by Kally Ash
Natasha hung up and stared at John. His mouth was curled up in a small smile. “So, Big Sur. Have you been before?”
“Yeah, my parents vacation up there sometimes.”
“Is it nice?”
“Gorgeous. Private.”
His eyes got heavy. “I can’t wait.”
Her body flushed with heat. Maybe going away for a dirty weekend was just what she needed. But then…
She looked away. Too close. She was getting too close, too attached to the idea of her and John. “Ah, I should go,” she said, standing up.
“Oh, I thought we were getting somewhere with the orphanage plans.”
“I’m sorry,” she replied softly. Sorry she couldn’t handle the intimacy. Even when they’d fucked, they hadn’t been intimate. This, what they’d been doing—talking, him breaking down her walls, her spilling her darkest secrets, that was far more intimate than all the horizontal action they’d had. “I have to go.”
“I wish you didn’t,” he replied in a low voice. “I’m enjoying our time together, Natasha.”
She shook her head, wishing he didn’t say her name in that low seductive way. “I’m sorry.”
It was too much for her to process, so she was doing what she normally did when it came to relationships that jumped over the invisible casual-to-serious line: she ran.
Putting her shoes back on, she grabbed her handbag and slung it over her shoulder. “Thank you. For everything.”
John shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweats and shrugged. “I couldn’t let you go home in your condition.”
Glancing down at what she was wearing, she grimaced. “I’ll have these cleaned and returned to you.”
“Next Saturday?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, we should travel up together.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She glanced at the door, wondering how long it would take her to get over there. Five seconds? Two?
“Natasha? Have I said something wrong? Have I done something wrong?”
“No, John.” She clutched at her strap. “Look, I have to go.” She hated that crushed look on his face. She hated how much it hurt her more to make him feel that way. “I’m sorry.”
She walked from the hotel room. When the door was shut behind her, she disappeared around the corner near the elevator bank and just stood there for a moment. When she heard a door slam farther down the hall, she got moving, jabbing at the elevator button. The car arrived quickly and she stepped inside, slumping against the side of it, then quickly straightening when it arrived in the lobby. She got a lot of strange looks dressed in sweats and Louboutins, but she kicked up her chin and walked out of there like she owned the damn place.
“Taxi, ma’am?” someone asked her. She turned her head to see she was standing in front of the valet’s desk. The guy’s eyes drifted down her body but she kept her haughty expression in check.
“Please,” she replied.
The guy stepped forward and raised his hand, indicating to one of the waiting cars to come around. He even opened the door for her, which was a bonus. Folding herself into the rear seat, she gave the driver her address and then tried to ignore the guilt crawling up her throat.
When she arrived home, she kicked off her heels but stayed in John’s clothes. They smelled like him...
Not that she would’ve admitted that she liked how he smelled.
Wandering into the kitchen, she got herself some water, then parked it in front of the TV. She felt wrung out, like her emotional quota had been filled up two times over already; she wasn’t used to being used to capacity like that. John was the one responsible for that though—him and his caring nature and his fucking hot body.
Her laptop was on the coffee table and she flipped the thing open, bringing up one of the documents she didn’t have to read for work because she was on vacation. But even then, her work couldn’t distract her. Shutting down the PDF she was (not) reading, she opened up a search engine and started looking up options for a joint bachelor and bachelorette party. What the hell were they going to do? And PS, how little time did they have to plan it now that the wedding date was potentially only eight weeks away?
When she ran out of ideas on the hucks night, she checked out the venue Vee was interested in. Damn, it was nice. Hemmed by both ocean and woods, there was everything anyone could possibly want. It would be a beautiful wedding venue.
Fatigue suddenly washed over her and she closed the lid of her laptop, then stretched out on her white leather couch. Her eyes shut and she drifted off to sleep with the scent of John’s cologne tangling in her nose.
Nineteen
It had been almost a week since John’s drink at the bar with Natasha. Almost a week since they’d gone at each other like rabbits and almost a week since she spoke more than two words to him. He was really fucking confused. He thought they were moving forward from that insta-hate that started it all, but now he wasn’t so sure.
Picking up his phone, he dialed her number by heart because—like a complete sap—he’d dialed it about ten times a day but never followed through with the connection. This time he did though.
“Yeah?” Natasha asked, clearly distracted.
“Natasha? It’s me. It’s John.” Christ, he rolled his eyes at himself with that one.
“John,” she replied stiffly. “How are you?”
“Fine. You?”
“Fine.”
Wow. Three monosyllabic words that held so little meaning they may as well have been adverbs. All of them.
“I missed you at this week’s orphanage meeting.”
She was silent for a beat. “I thought we covered a lot of ground on Saturday. I didn’t think you’d need me there.”
The terrible truth was she was quickly becoming his new addiction.
“It would’ve been nice to see you.”
Another one of those loaded silences and he wanted to kick his own ass for saying out loud what he was thinking.
