“I get that,” I murmured. “It’s almost like the ballet. If the people in the audience were yelling and screaming for the ballerinas to get to one side of the stage or another, I guess.” I cracked up at my own lame joke.
Gideon chuckled, too. “My sister Gabby is a sculptor. You’ll meet her tonight. She says that football is more like performance art, because it draws in the spectators, too, and involves them in the beauty.” He grinned crookedly. “In the end, we’re probably all wrong. It’s a game, man. A game that makes a lot of people a hell of a lot of money.”
I laughed along with him. “True.”
“And on that note, let’s put some of that money to good use and enjoy some champagne.” Gideon released my hand, leaning forward to open a small fridge and withdraw a silver bucket with a bottle sticking up out of it. “We have a long drive. We might as well enjoy ourselves.”
I watched in silence as Gideon carefully popped the top, his fingers expert on the cork and bottle. He retrieved two flutes from a tiny cabinet and poured us each a glass.
“I don’t want to drink too much,” I warned him as I accepted my flute of the golden, bubbly liquid. “I won’t be tipsy when I meet your family.”
“A couple of glasses of champagne won’t make you drunk,” Gideon promised. One of his eyebrows quirked upwards. “Or will it? Isn’t there a song about champagne making a woman’s clothes fall off?”
“That’s tequila,” I corrected. “And no. No amount of alcohol is going to cause me to get naked in the back of this limo.” No matter how tempted I might be to strip that very excellent suit from your hot body and remind myself how hard your abs are . . .
“Ah, well, a guy can hope.” Gideon lifted his glass. “I think this occasion calls for a toast. To . . . friends.” He seemed as if he wanted to say more, but in the end, he simply tapped his flute against mine.
“Friends,” I echoed. “We’ve known each other for almost an entire year now, Gideon. In my book, that means you qualify for old friend status.”
“Even though we’ve only seen each other four times?” He sounded amused as he sipped his champagne.
“Absolutely.” I nodded, testing my own bubbles. “Because each time we’ve been together has been . . . monumental. Important. Special.”
Gideon considered. “I won’t argue with that. Okay, then, old friends it is.”
We both settled back into our seats. I wished I felt confident enough to hold Gideon’s hand again, but it was one of those things that had to happen naturally, almost casually, I decided. How awkward would it be if I reached for him and he didn’t want to hold my hand?
And when had I devolved back to middle school? This was ridiculous. We were friends, and I was doing him a favor by going as his date to a big family shin-dig. I needed to cool it with the touching and the not-so-subtle undertones of the evening.
“So,” I began brightly, eager to talk about anything that would keep my mind off touching Gideon. “Tell me about your family. I mean, aside from all the football talk . . . who will be there tonight? Who will I be meeting?”
Gideon cocked his head, thinking. “Well, my parents, of course. They’re cool, and they’ll like you right away. I don’t have any doubt. And then there’s my sister, Gabby. She’ll like you, too.”
“How can you be so sure?” I wondered. “Maybe they’ll hate me. What if they think I look like I don’t belong?”
Gideon shook his head. “Not a chance. My parents and my sister aren’t that way at all. Neither are my grandparents—and you’ll meet both sets tonight. Gammy and Gramps are the ones celebrating their anniversary. Nana and Granddad are my father’s folks, but they’ll be at the party, too.”
“Your family’s pretty tight-knit, isn’t it?” When I’d been a kid, moving from place to place, I’d gone through a phase where I was drawn to big families. I’d made friends with kids in my class who moaned about their siblings, their grandparents, their cousins . . . their parents with intact and happy marriages. Eventually, I’d outgrown that tendency, but even now, listening to Gideon talk about his relatives, I felt the same wistful pull.
“They have their arguments and disagreements, sure, but for the most part, everyone gets along.” Gideon set down his champagne and stretched his legs out in front of him, at least as far as the limo’s space would allow. “Sarah, you know, I didn’t think that this might be hard on you because of your own, ah, situation.” He looked decidedly uncomfortable, with just a smidge of guilt tossed in. While I always enjoyed having Gideon at a disadvantage, this time I wasn’t going to exploit it.
