He thought of Ressa’s number, saved into his phone—and the not particularly great picture he’d found on Facebook of the panel they’d done. He hadn’t been snooping. Somebody had posted pictures of the panel to his Facebook page and she’d just happened to be in one of them—it wasn’t a great picture, her face averted, hair half obscuring her face, but it was the only one he had.
He had that picture in his phone, with her phone number.
He was going to wait until tonight.
Then he’d call her.
He didn’t know just what was going to come of it . . . but he’d call her.
For now, though, he studied the stack of papers waiting for him on the table and scowled. Brooded. Debated.
Then he flipped them facedown.
He’d go over all that mess later . . . after he took a few more minutes of the relative quiet.
* * *
“Spill.”
Legs crossed, skirt hiked up to her thighs, Farrah chowed down on chow mein and waited.
“You’re so subtle,” Ressa said, shaking her head. “I just love how you work up to these things.
“Screw subtle. Spill.” This was spoken around a mouth full of noodles and punctuated with a pair of chopsticks jabbed her way.
Ressa picked up her wine and took a long swallow, bracing herself. As she lowered it, she said, “Don’t go getting all excited about this. I don’t know just what is going on right now . . . it might not be anything.”
She picked up a piece of crab Rangoon but instead of eating it, she just plucked it apart. “So . . .”
Just how did she say this?
“Son of a bitch.”
She looked up.
“You slept with him.”
Ressa winced.
“You did. You went and slept with him,” Farrah said. She put down the box of carryout and leaned forward, speculation on her face. “Didn’t you?”
Ressa caught her lower lip between her teeth for a second, then she shrugged. “There wasn’t really a whole lot of sleeping.”
“Don’t tell me that.” Farrah drained her glass of wine and grabbed the bottle, giving herself a refill. “Considering your answer, I’m going to assume he does fuck as beautifully as I’d have hoped.”
“Ah . . .” Ressa felt her mouth going dry as she remembered the way his mouth had felt moving over her, his hands—his body. All of him. “Yeah. You can assume that.”
“Details.” Farrah sat back down on the couch and leaned forward, eyes wide, laughing.
“No!” Ressa glared at her. In self-defense, she popped a piece of the mutilated crab Rangoon in her mouth and chewed. As she was chewing, her belly let out a yowl, reminding her just how long it had been since that panini.
With her appetite kicking in, she reached for her dinner of General Tso’s chicken and a set of chopsticks. “You’ll have to do your sexual gossiping with somebody else. But yeah, we slept together in Jersey—the last night. I figured . . .”
She trailed off and popped a bite of chicken into her mouth. Acutely aware of Farrah’s watchful eyes, she shrugged. “I figured that was it. It was great, but . . .” She let the words trail off, unwilling to go into details about everything else.
Farrah was one of the few people who knew most of Ressa’s secrets. And because Farrah loved her, she didn’t care. But she wouldn’t understand.
“But what?” Farrah asked softly.
“Well . . .” Keeping her head tucked, she shrugged. “A lot of things. The . . . his ring.”
Yeah. That was a good cover-up.
“Ohhhh . . .” Farrah nodded. She nipped a bite of noodles from her chopsticks. “If he’s still wearing his ring, honey . . . well, that’s a mess waiting to happen. You might want to check things now. That can’t lead to anything but trouble.”
“He already took it off.” She frowned and poked at her rice.
“What does that matter?” Farrah’s expression was troubled. “I know that look in your eyes . . . you’re already falling. You don’t need to be falling for a guy who’s still carrying a torch for his dead wife.”
“I don’t think he’s still pining for her.” How did she explain this? Yeah, the ring was an issue, but there was something powerful between her and Trey. “I get a feeling that ring was just as much of a security blanket for him as anything else.”
She stopped and shook her head. “No, not even that. It was a shield. I think he uses it to keep people at a distance—women, at a distance.”
“I guess that could make sense.” Farrah’s voice was neutral.
Ressa looked up.
“Honey . . .”