“I have to go.”
“Wait! Natasha?”
“Yeah?” she finally said with a weary sigh.
“Are we still on for tomorrow? We’re still going to Ventana together, right?”
“John, what are we doing here?”
He frowned and eased back in his desk chair. “I don’t... I don’t understand. We’re talking on the phone?”
“I mean, what are we doing?”
“Oh.” He glanced around, looking for advice. Nope, his stapler was staying quiet, as was his keyboard and his half-drank cup of coffee.
“I like talking to you.”
“Why?” she shot back immediately.
“I don’t know. I just do.”
He could hear her steady breathing on the end of the line.
“What do you want from me?” she asked in a whisper.
He frowned, sitting forward in his chair. What did he want from her? Anything he could get. “I thought we could start with friendship.”
“Friendship,” she murmured, like the very concept was foreign to her. Sighing heavily, she muttered, “I’m going to regret this, but I’ll pick you up at seven.” She hung up with a decisive click. Reaching across his desk, he put the phone back into the cradle and stared at it when it started ringing.
“John, how are you doing? Settling in?” the manager of the LA branch of RDM asked.
“Great, thanks, Jerry. I’m actually heading to Big Sur tomorrow for the weekend.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s the occasion?”
“My best friend is getting married and I need to check out the venue for him while he’s away.”
“Nice.” He rapped his knuckles against his desk. “Well, let me know if you need anything, okay? My door is always open.”
“I appreciate it, sir,” he replied.
He picked up his mechanical pencil to start sketching out some details on the orphanage design when his desk phone rang again.
“John Baxter,” he answered.
“Joh
n,” Robert said. “How are you? How’s LA treating you?”
He settled back in his chair. “It’s noisy,” he replied. “But the women here are...”
Robert chuckled. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Look, just a quick check-in call. The Mother Superior called me a couple of days ago to tell me how impressed she is with your dedication and drive toward the project. Well done.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m finding myself really enjoying this project.”
“Good. Good. So, you’re on schedule to come back in about three weeks? I need you back here. The office hasn’t been the same.”
Go back? To San Diego? The thought of leaving Natasha stung a little too much, but he knew he was stupid. They weren’t a couple. They were barely friends. All they’d done was fight and fuck, but those two things had been spectacular.
“Right, sir. Three weeks,” he repeated. “I’ll be ready to start on something new as soon as I get back.”
“Good man. Okay, I’ll check in again next week, otherwise let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. Thank you, sir.”
Twenty
Natasha had woken up at five to go to the gym before showering and getting ready to pick up John. The real reason she’d woken so early, and then proceeded to run herself into the ground on the treadmill, was that she’d been fighting with her own feelings, her own common sense about the reason she enjoyed John’s company so much while simultaneously despising him.
He’d managed to get under her skin in such a short amount of time. On top of that, she was opening up to him and that alone scared her more than she thought it would. Her father had taught her to keep her female emotions in check her whole life and nothing said needy like estrogen overflows and the need to talk it out.
But that was the reason she needed to place a little more distance between them. If she wanted to reach her career goals (read: her dad’s career goals), then she didn’t have time for this crap.
She finished packing the last few things into a bag. In the text Vee had sent her, she told her that they were staying overnight at the resort. After shoving her phone charger into the bag, she lifted it over her shoulder, grabbed her keys from beside her front door, and shut up her apartment. Down in the elevator, she stepped into the cool underground parking garage, hitting the button on her key fob. Her Lexus’s driving lights flared in greeting and she popped the trunk.
She made it to John’s hotel about twenty minutes later, the early morning traffic light. When she pulled into the circular driveway, the buttery gold exterior lights spilled out over the freshly cleaned pavement. The valet approached her car but stopped when she wound down her window.
“I’m just here to pick someone up,” she told the guy, who bobbed his head and retreated back to his post. She’d just picked up her phone to send John a text when her passenger door opened. The smell of his cologne and shampoo rolled into the interior.
Damn, he smelled good.
“Hey,” he said softly.
She opened the trunk from him. “Hi. You can put your bag in the back with mine.”
He disappeared and she sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly.
“How are you?” he asked, sliding into the passenger seat and settling back into the leather. “Nice car, by the way.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, shifting the car into gear and following the driveway around the fountain that sat in the middle of the drive. Concentrating on what she was doing, she headed out toward Ventura on the 101-North.
“How’s your week been?”
She glanced at him and smiled briefly. “I only worked three days this week.”
“Oh, that’s right. You had your vacation.”
He air quoted and she felt her mouth flex into another smile. “I did.”
“Did the time off manage to clear your head at all?”
Shrugging, she said, “No, not really.”
“What about your boss?”
She swallowed. “Oh, I’ve got your clothes in the back.”
John had a look into the rear seats. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied stiffly, focusing her attention on the road.
“Is the whole drive going to be like this?” he asked.
