Real Men Will

by Dahl, Victoria

  Eric looked down at his mom’s grave, wishing like hell he had someone to help him puzzle it out. It wasn’t just the arguments with his brother that had been slowly tearing him up inside. It was more than that. “I’m not happy doing what I’m doing. I need something else.”

  “You’re not thinking of heading east again, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you can’t have my job,” Jamie growled.

  “I don’t want your job. But…maybe somebody else’s.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  BETH STRETCHED OUT ON the blanket, pointing her toes and raising her hands as far above her head as she could. The sun beat down on her. The breeze danced over her skin. It felt like the last nice day of the year. She knew it wasn’t. There’d be other bright, sunny days, but she felt an urgency to soak up the warmth to see her through the winter.

  “They’ll be back soon,” Cairo said, stretching like a cat on her own blanket. The sandstone beneath them was hard under the thin fabric, but it was nearly as warm as the sun.

  “Do you need me to do anything else?” Beth asked, hoping the answer was no. She didn’t want to move.

  “It’s all ready,” Cairo answered, her own voice drowsy.

  “Good.”

  The climbers had set off well over an hour before, and Beth was glad she hadn’t joined them. She needed this peace right now more than she needed to challenge herself. And she did feel peaceful, despite everything. She felt freer than she had in years. She couldn’t change what had happened to her, but she could be free of it. She was free of it. No matter what Kendall did.

  But nothing was clearer. Because now that she’d been honest with her father, she could see how dishonest she’d been with everyone else. She’d wanted so badly to be everything she’d read about and studied. Everything she’d believed. But she couldn’t be everything. Nobody could. Cairo had her life with two men, and she was happy with that. She didn’t try to fit what other people loved into her life, too. How could there be room for that?

  Beth had been trying to be too many people, all at one time. But how was she going to figure out who the real Beth was?

  The wind lifted a strand of hair and dragged it over her face. She slipped it back behind her ear. Over the past few months, she’d discovered a few true things. She loved helping people at the White Orchid. She loved putting them at ease and guiding them in the right direction. And she loved the family she’d made for herself at the store. But that was the extent of it. The rest…the rest of it she could do without. And frankly, some of it she was starting to hate.

  One more true thing was that she didn’t want to be sexually omnivorous. She just wanted to be comfortable. Which led her to the truest thing of all…Eric Donovan. He’d hurt her, badly. But part of that was her fault. If he hadn’t known anything about her but sex, it was because she hadn’t let him see.

  She sighed and stretched again, wishing she could make things different. If they could just go back and start over. If they could both be honest.

  “Here they come,” Cairo said.

  Beth pushed up to her elbows and raised a hand to her eyes to shade them. Sure enough, Harrison and the others were headed back from the rock face. And Davis was with them.

  She stood up and greeted them all with a hug, including Davis. She even sat next to him during the picnic lunch. But this time when he put his hand on her knee, Beth didn’t feel the least bit tempted.

  But one thing did tempt her.

  “Beth?” Harrison called. “Did you make a decision? You want to try?”

  She looked down at her hands. Did she want to? “I don’t want to go too far, okay?”

  “You got it,” he said with a wink, walking over to pull her to her feet. “Ready?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on. It’ll be amazing.”

  “If you say so.”

  Twenty minutes later, he had her strapped into a safety harness and tied to a rope. Beth put her hand high on the rock and ran it along an edge until she felt a good hold. She put her foot to a crevice and pushed herself up.

  “That’s it,” Harrison said. “Just climb. I’ve got you.”

  “I’m a lot heavier than Cairo, you know.”

  “You’re fine,” he said with a laugh. “Use your legs. Keep going.”

  Beth grabbed for a higher hold and fit her other foot onto a narrow step. She pushed again and reached up. With Harrison urging her on and offering direction from below, she was up to the first flat ledge far quicker than she’d expected. As a matter of fact… She boosted herself up and looked down. “Yikes.” She hadn’t expected to get this high at all.

  “How high am I?” she called down to Harrison.

  “Thirty-five feet! You want to go higher?”

  Beth looked up. And up. “No!” she yelled back, making him laugh. “But can I stay here for a little while?”

  “Absolutely! I’ll tie you off so you’re secure. Take your time!” He tied the end of the safety line to a metal loop in the ground, then gave her a thumbs-up before finding a comfortable rock to sit on.

  Beth let her feet dangle over the ledge. She breathed in deeply and closed her eyes, letting the quiet wash over her. She was alone up here, above the world. Well, a little above the world. There was plenty of rock still stretching up above her.

  The sun felt even stronger here, and it seeped inside her, relaxing everything. Somebody in the group laughed, the sound bouncing between the cliffs. And when Beth opened her eyes again, the red rocks were deeper, the sky a brighter shade of blue. All the colors were more…honest.

  In that moment, higher than she’d ever been, all alone on that narrow ledge, Beth knew exactly what she wanted to do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “WELL?” TESSA ASKED before she even made it all the way into Eric’s office. “What happened?”

