It was an extra special event for the Wilde family.
Charlotte Wilde, the sisters’ mother, had always insisted that the holiday season started with Thanksgiving, moved on to Christmas, and ended with New Year’s Eve.
When they were children, they’d all gathered around her the night before Thanksgiving and she’d read them that wonderful old poem, “The Night Before Christmas.”
After a while, they knew it by heart, but that didn’t lessen the joy of sharing it.
Things changed.
Charlotte died.
The loss was indescribable. Her daughters and stepsons, who had already suffered the loss of their own mother years ago, had adored her.
Jacob, Caleb and Travis, older by several years than Emily, Jaimie and Lissa, had gotten them through that first empty Thanksgiving. After that, the holiday had become more meaningful than ever.
Except for the times one of the Wilde brothers was away serving his country, none of the Wildes ever missed it. Well, none of them except for their father. Four-star generals couldn’t always make it home for the holidays.
As a kid, Jaimie had sometimes wondered if he’d even tried.
After a while, it hadn’t mattered. Thanksgiving was for the Wilde brothers and sisters. Not one of them would deliberately stay away.
Now, for the first time, Jaimie had considered the possibility.
Coming up with an excuse would have been easy: the press of work, the importance of networking at the several holiday parties to which she’d been invited.
There were only two problems.
The first was that she couldn’t bring herself to lie.
The second was that nobody would have believed her.
One or maybe all of them would have turned up at her apartment, demanding to know what was going on. And Jaimie couldn’t tell them that because she wasn’t sure herself. She only knew that things were different since the night of The Big Blackout.
Not that that night had anything to do with the way things had changed in her life. It was just a convenient frame of reference. Lots of people used the event that way, as if it had been some kind of turning point on the calendar.
She was edgy. Out of sorts. She wasn’t sleeping well.
Well, it wasn’t a problem, it was just a temporary blip. There was so much going on in her life lately. Lots of appointments and showings. She’d picked up three exclusives, one in Georgetown, two in Silver Spring. She was busy, busy, busy…
OK.
Maybe it was more than that.
Maybe, she thought as she drove her rental car from the airport at Dallas to El Sueño, maybe the night of The Big Blackout had affected her.
Damn.
Jaimie blew out a breath.
Of course, it had affected her. Why lie to herself? Why call that October night The Big Blackout when what it had been was The Big Mistake?
She had slept with a stranger. A man she'd met, what, a couple of hours before she’d tumbled into his bed. A man she’d known she would never see again. No, she hadn’t consciously thought about it, but she’d known it anyway. Zacharias Castelianos was the exact opposite of the kind of men she dated.
Correction.
The kind of men she dated when she dated.
There wasn’t much time for a social life when you were chasing after listings and courting buyers, but when she did go out with someone, he was what Lissa called a Suit.
“Gag me with a spoon,” her California-transplant sister had said when she’d paid a visit last year and they’d done some late-night dishing about men. “Accountants. Attorneys. Economists. Financial analysts. Good grief, James, don’t you ever want to go out with somebody who’s pure testosterone? All brawn and no brains? A man who’ll just scoop you up, carry you off to bed, and make you come so many times you’ll be bowlegged the next morning?”
They’d both laughed.
Right—except Jaimie wasn’t laughing anymore.
A coyote shot across the dirt road just ahead. She stood on the brakes; the car swayed. She got it under control and took another long breath.
That was what The Big Mistake had been all about. Being scooped up by a man who’d taken her to bed and given her so many orgasms that she really had ached the next morning.
Ached with humiliation.
She wasn’t into hooking up. She never had been. That was fine if it was your thing—she wasn’t sitting in judgment on anybody—but it had never been hers. She’d always been a romantic about men. Dammit, even about boys.
How many times had some jerk broken her heart in high school because she’d thought forever was supposed to last more than a week?
Hooking up would have made sense in college. All the courses. The endless hours spent studying. Working to score As, to make the dean’s list, to make Phi Beta Kappa.
There’d been no time for relationships. But there’d been time for sex, had she wanted it.
Meet a guy, find him attractive, set things up so that when you were free and he was free, you got together for an hour. For a night. You hooked up. No strings, no commitment, no emotional baggage.
Lots of her friends had done it. Lissa, too—well, maybe not hooking up, not exactly, but her older sister certainly took a different approach to sex than she did.
“You want too much,” Lissa had said that same night they’d talked about men. “You want a guy with a measurable IQ to ride up on a white horse. You want bells to ring. Nope. Scratch that. You want John Williams to write a score for the big scene.”
Jaimie sat up straight and shifted into drive.
They’d both laughed—except, there was a nugget of truth to what Lissa had said.
She did want bells to ring.
So far, they hadn’t.
Except for that night with Zacharias Castelianos, which was ridiculous because he was nothing she’d ever wanted. He was the all-brawn-no-brains type.
Wasn’t he?
She thought about how he’d taken care of her. Made her laugh and forget her fears…
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said aloud, “it was sex. S-E-X, and why can’t you admit it? It was sex and it was good.”
