Blame It on the Bachelor

by Karen Kendall

  “You’re a spook? An international arms dealer? A—?” She swallowed hard as the worst thing possible came to mind. “You’re not a pedophile?”

  His jaw dropped open. “No.”

  “Then what is it you have to tell me?” Her voice had risen to almost a shriek.

  “Patience is a virtue, Kylie.”

  “I’m fresh out! Tell me, for the love of God.”

  He heaved a deep sigh. “Well, okay. I guess I’ll have to.”

  17

  DEV GAZED INTO her eyes and took her hands in his. He could see the doubt growing in her eyes and feel the tension in her fingers as they lay in his.

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  She stared at him. “That’s it? That’s your big confession?”

  He nodded.

  “You— You—” She tried to pull her hands away but he held on tight.

  Dev laughed as she smoldered across the table.

  “I thought you were going to tell me that you’d murdered someone.”

  “Would you like me to?”

  “No.”

  “Dry-cleaner didn’t press your suit well? Fast-food worker gave you the wrong order? Bag boy at the grocery store squish your bread? I’ll do away with ’em and toss ’em in the bay.”

  “McKee, you are so obnoxious.” She gave a final tug and got one hand back, which she put immediately on her wineglass and brought it to her lips.

  “It’s an appealing quality in a man, I think,” he mused, draining half of his beer.

  “Appalling is more like it.”

  He grinned in appreciation. “So, I have no more terrible secrets to tell you. They’re all on the table.”

  “No skeletons still in the closet? You’re sure?”

  “My skeletons are way too shameless to stay in the closet. They dance around in public with a microphone, just like I did. Now, how about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Have you ever done anything bad? Or are you as good as you look?”

  Kylie repressed a smile, causing a dimple to appear at the corner of her mouth.

  “Uh-huh. I thought so. What was it?”

  She caught her lower lip between her teeth and looked up at him from beneath her lashes. “I set my fiancé’s laptop on fire.”

  “You what?” Dev burst out laughing.

  “He— Well, he liked to look at porn on the web. A lot. He got obsessed with it. And he’d drink and pop pills. So one day I came home and found him passed out in our bed with his laptop. And I don’t need to tell you what was on it. That day was it for me. I had reached the breaking point. So I took the laptop out to the barbecue grill, lined it with foil and set the laptop inside. Then I turned on the gas and lit it.”

  “You lined the grill with foil, first,” Dev repeated, in disbelief.

  “Yes. I didn’t want to ruin the grill, just the computer.”

  He shook his head, his mouth working.

  “Then I went inside and packed all my stuff and got a friend to come help me move it out. Jack never woke up once. He was out for hours, oblivious.”

  “You didn’t have furniture there?”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t nice. We were waiting to buy new stuff until after we got married.”

  “How recent was this, again?”

  “Eight months ago.”

  Dev nodded. “So when he woke up, you were gone.”

  “Pretty much. He called me, cussing, and said I owed him an explanation and an apology. I gave him the explanation—not that I hadn’t warned him many times what would happen if he didn’t pull himself together—told him to get help and that he owed me the apology.”

  She pressed her lips together as if to keep her emotions from escaping. There were no tears in her eyes, but he could see the pain there.

  “I’m guessing you never got it.”

  “No. And I never will.”

  Dev was still holding her hand in his, and he felt it quiver. He stroked the back of it with his thumb. They sat there in silence for a few moments.

  Then Kylie pulled her hand away.

  Dev pursed his lips. “So, tell me the truth. Did this guy wear golf shirts?”

  Kylie gulped the rest of the wine while looking darkly at him over the rim of the glass. Then she nodded as she put it down. “And he drove a blue BMW sedan.”

  “I knew it.” He slammed a fist onto the table.

  She began to laugh. “And he was looking at country clubs to join…”

  “See, you should stick with the black T-shirt kind of guy, like me.” Dev nodded, poking himself in the chest with his index finger. “I rest my case.”