  Jamie followed hot on her heels. “Yeah. What happened?”

  Eric raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You guys can’t give me one second to get settled in?”

  Tessa dropped into a chair. “Nope.”

  Jamie followed her lead. “Come on, man. Tell us what he said.”

  Eric’s monitor finally blazed to life, and he tried his best not to be distracted by it. It was Wednesday. He’d checked for Beth’s column first thing this morning, but it hadn’t been up yet. He shouldn’t look. God only knew what it would be about. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t help him feel better.

  Tessa kicked his desk, making him jump. “Focus, Eric. Jeez.”

  “All right.” He leaned back with a smile. “Wallace has agreed on one condition.”

  Jamie frowned. “What’s that?”

  “He wants Faron in as chef.”

  “I was going to hire her anyway,” Jamie said.

  Eric laughed. “Yeah, I know. But I didn’t tell Wallace that.”

  “Seriously,” Tessa interrupted. “He agreed to everything?”

  “I’m going to apprentice to him for a year. After that, we’ll pay for him to attend a three-month brewing course in Germany that he’s always wanted to take. He’s never been able to be away that long, obviously.”

  Jamie shook his head. “He’s really okay with it? Sharing the tank room with you?”

  “I told him he’ll have the title of brewmaster as long as he wants it, but that I need to be in there, too. We can split some duties and expand others. But I can’t stay behind that desk anymore. This is what I want to do. I don’t need the title. I just need the work.”

  “Awesome,” Tessa breathed.

  “Frankly, I think Wallace is excited to have an indentured servant for the next year. I’ll start interviewing someone for a dedicated sales and marketing position next week. Someone who can take over trade show and distribution responsibilities.”

  Tessa held up a finger. “We’ll start interviewing. I’ve got to get along with this person more than you do.”

  “You got it,” he said with a grin. He couldn’t believ
e this was really happening. He was going to get out of this box of an office and into the tank room. “You’ll call Faron?” he asked Jamie.

  “I’ll make an offer right now.”

  Eric wanted to get started with Wallace today. Hell, yesterday. But he had to get everything in place. He needed to put out the call for a new employee, but first things first….

  As soon as Tessa left and closed the door behind her, Eric clicked on his bookmarked link to The Rail and held his breath. He didn’t know what he thought it would say. Would it be about privacy? Betrayal? Breakups? Or would it just be one of her normal columns, leaving him to wonder if she was talking about a past relationship or a current one? If she’d moved on already and—

  The page finally loaded, and Eric’s breath hissed between his teeth. Sex & Lies, the title read. Would the whole thing be a shot at him?

  He braced himself and started reading, but halfway through he was already reaching for his phone.

  Last week, I got an email from a woman who wanted to know whether she should tell her husband the truth about her past. She’d had nearly twenty sex partners, and she knew he wouldn’t like that, so wouldn’t it be better to lie?

  My initial thought was, “No, of course not! You have nothing to be ashamed of!” But it’s not so simple, is it? Life is complicated. And frankly, I’m not really qualified to answer the question because my entire sex life has been a lie.

  Most of us lie a little. We fudge the numbers. We pretend to like something for our partner, or not to like something that our spouse isn’t into.

  It’s usually about shame. And embarrassment. Sometimes it’s just about privacy. For me, it was all those things and more. So here’s my confession: I am not Sexuality Personified. I do not know everything about sex. I don’t know anything about threesomes. Or domination. Or bisexuality. Or fetishes. That’s why I write this column with three other women, because none of us is sexuality personified on her own.

  Still, I’ve tried to be all things to all people. Because of that, I’ve never been me. The real me is shy, private and not very sexually adventurous. I’ve spent so many years trying to hide that from people that I’ve hidden myself. And who can love someone they can’t really see?

  So my advice to the reader is to tell the truth. But my truth is that I understand why she might not be able to. It’s scary. You might tell him and he might walk away. I might tell him and he might walk away. But if he does—

  A soft knock drew Eric’s head up. When the door opened, he stood so quickly that his chair fell over. “Beth? What are you doing here?”

  She smiled uncertainly, hanging back in the hallway as if she wasn’t sure he’d want to see her.

  “I was just…” He looked from the computer back to her.

  She nodded, still wearing that nervous smile. “Can we talk?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  When her smile fell away, he noticed that her hands were clenched into fists.

  “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

  “Maybe we could go for a walk? Are you busy?”

  Eric walked around and took her hand in answer. He couldn’t talk because she’d curled her fingers into his and she hadn’t pulled away, and that had to be a good sign, right?

  He led her through the back door, trying to ignore the wide-eyed stares of his brother and sister as they left. He kept his pace slow, even though he wanted to race, and Beth held her silence until they reached the blacktop trail that disappeared into a grove of golden aspen.

  He squeezed her hand. “I need to apologize again. For what I said and the way I said it.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. You were angry, and you had a right to be. I’m so sorry about lying. I called Luke this morning to apologize and try to explain.”

  “Did you tell him what happened?”

