think. I guess whether we break off the engagement is up to her.” He ran his hand over the back of his neck. “This is going to be a hell of a conversation.” Elliott drew a deep breath and whooshed it out. “Come with me to tell her.”

  “No.” This was between Elliott and Tawny. And talk about a conflict of interest. Simon wanted her, but not with a broken heart or as a rebound lover. However, she would be available if this went down the way he thought it would.

  Elliott braced his hands on the desk and leaned toward Simon. “Please. I need you for moral support. This is going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

  Elliott hated facing unpleasant tasks alone. From the time they’d met and become fast friends, he’d dragged Simon along to face teachers, professors, his parents. He’d always maintained Simon was stronger than he was. But for once Simon wasn’t being dragged into Elliott’s mess. This time his friend was flying solo.

  He shook his head. “It’s private, Elliott.”

  “You were there when I proposed,” Elliott argued.

  Simon crossed his arms over his chest. “And if I had known you were going to propose, I wouldn’t have been.” Outgoing, give-me-an-audience Elliott had chosen a double date to propose. Simon recalled the agony that had ripped through him when Elliott had presented Tawny with a yellow-diamond engagement ring over dessert. Simon’s date, Lenore, had thought it quite romantic.

  “This is a mess. I need you there when I tell her. I called her and asked to come over tonight after the gallery closes.” He stopped pacing and faced Simon, the length of the room separating them. “I told her you were coming, too.”

  Simon squashed the adolescent urge to ask Elliott what she’d said about him coming round. He and Elliott had always supported each other. They’d always watched one another’s back. But he wasn’t sure if he could bear to see the hurt and betrayal on Tawny’s face. Nor did he have the right to witness that. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Please, Simon.”

  But he hadn’t exactly been coming through for Elliott all the nights Simon had lain in his lonely bed and made love to Tawny in his head. His conscience smote him. He had no business going. He didn’t want to go. But he owed Elliott, whether Elliott knew it or not, for every licentious thought he’d ever had about Tawny. For all the times and all the ways he’d had her in his head.

  Guilt did crazy things to men—left them agreeing to things they would otherwise run away from.

  “Okay, I’ll go. But I’ll have to meet you there,” Simon said. He stood and picked up his equipment bag.

  Elliott dropped into his chair, his relief evident. “Nine o’clock. Her place. Do you remember the way?”

  He’d dropped her off once with Elliott. “Sure.” He shifted the camera bag to his shoulder and turned for the door.

  “Simon...” Elliott said.

  He turned again to face Elliott.

  “You’re a good friend.”

  Righto. He was a good friend to be obsessively, compulsively in love with his best friend’s woman.

  2

  TAWNY GLANCED AT THE CLOCK on her dresser. Fifteen minutes until Elliott and Simon arrived. She discarded her skirt on the closet floor and defiantly pulled on a pair of shorts. She’d g
otten home from running errands and had plenty of time to shower and shave her legs. And now she was dithering about what to wear. As if it mattered.

  Her fiancé and his best friend, the guy who disliked her intensely, were coming over with take-out Thai. After a year of living here, one of the things she still loved about New York was the variety of fabulous food within blocks, even if a Southern-girl transplant couldn’t find grits or sweet tea.

  She looked over the clothes in her closet. It wasn’t as if they were going anywhere or she was looking to impress anyone. She picked up a faded T-shirt from her very first 5K run and promptly discarded it. Nah, Elliott had a thing about her dressing up, even if they were staying in. And even though she wasn’t entering a beauty contest, her Southern upbringing drew the line at having anyone over and wearing that.

  She laughed at herself. And no, she still couldn’t bring herself to wear white after Labor Day or before Easter. She might be living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side but she’d always be Tawny Edwards with Savannah, Georgia, sensibilities. Funny, she’d come to New York to find out who she was and what she was about. She smiled. Wouldn’t her mother be surprised that the rebellious Edwards family screwup still adhered to the rules of white?

