Her voice pithy, Jaynie said, “All he lost was a frigid bitch too scared to experiment, Kate.”
“You are not frigid,” Kate snapped. She poked Jaynie in the arm and those nails didn’t feel good. “So you didn’t want to do a three-way. Hell, neither would I. Interesting fantasy, but that’s all it is—a fantasy. Not wanting it doesn’t make you frigid.”
Logically, Jaynie knew that. Honestly, she did. But still… Groaning, she turned her face away from Kate. “Kate, this is ridiculous.”
“The hell it is. Just listen—don’t say no. Think about it, okay? Hell, what can it hurt? You spend a few hundred dollars on clothes and we’ll go to the wedding and watch him squirm.”
* * * * *
A few…hundred. Yeah. Right.
Jaynie stood in her bedroom and stared at the bags littering the floor, the bed, her dresser. She had a little bit of makeup on, courtesy of the cosmetics counter at Dillard’s and it felt like she’d visited every clothing store in Spanish Fort. The clothes she wore now had also come from Dillard’s—a short blue skirt that would require extreme caution if she bent over and two skinny-strapped tank tops, a blue one layered over a white one which had lace around the neckline. The lace on the white tank matched the cute little thong panties and front-clasp bra.
One thing that Jaynie had liked buying was lingerie. She’d always liked buying it and that part had been relatively painless. She hadn’t even needed much prodding from Kate. Unlike all the clothes. She’d needed a lot of prodding with the clothes. And the makeup. Jaynie imagined if she hadn’t done the butcher job on her hair, Kate would have had to coax her to the salon too. But Jaynie had been more than happy to hit the salon.
Her hair had been trimmed and now it fell around her face and shoulders in layers. “You got good hair. Shouldn’t take much more than some mousse in the morning, though if you want it to flip at the ends like this, you will have to blow-dry it,” the stylist had told Jaynie. “But next time you need a change, come see me instead of trying to do it yourself.”
Mousse. She could handle that. Although she doubted she could make it look the way the lady at the salon had. Nor did she want to try. She had hopes that she could convince Kate to help her with it when it mattered.
Like in two weeks. Dean’s wedding.
She even had the perfect outfit. She waded through the bags and boxes on the floor and grabbed the bag that Kate had draped over the end. Kate had dared Jaynie to buy a white dress, but Jaynie wasn’t going to the wedding to try to outshine Kat. She didn’t give a damn about that part.
She was going to prove something to Dean…and to herself.
The dress was a soft peach color. The first thing that Jaynie had thought when she’d seen it was that it was nearly the same shade of the robe she’d been wearing that night with Brian. She had never been much for soft feminine colors but she really liked the way this peach color seemed to glow against her skin. It had two skinny straps and a neckline lower than Jaynie was used to. It followed her curves closely, skimming them like a lover’s caress. It wasn’t quite floor-length, but the skirt was long. There was a slit on either side that went up past her knee and Kate had helped her pick out a pair of shoes that were both pretty and relatively comfortable.
So to speak. The sandals had a nearly flat sole and thin, sparkly straps. Kate had said she needed a pedicure and Jaynie had resigned herself to having her feet messed with.
“A pedicure and a date, and you’ll be good to go.”
Kate had told her that while they’d lugged up all the bags and boxes and when Jaynie had insisted she didn’t want a date, Kate had disagreed. “You’re going to go in there looking phenomenal and you’re going to have a good-looking man at your side who hangs on to your every word.”
“Great,” Jaynie had replied sourly. “Where do I find one?”
* * * * *
“Find somebody else,” Brian said from inside the refrigerator. He stood up, a beer in one hand and a box of takeout in the other.
Kate grabbed the takeout box and tossed it in the trash. “You don’t want to eat that. I’ve been forgetting to throw it away for the past two weeks.”
Brian scowled and looked toward what would have been his first meal in nearly twenty-four hours. There was next to nothing else in the refrigerator. Both he and Kate sucked at grocery shopping. A glance into the freezer revealed a couple of steaks with freezer burn and a package of ground beef that looked like it had gone past freezer burn and into the final throes of frostbite.