“Hey. Don’t.” I gave his foot a little kick with my silver heels. “If you’re thinking that being around your comparatively healthy and sane relatives tonight is going to make me feel worse because my father’s a jerk and my mother lets him walk all over her, stop right now. That’s bullshit. You have your deal, and I have mine. After all, I don’t feel bad about the fact that I have a sparkling, scintillating personality, and you’re a glowering grouch ninety percent of the time, do I? I don’t apologize for that, and you shouldn’t about this.”
My teasing had the desired effect on Gideon. He frowned at me, his eyes going dark. “Only ninety percent of the time? Damn, I must be slipping. What about the other ten percent? What am I then?”
I dropped the pretense and answered him honestly. “The other ten percent of the time, you let people see the real you, the Gideon Maynard who’s funny and sweet and does kind things for his friends. I think that’s probably the Peaceful Meadows Gideon—the person you are when you’re alone on your pretty farm, perfectly content and happy.”
A faint flush spread over his cheeks. “I think you probably give me too much credit, princess. To be fair, I’m not that great a person, and I might be halfway decent only about two percent of my waking hours.”
“Why do you do that?” I tilted my head, studying him.
“Do what?” Gideon spread out his hands in front of him, palms up. “Tell the truth about myself? Because it’s important to be honest and to know myself. I’m well aware that most people who work with me or only see me through the press probably think I’m an ungrateful, miserable bastard who happens to have some talent on the field. That’s okay. They’re probably right.”
“Actually, that wasn’t what I was asking.” I used the toes of one foot to ease off a single silvery shoe before I bent my leg and tucked my bare foot under me, getting comfortable on the soft leather seat. “Of course, the question you answered was a good one, too, but I’ve gotten used to you putting yourself down. I ignore it, because we both know exactly what it is—a defense mechanism.”
Gideon rolled his eyes. “It’s not, but I’m not going to argue the point with you right now. What exactly were you asking me, if not that?”
I set down my champagne flute next to his and laid my cheek against the back of the car seat. “Why do you call me princess? I haven’t noticed you using nicknames for anyone else—or maybe you do, but I just haven’t been with you around others enough to realize it. You don’t strike me as the type of guy who makes up insulting names for his buddies, like some men do. Danny Taylor, for instance, calls Leo cubby all the time. It’s a derogatory play on the name Lion, which was what everyone called Leo back in high school. But that doesn’t seem like your style.”
“It’s not,” Gideon admitted. “My family’s never been big on nicknames. The only reason my sister is Gabby is because I had trouble saying her full name—Gabriella—when she was born.” He smirked. “And as it happens, the name fits her, too. She talks more than any girl I’ve ever known. Can’t get her to shut up.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “So aside from your sister, I’m the only person you’ve nicknamed? Should I be flattered or insulted? And what does it mean that you think of me as a princess?”
Gideon shifted in his seat, and I’d observed him often enough now that I picked up on his sense of discomfort. “It doesn’t mean anything, really. It’s just . . .�
� He heaved a long sigh. “All right, since I know you’ll pester me until I come clean. Almost no one outside my family knows this about me, but I’m . . . “ He seemed to be struggling with something, and I began to worry that I’d accidentally hit on something genuinely sensitive. “Well, I guess you’d have to say I’m a history nerd.”
“Wait, what?” My forehead drew together as I tried to make sense of what he was saying. “A history nerd? You mean, in the sense that you know a lot about—history? And you’re embarrassed about this?” I wagged my head. “Dude, you need to get out more. Being smart about anything is sexy, but knowing shit about history is really super sexy. Like Indiana Jones, or Charles Xavier or Friedrich Bhaer in Little Women. You should totally own that.” I gave a happy little sigh, just thinking about all of those hot fictional professors.
“You’re seriously turned on by intellectuals?” Gideon’s tone was filled with skepticism. “That’s what makes you hot and bothered?”
“You forget that I’m the woman who doesn’t date athletes,” I reminded him. “I’ve spent years honing my preference for the guy in the sweater vest and horn-rimmed glasses.”
