Okay, now was she going to hit him or was she going to give him a flirtatious smile?
Ding, ding, ding. The flirtatious smile won. She gave it to him along with a T-shirt that advertised her TV series.
Well, hell. Okay, he could use her sudden interest to his advantage. “So we need to get together and talk more about your security system,” he told her as he pulled on the shirt.
“You could stick around,” she suggested meaningfully. “The party’s already breaking up.”
Yikes. There was no way he was going to stick around and get cozy with Lana’s sister. No flipping way. Now, if it had been Britt suggesting that…
Wes shook his head. “Can’t do it. I’m sorry. What’s tomorrow like for you?”
“I’m busy all day,” she said. “But I could do dinner.”
“Okay.”
“Here,” she said. “Seven o’clock.”
“Great,” Wes said. “I’m glad—and Lana will be, too—that you’re taking this seriously.”
“Oh, I am,” she said. “I’m taking it very seriously. See you tomorrow.”
And with that, she was out the door.
“Did she ever thank you for saving her life and the lives of her guests?” Brittany asked, startling him. She came into the room.
“How much of that did you hear?” he asked.
“‘You could stick around,’” she imitated Amber. “I can’t believe you said no. What’s wrong with you? Every heterosexual man in the free world wants to stick around Amber Tierney, and you said no.”
“I’m hung up on her sister,” Wes said.
Brittany had no snappy comeback for that. She just smiled at him, but it was a very sad smile. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I guess you really are, huh?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN THEY GOT BACK to the apartment, Brittany made a point of obviously and definitely saying good-night to both Andy and Wes, and going into her bedroom—alone.
Andy rolled his eyes at Wes as they both rummaged in the kitchen, looking for a late-night snack.
“The baseball team’s going to Phoenix tomorrow,” Andy told him as he poured milk over a bowl of corn pops. “We’ll be gone…I think it’s four days.”
Wes nodded as he put two slices of bread into the toaster. In other words, he and Britt would have the place to themselves. Not that that was really going to matter. He wasn’t going to act on his attraction to Brittany.
Unless she came to him and told him that she knew he wasn’t looking for anything serious, and that she wasn’t looking for anything serious either and…
Yeah, like that was going to happen. And even if it did, man, that would make an already confusing situation even more complicated. If she approached him, he’d do his damnedest to keep her at arm’s length.
“I’d like to see you play some time,” he said to Andy, trying to change the subject. The kid was sitting at the kitchen table, already packing away his second bowl of cereal. He was a good-looking young man, with dark hair and eyes and a face that reminded Wes a little of James Dean.
When Wes was nineteen, he’d still looked about twelve. He’d chugged powershakes and practically mainlined doughnuts in an attempt to leave his ninety-pound-weakling stage behind. God, he’d worked his butt off to get some muscles. Andy didn’t have that problem. No one could ever call him scrawny. Lucky kid.
“Do you have any home games in the next week or so?” Wes asked.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure we do.” Andy laughed. “You know, that’s one way to get on Britt’s good side.”
“That’s not why I want to see you play.”
“Well…okay. I’m just saying—”
“Your mother wants us to be just friends, so quit it with the innuendo,” Wes told him as he opened the refrigerator, got out the butter and put it on the table.
Andy stopped eating his corn pops. “What about what you want?”
“Sometimes you just don’t get what you want,” Wes said evenly.
“Yeah,” Andy said darkly. “Tell me about it.”
Wes’s toast popped, and he put the slices on a plate and carried it to the table. He sat down across from Andy. “Did you get that girl’s phone number tonight? She seemed nice.”
“Yeah.” The kid morosely stirred his cereal. “Did I really want her phone number? No. Am I going to call her? Probably not.” He sighed. “I can’t stop thinking about Dani and that son of a bitch Melero.” He looked up at Wes, real pain in his dark eyes. “She slept with him. She really did. I mean, I was so sure it was just Melero’s crap, you know? But I talked to her roommate this afternoon. Sharon’s a friend of mine, too, she wouldn’t lie to me. Not about something like this. And she said Dani told her she spent the whole night with Melero. This is after nearly six months of her telling me that she wasn’t ready for that kind of a relationship.” He laughed, but it wasn’t because he thought it was funny. “I guess she was finally ready, huh?”
