The Sweetest Taboo

by Alison Kent

  But, then again. It doesn’t really matter, does it?” He spun his hat Frisbee-style down the bar and shrugged off his cape to go.

  Cali grabbed at his elbow before he’d gotten completely out of her reach. “It matters to me. And, okay. I’ll admit it. Yes, knowing Erin’s plans did impact my decision to come home with you. But I’d wanted to come home with you for a very long time. I borrowed what I could of her guts and did it. I guess I shouldn’t have.”

  The crowed milled noisily in the background while the world become nothing but the two of them and the tension of lovers at odds. Will stood still, the overhead track lighting casting over his hair a nimbus of light that was brighter than the one Cali wore.

  “If you wanted to be with me, Cali, it should’ve been about you and me. Not about what Erin decided to do.”

  He sounded too rational, too right. So much so that doubts burst rather than blossomed from recently sown seeds. “Does it really matter how we got together?”

  “Does the end justify the means? Is that what you’re asking?” He didn’t give her time to say anything else before adding, “I think it does, yeah. Sex shouldn’t be about a bet or a dare. And it sure shouldn’t be some sort of twisted group seduction project.”

  Cali balled her fist around the rag she still held, afraid Will was about to wash his hands of her. “I can’t believe you’re being this way about the reason why I finally decided to come home with you. Or because of a lousy class project.”

  Will’s brows went up. “Lousy? So now the screenplay is lousy?”

  Cali pulled off her halo and flung it into the trash. “No, it’s not lousy. I wish you’d quit mucking up everything I say.”

  Will shook his head, gave a laugh that was more about frustration and disbelief than about anything he might’ve found humorous. “I’ll tell you what’s mucked up. That’s the way you can take Sebastian’s word about making changes without talking to me first. That you don’t have that much respect for me. Or that much faith that I might eventually

  ‘get it’ if you drum it into my head often enough.

  “I really might, you know.” He paused then, studying her face with eyes that reflected a sad disappointment. “But you didn’t give me that chance. You went to Sebastian because he immediately told you what you wanted to hear. And, yeah. That is totally mucked up.”

  He reached back and pulled out the copy of Sebastian’s book he’d tucked into his waistband. He tossed the hardback volume onto the bar where it skidded to a hard stop against Cali’s forearm. By the time she’d found a steady enough hand to pick up the book from the counter, Will had disappeared.

  She opened the cover and read the inscription. Then she turned her back to the room and cried, while the words glared up at her. It’s a rare woman who is able to let a man be a man. You, Cali Tippen, are one of the best. I know it. And Will knows it, too. Friends always, Sebastian.

  ERIN COLLAPSED INTO THE gold velvet chair in her office because her desk chair wasn’t big enough to contain her crushing despair. If despair was even the right word for the cloying fog that had wound itself in and around the flowing scarves of her costume until her feet felt too heavy to lift, her body too sluggish to move.

  Her heart too brutally battered to ever beat again.

  Ridiculous, really. So what if Sebastian hadn’t breathed a word about his alter ego? They’d never agreed to any sort of full disclosure. What they were doing here was all about sex. He’d found an easy lay. She’d tumbled him as a lark. No one said their involvement meant anything more.

  But it did. For both of them. Because, no matter what bullshit he’d given her weeks ago about calling in favors, there was absolutely no reason for him to have revealed his identity to save Paddington’s. Not unless he had feelings for her. He could’ve had any woman he wanted. But he’d wanted her.

  And she knew she’d fallen in love with him that first night in his shower.

  After welcoming Sebastian and his publicist and feigning excitement when her giddiness had been more about hysterical misery, she’d spent the last two hours avoiding the grotto and circulating through the crowd as befitting her position as hostess. She’d laughed and refilled drinks and flirted and danced when hijacked onto the dance floor—

  until she couldn’t fake the lighthearted charade any longer.

  She’d had to get away. And now she sat rubbing at the headache building behind the bridge of her nose.

  God, she needed to talk to Cali. But Cali was busy running the show Erin should’ve been out there handling. She wasn’t about to add to her best friend’s stress load, so she pushed up from the comfy velvet chair and dropped into the one in front of her keyboard instead.

  From: Erin Thatcher

  Sent:

  Saturday

  To: Samantha Tyler; Tess Norton

  Subject: The Secrets That Men Keep

  Y’all were wondering if the things Sebastian told me were true? The secretive things I hinted at earlier? Well, they are. And it’s worse—or better—depending on your viewpoint.

  I’m sleeping with Ryder Falco. No, I’m not kidding. Ryder Falco is my Man To Do. I guess that wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t fallen in love…

  Erin,

  who can’t even think of anything else to say

  She hit Send and collapsed back in her chair. Not only couldn’t she put together another cognizant sentence, she also couldn’t get beyond the dimensions of the sacrifice Sebastian had made. For her. What he’d done said so much about the man he was. And that, more than anything, made loving him impossible.