  She settled instead on a halter wrap. Casual but sexy. And more important, cool—a major plus considering how stinking hot it was outside. She finished dressing and closed the closet door on the discarded clothes littering the floor. She pulled her hair up and clipped it haphazardly with a giant barrette underneath. Even with the air-conditioning cranked, the sweltering heat seemed to seep inside.

  She spritzed perfume behind her ears and, on a defiant whim, sprayed it between her breasts. Simon might not like her, but dammit, he’d at least like the way she smelled.

  She sang along with a Roberta Flack remake playing on the radio in the other room. She loved the evening program—Sensual Songs and Decadent Dedications—which offered a nice mix of old and new love songs. And who cared if she was off-key?

  She tugged at her shorts. She’d skipped her run this morning and she felt it in their snug fit. Some women were blessed with svelte, slender bodies that actually fit into sylphlike fashions. She, however, didn’t belong to that club. She’d learned long ago that eating half of what was on her plate and exercising every day was the only thing that kept her from resembling the Pillsbury Doughboy in drag. Petite and curvy all too easily slid into short and fat.

  Tawny made the mistake of double-checking her behind in the mirror while she sang about him killing her softly with his song. Ugh. It was still there...all of it and then some. Elliott was right. The last time they were in bed, he’d mentioned that her butt had gotten bigger. Not exactly what she’d wanted to hear, but she supposed the truth sometimes hurt.

  She’d seriously considered having her ass liposuctioned with her last bonus, but what if those fat cells relocated to her thighs or some other equally heinous body destination? Unwilling to risk fat-cell transference, she did an extra set of butt-killing donkey lifts every other day. And from the looks of things, it was time to make that a daily habit.

  An outraged yowl in the other room diverted her attention from the shortcomings—or rather the overabundance—of her behind. She went into the kitchen and dumped a measure of cat food into the empty bowl by the refrigerator.

  “Uh-huh. You’re as close to wasting away as I am.” She laughed and snatched Peaches up for a quick hug before he squirmed out of her arms. “But I understand. I’m hungry, too.” She put him down in front of his food bowl.

  Peaches, a five-year-old declawed Maine coon abandoned by his former owner and promptly rescued from the animal shelter on his last day before the big E—as in euthanasia—in no way resembled a peach in either coloring, countenance or personality. However, Tawny had named him that because it reminded her of her Georgia roots without bringing home too close. Which probably made no sense to the rest of the world but perfect sense to Tawny.

  One might reckon that Peaches would be grateful to have been snatched from the jaws of certain death and appropriately fawn over his savior. One would be wrong. It had been Peaches’s arrogance in the face of his impending demise that had stolen Tawny’s heart and sealed the feline’s fate.

  The sound of the buzzer reverberated through the apartment and Tawny’s heart thudded in her chest. Simon and Elliott. The idea of coming face-to-face with Simon had tormented her all afternoon. She hadn’t seen him since he’d begun to invade her dreams, and subsequently her body, in a most satisfying, but totally disquieting, manner.

  She swallowed and turned the radio down on her way to the door. Peering through the peephole, her heart hammered even harder as Simon’s lean face stared—not at the door but down the hall, as if he’d actually prefer to be anywhere rather than outside her apartment.

  On the radio Etta James crooned in a low, sultry voice about her love coming along at last and the end of her lonely days, which did nothing to dispel Tawny’s nervousness and the sexual anticipation curling through her.

  She mentally slapped herself around. Get a grip. So in her dreams she’d had wild monkey sex with Simon. By no stretch of her overactive, oversexed imagination was he her own true love coming along.

  She squared her shoulders, pasted on her best loaded-with-Southern-charm smile, slipped the locks and opened her door. “Hi, Simon.”

  “Hullo, Tawny.” It was wickedly unfair the way his voice, with its hint of British accent, revved her engine. That was one thing about her dreams—he always talked to her during sex and it always turned her on. This was no dream, but she’d been conditioned and felt a familiar heat stir within her.

