Gentlemen Prefer Curves: A Perfect Fit Novel

by Sugar Jamison

  He nodded stiffly. “I take it you don’t live in the city anymore?”

  “Not for three years now. Are you here just for a visit?” she asked hopefully.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I moved here. I’m a partner in Steven’s firm.”

  “Oh.” She lost the ability to form words. It was too much. Of course he’d moved to Durant. To her hometown. When she left California he was supposed to stay behind along with all the memories of him. He wasn’t supposed to leave and make a bigger mess of her life than it already was. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “You know damn well what I’m asking,” she snapped. “Why here? Why did you have to move here?”

  He looked down at his daughter. “I did it for her and honestly, it’s the last place I thought you would be.”

  “How could you think—”

  He held up his hand, cutting her off. “We will not have this discussion in front of my child. It’s time we settled some things. We need to sit down and talk.”

  “I think you’re right.” It was past time. “Call me.” She freed her wrist to pull a business card out of her wallet. “I promise I’ll pick up when you do.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Do that to me one more time …

  For two days after his run-in with Belinda he stared at her business card.

  Belinda Gordon. Manager of Size Me Up.

  How many times had he and Ruby walked past that store in the near month they had been there? Durant wasn’t a huge town. He was surprised he hadn’t run into her sooner. He would probably run into her a thousand times now that they were both living in Durant, and the next time he did, he wanted things to be settled between them.

  He wasn’t sure that was possible. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to look at her and feel settled. He wasn’t sure if he could ever look at her and feel nothing.

  After two days of staring at her card, after two days of trying to think of what he would say to her, he picked up his phone and dialed her number. He held his breath as the phone rang and couldn’t help but wonder how she had spent the last four years, if she dated, if she was seeing anybody now.

  It didn’t matter anyway. They were over.

  Keep telling yourself that.

  Part of the reason he hadn’t sent the divorce papers before was because he was waiting for her to end it first. She had left him. She should be the one to take the steps to dissolve their marriage. If it was up to him they would still have been together. They would have still been happy.

  His call went to voice mail, her slightly husky voice telling him to leave a message. For some reason he was relieved he didn’t have to speak to her. It was ironic. He had always been a quiet man, a man who liked to keep to himself, but he always liked to hear Belinda speak. She could talk about everything and nothing. She could go on for hours, but instead of her chattiness annoying him, it used to make him feel not so empty.

  Ruby filled up his life these days and he couldn’t fathom his existence without her, but there was still that emptiness, that hole that never felt filled after Belinda had gone.

  “Hello, Belinda.” He paused for a moment, his voice not sounding as steady as he wanted. “It’s Carter. I think it’s time we talked. Please call me back at this number when you get the chance.”

  He disconnected and walked down the hallway to Ruby’s room, needing a distraction from his thoughts. She was sound asleep, curled up on side, her chubby hand resting on her cheek. It was the same way she had slept when she was a baby. Unwillingly his mind flashed back to two days ago in the department store. He kept seeing Belinda reach up to touch Ruby’s face. He kept seeing how Ruby leaned in to Belinda’s hand, how she responded to a woman she barely knew, how Ruby had talked to Belinda, like she was comfortable, like she wasn’t afraid. Nobody but him could understand how huge that was for his child. His child who barely spoke in school, who grew terribly embarrassed around strangers, had walked away from him to talk to Belinda. He would have expected Belinda to be cruel to her, to shoo her away to make her feel unwanted. But she was the opposite of that. She was kind to her.

  Why the hell was Belinda kind to her? She was sweet. She reminded him of that woman he had fallen crazy in love with. Crazy was the right way to describe it, because he had never felt sane again after the moment he laid eyes on her.

  He thought she’d walked out because she wanted nothing to do with Ruby, because she didn’t want to be a part of her life. That made him hate her, that made him mistrust his judgment, his heart. If he could be so wrong about the woman he married, he must have been wrong about so many things in his life.