“What is it about guys who are assholes?” Wes asked as he brushed crumbs from his fingers. He was thinking about Wizard-the-Mighty-Quinn. Wherever the Wiz went, women fell into his lap, too. “Women just flock to them. I don’t get it.”
“I don’t either.” Andy pushed his cereal bowl forward, his appetite apparently vanished. “I just keep picturing her, with him, in his bed. God, it’s killing me.”
“I know what you mean.” And Wes certainly did. He didn’t have to work very hard at all to imagine Lana with Quinn. He shook his head to get rid of the image. “You’ve got to stop thinking about it. It doesn’t do you any good.”
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“No buts. You’ve got to let it go. Move on. You know, just grieve and let go of her and… just move on.”
Jesus, listen to him, giving this kid advice that he himself should have paid attention to years ago.
And for the first time, his own words really seemed to resonate. What the hell was he doing, wasting his life, pining away after Lana when the world was filled with beautiful, smart, sexy women who wanted to be with him?
Brittany, for example.
Well, okay, maybe not Brittany. She’d made it more than clear that he wasn’t her type, that she didn’t want to be more than friends. That was a crying shame, but he refused to let himself get hung up on yet another woman who was unattainable. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony? To push himself to get over Lana and instantly fall for a woman who didn’t want him?
But Amber Tierney—damn, she was sure interested in exchanging bodily fluids with him, and that was sure a nice place to start. And Britt had been right. The woman was courageous and smart—and in possession of the most perfect pair of breasts he’d ever seen in his life. Not that he’d had time for more than a glance, but maybe, tomorrow night, he could remedy that.
So what if she was Lana’s sister? Maybe that was a good thing. What better way to completely blast Lana out of his system, right?
“Give yourself a couple of days,” he advised Andy. “And then, you know, when you come back from Phoenix, call that girl you met tonight. Put her phone number somewhere where you won’t lose it and take her out to the movies when you get back into town.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Andy said. “I just… I thought I knew her. Dani. You know?”
“Yeah,” Wes said. “But sometimes people do things that don’t seem to make any sense. But it makes sense to them for their own reasons. I mean, why would a woman stay with a man who was—for example—cheating on her? I mean, after she knows about it. The best I can come up with is there’s something else going on that I don’t know about.”
Andy stood up and poured his bowl of cereal down into the garbage disposal. “Britt didn’t. She kicked her husband’s butt out of the house once she found out.”
Wes had to smile. “Brittany wouldn’t put up with anyone’s crap for a second longer than she absolutely had to.” Including his own. Which was why she was adamant about keeping her distance.
Andy l
oaded his bowl and spoon into the dishwasher and held out his hand for Wes’s plate.
“Look, Andy, for what it’s worth, chalk this thing with Dani up to a learning experience,” Wes told him. “But don’t let it turn you into one of the dickheads, all right? Women are drawn to jerks, it might be true, but the women you want to get involved with—they’re the ones like your mom, who are looking for a good man, a man who’ll treat ’em with the respect they deserve. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“Yeah.” Andy closed the dishwasher. “If I don’t see you in the morning, have a nice weekend.”
“You, too.”
“And whatever happens between you and my mom—”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Wes said again.
“Just make sure you treat her nicely, all right? She doesn’t go out very often. Take her out. To dinner or a movie. You want to win huge points? Take her dancing.”
Wes opened his mouth to speak, but Andy talked right over him. “Even if it’s just as friends,” he added.
“It is,” Wes said.
“Yeah, right,” Andy said as he headed down the hallway to his bedroom. Or maybe he said, “Good night.”
