He couldn’t tell her the truth.
The way things were now, Lana was an obstacle between Alessandra and himself. And he needed all the obstacles he could get. Anything that might squelch these feelings he had for Alessandra Baci. Because it was beyond inconvenient to be in love with the Nun of Napa, the woman who was forever connected—through love and community—to another man.
Clare stood on a platform in the middle of Susie Lee’s Alterations as Susie herself bustled about, checking the final fit of the wedding gown. The tiny, crowded shop was wedged between a trendy bistro and an elegant wine shop. Typical Edenville, with the pleasurable existing side-by-side with the practical.
“You look fabulous,” Allie said from a tiny chair set beside a tall stack of fashion magazines. “You love it, don’t you?”
Clare inspected her reflection, not ready to commit to “loving” it. She ran her fingers over the new stays that had been sewed into the bodice before meeting the layers of petticoat and ivory fabric that created the full, ballet-length skirt. It had been her grandmother’s dress, which they’d updated by removing the long fitted sleeves of chiffon as well as the matching material that had been sewn from the sweetheart neckline to the throat. Now it was a simple, strapless garment that clung to her breasts, ribs, and waist until belling into that frothy skirt at the hipline.
From the chair beside Allie’s, her mother sighed.
Clare suppressed hers. “I’m sorry, again, Mom, that we couldn’t use your dress. But that tear in the skirt—”
“No, no, no,” Sally said. “I’m not thinking about that at all anymore. I’m just basking in how perfect this is turning out to be.”
Both Clare and Allie stared at the older woman. She’d been dithering and anxious about the upcoming wedding for months. Nothing—from the invitations to the favors—had been found completely suitable.
“Mom . . .” Clare shook her head. “Did Dad prescribe you a tranquilizer or something?”
“No.” Sally laughed. “Though I confess I sampled a bottle of the Tanti Baci blanc de blancs after talking to those Wedding Fever people.”
Clare stifled a groan. The idea of her ceremony being filmed for the television program made her belly flip like a pancake, but it thrilled her mother. Not only that, but Allie had confessed that the additional exposure would be fabulous for the winery and though Jordan had claimed he didn’t care whether they had five witnesses or five million, she’d heard the lilt of excitement in his mother’s cultured voice when Clare had floated the idea by her via telephone. So she hadn’t voiced her objections.
Everyone was in a good mood about the upcoming day but Clare. At this moment the idea of walking down the aisle was daunting, with or without cameras watching. But she’d stepped aboard the marriage train months ago and there was no disembarking now.
Susie climbed onto a stepladder to arrange the veil on Clare’s head. This was her mother’s, a long fall of tulle that would be tucked under a simple top knot.
Gasping, Sally rose to her feet. “Oh, Clare.”
The refrain of her life.
Oh, Clare, you’re not still watching that old TV show.
Oh, Clare, why can’t you be more like your brother.
Oh, Clare, you’re not bringing that Italian boy home yet again.
“Oh, Clare,” her mother said again now, tears starting to roll down her cheeks.
“Mom . . .” Lifting her skirt, she made to hop off the platform.
“No, no. Stay right there,” Sally implored. Her palms covered her heart. “Let me soak in this sight.”
Tears of joy? But they must be, because that was a smile on her mother’s face, a wide smile that Clare hadn’t seen in five years, not since her brother Tommy died.
It was impossible not to smile back. “It looks okay?”
“It looks wonderful. You look wonderful. I’m so happy.”
“Get your cell phone out, Allie. Take a picture. Mom’s happy.” She was teasing, but really, the photo wasn’t a bad idea. They’d walked through shadows for months upon months, years now, and for the first time Clare believed they might see the sun again.
Her mom even laughed. “I know it’s been a long time coming, but today . . . today I think I am finally, finally moving on.”
Clare’s breath caught in her chest. “I’m so glad,” she said, her voice breaking.