  His cell phone rang, startling him from his thoughts. He quietly exited the room so that he wouldn’t wake his daughter. He answered it, not bothering to look at the screen.

  “Carter Lancaster.”

  “I know who you are, dummy. I called you.”

  “Belinda…” He almost wanted to smile. She still had that mouth. Some things never changed about her.

  “Yeah … I’m sorry I missed your call. I was in the shower.”

  Immediately a thousand thoughts entered his mind when he heard that. The last time they had made love it was in the shower. He still remembered the way she looked, with the water running down her ultra-curvy body, and the way she smelled like shampoo and felt like heaven wrapped around him.

  “Did you want to talk?” she asked interrupting his thoughts and the long moments of silence that came with them.

  “Yes. Can you meet me tomorrow at Mina’s at eleven thirty?”

  “Mina’s?”

  “Yes. Is there something wrong with that place?”

  “No,” she paused. “No. I can meet you there.”

  “Good. I’ll see you then.”

  He disconnected before she could say another word and went to go look at the documents he had his lawyer draw up before he left San Francisco.

  *

  Belinda walked into Mina’s ten minutes late. She had arrived at the restaurant on time, but she had spent the last ten minutes pacing in front of it trying to suck up enough courage to go inside. Why out of all the cafés in Durant did Carter pick this one? Did he remember that it was her favorite place in the world to eat? Or that her parents had taken her here for every single one of her birthdays? Didn’t he know that by choosing to end their marriage here, she would never be able to walk in this place without remembering what happened?

  She spotted him sitting alone in a booth, a thick stack of papers in front of him. He was such an odd contrast with the setting. Mina’s was a romantic little hole in the wall with red-checkered tablecloths and candles illuminating the room. It wasn’t a place businesspeople met for lunch. It was far from the trendy cafés that littered the streets of Durant. It was a comfortable place. A cozy place, and Carter didn’t fit in sitting there all buttoned up. She wanted to go over there and mess him up. Ruffle his hair. Dump the cup of coffee he was sipping into his lap. He shouldn’t look so freaking calm when she was a mess.

  Maybe that’s why she’d been attracted to him in the first place. When she met him she had no idea where her life was going to take her, but Carter seemed to have all his shit together. He was stable and secure. He had plans. He was the opposite of her. And for some reason she craved that. She never thought at the age of thirty she would still be in the same place she was all those years ago. She never thought she would still be on a search for what made her happy.

  She took a deep breath before she approached him. “Hello, Carter.”

  He looked up at her and gave her a chilly nod, and it immediately rubbed her wrong. He was mad at her, but he had no right to be. She wasn’t to blame for the end of their marriage. She wasn’t the one who’d kept a large chunk of her past away from him.

  “I don’t want to take up much of your time.” He motioned to the seat across from him before she cut him off.

  She couldn’t sit. She couldn’t approach this as coldly as he was. She’d marri
ed him. He was her first love. Her only love. But it seemed he was so much more to her than she had ever been to him. “You never were one for idle chitchat, were you? No How are you, Belinda? No You look great? No What have you been up to for the past four years?”

  He blinked at her for a moment. “You’re beautiful,” he said, his eyes gently roaming over her before returning to her face. “You’re so much more beautiful than the last time I saw you. When we got married I didn’t think it would be possible for that to happen, but I guess I was wrong. I guess I was wrong about a lot of things. I never thought that you would have walked out on me like that, either. How’s that for your idle chitchat?”

  She stood there frozen for a few moments, unable to react, because too many things smashed into her all at once.

  “I had my lawyer draw up a settlement that I hope is agreeable to you,” he continued as she was still trying to process his other words. “If not, have your lawyer contact him and we can negotiate.”

  “You bastard!” Of all the things she was feeling, of all the sadness and hurt, the regret and attraction to him, anger won out. How the hell could he treat her so cavalierly when all she had tried to do was be a good wife, all she had ever tried to do was love him? “You son of a—”

  He grabbed her hand pulling her into the booth beside him, cutting off her words. She smashed into his side, her body once again unwillingly coming into contact with his. Her skin was hot because she was so damn angry with him, but it grew hotter because she was near him, and touching him. She could smell him. It hadn’t dulled. The attraction never decreased. How the hell was that possible?