Good? Amazing, was closer to the truth, and wasn’t that the problem? That it had been mind-blowing sex and she couldn’t accept that she’d done something so—so basic, so raw, so far out of the realm of reality that when she’d awakened in the early hours of the morning with light just creeping into the sky and the sound of electrical appliances coming to life, she’d been horrified.
There she was. In a stranger’s bed. Both of them naked. His arm draped possessively around her, his hand cupping her breast. Oh my God, she’d thought, oh my God!
And then he’d stirred, just a little, and his hand had curved more closely around her breast, and she’d felt her body quicken, felt the ache of wanting him, and she’d almost turned in his arms, touched his hard, gorgeous face, his hard, gorgeous body until he woke and whispered her name and took her again and again and again…
“Dammit!”
She wrenched the wheel, pulled to the shoulder of the road in a burst of dirt and gravel.
Pathetic. That she should still be thinking about something that had happened weeks ago…
That even though he had her business card, he had never called her or sent her flowers or done anything to make what had happened more than a down-and-dirty one night stand.
Why waste time on the past when the present was what mattered? The excellent progress she was making at work, especially after she’d come back from New York without the Castelianos deal. Her boss hadn’t been happy, but he’d said he was sure she’d do better the next time there was a hot client to land. She’d learn, he’d said, and she had. Just look at those three new listings.
If she had any problem at all, it was Steven.
He had changed since she’d returned from New York. His attention had gone from over-the-top to certifiably impossible. He was always, always there, lurking, waiting, fall
ing in step beside her as she walked down the street, turning up everywhere she was. At her office. At her apartment.
I was in the neighborhood, he’d say, and I figured you’d like a fresh croissant from that little bakery. Or he’d be at the door with the Sunday papers. A book. A box of chocolates.
She’d gone from being polite—Thank you, but no—to being direct—I don’t want you to bring me things, Steven—to being downright rude—Steven. I want you to stay out of my life. I’m not interested. You have to accept that.
Things had come to a head two days ago.
She was studying for her broker’s license; she’d had a class that night and when it was over, her car wouldn’t start. A guy from class, his car right beside hers in the parking lot, saw what was happening and offered her a lift home.
He was a pleasant man and, it turned out, a new dad. He’d spent the twenty minutes of the trip telling her all about his six-week-old son. Jaimie thanked him when they got to her place—she had an apartment in a townhouse just on the edge of Georgetown. She’d opened the outside door, gone inside…
And cried out when a figure materialized from the shadows in the hall.
“Steven?”
“Who is he?”
Steven’s voice had been low. Coarse. Frightening. Everything about him had been frightening. Jaimie had never realized he was so tall, six one at least, and he’d towered over her, loomed over her, stepped closer and closer so that she’d kept backing away until, finally, her shoulders were pressed against the wall.
“Steven. I want you to leave.”
“Is he your newest lover?”
“Steven.” Her heart had been racing; she’d fought to sound calm because instinct told her letting him see how scared she was would be a mistake. “You need to go home.”
“I bet you don’t tell him that.”
“Listen to me—”
“How many men have you fucked, Celeste?”
Oh God, she’d thought, oh God oh God!
“Your boss. All those men you work with. This one. And let’s not forget the man in New York. The Greek tycoon. I bet you fucked him straight through that entire blackout.”
Jaimie’s thoughts had raced. Should she scream? Try to get past him and run for the street? Knee him in the groin? She had to do something, and fast, but if she made the wrong choice…
Right then, the street door had opened. A neighbor, a man she’d never said more than “hello” and “goodbye” to, entered the vestibule.
“Good evening,” he’d said.
Jaimie had reacted like a drowning woman grabbing a life preserver.
“Oh,” she’d babbled, “so nice to see you. How’ve you been? How’s your wife? I saw her walking that beautiful dog of yours the other day. A poodle, right? Or is it a water spaniel? I never can tell the difference…”
She’d talked on and on for what had seemed forever, but probably had only been a few seconds. The guy had looked puzzled. Steven had looked…like Steven. Pleasant. Easygoing. Nobody would have believed him capable of saying the things he’d said only a couple of minutes before.
When he’d reached out to touch Jaimie’s hair, she’d flinched.
Her neighbor had noticed. He’d moved so that he stood directly beside her and took his cell phone from his pocket.
“Is there a problem here, Ms. Wilde?”
“No problem,” Steven had replied. “Ms. Wilde and I were just saying good night.” His smile had glittered. “Isn’t that right, Celeste?”
She’d managed to nod. Steven had strolled past her, opened the door and left.
Jaimie had slumped back against the wall.
“Ms. Wilde? Are you all right?”
Jaimie had nodded. “Yes. I’m fine. Thank you. That was just—it was just someone I know who—who tends to get a little carried away.”
She’d babbled some more—it had been her night for babbling. Her neighbor had headed for his own apartment. Jaimie had gone into hers, double-locked the door and collapsed onto the sofa. She’d spent the balance of the night trying to figure out how to deal with what had happened, but she hadn’t found a solution that wouldn’t involve unwanted notoriety—for all its sophistication, D.C. was like a small town that thrived on gossip.