“You and Jordan marrying,” Sally said, “that’s going to be the signal for all of us to start living again.”
Her own mood almost giddy now, Clare itched to get to her own phone to pass along the good news. Gil would . . . Guilt stopped that line of thought.
Jordan was the one she’d call. He’d been so busy at work that she’d spent little time with him during the last two months. She didn’t think they’d ever been alone. But give her a few minutes of privacy and she’d phone her fiancé and impart the astounding news that her mother, who had been ready for the rubber room and the straitjacket—or who had gotten Clare ready for those two items anyway—was at last relaxed.
And because of that, so was the bride.
She looked at herself in the long mirror. Flushed, bright-eyed, focused on the future.
But five minutes later, down a short hall and behind a dressing room door, doubts flooded in again. With Allie gone back to the winery and her mother engrossed in conversation with Susie out front, Clare had those moments of privacy she’d sought. In two breaths she had her cell in hand and it was on instinct alone that her trembling finger punched a number.
“I need to see you. I need to see you right this minute.” She pressed her fingers to her temple. “Don’t say anything yet, just go to the alley door behind Susie Lee’s tailoring shop.”
Still dressed in the gown, she slipped out of the dressing room and unlatched the door leading to the alley, opening it scant inches. When she caught sight of him, she grabbed his arm and yanked his body through the opening, the door shutting behind him.
She towed him to the dressing room and locked them inside. “Clare,” Gil said, shoving a hand through his hair. Shaking his head, he looked her over. “Isn’t this bad luck or something . . . ?”
Bad luck or something was the day she started seeing her best friend in a new light. In the tiny room, his shoulders seemed to touch both walls and her full skirt brushed his knees. His body heat radiated toward her and she wanted to move into it, press herself against the hard block of his chest, feel the stubble of his dark whiskers against her face.
“Clare? Why did you call?”
Questions tumbled in her head and she grabbed for one. “What happened?” she asked him. “What happened the night of my bachelorette party?”
Gil froze. “What?”
Another thought bubbled to the surface of her troubled mind. “My mom’s happy, Gil.”
“Okay,” he replied, his tone cautious. “That’s good, right?”
“It’s great.” She bobbed her head. “What isn’t so great is this hole I have in my memory bank, the nights that I’m not sleeping, the—” She broke off, staring at him. Her heart seized and she had to swallow, hard. “The way that you’re looking at me right now.”
He cleared his throat. “Because I don’t quite know how to tell you this . . . I, uh, I brought someone with me, Clare.”
“What? Here?”
“Here,” he confirmed. “Someone I ran into on my way over. Someone I . . . convinced to come with me.”
Her hands fisted. “Your new girlfriend?” It killed her to say it. She wanted him all for herself, always just hers. If it was only as her friend, so be it, but she could imagine so much more. Her brain had been imagining it, night after night, replaying the way he’d held her on Daphne’s couch, how sweetly they’d fit, two puzzle pieces—
“I have to get him, Clare,” Gil said, slipping out the door.
Him? And then that “him” was in the small dressing room facing her. Jordan. The man she’d promised to marry. Gil hovered in the doorway behind his ba
ck, like her bodyguard . . . or maybe more like an enforcer.
Jordan slipped his hands in the pockets of his slacks, his pose a study in cool sophistication. “So Clare . . .”
Her gaze flicked to Gil’s blank face, then back to Jordan’s. An easy smile turned up his mouth. “I need to confess, babe.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong.”
His laugh was easy, too, but he glanced over his shoulder as if Gil was making him nervous. “That’s true—it’s what I think anyway. It was just an . . . aberration. A little bit of . . . guy fun before we married.”
Guy fun? “You put money on a horse race? Took up Texas Hold’em and lost our honeymoon fund?” Jordan never gambled; a vow he’d made to straitlaced Grandmère when he was fourteen. She gave him five grand every year he kept his promise.
“Heh heh.” He withdrew a hand from his pocket and wiped his mouth. Another nervous gesture.