  Already she suffered enormous guilt at the thought of letting down the grandfather whom she’d dearly adored. Now she had Sebastian’s sacrifice to come to grips with. And then there was all the work Cali had done. And Will. Not just in the bar and cohosting the party, but in their amazing concern and effort to bail her out of the Courtland’s debacle.

  And the worst part was that, after all of this, ungrateful cow that she was, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to save Paddington’s.

  Before she could flagellate herself further, or wrap one of her flowing scarves around her neck and pull it tight, the e-mail chime sounded. Good grief. What were either of her cyber-girlfriends doing up at this ungodly hour?

  From: Samantha Tyler

  Sent:

  Saturday

  To: Erin Thatcher; Tess Norton

  Subject: Re: The Secrets That Men Keep

  Erin! I don’t know which is freakier, that this guy turns out to be a mega-celebrity or that you are in love with him!

  But I sure as hell want to hear more. There’s a whole, whole lot you’re not telling us. Judging by the tone of your e-mail, I’d say you aren’t overjoyed either about who he is or the fact that you’re in love with him. Or maybe you’re just exhausted and overwhelmed? I hope that’s all it is.

  In any case, you owe us one whole cartload of details, so give! I won’t rest easy until I hear.

  Wondering and worrying and crossing my fingers hard that it works out for you, honey.

  Samantha

  Too bad there wasn’t going to be anything to work out, Erin mused, closing out the e-mail. Samantha couldn’t know that, of course. Couldn’t know that Erin had managed to screw up the life of the man she loved.

  12

  SEBASTIAN KNEW HE’D FIND Erin in the office.

  He’d seen her disappear behind the safety of the door an hour ago, but he’d been stuck in the shadows of the grotto, developing carpal tunnel from repeatedly signing his name. His own fault, he reminded himself, scratching out Ryder Falco another fifty times.

  He wasn’t worried that she’d been in there all this time falling apart. She was too strong to let that happen. She had no reason to let that happen. During their time together, he’d been more than careful to make sure he did nothing to encourage her emotional involvement. Not that he’d succeeded. He’d seen too much hope, too much longing in her eyes.

  Unless what he’d
seen was his own damn reflection—a highly likely possibility.

  Never had he been so close to abandoning every principle by which he’d lived since he’d taken back his life. And all because of what Erin Thatcher made him feel about her—and about himself. The hope was the worst, the sense that she’d be there any time he extended his hand when he knew better than to reach out in the first place. Yeah, the hope was the main reason he wouldn’t be seeing her after tonight. If he ever finished up this damn signing…

  Ninety minutes later, he’d depleted the books supplied by the distributor and finished with the fans who’d brought copies of their own. As Ryder Falco, he escaped through the back door, climbing into his publicist’s limo rather than taking the chance of being followed on foot. Three blocks later he was out of his costume and demanding the driver pull over.

  Wearing biker boots and jeans and the black T-shirt he’d had on beneath his Aztec print western shirt and long black duster, and having ditched both the bandanna and broad-brimmed black Stetson, he headed back to Paddington’s and, as Sebastian Gallo, walked in through the open front door.

  He ignored the lingering party-goers, ignored servers clearing tables, ignored the caterer’s crew dismantling the grotto, pulling down spiderwebs and snowflakes, even ignored Cali Tippen as she tried to flag him down. Unless he found Erin’s office door locked, he wasn’t stopping for anyone.

  He didn’t stop, in fact, until he’d shut the door behind him. This time he made sure to turn the lock. He had too many things to say and no patience to deal with interruptions. Erin sat at her desk, her head down on crossed arms, those sheer scarves draped over her body that drove him wild. A fall of red hair covered her face. He steeled himself as she raised her head.

  At least she hadn’t been crying. That much he was desperately glad to see. It was the blanch of white skin, however, and the purple boxerlike bruises underneath her eyes that told him discovering his identity had not been one of the better moments of her life. She was beaten up and badly so.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her voice a steady whisper, her brows drawn together in a frown of frustrated confusion and loss.

  The loss is what got to him the most when it should’ve made what he had to do that much easier. He wasn’t always big on honesty being the best policy, but tonight he owed her no less. And he’d get there. Eventually. “I never tell anyone.”

  “You told half of Houston tonight,” she accused.

  “Not really.” He moved away from the door and sank into the cushy crushed velvet chair opposite her desk. “Thanks for accommodating me the way you did. The cave was great.”

  “It was a grotto.”

  “It was perfect,” he repeated.

  She sat up straighter, straight enough to lean back in her chair, brace her elbows on the chair arms and protectively lace her hands over her midsection. “Well, your publicist did say you weren’t much for exposure. I mentioned that I’d heard that. Had I known we shared experience with one and the same person, I could’ve given him my personal insight.”

  Sebastian shrugged, though none of what he felt registered on the scale labeled nonchalance. “Like I said, I don’t tell anyone. Ever.”

