by Lizzie Shane
Parvati squealed and Sidney winced, wishing she had a hand free to move the phone away from her ear.
“I take it you approve.”
“Hell, yes. But since when do you need my approval?”
The cork came free with a jerk and Sidney nearly dropped the phone. She hastily set down the wine and corkscrew, wondering if she had anything stronger in the apartment to take the edge off.
She ignored Parvati’s question, explaining instead. “He’s coming over here. I’m making him dinner. We’ve been playing at just friends, but I do not feel just friendly toward him and I’m pretty sure he feels something for me and now I’m making him carbonara.”
“Ooh, bringing out the big guns. I love your carbonara. Save me some?”
“I’ll make you some on Tuesday.” It was their traditional Girls’ Night In with Victoria and Lorelei—reserved for gossip and watching Marrying Mister Perfect or whatever other television addiction was in season. “Just tell me I’m not a bad person for engaging in an illicit affair.”
“Is anyone going to be hurt by you two being together?”
“I don’t know. Last time we talked about it, he was still with Olga.”
“Okay, so maybe that’s something to get out of the way up front. Find out if those two are exclusive.”
“Right. But even if they aren’t, he could lose his job if they find out he’s with me. And it would kill my reputation. Everyone would think I only got the MMP Wedding because I was banging the host.”
“Which is why no one can find out. But it isn’t a reason you shouldn’t be together,” Parv said. “The way I see it, it all boils down to one question—assuming he and Olga aren’t an exclusive item.”
“What’s that?”
“Will keeping this secret make you crazy? And if it will, is he worth it?”
Sidney had a feeling the answer to the first question was yes. But so was the second.
Sometimes you just had to go a little crazy.
“Do you have any of today’s tiramisu left?”
Parvati squealed. “I’ll bring it right over.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“That,” Josh declared, leaning back in his chair and lacing his hands over his stomach, “was transcendent. We should have had you cook for Daniel. He would have never let you leave.”
Sidney stood to clear their empty plates. Daniel was about the last person she wanted to talk about tonight, but when she flailed blindly for another response, the one that came out of her mouth was the one topic she wanted to talk about less. “My mother is a firm believer in being the best. If Dewitts want to cook, we have to be gourmands or stay out of the kitchen—lest we sully the family name.”
“No pressure,” he said with a light laugh, rising to help her bring the dishes the three feet from her small, round dining table to the narrow galley kitchen. “I keep forgetting you’re one of the Dewitts.”
“Sometimes I wish I could,” she said dryly.
“Silver spoon didn’t taste so good?” He refilled their wine glasses, emptying the bottle, as she rinsed the dishes and slid them into the dishwasher. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m surprised one of the Dewitts drives a cheap SUV and lives in a tiny attic apartment—not that this place isn’t charming, but growing up the way you must have grown up…”
She closed the dishwasher and he handed over her wine glass. He reclined against the opposite counter in the narrow kitchen, watching her as he idly swirled his own wine. Sadly there was nothing seductive about the look in his eyes. Ever since he’d arrived things had been friendly and comfortable, with none of the electric sexual tension she had half-hoped would saturate her apartment the second he crossed the threshold. All her soul searching about whether or not she could be a secret mistress had apparently been nothing more than wishful thinking.
“My parents are big into standing on your own feet,” she said, by way of explanation for her less-than-palatial living arrangements. “No hand-outs or hands-up allowed. My father even refused to invest in Once Upon a Bride. Didn’t think our business plan was strong enough. What about you? What’s your family like?” she asked, in part because she was curious and in part because she would rather talk about anything but her failure as a Dewitt.
“My folks are pretty much the middle class American cliché. They let me buy them a cruise when I landed my first big contract, but only because Marissa and I went with them. They have a nice little place in Washington, not far from Seattle.”
“That’s where you’re from?”
He hummed an affirmative, sipping his wine. “I have one little sister, a high school English teacher, and she still lives up there, right down the street from where we grew up.”
“While you ran off to Hollywood the first chance you got?”
“Actually, the Hollywood thing just sort of happened—not that I’m not thankful for it, I know I’m a lucky bastard to work in this business—but it wasn’t really the plan. I came down to USC with dreams of being an architect, but I wound up majoring in partying instead.” A self-deprecating shrug. “My frat had a drunken quiz bowl fundraiser and I played host. I was just screwing around, but someone taped it and, don’t ask me how, but somehow it got into the right hands and the producers of Brainiac decided I had the perfect balance of class and smartass to make a good game show host.”
“It doesn’t hurt that you’re pretty.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what my first agent said, but I can’t help it if the camera loves me.”
She grabbed a handy dishtowel and chucked it at his head. He dodged with a grin, snatching it out of the air with his free hand. “What about you? Did you take classes on fairy godmothering in college?”
“No, I was taking business classes like a good little Dewitt—and pretty much hating every second of it—when my college roommate got engaged. I started helping her plan her wedding, trying to figure out ways to make it magical on a shoestring, and I realized that planning the wedding was the only part of my day I looked forward to. I’d always sort of wanted to do it, but it wasn’t until that summer that I rebelled by giving up my summer internship in favor of working for a wedding planner. Victoria was also on staff there and we hit it off. After I graduated I began working there full time, and eventually we saved up enough to start our own place.”