WES’S CAR PULLED INTO the driveway the next evening at about a quarter to ten.
Brittany sat at the kitchen table, finishing up her homework, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.
This was the test. This was the real, honest-to-goodness test. If Wes came in that door and she kept her glasses on, then she really, honestly didn’t want to be anything more than friends with him.
And if she took the glasses off…
She could hear him whistling as he came up the stairs.
He sounded happy and relaxed. As if he’d had a good time with Amber. A good, happy, relaxing time. Except if he’d had a really good, happy, relaxing time, he’d still be there now, wouldn’t he?
The screen door opened and he came into the house and then into the kitchen. “Hello, hello!”
She looked down to see her glasses in her hands. Darnit. It was impossible to tell if she took them off on purpose or if it was merely reflex and force of habit kicking in. She could put them back on, of course, but what would be the point? She set them down on the table instead.
“How was dinner?” she asked.
Wes laughed and opened the refrigerator. “I’ve come to the conclusion that Hollywood stars don’t eat real food.” He was wearing his sports jacket again, only this time over jeans and a white button-down shirt. He’d already loosened his tie, probably on the drive home.
“The spread at the party last night was lovely,” she protested.
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “If you like food that’s ninety percent air. What was that stuff they were serving?”
“They’re called pastries,” she told him. “They’re supposed to be light.”
“Chick food,” he dismissed it. “There should have been another table with cold cuts and bulky rolls.”
“And pretzels and beer?” She raised her eyebrows.
“You got it, babe.” He grinned at her over the top of the refrigerator door. “Tonight we had a wide array of salads. Salads. I was ready to eat my shoe.”
“Well, help yourself,” she said, even though he already was, taking Andy’s loaf of white bread, the peanut butter and the jelly out of the fridge. “We’ve got plenty of other kinds of manly food here, too. You know, Twinkies and Froot Loops and Cocoa Krispies and Pop-Tarts. And currently our manly man index has dropped by one, so you can have it all for yourself. Twinkies are just too manly for lil’ ol’ me.”
“Ha, ha,” Wes said as he slathered peanut butter onto a slice of bread. “You’re so funny. But that’s right—Ethan’s in Phoenix. Andy. Andy.” He swore. “I have to stop doing that.”
“He really reminds you of your brother, huh?” Brittany rested her chin in her hand as she watched him tackle the jelly. “It’s funny, Andy’s coloring is nothing like yours or your sister’s. You’ve got that Irish thing going and… Colleen’s got red hair and freckles, right? While Andy’s biological mother was at least part Italian.”
“It’s not a physical thing. It’s more of a spiritual resemblance.” Wes slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “God, I can’t believe I said that. I’ve been living in California for way too long.” He put the slice of bread with the peanut butter on top of the slice with the jelly and took a bite. “Mmmm. Finally, food I can chew,” he added with his mouth quite full.
“Where are you from originally?” she asked. “Not California, I guess.”
He came and sat down across the table from her, waiting until he swallowed to answer. “Everywhere. Nowhere. I’m a Navy brat. You name it, we lived there. My father was regular Navy—a master chief. But right after I enlisted, the old man retired, and he moved the family to Oklahoma—that’s where my mom’s parents lived. These days if I go home, that’s where I go, but it’s weird because I never lived there with them, you know?”
“I can imagine.”
“My dad did a tour in Hawaii that absolutely rocked. I loved it there. I learned how to surf and spent, you know, my formative years there, if you want to call ’em that. When I think of home, I think of Oahu. Unfortunately, I haven’t been back there in years.”
Brittany had to laugh. “When I was little, I loved all those old Gidget movies. I wanted to move to California or Hawaii and find my own Moondoggie.”
“Oh yeah?” Wes said. “Well, here I am, babe.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Live and in person. Like, your own personal surfer dude.”
“Do you still surf?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Every now and then. I don’t have a lot of extra time these days to hit the beach, but when I do, well, I can still keep up with the youngsters.”