  “You’ve argued well, counselor,” she agreed. “With somewhat skewed logic, but it works for you.”

  “So you’ll retain me, then.”

  “Don’t push it. Take me to dinner and keep talking.”

  So Dev did. He took her to the Ritz-Carlton on Lincoln Road, and they ate in Bistro One LR. They shared an intimate poolside table, with romantic lighting and an infinity view of the Atlantic.

  Dev watched her eat king crab with clear enjoyment of both her food and the ambience. She ate the crab delicately, as if she were afraid to hurt it, which he found amusing.

  She was such a study in contradictions. A lady who’d come on to him like a whore at first meeting; a prim bank executive who’d let it all hang out at the most formal of occasions. A hard-hitter who blushed.

  Kylie looked up with a mouthful of crab and caught him watching her. She finished chewing self-consciously, swallowed and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “What?”

  He smiled. “It’s about time someone treated you well. You deserve it.”

  “This is beautiful, Dev. Thank you.”

  “You’re beautiful. The pleasure’s all mine.”

  “You know, at some point we really should talk about business.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “But now’s not the time.”

  She nodded. “Fair enough. So what about your family, Dev? Did you grow up here?”

  He nodded. “Like I said, my mom is Cuban, and my dad’s Irish. That can be a strange combination, but their core values are the same, and they definitely gave us all a love of music. We all know how to party, too.” He grinned.

  “How many is all?”

  “There are four of us—Ciara, Bettina, Aidan and me. My mom got to name the girls, and my dad named us boys. I’m the youngest.”

  The waiter took away the remains of their first courses. Then he brought Dev’s beef brisket and Kylie’s wild salmon.

  “What did your parents think of their baby becoming a rock star?”

  “That I’d outgrow it. They’ve been really supportive, though—aside from the occasional lecture on my lifestyle. They’ll be at the grand opening. You’ll meet them. They’ll love you.”

  “Oh, great,” Kylie said, avoiding his gaze.

  Clearly she didn’t feel that they were at the meeting-his-parents stage yet. Dev resolved to change that as soon as possible.

  “Yeah, they’ll be so shocked to meet a nice girl on my arm that they’ll have you fitted for a wedding gown on the spot,” he joked.

  “Ha,” said Kylie faintly. “Fantastic salmon.” She reached for her wine again.

  “Glad you like it,” Dev said. He couldn’t resist torturing her a little. “So, do you cook?”

  “Me? No.”

  “Ah, that’s okay. Mom will give you copies of all her good Cuban cookbooks. You’ll have to learn Spanish, of course, to read them, but you’ll pick it up fast.”

  “Uh—”

  “You like plantains?”

  “Not exactly…”

  “You should definitely develop a taste for them, because—”

  “Wait a minute, Dev, hold on.” Kylie set down her fork. “Just because I went out on a date with you, doesn’t mean that— I mean, I’m not going to marry you!”

  He produced his most wounded expression. “You could at least wait until I a
sk before you turn me down.”

  “I— But—”

  “Relax, Kylie. I’m only teasing you.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief but then she got that look in her eye again. The look that said she was going to kill him with her bare hands. It was very entertaining.

  Dev forked some brisket into his mouth and smiled at her while he savored it. It was tender, smoky, tangy and delicious. He wondered if he could smuggle some to Bodvar to see if he could reproduce it. Then he dismissed the thought. Bodvar would probably throw a Nordic tantrum and quit if Dev even asked him to taste the food from another restaurant, much less food from the Ritz.

  “Dev, how did you end up becoming a rock star?”

  He laughed. The term sounded so cheesy. “I never was a star.”

  “You were—still are—pretty well-known, though.”

  “Only around here. We played at clubs and charity events and some weddings and bar mitzvahs. Kylie, we started in my garage, for Christ’s sake. I went on to study music, and I eventually hooked up with some guys who were better than my high school buddies, but it’s not like I was Tommy Lee or Jon Bon Jovi or anything. We never had a national following.”

  “Did you record any albums?”