“Stop worrying.” Ressa didn’t know what Farrah was dancing around, but whatever it was, she just wanted her to get it over with. “You don’t have to baby me, okay?”
“I can’t help it.” Farrah wrinkled her nose. She took her time over another bite of noodles and then put the box down. “Listen, she was young. So was he. I think I read once that they’d been together since their first year in college—they just hit it off. And if she died right after the baby was born—”
“During,” Ressa said, her voice soft. “She had to have a C-section and she died during the surgery. Clayton . . .”
She stopped as Farrah’s eyes widened.
Oh, she hadn’t gotten around to explaining that part, had she?
“Clayton . . . what?”
Wincing, Ressa said, “I didn’t tell you about that, huh?”
“No, you did not!”
“Ah. Yeah.” She put her food down and got up, taking only her wine as she started to pace. “Well. It turns out that he’s actually been coming to your library for a while. Isn’t that funny?”
Seconds ticked away. Finally, Farrah said, “Are you telling me that Mr. Tall and Tattooed, the daddy of that adorable little boy who just about broke your heart is Trey Barnes?”
“Well.” Ressa shrugged. “We thought he looked familiar, right?”
Farrah all but wilted back against the couch. “I can’t take this. Please. Just . . . I think I’m going to faint.”
“Let me just go get my smelling salts.” Ressa understood, though. She had to fight the urge to toss back the plum wine like it was two-dollar whiskey. “Now stop being so dramatic.”
She huffed out a breath. “Clayton . . . he almost died. I read about what happened to his wife—there was a drunk driving accident. Apparently it almost killed his son, too. After all of that, I think it just made him all but shut down.”
Farrah got up to pace. “The baby was born early,” she said after a minute. She gave Ressa a sheepish smile. “You know how obsessed I get with these things. Anyway . . . I know he all but lived at the hospital for a while. I think his son was sick a lot.”
“Makes sense,” Farrah said, shaking her head. “His wife dies, he almost loses his son. The baby didn’t even leave the hospital for the first couple of months, I don’t think. He went from being this super social guy to a recluse. That poor guy. Ressa, he had the media hounding him non-stop. It got to the point where his twin was even running interference half the time, pretending to be him just so he could get in and out of the hospital without people harassing him. And when the media figured out what they were doing, they gave him even more grief . . . they came up with these bullshit stories about how he couldn’t really be grieving if he and his twin were playing games with the media.”
“Assholes,” Ressa muttered. She couldn’t imagine how hard that must have been for him. And yeah, it made sense why he’d gone into the hermit mode.
Then Farrah came back to her, held out her hands.
Ressa accepted them, a knot swelling in her chest.
“I get it.” Farrah’s eyes were dark and kind and gentle, so full of understanding, it made Ressa’s throat get tight. “I do—and sweetheart, if I were you, I’d be all over him. A crazy weekend with a beautiful man like that?”
“But . . .” Ressa waited.
“But . . .” F
arrah squeezed her hands. “You’re already twisted up about him. You were months ago, and you’re just as crazy about Clayton as you are about him. What if he is still in love with her? And . . .” She bit her lip and then hurriedly asked, “And are you sure he’s ready to handle everything else that comes with you?”
Ressa tugged her hands away and started to pace. She thought about the way he looked at her. The way he touched her and how everything inside her lit up, and how everything inside seemed to just slow—and wait. It was like she’d been waiting. Just for him.
She thought about the way his eyes lingered on her, how he stared at her as if nobody else existed.
When he looked at her, it wasn’t the memory of his dead wife he saw. And he wasn’t caught up in the memory of anything else either. He saw her and only her.
“I’m complicating this,” she said, swearing. Then she glared at Farrah. “We are complicating this. We like each other. I like how I feel when I’m with him and I know he likes being with me.” Then she paused in front of the mirror and added, “If nothing else, when he’s with me, I know he’s not seeing me as some sort of replacement. I saw pictures of her—she was like some Nordic princess. She was this tall, elegant thing, all legs and boobs and yards of ice blonde hair.”