“Sweater vests.” Gideon shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Not one bit,” I replied cheerfully. “But now I want to know two things: just how deep does this history nerdism go, and what does it have to do with calling me princess? Do I remind you of some majestic royal ruler from an ancient kingdom?”
He gave a short bark of laughter. “No, not exactly. It’s a lot simpler than that. See, when I was in middle school, I went through a phase where I was obsessed with onomatology and etymology.”
When I treated him to a blank stare, Gideon added, “It’s the study of name formation and naming practices, and then the study of name meanings. I memorized lists of names and of what they meant. It was kind of my party trick for a couple of years.” He grinned sheepishly and shrugged, one eyebrow going up. “Hey, what can I say? A teenage boy needs an ice breaker, and that was mine. I’d ask a girl’s name and then explain to her what it meant. It was my signature move.”
I couldn’t hold back my laughter any longer—but I noticed that Gideon was chuckling along with me. I wasn’t amused at his expense; I was enjoying the idea of a shy, thirteen-year-old Gideon Maynard, who was probably a total stud even then, thinking he needed a way to start up a conversation with a girl.
“I wish I’d known you then.” I reached across to squeeze his knee, daring to let my hand linger there on his muscled thigh. “I bet it was sweet, the way you’d tell a girl the history of her name, even while she was probably just wondering when is this hottie going to stop talking and kiss me?”
Gideon harrumphed, which only made me giggle more. “They weren’t wondering that, I promise. It turned out that my failsafe icebreaker only worked about fifty percent of the time.”
“Mmmmmhmmmm.” Still smiling broadly, I slid a bit closer to him. “So tell me, Professor Maynard . . .” I made my voice soft and breathy, like a stereotypical undergrad coed. “What does my name mean?”
Gideon stared into my eyes, and the intensity of his expression chased all the humor away, replacing it with an air that was heavy with expectation and anticipation. Without thinking about it, I licked my lips, and Gideon’s gaze followed the path of my tongue as it darted out. My heart began to pound so loudly that I was sure he could hear it. Every erogenous zone in my body was on high alert, longing for his touch and attention.
He swallowed, his throat working as I watched, and when he spoke, his voice was low and rough. “Your name, Sarah . . . it means princess, of course. It’s Hebrew in origin.”
“And that’s why you call me princess so often? Because you knew the meaning of the word when we first met?” I was so close to him now that my breath was sweeping over his cheek.
“Yeah.” He nodded, a bare movement of his head. “That, and . . . when we were little, my mom used to tell Gabby and me stories at bedtime. In reality, it was just one story, an adventure that she made up as she went along. Every night, she left us on a cliffhanger, which at the time I thought was cool, but looking back, I’m pretty sure it was to make sure we didn’t argue when my parents said it was time for bed.”
“Smart,” I murmured.
“Very,” Gideon agreed. “Anyway, in this ongoing tale, the hero was a girl. She was a princess—Mom never named her, just called her the Princess—but she was strong and brave and daring, and she saved the day every time there was danger or trouble. When I first saw you, my immediate thought was that you were like the Princess. You looked like nothing in the world would frighten you. And then when I found out your name, I knew that my initial impression had been right on target.”
I was trembling, shaking with emotion born of Gideon’s admission and of the intensity of my need for him to kiss me. We were so close that all it would take for his mouth to meet mine would be the slightest move forward—
The door next to us swung open, and the noise of New York City spilled over us, breaking the spell as the driver called out, “Here we are, Mr. Maynard. Welcome back to New York.”
Neither of us had noticed that the car had come to a stop. I sat back in my seat, my foot blindly groping for the shoe I’d taken off earlier. Gideon let out a long, shaky breath. I wondered if he was as rattled as I was, and when I saw him discreetly adjust his pants under the guise of reaching down to help me with my shoe, I hid a smile. Yeah, he’d felt it, too.
Whatever this was between us—this odd attraction that we were both fighting, even as we were drawn together time and again, even as we seemed to crave each other’s company—examining it would have to wait. Gideon was climbing out of the backseat and then reaching back to offer me his hand, treating me to one of his rare genuine smiles as I stepped onto a city sidewalk in front of a hotel lit with what seemed like a million tiny white lights.