  “Yeah. We had three different CDs out. But again, without a big label behind you, you’re not going to make much of a splash. We had some articles done on us in the Miami papers, and even as far north as Orlando, but…” He shrugged.

  “You have to play one of the CDs for me,” she said. “I want to hear you.”

  “Okay. Later.”

  “So when did you decide to walk away from it and open Bikini?”

  Dev’s chest tightened, and he felt the familiar dark weight of guilt and depression settle around his heart. He felt tired and gray whenever he thought about Wilbo. “We lost a guy,” he said. It sounded stupid to his own ears. As if they’d misplaced him. “A good friend. My oldest friend.”

  Across the table, Kylie swallowed and put down her fork. “Lost him?”

  “He died of an overdose,” Dev said shortly. “Right in front of me. Yeah, I know—how clichéd can you get? A rock musician ODs. It’s such an old story that it creaks when you tell it.”

  “It’s not a cliché when it’s a dear friend of yours,” Kylie said. She touched her fingers to his. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Dev put another forkful of brisket into his mouth, but it could have been a tofurkey for all he cared.

  “What was his name?”

  “Will. We used to call him Wilbo. He played bass guitar. We went to grade school together.” Wilbo, with his big ears and pointy chin…he’d looked like a demented little elf. Of course, Dev had looked like a giraffe in those days.

  “We learned the multiplication tables right next to each other, and long division, too. In Mrs. Clark’s class.” His mouth twisted. “We read all the Encyclopedia Brown books, the Lloyd Alexander books and then the C. S. Lewis ones. We’d pretend we were the characters in them.” A lump grew in his throat, and he tried to ignore it.

  “We learned how to play guitar together. Started a garage band. He loved Rush and Talking Heads and—” He broke off before he broke down.

  “You miss him.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

  Dev pushed his plate away. “Yeah. I miss him.”

  She continued to look at him, her gaze unwavering, a question in them.

  “I wish that instead of partying right along with him, I’d dragged his ass to rehab. I wish I hadn’t made him play the night he died, but I did. I wanted this record producer to notice us.” Dev cracked his neck, and then his knuckles, right at the table—even though it was guaranteed not to impress Kylie. “He might be alive today if I hadn’t pushed him on stage that night to perform.”

  She squeezed his fingers, and he looked down, vaguely surprised.

  “You can’t blame yourself for what happened, Dev.”

  “Why not? His parents do. To this day, they won’t even speak to me. I’m the one who brought him into the band. I’m the one who got the gigs, created the lifestyle that killed him.”

  “That’s not fair. You’re not responsible for what he chose to put into his body.”

  Dev broke the contact and scrubbed at his face with both hands. “Maybe, maybe not. I put a lot of bad stuff into my body, too. Why am I alive, and he’s not? Why was I able to walk away from it, and he wasn’t?”

  Kylie shook her head. “Only God knows the answers to questions like that.”

  Dev decided that it was time to steer the conversation away from this morbid topic. It made him want to drink. A lot. It made him want to smoke. And he didn’t need to do either of those things. When he did, he ended up doing dumb things that hurt people.

  “So,” he said with determined cheer. “What would you like for dessert?”

  Kylie looked as if she wanted to say more; wanted to keep him talking about this. But she didn’t push the issue, and Dev was grateful.

  He didn’t talk about Will to anybody but his buddy Pete, and even that was rare.

  “I don’t need dessert, Dev,” Kylie said.

  He put the past behind him again and winked at her. “Oh, yes, sweetheart, you do. You absolutely do.”

  18

  THEY SHARED A chocolate confection and then left for Dev’s apartment. Aside from her feet hurting in the stilettos, Kylie felt loose, happy and more at ease than she’d ever remembered feeling. Dev brought out a side of her that she wasn’t used to sharing. He didn’t allow her to be careful, to hold back. She wasn’t sure what it was about him—maybe his charm, maybe his sheer outrageousness, the way he made her laugh like a loon. Or maybe it was because Dev withheld judgment. He admitted his own foibles and past—so he was unlikely to hold hers against her.