Besides, maybe she’d overreacted.
Steven had always been given to overblown gestures. This confrontation, whatever you wanted to call it, might have been nothing more than that.
So, in the end, she’d let the entire thing go. It had been the right decision. Steven hadn’t bothered her again. She was certain of it. The sense she’d had of being followed a couple of nights ago, the even more ridiculous sense that someone had been in her apartment, had gone through her things.
Nonsense, both times.
Nobody had followed her. She’d turned around and checked. And nobody had been in her apartment. Surely a burglar would have taken something. That the panties in her underwear drawer weren’t stacked the same way as usual was just plain ridiculous. She could easily have messed them up herself.
Of course, she could have.
Jaimie pulled back onto the road and continued driving toward El Sueño.
* * * *
The Texas sun was low on the western horizon when Jaimie pulled the rental car off the road, yanked down the sun visor and looked at herself in the mirror. Not good. She was pale, there were bags under her eyes. And her cheekbones… She must have lost a little weight because they stood out as if she’d penciled them in.
Somebody would notice. Emily or Lissa. Jacob, maybe, or Caleb or Travis. One of her siblings would look at her and say, “James? What’s going on?”
And what would she tell them? Would she say she had a nut case in love with her? Talk about horrible messes…
Damn.
Why not be honest? It wasn’t just horrible, it was ridiculous. Other women had admirers. “Gentlemen suitors,” as the woman who’d schooled the Wilde girls in deportment would have said.
Not her.
She had a lunatic.
She could always give an alternate response. She could say that she’d slept with a man and then run away in the middle of the night. She could admit that running—remember, you’re being honest, James—instead of facing Zacharias had been pathetic.
Double damn.
Her life was starting to sound like a really bad TV show.
Jaimie smiled. Tried again and, this time, choked out a laugh. She peered into the mirror. Could she pull this off? Fluff up the hair, finger-pat those carry-on bags under the eyes, dig out a lipstick from her purse.
Not bad. Actually, good. As long as nobody looked too close.
“You can do this, James,” she said sternly.
Then she started the engine and pulled back onto the road.
***
Luck was with her.
No. Scratch that. There was nothing lucky about nobody noticing her because they were too busy trying to pretend they weren’t noticing Emily.
They were all there. Caleb and his wife, Sage, and their beautiful baby boy, Cameron. Travis and his Jennie, and their precious little daughter, Eleanor. Jake and his Adoré, with Jake curving his big hand over his wife’s belly and proudly announcing that they were having twins. Lissa, looking Hollywood-spectacular. And Emily..
Emily, quiet and withdrawn.
Jacob, Caleb and Travis didn’t seem to notice. They were busy discussing expansion plans for El Sueño. Sage and Jennie and Addison, which was Jake’s wife’s real name, were busy with the babies.
But Jaimie and Lissa noticed it right away, and whispered about it whenever they got the chance.
“Something’s the matter with Em,” Jaimie said as she and Lissa helped clear the dishes from lunch.
Lissa nodded. “I know.”
“Should we ask her about it?”
“No,” Lissa said.
“Agreed,” Jaimie replied.
Then they marched into the kitchen, walked up to Emily, who was r
insing silverware at the sink, and folded their arms.
“Em?” Lissa said. “What’s the matter?”
Emily looked at them. “Nothing. Why would anything be the matter? What kind of question is that?”
She was smiling. Her words were bright. But Jaimie and Lissa weren’t buying it.
“Well,” Jaimie said, “you haven’t had much to say.”
Emily stared at Jaimie. “Neither have you.”
Whoops. Jaimie could feel her face flush. Lissa was staring at her. Damn, damn, damn.
“Work,” Jaimie said. “I’m all tied up with stuff. Things are stabilizing a little; people are beginning to put their houses on the market. And we weren’t talking about me, we were talking about you.”
They went on talking. About Emily, if not with her. Emily was evasive, even when they asked about her new job.
“What new job?” she said, and that was when they found out she’d already quit the job that had sounded so promising, so exciting, and before they could ask more questions, there was the sound of people greeting people.
The Wildes, it turned out, had visitors.
Jake had invited old friends to join them: Khan, the reigning prince of Altara, and his bride, Laurel.
Emily looked as if she wanted the floor to open and swallow her.
“Em,” Laurel said, “I’m so sorry about what happened that night…”
“What night?” Lissa said.
“What happened?” Jaimie said.
And then what Lissa would later dub The Meltdown began.
* * * *
After a whirlwind of confusion, things began to sort themselves out.
Emily had a lover. That she’d taken a lover seemed beyond the Wilde brothers’ comprehension, but then, they were her brothers.
That he had abandoned her drove them insane.
Emily kept insisting that Marco Santini hadn’t abandoned her. She’d walked out on him. It didn’t matter. The Wilde men had blood in their eyes.
Then Marco showed up.
Jaimie: Fire and Ice Page 10