by Tracy Wolff
And then I get it all too well.
Hunter did this.
I sign for the bags—what else am I going to do—then reach for my purse, and my last twenty dollars, to give the guy a tip. But he just smiles and tells me it’s all taken care of. Then he disappears and I am left with a reception area full of bags. And not just any bags. Nordstrom bags.
I like high-end things as much as the next girl, but I make no move to open any of the packages, even after the courier leaves. In fact, for long seconds I don’t do anything at all. Just stare at the bags and wonder what the hell I’m going to do now.
Alice has no such compunction. She’s almost squealing as she grabs the first bag and all but throws it at me. “Open it, open it, open it!”
“Ssssh,” I tell her, glancing furtively around. But it’s too late. We have the attention of all four of the agents who happen to be in the office right now. And since all of them know that I spent yesterday showing Hunter Browning around, I’d say it’s a safe bet that they know who these packages came from, too.
I don’t want to open the damn bags. Not here and maybe not ever. But I have to do something—partly to shut Alice up and partly because there are so many of the damn things that they’re blocking my whole work area.
Damn it. This isn’t what I wanted. Isn’t close to what I wanted.
“If you don’t open one of these bags, then I’m going to,” Alice threatens.
“We’re at work!”
“You’re on your lunch break! You can do what you like.”
“Yeah, until Kerry comes out here and finds this mess.” But I give in, picking up four of the bags and piling them behind my desk. They’re not exactly invisible, but they’re a little less obvious than when they were in the middle of the damn lobby.
“Oooh, this one first!” Alice says, refusing to relinquish her hold on the long, dress-shaped bag. And that’s when it hits me.
Hunter knew I probably didn’t have anything appropriate to wear to the charity thing tonight, so he sent me a dress. Of course.
The ball of tension that appeared in my stomach the second I realized these bags were for me loosens up. It doesn’t disappear completely—this is a lot of bags for a one-night party—but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s not that he thinks he needs to buy my affection with all this stuff. It’s that he doesn’t want me to be embarrassed about having nothing to wear tonight.
It’s the move of a nice guy and I feel the barriers I’d started reconstructing after last night begin to falter. He didn’t need to do this. I could have worn my standard black cocktail dress and been just fine. But, I have to admit, as I undo the knot at the bottom of the bag and reveal the midnight blue silk inside, this is so much better.
“Ooooooh,” Alice breathes as I slowly pull the bag up. “That color will look amazing with your eyes.”
I’m too busy staring at the gorgeous—and obviously couture—gown to answer her. It’s one of the most beautiful and most deceptively sexy dresses I have ever seen. At first glance, it doesn’t seem that risqué, but when I look at where the numerous cutouts are and figure out where they’re going to fall on my body, I can’t help being a little intimidated. I have a decent figure, but my boobs and my ass are just a little too big. I can only imagine what this gown, which is obviously designed for a six-foot model, is going to look like on five foot three, size eight, little ole me. But it’s not like I’ve got a better option.
“A dress like this is meant for going out,” Alice says, excited. “Why send it to you if he’s not planning something special?” The look she gives me tells me I’ve run out of wiggle room.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try…“It’s for a charity gala he has to go to tonight. He asked me as a kind of thank-you for finding him the house.”
Her look tells me I’m still a terrible liar, so I give up. At least for now. If Kerry comes sniffing around, though, all bets are off. It’s bad enough that she lost one and a half percent commission to me. The fact that she also lost her shot at one of the country’s most eligible bachelors is probably one strike more than she can bear.
“What else did he send?” Alice says, gesturing to the next bag.
I glance furtively behind me and am relieved to see that everyone else seems to have gone back to their own business now that we’re seated in front of the partition that separates the receptionist’s desk from the rest of the office.
Knowing she won’t go away until I open every single bag, I give in to Alice’s machinations. The next five bags I open hold shoes. And not just any shoes. Shoes by Christian Louboutin. The same pair in five different sizes.
Alice looks frustrated when she realizes what’s happening, but I’m amused. And also very, very relieved. Because, obviously, I get to send four of the pairs back and keep only the size six and a half that fits me perfectly.
As I put the rest of the boxes back into the bags, I can’t help being impressed with Hunter’s ingenuity. It wasn’t hard to figure out how he knew my size—he did go home with my panties still in his pocket last night. But the shoe thing? Totally genius. And obviously well thought out.
I like that in a man.
“Ooooh, Hunter Browning is a man after my own heart!” Alice suddenly squeals, holding another bag out to me. She’s given up on waiting for me to open the packages and has taken to peeking inside them.
I take it reluctantly—anything that makes her that excited is bound to be bad—then blush like crazy when I realize the bag is filled with Agent Provocateur underwear in midnight blue. Bra, panties, garter belt and stockings.
“A thank-you for the house, hmm?” Alice teases as I shove the small scraps of silk back into the bag. “He must really appreciate the seven and a half million dollars you’re saving him.”
“It’s a lot of money,” I answer primly.
“Okay, last package,” Alice says, holding out a tiny bag that has the bowling ball settling right back into the bottom of my stomach. “And it looks like jewelry.”
