I could feel him getting close, his trunk-like thighs tensing. I kneaded his ass, taking him whole, bringing him closer to the edge. Connor gave a resounding hiss and before I could do anything else, he pulled away and grabbed the towel, bucking as he spilled his seed in the cloth. For a moment I just sat there, watching him, loving the taste of his salty skin on my lips. He leaned over the cot and exhaled shakily, his eyes turning toward mine. “Damn.”
“I would have, you know,” I started as he wiped himself and pulled up his shorts. Connor stilled his motions and reached out his hand, helping me to my feet before pressing a kiss to my lips. “I know, sweetheart,” he said softly, handing me my top. “But I couldn’t let you… I don’t think I can explain it.” I nodded, not really understanding him but letting it go for now. I tied my top back on, and tucked my breasts back into the correct spots. My body was like jelly, and I was barely able to walk, my legs still shaking from his touch.
Connor wrapped his hand around mine and together we stepped out, colliding with the attendant. “Massage good?” he asked, a cheeky grin on his face. My face burned as I thought of what he must have heard, ducking my head against Connor’s arm as he gave the man a slap on the back. “Dude, you have no idea.”
The attendant laughed as Connor steered us back to the hut, a whistle on his lips. “I can’t believe you said that to him that,” I giggled, mortified. He grinned and brought up our joined hands to kiss the back of mine.
“Darling, I could have told him a lot more but I doubt it’s the first time that’s ever happened.”
“True… he’s probably not even a masseuse and it’s all a naughty little set up for the couples to, you know…” My steps faltered as Connor stopped dead in his tracks, some of the humor sliding from his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked immediately as he released my hand.
“Stay here.”
Dumbfounded, I squinted to where he was heading, wanting to follow but thinking better of it as I watched him approach a woman hovering by our hut. That bitch! It was the one from the bar the other night, the one that he’d said was a reporter. She was back and she hadn’t come alone. She had a man next to her, a black camera in his hand as he snapped off pictures of Connor.
Oh god. Connor reached the pair and snatched the camera out of the guy’s hand, his angry words hard to understand with the gentle wind and surf in the background. When he pushed the guy, I hurried over, grabbing his arm and feeling the muscles clench under my touch.
“Connor, no.”
“April, right?” the woman said, her grin wide as she looked at me. “The wedding planner?”
Shit.
“Come on, Connor, let’s go,” I said, ignoring her. This wasn’t good. If she really was a reporter, then our pictures and the story were about to be widespread. The thought made me sick to my stomach.
“Don’t worry, I already know your dirty secret,” she tried again, giving Connor a onceover as he stared down the cameraman. “I can’t say that I blame you. He’s a fine prize.”
“Get the hell out of here and leave us alone before I really lose my temper!” Connor shouted, shoving the cameraman away.
“Hey! Give me back my camera!” the man cried as Connor grabbed my hand and turned to go. “That’s my private property!”
“You should’ve thought about that before you decided to take my or her photo,” Connor replied angrily.
The woman laughed, her voice trailing after us. “Don’t worry. Take the camera. I’ve got all we need.”
I swallowed hard as Connor led me away, my earlier giddiness and good feelings now quashed by the stark reality of Connor’s life. This was going to be all over the news when we got home. If I hadn’t already lost my job the other day, I sure as hell would now. What was Crystal going to think? What were my colleagues, the people I’d built relationships with in the business community going to think upon seeing me with a client that had just stood up his own fiancée at his wedding? Oh god, the rumors were going to be horrendous and even if—and it was a big if—I could find the money to start my own company, I would be the laughingstock of the professional party world. A businesswoman who stole her own client’s groom. I could see the headlines now.
“Oh, April?” the reporter called, her annoying voice pervading the very air around us. “Why don’t you ask him about the bet?”
I didn’t dignify her question with a reply and continued walking away with Connor. But her words kept repeating on a loop in my head. What bet?
“Connor, what was she talking about?”
Connor didn’t say anything and crossed over the boardwalk to the hut, forcing open the door and letting me pass, then shutting it firmly behind us before throwing the camera onto the sofa.
I watched as he paced the floor, obvious anger and tension in every step, seeping out of his body. He was furious and I was about to be a hot mess if he didn’t start explaining.
“Connor?” I repeated, getting a little scared that he wasn’t answering. Whatever the reporter’s intentions by saying those last words, they definitely weren’t good.
I may not have known what she’d meant, but what I did know was that the illusion we were trying to portray here on this romantic island was over.
The shocking reality of what I’d done was coming crashing down around my head. Once the word was out, we couldn’t be together. After all, who would hire a woman who had the potential to steal grooms away from their wedding? Of course it wasn’t what had happened, but the public wasn’t going to see it any other way. I’d be labeled a hussy, a man-stealer, a whore.
And Crystal, she had the money, power, and media influence to ruin me, slinging mud and making it stick. A few well-placed words and she could utterly destroy everything. No one would ever trust me to plan their wedding again. My knees weakened and I stumbled over to the couch, sinking down on it with my head in my hands. What had I done?