  “You think you’re the only one who’s angry?” His cold gray eyes heated up as his fingers slid up to her throat. His thumb stroked her pulse as his lips settled on her ear. She shivered, her nipples tightening painfully, because his touch, his breath on her skin was seductive. “You think that you’re the one who’s hurt here? I married you because I thought we would be forever. I trusted you to stand by me, to listen to me, to be the wife I expected you to be, but you let me down. You let me down when you walked out. You let me down when you wouldn’t listen. You wouldn’t even give me a chance. You fucked me up, Belinda, and I’ll never forgive you for that.”

  She looked into his eyes and all she could see was raw naked pain. That sent her reeling. She had hurt him.

  She had hurt him?

  He didn’t come after her, he didn’t call her or try to explain; he had just let her go. She thought it was because he hadn’t cared, but there was apparently more to it than that. There was much more to him than she had given him credit for.

  She touched his face, cupping his hard jaw in his hands before she kissed him. It wasn’t something she meant to do, but her mind had lost control and her body had taken over.

  Damn it.

  His lips still felt the same, smooth and firm and hot to the touch. He still responded the same to her kiss, opening his mouth over hers, sliding his tongue inside, stroking her mouth. It all came back to her, the heat, the familiarity, the longing that he always set off inside her. His fingers tangled in her hair as his body pressed against her, and the fire that was always lit between them threatened to bloom into an explosion. But she pulled away before she forgot where she was and why. She had to pull away because there was so much more to them than this—so much that was left unsaid. Because she had come here to finally settle things between them.

  “I loved you, Carter. Maybe I wasn’t blameless, but I’m not the only one to blame. Your friends would say nasty things behind my back. They whispered about me, talked down to me. Your mother said I wasn’t good enough for you, your father treated me like a prostitute and offered to set me up with one of his friends so that I would leave you alone. And when that didn’t work, your parents tried to pay me to stay away from you. They humiliated me. Every single day I felt like I wasn’t good enough for you, that I was dirt beneath your feet, but I didn’t give up on us then because you never treated me that way. Because I believed in us. But then I found out that you were married to someone else—that you made a baby with her! You proved your parents right. You proved that I wasn’t important to you, that I wasn’t good enough for you to share that huge part of your life with me. You think I fucked you up? Marrying into the Lancaster family almost killed me.”

  Carter stared at her silently, his jaw clenching, redness starting to form under his collar. “My parents did what?”

  “You had to know they hated me. You had to know your parents didn’t want their son married to … What did your mother call me? A money-hungry tramp?”

  His jaw ticked. She watched him clench and unclench his fist for a moment, and then a deadly calm settled over him. “You’re lying. They couldn’t have done that.”

  “Half a million dollars they offered me,” she whispered. “You should be flattered. Your parents must really love you.”

  “This is not a joke.” He slammed his fist on the table, causing the silverware to jump. “Shit. I need to go.” He got up, forcing her to move out of his way.

  He snatched his papers off the table and left without another word. She sat back down, her legs too shaky to support her. She was ridiculously close to tears, but she wouldn’t allow herself to cry. She had cried enough over Carter Lancaster.

  Her cell phone rang, and for a moment she was too wrapped up in what had just happened to hear it. But soon the familiar ring penetrated through her fog, and she blindly reached into her bag and pulled it out, not caring who it was. She would talk to a telemarketer for an hour if it helped to pull her out of her head. “Hello?”

  “Pudge? What’s wrong? Why does your voice sound so high?”

  “Mamá?” Her mother may not always understand her, but sometimes she just knew when she needed her. “I’m fine,” she said quickly. “I’m on Lafayette. Do you think you could meet me in town to go shopping?”

  “Shopping? Of course. I’m just leaving my hair salon. I can be there in five minutes.”