  While she and Jack had been used to each other, she’d always felt a mild, unspoken tension with him. As if there was something she should say to fill the air. Or she’d look up to find him watching her and feel lacking somehow, a little uncomfortable. She realized now that he’d probably been comparing her in his mind to one of his airbrushed beauties.

  With Dev, what she saw seemed to be truly what she got. He was shameless, but the more she thought about it, the more his speech about the guy in the golf shirt made sense. Jack hadn’t been in love with her. He’d simply seen her as the perfect wife, an accessory to his life.

  As she and Dev sped through the streets of Miami in the Corvette, a question rose in her mind. “Remember your speech about the guy in the golf shirt and how he only saw me in relation to him? As fitting the bill, or something. Well, how do you see me?”

  A slow smile spread across Dev’s face, and he took his time answering. In fact, he pulled into the parking lot of his complex and cut the car’s engine before he did.

  He turned to her and traced the outline of her lips with his index finger. “I see something wild, underneath a smooth, calm, lovely exterior. I see a troubled woman who’s been hurt and taken advantage of, and who wants to choreograph and control her next relationship. She wants to be on top, in more ways than one. And that’s okay. She glories in her sexuality but is afraid of it at the same time. She sees it as a weakness when it’s really a strength.”

  Kylie could barely breathe as he continued. “I see humor, intelligence, kindness, beauty, grace and quiet ambition.” Dev dropped his finger and kissed her. His lips were light, but they lingered. His touch went straight to her tummy, releasing hundreds of butterflies.

  “Bottom line,” said Dev, “I see you as a gift. For as long as you choose to remain in my life. And it is, very much, your choice.”

  A lump the size of a Volkswagen rose in her throat. Then she impaled herself on the gearshift while trying to reach him.

  “Whoa,” he said, laughing. “I guess that was a good answer.”

  “It was a great answer.” She climbed into his lap—not that it was easy—and settled her mouth over his.

  Dev was hard already. She p
ressed her body against him and he groaned. His hands tightened around her waist and then moved down to her hips. He moved his own urgently.

  “I think it’s time we got out of this car and went into my place,” he said into her ear. “C’mon.”

  When she nodded, he opened the door, picked her up and set her on the pavement outside. Then he got out and they walked hand in hand into his building.

  HIS PLACE WAS on the twenty-first floor, with a stunning view of the bay. Dev unlocked the door, ushered her inside and immediately went to put on some music. Something soft and low-key. Some Ella Fitzgerald should do the trick. “You like old jazz?” he asked.

  “Love it.” She took in the view, and then his spare, modern furniture in caramel leather. He didn’t have much on the walls—a few black-and-white photographs in light wood frames.

  “Nice place,” she murmured. “Mind if I use the bathroom?”

  “Take your pick. There’s one in there and one back through here. I’ll get you some wine. Red or white?”

  “White, please. Thanks.” Kylie moved in the direction of the guest bath.

  The kitchen sparkled, if he did say so himself. He got a wineglass out of a cabinet. He had to rinse it because it had been so long since it’d been used. In fact, it was probably the only clean dish he—

  “Oh, shit. Oh, no, no, no,” Dev said out loud. But there was nothing he could do at this point, except brain himself with the corkscrew.

  Kylie’s heels clicked across the floor as he opened the wine and poured. “Dev?”

  He winced before she even said anything. “Uh-huh?”

  “Do you always wash your dishes in the bathtub?” The expression on her face was half horror, half amusement.

  He set down the bottle. “I can explain that.”

  “You can?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  “I’ll bet this is going to be interesting.” She accepted her glass with a nod of thanks.

  And so, while Ella Fitzgerald sang about makin’ whoopee, Dev told her about his MIA cleaning person and his broken dishwasher. “Everything sort of piled up,” he finished lamely. “It all needed to soak, and I was running out of time, so I threw it all in the tub and used about half a bottle of Palmolive. Then I forgot about it.”