It’s too much. Even if it’s just costume jewelry—which I am praying with everything inside me that it is—it’s still too much. Dress, Loubis, expensive lingerie and now—“Fuck.”
“Fuck is right!” Alice whispers. She reaches out as if to touch the earrings, then pauses like she’s terrified she’s going to break them or something.
I get her reluctance, one, because the long, dangling earrings look so delicate, as if the stones are held together by air instead of the most slender platinum strands and two, because I’m pretty goddamn sure these earrings aren’t costume. I hold them up to the light, watch how the dark blue stones gleam in the sun. Nope, definitely not costume.
Hunter Browning just sent me several carats of sapphires and diamonds like some men send flowers.
What the hell am I supposed to think about that?
A dress is one thing. It’s understandable, reasonable—even if it is couture. The shoes are a bit much, but okay. I can even understand them. The underwear is a sexy statement of intention that has my heart beating too fast and my sex growing damp.
But the earrings? The earrings are a blatant statement of intention by a man who has the means to take care of a woman. They’re meant to be an enticement, a promise of what’s to come. And they make me feel dirty.
More, they make me feel like nothing.
Some women would be thrilled with them—Alice being one, considering she hasn’t stopped oohing and aahing over them since I opened the box they came in. My mother being another.
But I’ve been down this road before. I know how it ends. I’ve spent my life watching my mom move from well-off man to well-off man, taking presents and vacations and houses in lieu of love and affection. I’ve seen relationship after relationship of hers go bad, because men who like to pay women off tend to think of them as employees and not wives. Men who try to buy one woman eventually want to return her and try another one on for size. If they wait that long…<
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It’s happened to my mother—a woman far more beautiful than I am—half a dozen times in my life. I swore when I was little more than a child that I would never let that happen to me. That I would never let some rich man try to buy me. And yet here I am, surrounded by thousands of dollars’ worth of presents from Hunter meant to do just that.
The tension in my gut turns to sickness. I’m not angry—how can I be angry about him doing what rich men always do? But just because he thinks that’s how things should go between us doesn’t mean that I do. And he’s not the one in control of this relationship. I am.
I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, willing to believe that maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing here—at least until I speak with him. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let things start off like this. Because I’m not. No way in hell.
Which is why, when the courier comes back twenty minutes later with a grin and a cocky, “I was told I’d have some shoes to return?” I hand him more than four pairs of shoes. I hand him the whole lot and then turn away, letting Alice’s exclamations and pleas for me to reconsider fall on deaf ears.
Chapter 18
Hunter
I hang up the phone from the courier I hired to take Emerson the stuff for tonight and try to figure out what the hell I did wrong. Tanner said to woo her, so I tried to woo her. And obviously fucked the whole thing up every way that I could fuck it up.
I don’t understand. I’ve dated women before—not for a while, sure, but I used to be pretty damn good at the dating thing. And the present-giving thing. So why the hell did she just send it all back? The dress, the shoes, the jewelry, the underwear? Damn it, I was really looking forward to seeing her in those scraps of blue lace. That ass of hers would look amazing in those cheeky panties.
“Dude, you look like someone just stole your dog,” Shawn tells me as he walks up behind me in the locker room.
“I feel more like someone just stole my girl,” I mutter, shoving my phone into the cabinet at the top of my locker. “Come on, let’s go. I feel like hitting something.”
“I think you’ve got your job confused with Tanner’s. You hit anything out there and Coach will pop a blood vessel. He’d lock those magic hands of yours up six days a week if he could.”
“Cuz that would work really well for me.” I shoulder my way through the door with a grunt.
“Right? Then some guy really would steal your girl.” Shawn holds the next door for me. “I talked to her today, by the way. She’s too nice for you. And too smart.”
“I think she’s beginning to figure that out.”
I start jogging toward the fifty-yard line, with Shawn keeping pace beside me. I’m no slouch, but he can leave my ass in the dust if he wants to—he isn’t one of the top three wide receivers in the league for nothing. But he seems content to run along beside me until we get to where the offensive coaching staff is waiting for us.
We’re running a couple of new plays today, designed specifically to shut down the Panthers’ vicious defense. We’re 4-0 this season, but we haven’t been tested yet. Not really. Sunday’s game is going to change all that.
And yet, as the plays get called, I can barely keep my head in the game. I’m running on autopilot as I twist then sidestep to avoid the Raiders’ favorite defense combo. Tanner is blocking to my left, Seb to my right, and they’ve provided me a few seconds to run straight up the center. But I’m so distracted it takes less than that before I’m sacked, or virtually sacked as I’m currently wearing the untouchable red jersey.
I fuck up the play two more times before I can finally get my shit together and then I’m running for the end zone with Tanner clearing the way in front of me. About damn time.
We’re on the field for three hours, and though I spend most of it focusing on how to evade the Panthers’ trademark plays, I still find myself thinking about Emerson more than I should. In fact, if not for the red shirt I would have had my ass handed to me no less than half a dozen times.