“Jordan?”
“I’ve been seeing someone. A woman.” He followed the words with a shrug. “Nothing important. No big deal. Has nothing to do with the two of us at all.”
“You’ve been seeing someone. A woman.”
“Yeah. No big deal. Like . . . like you see big Gil back there,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb. “Except . . . except we have sex.”
Like you see big Gil back there . . . except we have sex.
Her gaze lifted to the man in the doorway, as recall filled that hole that had been hanging in her memory, one Technicolor drop at a time. In Gil’s arms. On Gil’s lap. Gil’s mouth on hers.
“. . . last fling.”
Her eyes cut back to Jordan, who was still talking. “What did you say?”
“I’m saying I hope you won’t hold that last fling against me. Really, it was nothing more, say, than . . . than a lap dance.”
And there it was again, the vision of herself on Gil’s lap, his arms around her, her voice pleading. Last. Single. Girl. Fling. You. He’d kissed her, caressed her, then stopped. In the end, he hadn’t wanted her that way.
Jordan was speaking again. “You understand, right, Clare?”
She almost laughed. “Yes.” Better than you suspect.
“So we’re good? Going forward?”
“Moving on,” she said slowly, repeating her mother’s words as more of them echoed in her head. You and Jordan marrying, that’s going to be the signal for all of us to start living again.
Going forward. Moving on. No more doubts. Gil didn’t want more than her friendship, so the train wasn’t even slowing down.
16
After closing the garage for the day, Gil had picked up his Man of Honor tux at the rental place. He’d been too grimy to try it on there, so he’d ducked in the shower as soon as he arrived home. The girl at the counter had taken one look at him and urged he put the pieces on before the big day. “With someone your size . . . there are no guarantees.”
Yeah, he got that no guarantees thing, he thought as he wrapped his towel around his waist. A friendship could change, a woman could forgive when she shouldn’t, a man could learn love didn’t have a reciprocal clause. Walking into the bedroom, he tried not to glance at the bed. He shouldn’t expect that, either, because every time he’d crossed the threshold the last few weeks he’d checked for Clare on his unmade bed. Don’t look, he told himself yet again . . . and yet again failed.
She was there, a key ring spinning on her forefinger, her gaze on his body. “Pretty,” she mused, in a repeat of that other day.
It was his imagination. That key he’d taken away from her weeks ago. Ignoring the apparition, he pulled open his dresser drawer and rummaged for a pair of boxer-briefs.
“Hey,” the Clare-specter said.
Still ignoring her, he dropped the towel.
“Hey.”
The squeaky sound of the word sent him whirling around. Clare squeaked again—it was Clare!—and he scooped up the fallen terrycloth and held it to his genitals.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.
Her hand was pressed to her chest. “Well, if it was to experience a shock to my system, I think I just checked that off the list.”
His gaze went to the key, because it was much safer than staring at pretty Clare in the very place he’d been imagining her for months. Her bronze sandals had short heels, there was a light tan on her bare legs, and above a short skirt, she wore a little T-shirt. He smelled her, too, that sexy floral scent that made him want to seek out every pulse point where she’d applied the stuff.
“Since when do you wear perfume around me? And where the hell did you get that key?”
“It’s the one you gave Stevie. As for the perfume . . .” She frowned. “You don’t like the way it makes me smell?”
“What happened to kindergarten paste and waxy crayons?” he muttered to himself, ducking into the bathroom. He yanked up his underwear, but realized he had nothing else to cover himself with but a very damp towel. To hell with it. This was his place.
He stalked back into the bedroom. “What do you want, Clare?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
She shoved higher on the bed, an uncharacteristic spark in her eyes. “Don’t try that with me.”
“Try what?”
“Try going all big, half-naked he-man. It won’t change the fact that I’m pissed at you.”
His jaw dropped. “What did I ever do to you?”
“That’s an interesting question all by itself.”