Kate shouldered him aside and shoved the freezer closed. She gave him her most charming smile and said, “Tell me that you’ll take Jaynie to the wedding and you’ll have a meal fit for a king.”
Brian gave the steaks a grim look. “I said no. And last I checked, you weren’t a magician. There’s nothing here to cook and I’m not waiting for you to go the store. Why in hell is Jaynie going to that jerk’s wedding anyway? After what he did—”
Kate’s smile faded. “That’s the whole reason she’s going, Bri. He hurt her. He didn’t just break her heart, he did something to her confidence.” She glanced back over her shoulder, as though she had to make sure Jaynie wasn’t there.
“Look, you don’t know the whole story.” She nibbled on her lower lip and fiddled with an earring for a minute.
Wary, Brian asked, “What whole story? Dean fucked around on her. She caught him.”
“No—she caught them. Them as in…three.” Kate’s face flushed red as she explained that Jaynie hadn’t just walked in Kit and Dean. She’d walked in on Kit and Dean, plus one.
“It’s something he tried to talk her in to trying back in college and she wasn’t interested. After all of this happened, he had her thinking she was frigid and a poor excuse for a woman. It’s not just what he did, but what he said to her, Brian. He hurt her and she’s dealt with that. But she needs to look him in the eye and show him that he hasn’t broken her.”
“Shit.” Brian closed his eyes and wished he had hit Dean that night. Repeatedly. He heaved out a heavy sigh and scrubbed a hand over his face before looking at Kate. “Katie, I…” Can’t. The word was there on his tongue, but he couldn’t force it out. It seemed lodged there. He kept seeing Jaynie’s face, how she had looked that night when he’d walked in the door and seen Dean tearing into her as if she had been the one out slumming. He saw how she looked that night she’d come down to the basement, her hands shaking, her voice uncertain and her eyes so full of need as she’d said, “I need this.”
Yeah, Dean had screwed up Jaynie’s confidence and Brian just now was getting an inkling of how badly Dean had shaken her.
Jaynie had seemed as if she had gotten some of it back after that night they were together. Brian knew it had little to do with him personally and everything to do with the fact that he was a man who had obviously wanted her and the fact that she sure as hell wasn’t frigid. Damn, even that thought was laughable. Jaynie was about as frigid as the beach was in August.
But one night of hot sweaty sex wasn’t going to undo the damage that bastard had done to her.
Still, Brian wasn’t so certain he was the man for this particular job. He couldn’t stand close to her without wanting to grab her. He had an ugly feeling that this obsession of his was growing into something serious, something he hadn’t planned on and something he wasn’t ready for. And even if he had been ready for it, Jaynie had no interest in him. She’d made that damn clear.
A woman couldn’t behave as she had the past four months, acting so casual and normal, if she had feelings for a man, right? He took a deep breath and braced himself. He couldn’t do this. It would be like throwing a lit match into a barrel of gunpowder. He opened his mouth to say it.
But instead of no, he heard himself saying, “Fine. Whatever, Katie.”
She beamed at him and then glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, and what do you know? The chef is here.”
The door opened and Brian’s stomach seemed to sink. Shit. Slowly,
he turned and saw Jaynie come through, juggling two bags. She gave him a casual smile and then she looked at Katie. “I said I’d do lasagna but you promised me a pitcher of margaritas while I cooked.”
She dropped the bags down on the counter and Brian started to retreat, hoping he could get to his room and get the door locked. But he had to pass the kitchen island to do it and the second he did, Jaynie turned and dropped a mesh bag into his hands. It was full of fat, red tomatoes. “Can you cut these?”
Jaynie turned away and continued unpacking the bags and that was when he noticed what she was wearing. The short skirt wasn’t exactly indecent but it left entirely too much leg bare for his peace of mind. Long, golden, tanned legs. Her hair was floating around her shoulders, inches shorter than he’d ever seen it. “You cut your hair,” he said, his voice rusty.