  She looked at him, but then her eyes fell to her shoes and she pulled her hand away. “Roland Kendall threatened to tell my dad about the store.”

  “Oh.” He tried to summon up some understanding, but he didn’t get it. She was a grown woman.

  “I know it must seem silly to you, that I’d panic about that, but there’s more to it than you know.”

  “Okay.” He waited, his whole body straining with the need to stop and hurry her up. To make her explain so he could forgive her.

  It seemed hours before she spoke. “When I was seventeen, my boyfriend took pictures of me. Nude photos. Some of them were more than that.”

  “Did you know?”

  “Yes. I let him. But what I didn’t know was that he would take them to school and show everyone.”

  “Jesus, Beth. I’m sorry.”

  “It was bad. Terrible. The worst thing that’s ever happened to me. When the principal discovered the pictures, he called my father.”

  Eric thought of that elegant, old-fashioned man and cringed.

  “I’d been Daddy’s little girl my whole life. I loved him more than anything in the world. And when he saw those pictures, he didn’t love me anymore. That was what it felt like. He said I’d shamed him and my mother and our name. He couldn’t even look at me for months.”

  “Oh, Christ. Beth…”

  “School was torture, and when I couldn’t take it a moment longer, I asked my dad if I could homeschool for the last two months of my senior year. Do you know what he said?”

  Eric shook his head.

  “He said, ‘If you didn’t want to be treated like a slut, you shouldn’t have acted like one.’ He made me go to school every single day until I graduated, because that was what I deserved.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” he whispered. “I know you love your dad, but that’s terrible.”

  “It’s why I never told him the truth about working at the White Orchid, but it’s also the reason I work there. I wanted to prove something to myself. That sex wasn’t bad. That I shouldn’t be ashamed. But the truth is every single partner was just a potential betrayal. I could never stop worrying, until I met you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

  “I read your column,” he said, hoping she would keep talking.

  She nodded. “I’m glad. I’ve been lying for a long time. I’m not that experienced. I’m not very good at sex, and I never have been. I can’t relax. I can’t enjoy myself no matter how hard I try, or maybe because of how hard I try.”

  “Um…” He didn’t get it. Was she just an amazing actress? “I thought you were pretty good at it,” he ventured.

  She flashed a quick smile. “It’s different with you, Eric.”

  He stopped so quickly that she had to turn and take a step back. “Is it?”

  “Yes. I’m comfortable with you, and you can’t know what that means. I…” She reached up to smooth his hair off his brow. Eric took her hand and pressed it to his mouth.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I want to be honest. And I want to trust. And I want to do that with you, if you’re willing to try. No lying about anything. No sneaking around. Just…us.”

  “Us.”

  “When you said those things to me, I realized that I was closer to you than I’d been to anyone in years, but you didn’t know anything about me except sex. I—”

  “That’s not true,” he cut in, angry now. “That’s not true at all. I said that because I was pissed. But I know a lot about you. I know that you laugh at terrible jokes in movies. I know you’re generous. I know that when you sleep you tuck your hand under your chin like a little kid and it makes my heart melt. And I know you don’t trust anyone, but you’re going to trust me.”

  She ducked her head. “Am I?”

  “Yes.” He pulled her closer and she slid her arm around his waist. “I’m making changes, too. I’ve been living my life for other people for thirty-seven years. I’m done with that. I don’t want to be perfect anymore. I just want to be me. With you.”

  “With
me?” she whispered. “Does that mean you forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive. I know what it’s like to be scared.”

  She tucked her head against his neck, and the scent of her hair set off an ache in his chest that nearly brought tears to his eyes. It hadn’t just been sex with her for a while now. In fact, it hadn’t ever just been sex. They’d just used that as an excuse to feel this connection.

  “I told my dad,” she whispered. “I told him the truth. And I’m buying the White Orchid.”

  “What?” He pulled back, and when Beth looked up she was smiling.

  “I’m going to make some changes, and it’s going to be exactly what I want it to be, instead of being everything to all people.”

  “Yeah?” He touched her chin, brushing his thumb against her bottom lip.

  “I’m going to make it a little calmer. Fewer novelty items. More lingerie, especially for larger sizes. And the classes will be run by a real therapist, not just me pretending I know what I’m talking about.”

  “More lingerie? I like that.”

  “But just the higher-end stuff. Really pretty things that compliment women’s bodies.”

  “Wait. You’re not getting rid of that black leather number I saw on the wall, are you?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Leather, huh?”

  “I just thought it would look great on you.” He pressed a kiss to her mouth while she was still laughing, but he pulled back when a startling thought hit him. “That whole toy thing in your column?”

  She grinned. “Yeah?”

  “Was that you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Eric felt the blush begin at his throat and work its way up in a slow path of scalding heat. “I see.”

  “It wasn’t my column, but I definitely had fun pretending it was.”

  “You were pretending?”

  She laughed and pressed her mouth to his again. “Not with you,” she said into his kiss. “Never with you. But I have one more confession,” Beth whispered.

  Eric felt more than a little nervous. “What?”