She was talking nonsense and he struggled to control his Italian temper. “I did nothing! Nothing! I’ve always been your friend. Hell, I agreed to the Man of Honor thing, as ridiculous as I’ll feel in a pink cummerbund.”
“How long did you know about Jordan’s extracurricular activities?”
Crap. Figured that out, had she? He’d wondered if and when she’d recall it was he who’d brought her fiancé to the big confession. Clearly he’d known what Jordan was up to.
Rubbing his hand over the back of his neck, Gil tried brazening it out. “What does it matter? You forgave him.”
“I don’t know if I forgive you.”
“Damn it, Clare.” His whole body was hot now. “None of this is my fault—”
“You should have told me the truth.”
That only made him hotter. Because she was right. Maybe if he’d told her himself, maybe if he hadn’t given Jordan the Jerk the chance to spew his bullshit—“less than a lap dance”—then Clare could have seen Gil’s outrage on her behalf. How horrified he’d been to know what a worm she was marrying. How horrified he’d been that she was marrying . . . someone else.
He turned his back on her again and reached into his second drawer for a pair of jeans.
“What else have you lied to me about?” she asked.
Silent, he shook his head. Then he shoved his feet in the denim legs and yanked the pants to his hips.
“I’ve been thinking about all this—about everything—a lot.”
Gil closed his eyes. If he knew Clare-the-Geek, she’d probably consulted dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the Star Trek episode guidebook to get her through. It didn’t matter how smoothly Jordan tried to cover over what he’d done, Gil was sure it had pierced Clare’s ego.
“Two things stand out. You owe me—”
“I don’t!” He turned to face her.
“—for keeping my fiancé’s secret.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fuck, Clare.”
“Exactly,” she said. “You owe me, and by doing that, you can settle the other issue that’s bothering me.”
“Doing that, what?”
“There’s an imbalance of power, as I see it. Jordan had his last fling. I didn’t get mine.”
Turning away again, Gil remembered the night of the bachelorette party. The soft and willing warmth of his best buddy in his arms. He was a beast in comparison to her slight figure, but he’d been prepared to cherish her. Treasure every inch of her sleek skin, show
her what she meant to him by being gentle with the rough pads of his fingertips and soothing with kisses the wet scrape of his tongue. But it would have given too much away. He couldn’t imagine going through the rest of his life with that memory in his head, knowing it was the first and last time.
The only thing that would make it worse would be if she guessed how he felt about her.
A hand touched the small of his back. He jumped, spinning on his bare feet and crashing into the dresser with his ass. The lamp sitting on top of it fell over, crashing to the floor. Moving to pick it up, he yelped as he stubbed his toe on a book that had somehow fallen to the floor as well.
She was staring at him, eyebrows raised. “Hard to believe you were the county’s leading quarterback.”
“I wasn’t always successful,” he grumbled, avoiding her gaze by setting the lamp and book to rights.
“Junior year. Versus the Crestmont Cougars. You thought you’d lost our team the big game.”
God, that had been a miserable time. His mother hospitalized with a serious infection, his father preoccupied with the illness and keeping the family in clean clothes. That night had been the last straw. On the bus ride back to school, he’d slumped in the bench seat at the back, ignoring everyone, his mood steeping in hurt and shame.
Clare had been waiting for him on the hood of his car. Bundled in her puffy stadium coat and a beanie, she’d looked like the kindergartner she’d once been. Big eyes, pink nose, and a bag full of Milky Ways.
She hadn’t said a word to him about the game. Nothing about how it wasn’t his fault or how the defensive line had let him down. She’d just stuffed him into his letterman’s jacket and sat in the front seat of his muscled ’69 T-bird, peeling wrappers off the candy bars like they were bananas. He’d crammed one after another into his mouth until he thought the sick feeling in his gut was from the chocolate and not from the loss.
They’d stayed out late and Clare had missed her curfew. She’d been grounded and he’d apologized for that . . .
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