“I could fucking kill him with my bare hands,” Connor seethed, stopping to look at me. “Don’t worry. I’ll sue the fuck out of them when we get back.”
“They won’t be the only ones,” I said softly, thinking of how big this could blow up. “Are you going to sue the rest of them too?”
“April, I will protect you,” he said fiercely, bending down to frame my face with his capable hands. I could feel his rage barely controlled under the surface, the anger in his face over what had transpired. It broke my heart.
“You can’t protect me from this,” I said, touching his hands with mine and bringing them down to my lap. He exhaled harshly and I saw the weary Connor, the worried Connor. “I’m sorry. I can’t deal with this.”
“Don’t do this,” Connor interrupted, his hands clenching mine. “This will blow over, just like everything else. We can get married and they will die down.”
My heart stopped in my chest as I looked at him, thinking that a marriage of all things was the last thing we needed.
What would be the difference between us getting married and what he and Crystal had gone through? There had been no declaration of love between us and though my feelings were undoubtedly strong for him, I wasn’t ready to throw caution to the wind and put on a white dress.
It could have been the way we had gotten together or the thought that he was going to totally destroy me in the end that worried me. Either way, this marriage proposal was not based upon anything but worry, a quick fix to a sticky situation, and I couldn’t accept that.
“Connor,” I tried, looking into his eyes and shaking my head. How could he not see the ridiculousness of what he’d just said? The tears welled in my own and I forced them away, knowing there would be plenty of time on the flight to cry all of this out.
“You can’t go around throwing that word about like that. Besides, getting married would only make things worse.” I wanted to add that he didn’t want to marry me but I held back, not ready for that kind of rejection. It was breaking my heart enough to know that this was over, and that our time together had come to
an end way too soon. But I wasn’t about to finish out the trip with a black buzzing cloud of reporters swarming upon us, waiting to capture tender moments between us. Tears welled up again and I let them fall this time, not strong enough hold them back anymore.
He swore and untangled our hands to wipe them away, his touch warm against my skin. “Don’t cry. Fuck, please don’t do that, April.”
“I… I can’t do this anymore,” I croaked, my voice broken. “It’s over, Connor. We just need to call it a day and go our separate ways before this gets even worse.”
A serious expression transformed his features, something in his eyes making me feel unsettled. “I’m serious, April. I want to marry you.” Desperation licked the edges of his words; he would probably say anything to make it better, to fix this. But these were not the words I wanted to hear. Though, I couldn’t decipher if he was saying them because he was truly serious or worried because he’d gotten caught, with me. What a story that was going to make in the tabloids! Like chalk and cheese, we didn’t belong together.
“Just think of how good we are together,” he continued with that eager grin I loved so much. “There’s so much we could do, see together. Hell, if you asked me to quit football I would do it. Please don’t leave.”
I gasped at his words. He was making no sense, how could he even think that I would want him to quit football?
I waited for him to say more, to utter the key words; the words that would solidify us, but they never came. He looked at me expectedly and I realized that he hadn’t entirely grasped what marriage and love was supposed to be all about. I didn’t care about his wealth or the ability to travel wherever I pleased. I didn’t care about his fame or all of the opportunities it provided. I was after one thing and he wasn’t prepared to give it to me. I wanted it to be real, to be straight from the heart and not from his convoluted mind. I wanted him to feel it, to breathe it and not just give me what I wanted to hear.
“You just don’t get it, do you? I don’t need any of that, I need…” I trailed off, I wasn’t going to give him the damn answer. He would have to work it out for himself.
With much regret, I shook my head and calmly rose from the chair, his hands falling away from my face as I moved to the bedroom, grabbing my suitcase through streaming quiet tears. I heard his footsteps behind me and I knew that if I turned around, I would be a sucker and would stay.
“I can’t do this, not in this way, and you still haven’t told me about some bet… what did she mean?” I forced out, thinking the worst as I choked on the words.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” he said flatly, surprise in his voice. “After everything that’s happened, everything that I could provide to you, you’re turning me down?”
“Connor,” I warned, ignoring his question.
“Fine. You want to know? I guess this is the right time… I was going to tell you, but I didn’t want to ruin everything. But it’s already fucked, so what’s the point?”
My stomach felt like it was tiptoeing on the edge of a deathly drop. My heart was screaming for me to step back, to forget about whatever the reporter had said… she was probably only out to twist things anyway. But my head, my bloody sensible side was telling me I needed the answer.
“Yes, I want to know.”
“This whole thing was a setup,” he replied, his tone even and cold. “My teammates bet that I didn’t have what it took to be in a committed relationship the night of my bachelor’s party. And you were the mark.”
I was freefalling. None of it had been real. Every word, every caress, every kiss was meaningless. I’d been used.
I turned on my heels and slapped him across his face, trying to put every ounce of torturous pain into that final contact with him.