It makes me feel like a jackass. Maybe that’s why, as we’re heading back to the locker room, I knock a shoulder into Tanner and say, “You screwed me over, man. She didn’t like the Loubis.”
“Bullshit.” He looks at me like I’m crazy. “All women love the Loubis, which means you fucked it up. What’d you do?”
“I don’t know. All I know is she sent ’em back, along with everything else I got her.”
“Everything else…what’d you do?”
The accusation puts my back up. “Why the hell do you keep thinking I did something? I wooed her, just like you told me to.”
“Obviously not.” He claps me on the back as we make our way into the tunnel. “Step into my office and tell me all about it.”
“Yeah, cuz that doesn’t sound creepy at all.”
He laughs. “You worry too much. Doesn’t he, Shawn?”
“No shit.” Shawn sails past us. “But if you want to know what’s up with your girl, Browning, you should man up and ask her.”
Four hours later I’m still trying to figure out how to do just that. I texted her on my way home, to make sure she was good with me picking her up at seven for dinner before the ball. She’d texted back right away, told me seven was great. And never mentioned the returned presents.
Then again, neither did I. But that’s because I don’t know what to say. And because, if she’s pissed off, the last thing I want to do is bring her ire down on my head. I may face a hostile defensive line bent on tearing me limb from limb every Sunday on the football field without breaking a sweat, but the idea of trying to untangle the anger of the woman I’m hoping to get into bed tonight is enough to turn me cold.
After checking in at home, and making sure that Marta is still okay with spending the night with Heather and the kids, I quickly pull on my Tom Ford tux. Another quick check-in with Lucy and Brent—who are in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies with Marta while Heather dozes on the couch—and I’m out the door.
I hate that I don’t know what to expect when I get to Emerson’s place, hate that I don’t know if she’s angry or insulted or…what? And if she is, I don’t know why. Maybe I jumped the gun a little bit with the presents as tonight is our first official date, but I was only trying to help out. And, I admit, wow her a little. Most of the women I’ve dated would have loved to get presents like that and the fact that she didn’t throws me for a loop. As does my inability to decide if she was rejecting just the presents when she sent them back, or if she was rejecting me, too.
I’m in her parking lot soon enough, and I’ve got to say, the place looks even worse when it’s light out than it does at night. Her beat-up Corolla is in the same place it was in last night and I’m once again overwhelmed with the need to take care of it. To either buy her a new car or to make sure this one is as safe and secure as I can make it. But if she rejected a dress, I can only imagine what her reaction to me trying to do something with the car will be.
I take the stairs three at a time and knock on her door, waiting impatiently for her to open. It’s been nearly twenty-four hours since I’ve seen her face and I’m anxious to remedy that fact. Anxious to pull her into my arms and kiss away whatever problem has crept up between us since I left her last night.
But when she opens the door, she doesn’t look mad. She looks gorgeous. Absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous. The dress isn’t couture and the shoes aren’t designer, but I don’t give a damn. How can I when her black bandage dress molds her curves like it was made for her? When her glorious hair is studded with real flowers and her eyes are highlighted by some kind of smoky blue stuff that makes them shine like sapphires.
“You look…beautiful,” I tell her as I struggle to put my tongue back in my mouth. Belatedly I remember to hold out the flowers I brought for her.
She looks amused as she glances between the big bouquet of daisies and my face.
“Daisies?” she asks after a second. “Not orchids or some other crazy expensive flower?”
I wince. “In my defense, Tanner is the one who suggested the Louboutins.”
“It wasn’t the Louboutins that got you into trouble,” she says with a roll of her eyes, and I’m absurdly happy that she seems to have a sense of humor about my misstep.
“So what was it?” I ask as she buries her head in the flowers, her eyes closed in pleasure as she breathes them in.
She steps back from the door. “Come on in, let me put these in water before we go.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me?” I ask as I step inside her place. And then promptly forget everything as I get my first good look at her living room.
The whole room is covered with canvases in various stages of completion. On the walls, lined up against the walls three and four deep, stacked on easels in the four corners of the room. And in the center of the room, under a dingy little skylight, is what must be her current work in progress. A huge, bright, watercolor of a woman. The lines are a little blurry, the drawing just a tiny bit abstract, but the energy of the piece is hard to miss. As is my belief that—even though the woman has no face as of yet—this is a self-portrait. The energy radiating from the painting, from the woman, is too much like the energy I feel every time I get close to Emerson.
“You’re a painter,” I say, unable to keep the awe out of my voice as I cross to the far side of the room, where painting after painting is stacked against the long wall.
“I am,” she says, holding up her hands. For the first time, I notice the myriad paint stains around a couple of her fingernails, as if she’d scrubbed but couldn’t quite get the remnants off.
“How did I not know this?” I ask, crouching down to get a better look at a picture of a field of wildflowers.
“Because we’ve only known each other two days—”
“Three.”
She laughs as she breaks one of the daisies off its stem and tucks it into her hair. “Fine, because we’ve only known each other three days and my art isn’t something I wear on my sleeve.”
“You should,” I say, even as I grin at her obvious pun. “It’s amazing.”