She glanced over her shoulder at him, a smile flirting with the corners of her lips. “Yeah. I…uh…well, I tried to trim it a little myself and did a crappy job of it.”
The skirt and the shorter hair weren’t the only difference. She had on a pair of strappy sandals, a dusky blue tank top and something white and lacy underneath that played peekaboo at the neckline. The top closely hugged the full curves of her breasts. He edged around the counter under the pretense of washing the tomatoes and, as he did, he stole a look at her face.
She was wearing makeup. Some shimmery stuff on her eyes. Something along her cheekbones that added to the warm, sun-kissed glow of her skin. And her mouth was strawberry pink. He wanted to grab her and lift her up onto the island and kiss that lipstick away. Then strip away her clothes, hold her down, fuck her hard—fuck her until she screamed out his name. Until she stopped treating him so indifferently.
Instead, he focused on the tomatoes, washing each one carefully before he unearthed the rarely used chopping board and a serrated knife. Both he and Katie could cook. It had been something his mother had seen to, but neither of them cared to mess with it much.
He diced the tomatoes, trying to keep his focus on that task, but it was damn hard. He kept smelling the soft, summery scent of her skin. She brushed against him when she got out a pan for the sauce. She leaned over the island to drop some onions by the chopping block and he found himself staring at the full, ripe swells of her breasts framed by white lace.
“Right, Brian?”
He jerked his eyes away from her breasts and found his sister standing next to him, chattering on obliviously. “Huh?”
She poked him in the ribs on her way to the sink. “You need a date for Dean’s wedding, right? I mean, we all want to go and pay our respects to the happy couple.” Her voice took on a hard edge with that last part and Brian had to smother a grin.
He forced himself to give Jaynie a nonchalant smile. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
Jaynie flicked him a glance and then focused her attention on Kate. Kate was busy washing a head of lettuce and paying a lot more attention to the task than it really needed. She gave Jaynie a bright, sunny smile. “You know what would be funny? If he got drunk at the wedding and puked all over Kit.”
But Jaynie didn’t take the bait. “I don’t need a date for the wedding, Kate. We already talked about that.”
Katie shrugged. It was a habitual gesture for her, one that said, yeah, we talked but I decided this would be better. She’d been doing it since childhood and Brian knew she’d be doing it until the day she died. Knowing that Jaynie would likely butt heads with Kate over it, Brian interrupted. He didn’t know exactly why. If Jaynie argued with Kate and convinced Kate she didn’t need a date, he was off the hook. He wouldn’t have to spend several hours sitting next to Jaynie, standing next to her, dancing with her…
“I’m going anyway, J. We might as well go together. It will get Katie off our backs,” he said. He didn’t look up as he spoke, focusing instead on the tomatoes, but he could feel her gaze on him, knew she was watching him. He forced himself to glance up at her—one quick glance. He could do that without showing that she had him tied up in knots on the inside.
But that one quick glance into her hazel-green eyes had him remembering how she had looked four months ago, those eyes fogged with desire, her hair tangled around his hands and her mouth swollen from his. It had him remembering how she had cuddled into his body after they’d made love, and the soft, sexy little sounds she’d made while she slept. It had him remembering the night she’d come racing to the house, tears glittering in her eyes.
His voice was tight, rusty when he finally spoke. “You don’t really want to go to that asshole’s wedding alone, do you, Jaynie?”
She stared at him for a minute, silent and somber. Finally, she gave a jerky little nod. “Okay. Yeah. Whatever.” She looked like she wanted to say something else, but instead, she moved to the stove and started working on dinner.
If Katie noticed the strained silence in the kitchen, she made no mention of it. She chattered on about the new guy she was seeing, some rich investor who was putting up condos on the stretch of beach between Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. She mentioned that he’d invited all of them to spend a weekend out on an island he owned a little farther south. She kept up an unending string of chatter while they all worked on dinner and Jaynie couldn’t have been more thankful.