Keep up. She would bet big money that Wes would leave them in the dust. She smiled at him. “That’s so cool.”
He smiled back. “Jeez, I didn’t realize it would take such little effort to impress you. I also know how to ride a bike. And I can stand on my hands and—”
“Hush,” she said. “Don’t tell me about little effort. I’ve tried to surf. I know how hard it is to do.”
“Nah, it’s all about balance,” he said.
“Yeah, and I was the kid in gym class who didn’t travel more than four inches on the balance beam before falling on her head.”
“I don’t believe that,” Wes said. “You’re very graceful.”
“I think I’ve got some kind of weird inner ear thing.”
He grinned at her. “That’s always a good excuse. Trip over your own feet and fall on your face—whoops, my inner ears are acting up again.”
She smiled back at him. Tell me about Ethan, who was your brother, past tense. “Tell me about Amber,” she said instead. “Have you convinced her to get a bodyguard?”
He rolled his eyes as he finished the last bite of his sandwich, and he grabbed a napkin from the holder to wipe his mouth before he spoke. “She says she’ll get a bodyguard—but only if I agree to take the job.”
“I-ee-eye will always love you-whoo-whoo,” Brittany sang.
He snorted. “Yeah, I guess she’s trying to turn this situation into a three hanky movie—which, incidentally, means something completely different for a guy.”
Brittany hooted with laughter. “I never thought of it that way—and I’d rather not have to think of it that way ever again, thank you so very much.” But she couldn’t stop giggling.
“Sorry.” He wasn’t sorry at all, and she’d opened the door for more gross-out jokes by laughing like that. He’d discovered her shameful secret, and now she was doomed. Thank God Andy wasn’t home.
“Frankly, she seems up for making either or maybe even both versions of this particular movie,” Wes told her. “You know, wacka-chicka, wacka-chicka, ‘Hello, I am your bodyguard. In order to protect you more completely I must go into the bathroom with you while you shower….’” He rolled his eyes. “She was definitel
y all over me, all night long.”
“Oh, poor baby. How you must have suffered.”
Wes brought his plate to the sink and rinsed it before putting it into the dishwasher. Holy cow—a man who cleaned up after himself.
He turned to face her. “You know, I actually went there thinking, Why the hell not? Like, it occurred to me last night, you know, that I’ve been waiting for Lana to discover the truth about Wizard for all these years, and Christ, now it turns out she’s known for a while and… So what am I waiting for? Hell’s apparently not going to freeze over, is it? I can either spend the rest of my lousy life whining and miserable or snap out of it and go for the gusto. I figured it was gusto time. I mean, Amber Tierney—why the hell not, right? So I got to Amber’s tonight, you know, after stopping at the drugstore to pick up…you know, a little, you know. But, Britt…” He shook his head. “Amber leaves me cold. She’s beautiful, she’s sexy, she’s smart, and all throughout dinner I’m sneaking looks at my watch because I’m dying to get out of there. I don’t know. Maybe something’s wrong with me.”
Lana was what was wrong with him. Brittany’s heart broke for him even as she tried desperately not to be jealous. God, she was really starting to hate Lana Quinn.
She didn’t want to think what that meant in terms of her feelings for Wes Skelly.
She stood up and opened the door to the refrigerator, pulling out two bottles of beer.
“Here’s a news flash, genius. You can’t just decide to stop loving someone.” She twisted off the cap and handed one of the bottles to him, opened the other for herself. “Love doesn’t work that way.”
“Thanks,” he said, lifting the bottle in a toast. “The perfect complement to PB and J. Besides a cigarette, that is. I don’t suppose you have one of them lying around?”
“Not a chance.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
Brittany brought the conversation back on track. “Don’t get me wrong—I think it’s really great that on one level you’ve recognized that the chance of a relationship with Lana might be something of a dead end, but you need to give yourself a little time to absorb that. To let it sink in. Allow yourself to spend some time acknowledging your loss.”
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