“Your parents must be proud, working your way up like that.”
“My mother still calls me a party planner. I don’t think my business is what they had in mind when they said I was born to succeed. My childhood bedroom was like a Successories storeroom.”
“I can’t imagine growing up like that,” he said. “My family was pretty much the Cleavers.”
“And you were the Beav?”
“Nah. I’m Wally. Obviously.”
“You know I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen that show,” she admitted, draining the last of her wine.
“You’re kidding. You’re missing a vital part of our cultural history here.”
She shrugged. “I guess I was just too busy watching Marrying Mister Perfect and Brainiac.”
“You actually watched the quiz show?”
“Every episode. I had the biggest crush on you.” Belatedly realizing what she’d just confessed, Sidney’s face flamed as she shot an accusatory glare at the empty wine glass. “There’s dessert,” she said hurriedly, before Josh could comment on her crush. “Do you like tiramisu?”
“Love it.” He set his own empty glass beside hers as she hurried to the fridge to pull out the dessert. “Is this homemade as well?”
“Of course. Well, homemade across the street. My friend Parvati runs the coffee shop in town and she has a serious baking addiction—especially desserts, though her savory muffins are to die for. The gruyere-and-bacon muffin is my favorite, but she won an award for the Brie Apple one last year. And recently she decided to try making tiramisu and—well, suffice it to say her brilliance is not limited to muffins. You’ll never look at
tiramisu the same way again.” She was babbling, but even knowing she was babbling, she couldn’t seem to shut off the flow of words. Sidney set the dessert on the counter, reaching for plates and a knife to serve it. “She tests out new recipes on me and Tori—and shares the leftovers sometimes.”
She slid tiramisu onto a plate for him and thrust it toward him with a fork, turning back to serve herself when her mouth developed a fatal lack of restraint.
“Are you really dating Olga?” she blurted. “Because if you are, I won’t say another word, but all the photos I see of the two of you together look so staged. You never look like you with her. But if you’re happy, I’ll shut up. It’s none of my business. Obviously.” Too late, she managed to put the brakes on her runaway mouth.
He hesitated, frozen holding a plate of tiramisu. “Sidney… even supposing you’re right and Olga and I just have a business relationship—”
“Supposing?”
He shrugged, setting his plate down on the counter. “It’s a convenient lie. We certainly aren’t the first public figures to have a relationship for show.”
She wet her lips. “So you’re unattached.”
“I can’t date a former Suitorette.”
“I know.”
“I like you, Sidney,” he said in a let-her-down-easy tone. “I’d like nothing more than to… see where this goes.” His gaze flicked over her shoulder toward the bedroom. “But I can’t.”
“I understand,” she murmured. And she really did. She knew exactly how much it could cost him, but she just needed to say one last thing. Just in case. Reckless desire inside her had her peeking up at him through her lashes. “No one would have to know.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Josh went still.
He was unprepared for exactly how badly he wanted her in that moment. It had been easy to keep Olga at arm’s length, easy to tell himself he simply didn’t want the complication of a woman in his life, and that was true enough, but it wasn’t the whole truth. He wanted Sidney with a magnitude that overrode his reservations, even as he knew he should excuse himself and walk out the door.
“Josh?”
She was exquisite—all temptation and vulnerable hope. She deserved better than to be any man’s secret, but Sidney drew him in like a gravitational force and he knew he wouldn’t say no. Not when she stepped closer and whispered his name again, the sound of it an erotic invitation—
An invitation he took from her lips with a kiss that burned sweet and fast.
He pulled away only long enough to whisper, “Are you sure?” and then she was back in his arms, tangled around him so urgently there was no question of her certainty. He boosted her onto the counter and her legs immediately twined around his waist. His hands plunged beneath her skirt, stroking up the smooth skin of her outer thighs. When he kissed his way down her throat, her head thunked back against the upper cupboards.
He cursed softly. “We aren’t doing this here.” Scooping her off the counter, he pointed toward the bedroom, stumbling slightly because for all she was lean, she was almost as tall as he was and she was no featherweight.
“I can walk.” She squirmed, trying to drop her legs.
Not for long, if I have anything to say about it.
“I’ve got you.” He hitched her higher, fueled by the masculine need to get his woman to the bedroom.
She gave up struggling, twining her arms around his neck and murmuring, “So macho” in a teasing undertone as he kicked open the door.
The bedroom was a tiny little cubby off the main room, the double bed with the curling wrought iron headboard taking up almost all of the available floor space, but the lack of footage did nothing to diminish the comfort and personality Sidney had infused into the décor. It was warm and elegant, feminine without being overpowering—and he barely registered any of it as he sat on the bed so she was kneeling astride him.
She leaned back in his arms, shaking her head dazedly. “Josh Pendleton is in my bed.”