It gave her some time to think.
Brian was right. Katie was right. She didn’t want to go to Dean’s wedding alone. Showing up with Brian was actually the perfect solution. She didn’t know if he would exactly hang on to her every word the way Katie had talked about earlier, but he was a nice guy and from what Jaynie had seen, he was very attentive to his dates. Just as he’d been that night—Whoa, time-out.
That wasn’t a date. They’d had sex. A mind-boggling, breath-stealing, heart-pounding night of sex, but it hadn’t been a date. Jaynie hadn’t been looking for any kind of romance that night and Brian knew that.
Still, the man did take his time, didn’t he?
Some grease from the frying pan splattered her hand when she stirred the browning sausage. Hissing under her breath, she turned away from the stove and went to the sink, shoving it under the flow of cold water.
When Brian spoke right in her ear, she jumped. “You okay?” he murmured, reaching around her and catching her wrist, bringing it out of the water so he could inspect the small red blotch forming on the sensitive skin between her thumb and forefinger.
Nonchalantly, she tried to draw her hand away but he kept his fingers manacled firmly around her wrist. “I’m fine,” she said. Man, was that her voice? All throaty and raspy. She winced and dipped her head, hoped he couldn’t see the sudden rush of blood to her cheeks. “Just daydreaming instead of paying attention.”
Brian made a noncommittal hmmm under his breath and then he pushed her hand back under the water. He shifted away and she breathed a sigh of relief when his body was no longer pressed against hers. Her system was abuzz from that light contact, though, and Jaynie was left wondering, What the hell is this? There had been nothing remotely seductive or sensual about that touch, but suddenly she was remembering a night four months ago when he had held her wrists, one in each hand, as he’d pressed her into his mattress and pushed inside her.
Jaynie’s breath squeezed out of her in a wheeze. Her lashes drooped low. Her heartbeat kicked up a few notches and she was acutely aware of the way the air in the room suddenly seemed to caress her bared skin. She was aware of the way the lace on her bra cupped her breasts and that her nipples were suddenly hard, stiff little points that pressed into her bra.
Shit. Shitshitshit. Jaynie jerked her hand out of the water and turned the faucet off. She needed to get out of the kitchen for a minute. Get outside and clear her head. Or maybe run up to her apartment and jump into the shower for a minute, the cold water going full blast.
What the hell is wrong with me? she thought. She grabbed a towel from beside the sink and dried her hands, ignoring the sharp little pain when she rubbed the burn too roughly. She was going outside for a minute. She couldn�
�t disappear long enough for that cold shower, at least not yet. But if she could clear her head, she could finish this up and while the lasagna was baking, she could grab that shower.
But she never made it even two steps from the sink. Brian came striding back into the room and when she would have ducked around him, he caught her wrist and brought it up, inspecting the small red mark. “It’s no big deal, Brian. I burn myself worse all the time.”
He just grunted under his breath and tightened his grasp when she tried to pull away. She finally relented and held still, watching as he unscrewed a small tube and used a cotton swab to dab some of the ointment on it. Immediately, the slight pain receded but he didn’t let go right away. His thumb stroked over the inside of her wrist as he murmured, “You need to be more careful.”
Then slowly, he let go. The second her hand was free, she took off, disappearing outside. The screen door slammed shut with a bang as she walked away from the door, out of view of the kitchen and then she turned and pressed her back to the rough brick wall.
“Damn.”
The screen door slammed shut behind Jaynie and Brian watched her until she disappeared from sight, a faint smile curling his lips. She wasn’t oblivious. He hadn’t meant to touch her. He’d seen her flinch and heard the little hiss of pain when the grease splattered on her hand and he honestly had just meant to make sure she hadn’t been burned badly.
But then he’d touched her, moving up behind and catching her wrist, his front cuddled up against her back. She’d reacted. He’d felt that reaction clear down to the soles of his feet and for a moment, he’d been too dumbfounded to think.
One of the Guys Page 5