  She looked past him. “Where’s Elliott?”

  “I had a shoot today so we came separately,” he said without a glimmer of a smile in the depth of his dark eyes.

  Tawny stepped aside. “Come in.”

  His dark hair, cut close and combed back, lent his lean face an ascetic look. She felt his body heat as he stepped past her into the room, his camera equipment slung over his shoulder. This was much worse than she’d anticipated, far more potent than any dream. His clean, subtle scent teased her. In her dreams his scent didn’t entice her as it did now. She caught her breath and strove for a light tone.

  “How was your photo shoot?”

  “Fine. It went quick. I’ve shot Chloe before,” Simon said.

  The name evoked an image of a tall, thin, beautiful model. Tawny didn’t feel the slightest twinge of remorse at hating the unknown, unsuspecting Chloe—that was the price paid by thin, beautiful women without an ass the size of a principality.

  A few weeks ago, after their engagement, Simon had photographed Tawny at Elliott’s request. Elliott possessed an eye for art, but he wasn’t an artist. Simon, however, was a genius with a camera. She wasn’t a professional model and it had taken an entire day of Simon working with her, cajoling her, but her photographs had been fantastic. She’d seen herself in a different way. She’d seen strength, but also a sensual vulnerability.

  He’d been patient and almost charming, as if when he got behind the camera he forgot himself or perhaps he could truly be himself.

  During the shoot, she’d thought she’d finally reached Elliott’s best friend, won him over. It had been a magical day. But then afterward he’d retreated even further behind a wall, cooler and more aloof than ever. Mercifully their paths hadn’t crossed since.

  Except at night. In her bed. In her dreams. The night following the photo shoot she’d dreamed of erotic, explicit sex with Simon. And every night since. Now the object of her writhing lust stood in her apartment, having spent the day photographing some skinny model. Tawny bit back a bitchy comment.

  “I haven’t seen you to tell you I thought the photos you took of me were great. Not that I’m great, but the photos were. You’re very good at what you do.” Whoa. Instant image of him bringing her to orgasm in her dream. “I mean, you’re good with your camera.” She closed the door. Tawny, honey, fin
d a brain cell and grab on to it. She sounded like a dithering idiot.

  “You’re very photogenic. You have a great smile and good bone structure,” he said.

  He spoke very matter-of-factly. He could’ve been discussing the weather. There was absolutely no reason for her heart to pound as if he’d just claimed her beauty equal to that of the legendary Helen of Troy. She felt as gauche as she had when she’d been a third-grader and Henry Turner had pulled her braids. Except she’d liked Henry Turner. And while she might have toe-curling dreams about Simon, she wasn’t altogether sure that she liked him.

  “Thank you. Your equipment should be safe here.” She indicated a spot between the door and the antique cupboard to the right. Hauling that monstrosity up when she’d moved last year had been a party. “Would you like a drink while we’re waiting on Elliott? Red wine?”

  Simon placed his camera and equipment on the floor next to the cupboard with more care and consideration than many mothers with babies. He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Absolutely.”

  Earth to Tawny. She should stop admiring the way his black T-shirt hugged his shoulders and the lean line of his back. She should also stop eyeing the fit of his jeans over his very fine—make that extra fine—ass.

  He stood, pivoting to face her in one fluid movement. He arched a questioning brow. “Need any help?”

  Don’t mind me. I was just checking out your eye candy. “No. Going right now.” She indicated the sofa with a flick of her wrist. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”

  She fled the room, silently urging Elliott to arrive soon. Those dreams were seriously messing with her head. She’d felt as if his gaze, hot and consuming, had licked across her shoulders bared by her halter top and across her buttocks snugged into her shorts.

  She leaned against the counter and dragged in a calming breath, dismissing her ridiculous notions. Simon had been his usual remote self since he’d arrived. The only heat she’d felt from him had been a product of her own twisted, overactive, inappropriate imagination.