Natasha tightened her hands around the wheel, the leather creaking. “Like what?” she replied, pretending to get really interested in the road signs. Too bad they’d just gotten onto the freeway and there was nowhere else to go but straight.
“Like you’re counting down the seconds before you can get out of this car, before this weekend is over.”
108,000.
Not that she was counting.
Nope.
Not her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied with a shrug, turning up the stereo.
He turned it straight back down again. “Why have you been avoiding me? The meeting? The phone calls? Is it because of something I said?”
No, just something you do, she replied in her head. She knew she wasn’t handling this well, and it was clear he wasn’t going to let it drop either.
“Is it because I said I like talking to you?”
She shut her eyes briefly before the need to focus on the road became all too important. “Yes.”
In her periphery, she saw John smirk.
“Don’t be an asshole about it,” she snapped.
He held his hands up in front of him, but his smile didn’t budge.
“Such an asshole,” she muttered under her breath.
“So, you like talking to me too?”
“Do you want a trophy?” she snarled.
“You admitting it will be prize enough.”
Reaching over, she whacked him on the arm, but he grabbed her hand as she drew away. “I like talking to you, Natasha. I like doing lots of things with you.”
She gasped when she felt his lips on her fingertips, his mouth touching the pads of her fingers with a feather touch. Wrenching her head to the side, she watched him for as long as she dared before she was forced to look back at the road.
He settled her hand on his knee, smoothing her fingers down gently. She realized he was giving her a chance to pull back. “I’m no good at this.”
“What?” He stroked her fingers again.
“Feelings.”
He chuckled. “I’ve figured that out already. But I don’t think you should deny the way you’re feeling, especially if you’re feeling me.”
“Okay,” she replied, her breath shaky. Attraction was never the problem with them; it was everything else. “I’ll try to idle back on the bitch.”
“Good. Now that that’s settled, we now have five weeks before the wedding, so we need to talk about the hucks party.”
Natasha suddenly felt pounds lighter and she laughed. “You’re using that term? Hucks?”
He grinned at her. “I think it works, don’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
As they sped along the San Diego freeway, they talked about all the possibilities, the options they had for the joint party.
The hours melted away until they were pulling up at the Ventana, Big Sur. She peered out of the windshield, wondering how in the hell something so unspoiled was still here. Redwood trees soared above them on all sides, the smell of the ocean carrying on the breeze through their open windows. Parking her car in a designated spot, they just sat there for a moment, absorbing it.
“Wow,” John said.
“Yeah,” she agreed because it was stunning. Popping open her door, she looked up at the building in front of them, knowing that this was the perfect venue for Vee and Beau.
“Ms. Webster?” someone called, and Natasha turned on instinct.
“Ah…”
The woman who was coming toward her was blonde and bubbly. She powered on her heels, positively steamrolling in her direction. She held out her hand to her. “Miss Webster, I’m Natalie North, one of the event planners here at Ventana. It’s so nice t
o meet you.” Her head jerked around when the sound of the other car door shutting caught her attention. “And you must be Miss Webster’s fiancé, Mr. Jenkins. It is a real pleasure to meet you…”
“Actually,” Natasha tried to interject, but Natalie North was not having any of it.
“If you could both please follow me. The valet will get your bags for you.”
Twenty-One
John laughed at the confused expression on Natasha’s normally unreadable face. He was learning that she didn’t wear her emotions on her sleeve, but given the line of work she was in, he didn’t figure it was a good attribute to have. Also, she’d be a boss at poker.
“Come right this way, please,” the blonde trilled in their direction. She was armed with a pantsuit, an iPad, and looked like she always got what she wanted.
“Come on, Natasha, let’s do this,” he said, taking her by the hand. She tried to jerk out of his hold, but he stopped her with a look. “We’re engaged, remember?”
And yeah, he was smiling smugly, but this charade was just what he needed. Entwining their fingers, he led her up the path to where their guide was holding a timber and glass door open for them.
“Now, may I call you Evangeline and Beau? Great! Evangeline and Beau, sit back and prepare to be blown away…”
For the next thirty minutes, John quietly absorbed all the chatter, the information. The venue was beautiful. Every window revealed the redwoods, every fireplace they walked past was roaring with a fire. They were shown the different places available for the ceremonies, but John knew right away that the Redwood Cathedral was the right place.
With two dozen low benches that faced a spectacular specimen of a giant redwood, John was amazed. Awed. Felt utterly insignificant.
“The Redwood Cathedral can comfortably accommodate two hundred guests. We can decorate the benches in whichever way you see fit, and many couples like to have a simple white silk runner down the aisle. Of course, we can provide you with anything you need…”
Natalie continued talking, leading them off to another venue, showing them the accommodations, talking about the rates. Natasha remained quiet, but he was bolstered by the fact that she was still holding his hand, her grip tightening as more and more information was dropped on them ever so graciously by their guide.