“Get out!” I screamed.
“I’m sorry, April. I never—”
A delirious laugh popped out of my mouth, one that tightened the ache in my heart.
“What, you never wanted to hurt me? Well, tough, you have. And you aren’t sorry, you’re just sorry you got caught.” I threw my clothes into the suitcase, concentrating on my task.
He exhaled harshly behind me and walked away, leaving me to finish packing my things as the tears continued to spill out.
This was it. It was over. The best and most amazing time of my life with a very amazing person was done. But I’d been blinded by his charm, duped into thinking he was someone different.
Suddenly I couldn’t handle being there, near him, breathing the same air as him. I zipped up the suitcase, leaving the rest of my things behind, and grabbed my purse, blindly walked through the small living room before I opened the door, and exited with a sob.
My heart was breaking and as much as I wanted to turn around and run into his arms, to forgive him and accept his proposal, I forced myself to walk forward, far away from him.
The honeymoon was over.
26
CONNOR
I leaned against the rail, the breeze ruffling my hair as I watched the boat sail out of sight, swallowed by the other islands in the distance.
She was gone. She was fucking gone.
I still couldn’t believe it. The entire hut still smelled like her, most of her things left behind as she hurried to be gone from this place, and me. I would pick them up and mail them back to her, but right now it was taking all I could not to jump in the damn water and either swim behind the boat, begging for her to stay, or drown. How had everything that was seemingly going so right fallen apart in an instant?
Pushing away from the deck, I walked back inside, ignoring the bed that we had climbed out of this morning, happy as fuck and without a care in the world. It seemed like eons ago now, the happiness replaced by pain that I had never experience before. It was like someone had ripped open my chest and sucked out my heart, replacing it with this heavy stone that ached every time I thought of April. And she was everywhere at the moment.
“You screwed this up, Connor,” I said with a heavy sigh, dropping to the couch where the bottle of whiskey awaited me. I wanted to get rip-roaring drunk, drink her memory away and then pour myself into oblivion to stop this agony that was consuming me. But my fingers didn’t reach for the bottle. After all of my failed relationships, this one felt real, and for the first time in my adult life, I could picture something else besides the next game or the next party or the next pussy.
I had bought lock stock and barrel into April’s idea of a future; the fairytale ending, kids, marriage, love. It was all my own fault. I had cajoled her out here under false pretenses; put my hands on her, made her mine, without being honest with her.
Picking up the bottle of whiskey, I hurled it across the room, ruefully enjoying the sound as it hit the wall and broke into a million pieces, the liquid sliding down the dark wood in rivulets. Shit. Now I was going to have to pay for damages. I didn’t care though, tempted to trash the whole room.
My mind buzzed as I kept going over our last conversation, trying to figure out what it was that I didn’t pick up on, what I missed that might have kept her here, besides not telling her about the bet. There was something, I knew it.
There was something that I had failed to mention, something that I had failed to see was so important to her. And now she was gone, out of my life. The mere fact made me sick to my stomach. How did she go from being just here, to someone who I was beginning to think I couldn’t live without?
APRIL
I curled up in the plane seat, my Kindle in my lap that had laid there untouched for the last three hours, my gaze on the clouds outside the window. My trip home was vastly different than the trip nearly a week ago, where I was extremely excited about the opportunity of relaxing in the tropical sun. Now I couldn’t wait to get home so I could hide my face from the world and pray that the ache in my chest would subside with time and separation. Part of me still wished that I was back on the island and in Connor’s arms, enjoying another fun-filled day and night with him in paradise. It hadn’t taken me long
to realize that I was falling for him, the long ride on the boat to the mainland allowing me some time to process what I’d done and the implications my actions were probably going to have back in the States. There was a good chance I was going to get in those tabloid magazines, but for all the wrong reasons.
Sighing, I laid my head back on the seat and closed my eyes, the lull of the plane’s engines soothing my tortured soul. We weren’t meant to be together. We weren’t even on the same wavelength with our careers, with our lives. I should have never touched him, should have never allowed myself to even remotely think about him in any other form except as a former client. And every time I thought about the bet, I felt sick. He’d used me to win a fucking childish bet with his friends…
Now I was back in that dark place like I was when Derek destroyed me, heartbroken and not quite sure how I was going to move on with my life. And unfortunately it felt ten times worse this time around. Connor had surpassed everything that I loved about Derek. Connor was funny and unpredictable, tender and kind when he wanted to be, but also sexy as hell. He was everything I never thought I would have liked in a man until I’d met him and he had turned my life upside down.
And I had walked away. Why? Because I was scared, scared of being rejected once reality set in, scared of having my heart broken because I couldn’t live up to his expectations, scared that he would never love me as much as I loved him, and petrified of the betrayal he was very capable of.
Fine. I could admit it; no matter what he’d done, I loved him. I, April Matthews, had fallen in love with the wrong man, again.
27
Bad Boy's Wedding Page 13