Farrah grinned and her gaze dropped to Ressa’s chest. “Well, you’re not short . . . and you’re definitely not lacking in the curve department, Ress.”
“Ha-ha.” Ressa continued to study her reflection. A black woman stared back at her, her hair done in soft curls around her face, her mouth a deep wine red. The tank top she’d paired with her pajama pants had ridden up, revealing the outline of the newest tattoo design she was working on. It was a tower of books, one that threatened to topple over. It started on her hip and climbed up to just under her right breast. And when she looked in her own eyes, she saw the shadows and the insecurities she’d fought to hide for so long. “I’ve got tits, yeah. But he won’t look at me and see Nordic anything.”
After a moment, Farrah came up to stand next to her, leaning in so that her head rested against Ressa’s arm. “So what do you think he sees when he looks at you?”
“I don’t know.”
If she knew the answer to that, this would be a lot easier.
“Are you two going out?”
“I think so.”
There was a world of caution in Farrah’s eyes.
“Okay . . . then answer this. If he sees all of you, is he going to be okay with it?”
She heard the warning. She heard the love that came with it. If she was smart, she’d pay attention to it.
The phone rang and in the time it took Ressa to grab her phone from the coffee table and see his name on the display, she decided the time to be smart had come and gone.
Heart hammering, she hit talk and lifted the phone.
“Hello?”
Chapter Seventeen
It had been so long since he’d been out on a date, Trey wasn’t entirely certain he remembered how they worked.
Okay, in theory, yeah.
He could remember in theory.
Unlike Zane, Travis, and Sebastian, Trey hadn’t ever had the revolving door thing with females. He hadn’t pined for one woman for most of his life like Zach—Zach had only ever loved one woman and all the relationships he’d been in had been casual. Trey had had two serious girlfriends in high school—and then on a trip to Canada with Travis the summer after graduation, there had been this ballet dancer . . . Giselle had pretty much destroyed his mind. He couldn’t recall much about their time outside the bedroom, because he doubted they’d spent much time together outside of it.
But his experience with the opposite sex started and stopped there—those three not-really-serious relationships, and then Aliesha. In all, four first dates.
He wasn’t sure the first date with Giselle really counted as a date since they’d bumped into each other at a club—literally—and she’d wrapped her arms around him and pulled him onto a dance floor. From there, they’d ended up in her flat, a place that wasn’t much bigger than the bathroom he had now. In that flat, he’d learned more about the female body than he had ever dreamed it was possible to learn.
Because they had totally sucked, Trey decided not to count the first disastrous dates he’d had since Aliesha’s death.
It wasn’t a lot of experience. Trey realized that. Maybe that was why he was almost as nervous now as he had been the day he’d shown up to take Marisol Hammonds to the junior prom—she’d been girlfriend number one and they’d been together from sophomore up until right before their senior year. That was when she realized she was more into jocks and she’d broken up with him by way of leaving a message on the answering machine. His brothers had ragged him something awful about that.
Actually, he thought he was more nervous now. Back then, he hadn’t stood and stared stupidly at his clothes for ten minutes before finally deciding that absolutely, it was just fine to wear a button-down shirt and a nice pair of trousers.
When he realized he was second-guessing the choices again, he scowled at his reflection. Enough already, man. Keep this up and you’ll never make it out the door.
Clayton had poked his head into the bedroom, eying him with wide, puzzled eyes. “Why are you wearing your dress-up stuff? We can’t go to church. It’s Friday. Did somebody die? Nobody died, did they?”
“Nobody died.” The rush of questions had Trey smiling. “And no, we’re not going to church, although Grandma Mona wants us to come with her to church soon. She’s been asking—I just keep forgetting.”
“Okay.” Clayton slid inside the room and took a running leap to land on Trey’s bed. “Why you wearing nice clothes?”
“Remember what I told you earlier?”
Clayton’s forehead wrinkled. “The date thing. Oh, yeah. You and Miss Ressa are going out on a date.” For a minute, just a minute, he forgot his concern over the dress clothes. “I knew you thought she was pretty.”