As it always did, the atmosphere of New York wound its magic around my soul. I was about to go into an exclusive society party thrown by one of the city’s wealthiest, best-known families, on the arm of their son. Yet, as Gideon drew my hand into his, tucking it in the crook of his elbow in a move I’d bet he’d learned at some fancy class for manners, it wasn’t the anticipation of meeting the Maynard clan that was making my insides jelly.
What was causing my quiet, internal freak-out was the memory of the way Gideon had looked at me moments ago . . . how close we’d come to giving in to temptation . . . and worst of all, how much I wished we had.
10
Gideon
“Where did you find her?”
I turned around from the bar that had been discreetly tucked into a corner of the ballroom, to face my sister, who was looking at me with curiosity.
“Hello, fog face. Did you want something from the bar?” I lifted both of my hands, each of which was holding a glass of wine. “Sorry, I’ve got to take these drinks back to my table now. Catch you later on.”
“Wait one minute, loser.” Gabby narrowed her eyes and tapped the toe of her shiny black high-heeled shoe. “You’ve been holding out on all of us. I want to know everything. Now. Where did you meet Sarah? When? How serious it is?”
Before I could even draw in a breath to answer her, Gabby rushed to add, “I like her so much. She’s funny and nice and just—really real, you know? She’s not like one of those phonies who used to hang around you all the time, just hoping you’d notice them. So I’m thinking you didn’t meet her at the country club.”
I cast my eyes upward. “Because I spend so much time at the country club. You know me too well.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, enough of the dodging. I want to know all about it. Give me the dirty details, and also, I’m mad at you for keeping her a secret until now. Why didn’t you tell me about Sarah when you were home this summer?”
“Maybe I didn’t know her then?” I countered.
“That’s bullshit, because I managed to use my superior conversation skills to get Sarah t
o admit you’ve known each other for nearly a year. So you’re busted on that one.” My sister smiled at me sweetly, the no-nonsense gleam in her eye belying the expression. “Give over, loser.”
“If you’re so invested in knowing all the, uh, dirty details as you so charmingly put it, why not ask Sarah? You already pulled some of it out of her, apparently.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, glancing over Gabby’s shoulder to the table where I’d left my date. She was deep in conversation with one of my uncles, their heads together as they chatted. I hoped he wasn’t telling her embarrassing stories about my childhood.
“I did ask her. She said she had two sisters, and so she knew enough not to spill secrets. She said I’d have to ask you about the whole thing . . . and here I am.” Gabby put her hands on her hips, and even though she was half a foot shorter than me, she somehow appeared to be larger than life.
“Fine,” I sighed. “But only because I want to get back to my seat and get through the rest of this evening without you nagging me.” I gestured with my head, leading my sister to an empty nook alongside the card basket, where guests had dropped their anniversary wishes to my grandparents. Most probably contained notes about which charity the giver had donated to in Gammy and Gramps’ honor.
“I’m waiting.” Gabby tilted her head.
“Right. Okay, well, Sarah and I met last winter at Leo Taylor’s engagement party. We got talking, and we ended up having a drink afterward at her hotel. That was that.” I shrugged. “Then we saw each other again at Leo and Quinn’s wedding in May. We caught up a little, but nothing big.” I paused. The next part was trickier to explain without giving my sister an opening to pounce. “When I was in San Francisco for the game in September, we got in touch and had dinner—Sarah had moved there over the summer to take a new job, and I wanted to see how she was doing. She mentioned that she was going to be on the East coast for the holidays, and since Mom was putting the screws to me about bringing a date, I asked Sarah if she’d come tonight. She said yes . . .” I jerked my chin upward to indicate there wasn’t any more to it than simple convenience. “And that’s that. She’s here because she’s a decent person, someone I enjoy talking to . . .” My voice trailed off. “You’re right—she’s real. There’s nothing phony or disingenuous about Sarah. She’s direct, and she doesn’t play games. That’s refreshing in anyone, but in my life, it’s a fairly rare find.” I drilled my sister with a serious glare. “So don’t go messing around and fucking up what’s just a comfortable friendship. You hear me? I’m serious, Gabs.”
Sway (Keeping Score Book 6) Page 18