  She met his gaze directly, her eyes taking on a life that hadn’t been there when he’d first walked into the room. And a fiery life at that. “Why did you tell me?”

  “It was time.” That was honest enough. “I could hardly pull off the signing without you knowing who I was.” Another bite of indisputable truth.

  “That’s what I mean.” She put her chair into a side-to-side swivel. “Why would you go to so much trouble to keep your identity secret and then blow it like that?

  Paddington’s is such small potatoes in the scheme of your career.”

  “You’re not small potatoes.” And that was as honest as it got. Nothing else he said would ring with a louder sincerity.

  “Compared to Ryder Falco?” She swiveled faster, color returning to her cheeks.

  “Oh, I think that I am.”

  “We’re not talking about what you think.”

  “That’s patently obvious. If I had known what you were going to do…” Bringing her chair to a complete stop, she shook her head and let the sentence trail, though they both knew what she was thinking.

  Frankly, he hadn’t expected her to so easily make his argument for him. “And that’s exactly the reason I didn’t tell you before.”

  “I suppose I should be grateful that you’ve come to explain it to me now, after the fact, instead of disappearing out into the night.” She huffed. “It all makes sense now. The walking, the thinking, the steaming the wrinkles out of your brain.”

  One ankle squared over the opposite knee, Sebastian slumped down to sit on his tailbone, shoved both hands back over his hair and laced his fingers there on top of his head. “I’ve never lied to you, Erin. You know that. I was vague. Ambiguous. Elusive, even. But I never said a word that wasn’t the truth.”

  She crossed one long leg over the other. Filmy scarves fluttered with the movement then settled to expose thighs near enough to nude to toss a blip into the rhythm of his pulse. Her chin jutted forward—her spirited nature warning him he wasn’t in for an easy time of it.

  “Then what the hell is this truth?” she asked. “You get to call all the shots in this arrangement, is that it? I don’t have any say in how we play things out?”

  “This was my shot to call, Erin.”

  “No. It wasn’t. Not when you did it because of—”

  “Because of you?” he asked, cutting her off as frustration mounted. “Why else would I do it?”

  “I don’t know, Sebastian.” The skin over the knuckles of her laced fingers tightened. “I’m too tired to deal with this cryptic conversation. Why don’t you just tell me why and save me the trouble of sorting out the puzzle pieces?”

  She was neither dense nor naive. What she was was wracked with some misplaced guilt over a decision he had made. A telling realization that he knew her that well, when he’d worked hard to convince himself none of his knowledge about her went that deep.

  “I’ve watched you drive yourself insane the past few weeks, working to pull this party together. And then Courtland’s comes along with an advertising budget you don’t have and, what?” He dropped his hands to the chair arms and held tight. “You expect me to sit back and let you be steamrolled when I can stop it from happening? I don’t think so.”

  “Allow me to be skeptical about your altruism. For whatever reason, you’ve made it a point to avoid involvement with the city, with your fans, even with your neighbors,”

  she said and waved an encompassing hand. “Except for me. And I really don’t buy that you’d break your long time seclusion for the sake of good sex.”

  Sebastian ground his jaw. “I didn’t do it because of the sex.”

  “Then that leaves you doing it because you feel you owe me for something, which you don’t.” Her spine straightened further. “You haven’t taken advantage of me. You haven’t demanded anything I haven’t wanted to give. And this is not the sort of sacrifice one lover makes for another…not when being lovers has nothing to do with being in love.”

  His jaw remained tight, making it hard to maintain a level tone of voice. “Can you find a place for friendship in your conspiracy theory?”

  She considered his explanation for no longer than it took her to blink it away.

  “This seems to go beyond the bounds of friendship.”

  Talk about hardheaded women. “Wouldn’t you do the same for Cali?”

  “Sure, but Cali and I have been best friends for three years. You and I have been intimately acquainted for only a month. I just can’t make the same leap. It’s way too much of a sacrifice.” She pressed her lips together as if holding back the rest of what she had to say. And then she let it go. “I can’t decide which is stronger. The need to thank you, or the urge to tell you to take a flying leap.”

  Sebastian’s irrit
ation began a slow upward climb, approaching that place where he was afraid he was going to regret his words—and very possibly his actions. “Why are we even having this conversation, Erin? What’s done is done. It can’t be changed. All we can do is go on from here.”

  Erin tossed up both hands. “Sure. Let’s go on from here. Where exactly are we going to go?”

  Take it slow, bonehead. Nice and slow and easy. If he could manage to find the right words—and how hard could that be for a writer—they might emerge from tonight with at least their friendship intact. “Your party was a hit so, if anything, I’d say you’re headed into your second year of business in a very big way.”

  For an extended heartbeat she maintained eye contact, allowing him to see the flurry of thoughts as her mind processed the implication of his suggestion. But the longer he watched, the longer she remained silent, the clearer it became that a second year of business failed to offer any appeal.