“You never miss a thing, do you, pal?”
“Why you gotta wear nice clothes if you’re just going to take a girl to a restaurant? Is she going to be your girlfriend? Like Keelie is Uncle Zane’s girlfriend? Are you going to—”
“Let’s try one question at a time,” Trey suggested. Tucking his shirt in, he moved back to the closet and studied his belts. Before he could start the deliberation thing, he just grabbed one at random. It was black. His shirt was some kind of grayish blue, pants were black. The belt would work. No deliberation needed.
Turning away before he could think about it another second, he eyed Clayton. “I’m wearing nice clothes because I bet Miss Ressa will wear them and I want to do the same thing.”
“Why?” Clayton crossed his legs and focused his attention on Trey. These questions—and the answers—were serious stuff, in Clayton’s mind. Of course, all questions were serious in Clayton’s mind. Even the very silly, and very strange ones.
“If she goes to the trouble of looking nice, I should do the same.”
Clayton shrugged. “You should just tell her to wear jeans, then you could, too.”
“Well. . . .” Trey pretended to think that over. “I guess I could, but I think Ressa would rather wear what she wants to wear.”
“But then you have to wear stupid dress clothes.”
“I bet Ressa won’t think they are stupid.” He moved to the bed and caught Clayton’s nose, tugged it. “Your aunt Abby loves seeing Zach dressed up. And think about how all those magazines and TV shows go on and on about Uncle Sebastian when he gets all dressed up.”
“Those are goofy.” Clayton rolled his eyes. Then he looked down, plucked at a loose thread on his shirt. “A boy at school called me a dumb liar. I saw a poster with Uncle Sebastian on it and I said who he was and the boy said I was lying.”
Trey sighed and crouched down in front of him. “You might hear that some. You know you’re not lying.”
“Everybody was going on and on about how awesome he wa
s. I really know him. He’s my uncle. And they laughed at me.” Clayton’s lip poked out.
“I’m sorry.” He hugged Clayton closer, brooding. “You need to remember, though. Sebastian is your uncle—he’s not a prize to brag about or anything.”
“I wasn’t bragging.” Clayton’s thin shoulders rose and fell. “There was one girl who said her sister likes to kiss his poster—that’s weird. Isn’t that weird?”
“Very.” Easing back, Trey ruffled his hair. “You should have seen some of the girls I went to school with and how they acted about Uncle Zach. I bet they were just as weird.”
“Girls are weird.” Clayton sniffled. Then he said, “Neeci isn’t, though. Neeci is just Neeci. She believes me. She said she’s never seen any of his movies, but she believes me.” At that, Clayton slid Trey a sly look. “I told her I hadn’t seen too many of them, either. It’s not fair. He’s my uncle. I should be able to see more.”
“Nice try.” Trey grinned. “When you’re older. Besides, there’s that one coming out on Blu-ray soon—you were too little to see it in the theater last summer, but we can watch it together now.”
“But—”
Clayton’s would-be argument was interrupted by the sound of a chime—the alarm system Travis had nagged him into installing years ago—its computerized little voice announcing. Front door—
“Anybody here?”
Clayton’s eyes rounded and he bounced up off the bed and ran down the hall. “Uncle Travis!”
“Sounds like,” Trey said. As Clayton pounded down the stairs, Trey grabbed his shoes, a pair of black leather ones—again, not giving himself any chance to deliberate.
He was halfway down the steps when he caught sight of his brother, and the worry punched a hole in him. Too thin. Too pale. Travis was even skinner than Trey was.
And if he asked what was wrong, Travis would lie through his teeth.
As though he’d heard his thoughts, Travis turned his head, met his gaze.
“Well. Look at you,” Travis mused.
“Look at you.” Trey told himself to ignore it. That was what he should do. Travis knew how to take care of himself. He’d been doing it for a long time, and Trey knew that. But right now, he looked like death warmed over. “Travis, hope you don’t mind me saying, but you look like . . .”
Busted (Barnes Brothers #3) Page 17