  Her mother walked up four minutes later, her thick black hair shining as it brushed her shoulders. She looked elegant as always in black wide-leg trousers and a blush-colored long-sleeved fitted blouse, her sunglasses perched on her delicate nose. She was so beautiful that she looked out of place in their small town. People seemed to stare at her wherever she went, but it never bothered Carmina. She wore her beauty like a badge and was never above flaunting it.

  “My Pudge.” Carmina wrapped her arms Belinda and squeezed. “What’s the matter?” She slid her hand down her back and patted Belinda’s behind. “Oh! Your bottom looks quite round in this dress. I’ve always wanted a big fat bottom like this. It’s why I could never do swimsuit work. The bikini bottoms would just droop on my butt, making me resemble an overgrown toddler with a dirty diaper. But you have a perfectly fat bottom. I think you could be in one of those magazines. You know. The ones where the girls wear thongs and lean over the cars. I’m not really sure why they make those magazines. Surely it’s not to sell cars. Who could look at a car when they have a girl who is greased up like a pig hanging all over it? I hate being covered in oil. A photographer once had me covered in vegetable oil for a photo shoot because they didn’t have baby oil—”

  “Mamá,” she said, cutting off her absentminded mother before her train of thought turned into a two-hour conversation. “Let’s go buy some stuff.”

  If nothing else her mother was good for a distraction.

  They were having a local artisans’ fair on the town’s green. It was one of Belinda’s favorite places to go. It was the only place in the area to get handmade furniture and original artwork without paying a fortune. Her entire town house was decorated with things from here. One of her favorite pieces being the modern quilt she had picked up last year made by Two Crazy Grannies. It was made with bold red and white squares cut in an almost mind-bending pattern. This year she hoped to find something equally spectacular. This year she was planning on buying a whole bunch of crap she
didn’t need.

  Retail therapy. A hell of a lot more fun than seeing a shrink.

  “Aye, Pudge. I wish you would have told me that we were coming to the green. I wouldn’t have worn these shoes. I’m sinking in the dirt, and look.” She pointed at Belinda’s heels. “So are you! How are you ever going to get the dirt out of that purple suede? You’re not. You must come home with me so I can clean them. I learned a trick from a wardrobe stylist when I was modeling in Ibiza. Who knew it would come in handy when I had a little girl? The way your father always had you playing in the dirty, dirty mud. You two produced enough stains to keep the Tide people in business for the next fifty years! Oh, look! I smell Indian fry bread. Let Mommy buy you some before we go look at old dusty furniture.”

  Belinda wanted to say no, but she loved fry bread, especially when it was drizzled with honey and coated in powdered sugar. Plus after the meeting she’d just had with Carter, she deserved a little pick-me-up. “I think I can manage to choke some down.”

  “Good.” Carmina wrapped her arm around Belinda and pressed a kiss to her forehead as they made their way to the stand. “I’ve been thinking about my Pudge all week. I wish you would have stayed with us like we wanted.”

  After she had told them about her run-in with Carter, her parents didn’t leave her. They stayed all day and cooked her dinner—her father standing watch over her like some kind of guard dog, her mother fawning as if she were still a child. Belinda let them. She let them smother her because they took her mind off Carter and because she was their only child. And because they were still making up for her early childhood when both of them were so busy working that they missed out on much of her life. But all that had changed when they moved to Durant.

  “I was fine. You don’t have to worry.”

  “Don’t have to worry! Of course I worry. I blame you for the end of my modeling career because all I do is worry about you. I worry if you are eating enough vegetables and I worry that you live across town by yourself and I worry that you will stop breathing in your sleep, just like I did when you were a baby. I worry so much that it has caused a nasty crease between my eyes. And you know I don’t believe in that Botox stuff. Did you know that was poison, Pudge? They put poison right in your face. And speaking of poison, did you know that hamburger place that your father likes to go to got shut down because four people got food poisoning? What do you want to drink? I’ve heard this stand makes very good sweet tea.”