With anyone else, he would have taken the words as a warning sign, a red flag that the woman he was with only wanted him for his celebrity, but this was Sidney. She knew him—better perhaps than he wanted to admit—and her teal eyes glinted with humor, teasing him with his own self-importance. “On your bed at the moment, but give me five minutes.”
“In a hurry, are you?”
“Oh, trust me, darling, I’m planning to take my time.”
She shook her head with mock sadness, a smile flirting with her pink lips. “Some men are all talk.”
“Luckily, I’m not one of them.” Then he stopped any further talk with a kiss and got down to the business of taking his time.
*
Some men were all talk, but Josh was better than his word.
Sidney lay sprawled and satisfied beneath her covers as he snored beside her—who knew perfect Josh Pendleton sawed logs like a sputtering chainsaw? She lay in the dark, kept awake more by her own restless energy and the stirrings of her mind than the impressive noise he was producing, and waited for the guilt to creep in.
She was having an illicit affair. She really was supposed to feel guilty, wasn’t she? But all she felt was… smug. The man knew what he was doing and then some. But her satisfaction went beyond the physical. Things just felt right with him. Easy. That clicking into place feeling she’d always imagined had finally clicked.
Unfortunately it had clicked with a man who was completely off limits and who, even if he had somehow magically become able to date her, probably wouldn’t want to because he was still rebounding from his divorce.
No, this wasn’t a love connection—and she wasn’t going to let herself get all sappy about him just because he was a maestro between the sheets. She would keep her infatuation ruthlessly in check with the knowledge that they were going nowhere. He was just a temporary affliction, but one she was going to enjoy for as long as it lasted.
They would never be able to have a future together, but for right now she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Next to him.
*
“Did you go for it? How was it? Is he as good as I imagine?”
Parvati was lying in wait and bombarded her with questions the next morning as soon as she descended the stairs into Once Upon a Bride. Josh had slipped out early enough to avoid Victoria and Lorelei on the stairs—and get his car out of the Once Upon a Bride back parking lot before it raised any eyebrows—but they were going to have to be more careful in the future if they wanted this secret affair to stay secret.
That was assuming there would be a future. As soon as he had left that morning, Sidney’s euphoria had dimmed three notches and now she couldn’t help second guessing all the things that had been left unspecified.
Had he thought they were having a one night stand while she thought they were embarking on an affair? Did he have regrets? When would she see him again?
With all those questions rattling around in her head, the last thing she wanted to do was answer Parvati’s. Especially when Victoria came out of the office with a frown wrinkling her brow.
“What’s she on about? She’s been waiting here for half an hour.”
Sidney ignored Victoria’s question, aiming her response at Parv. “Don’t you have a coffee house to run?”
“My highly trained minions are manning the espresso machine. They’ll survive without me for an hour. Now dish. What happened with Josh Pendleton?”
Victoria’s frown deepened. “When did you see Josh Pendleton?”
“He found us a venue yesterday for the MMP Wedding,” Sidney explained, focusing on the innocent, professional reason.
“And then she made him dinner,” Parvati ratted her out. “Complete with my panty-dropping tiramisu.”
“You should call it that on the menu,” Sidney advised. “You’d sell thousands.”
“I just might,” Parv said archly. “Now stop stalling and tell me what happened! I’m dying here.”
“I don’t thin
k you can actually asphyxiate from lack of gossip.”
“Sidney! Was there or was there not boot knocking last night?”
A giddy little smile curled her lips of its own accord and Parvati squealed delightedly.
“I knew it!”
“You didn’t.” Victoria groaned, dropping onto one of the chairs set up around a place setting display.
Sidney ignored the waves of disapproval radiating off Tori, focusing instead on Parv and her giddy delight, trying to recapture her own euphoria from the night before, when she’d been so sure she was exactly where she needed to be. “We never got to the tiramisu,” she said with a wicked grin that sent Parvati into an exaggerated swoon.
“I’m dying. I’m actually dying of envy right now. Josh Pendleton. Be still my ovaries.” She fanned herself with a brochure for a florist. “Quick, give me details.”
“A lady never kisses and tells.”
“Especially when said lady isn’t allowed to tell anyone about the man she was kissing,” Tori chimed in dourly.
“Could you let me enjoy this for five minutes?” Sidney moved to one of the displays and began tidying the already immaculate sample binders. “I’m living in the moment. So sue me. I know it’s not something you ever do, but that doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“You’re a planner,” Victoria said, as if that was all the counter-argument she needed.
“I know.”
Tori flicked a manicured hand, impatient. “I’m not just talking about your job title. It’s your personality to look into the future and plan for every eventuality, to constantly reassess and reevaluate, and to always be looking forward, working toward some goal. And now you’re putting yourself on hold for some guy.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be a planner all the time. Could you at least consider that before you start trying to make me feel guilty? Maybe I’m going through a phase.”
“Can I have a banging Josh Pendleton phase?” Parvati interjected, lightening the mood.
“No. He’s mine.”
Tori stood, moving to toss her empty coffee cup in the trash. “You’re awfully possessive for someone who can’t be seen in public with him.”