by Brenda Novak
“It was an accident,” she said.
He cocked an eyebrow at her.
“I know you don’t believe me, and I don’t want to explain. I’m taking responsibility. That’s all you need to know.”
“The insurance would’ve replaced it.”
“They might have investigated.”
“There were no witnesses. Anything with any finger-prints has been burned to cinders.”
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“That you had a good chance of getting away with it.”
“I know.”
He scratched his head. “Then what are you doing here?”
Proving to herself that she wasn’t what he thought she was, that she wasn’t what anyone thought she was. But this was the hard part, the part she’d rehearsed so many times on the way over. “I came to apologize. I don’t appreciate what you said to Buddy, but I should never have come out here and…”
God, did she have to say it? He deserved to lose his Excursion. He’d always had everything, everyone’s admiration and affection. He was sexy and gorgeous and could kiss like the devil himself. And now he was rich while she scraped by doing hair. She’d always lived in his shadow. Even her own father preferred him to the gangly girl with the skinned knee who could never do anything right….
He waited, obviously taken aback but curious enough to give her the time she needed, even though the cold was turning his normally smooth skin to gooseflesh.
Lifting her chin, Rebecca looked him in the eye. “I’m sorry,” she said.
She dashed a hand across her face because her vision was blurring so badly she couldn’t make out the muddy flowerbeds from the still-steaming Excursion. Then she hurried back to her car.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JOSH COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. Somehow he’d pierced the thick hide that had always kept Rebecca Wells so aloof and unreachable and tough—tougher than any boy he’d ever known—and found something soft and sweet and very…vulnerable.
Damn. He shoved a hand through his hair, then tried to straighten the covers he’d twisted into a mess and told himself to go to sleep. Dawn was only an hour or so away, and he’d been up all night.
But he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing the tears rolling down Rebecca’s cheeks. It was the first time he’d ever seen her cry. Those tears grabbed hold of his insides and squeezed until he could hardly breathe.
Think about what she did to your truck. He stared at the ceiling, preferring the simplicity of the outrage he’d felt before her visit to the confusion he’d experienced since she’d left. She was in the wrong. She’d burned down his brand-new Ford Excursion, for crying out loud. Which meant she deserved to pay for it.
He’d provoked her, though. What he’d done seemed pretty innocuous compared to her reaction, but considering the size of the backlash, he’d apparently created some serious waves for her and Buddy. Maybe Buddy had even broken up with her. Something must have happened to set her off like that.
He glanced at the clock by his bed and wondered why he’d never lost any sleep over Mary. Because she was nice and uncomplicated, he decided. Those were good things. He’d heard all about the differences in the male vs. female psyches, the jokes about guys never knowing a woman’s mind, the talk about how hard it was to please a woman. But in his experience, keeping a woman happy wasn’t so difficult. Give her plenty of attention, a few compliments, some gifts and laughs and candlelight dinners, and everything went smoothly enough.
Except when it came to Rebecca. With her, there were no hard and fast rules. She played in a whole different ballpark.
Punching his pillow, he rolled onto his side and gazed at the phone. He felt terrible to think he might have cost her the man of her dreams—if a milk-toast man like Buddy could be the man of her dreams. And he felt even worse that his interference had made her do something as stupid as torching his truck, landing her with three-hundred-dollar-a-month payments she probably couldn’t afford. But he didn’t really know what to do about the situation at this point, and he wanted to release himself from whatever kept twisting his gut every time he remembered the pain in Rebecca’s eyes.
I’ll call Mary. She never makes me feel like this, never makes me want to rant and rave or slug inanimate objects.
Of course, if he was being honest, she didn’t make him feel much of anything. Certainly she inspired no passion. Nothing like what he’d felt when he held Rebecca in his arms, their bare skin pressed together, their mouths hungry for each other. The primitive drive to possess her had been startling in its ferocity, thrilling, exulting, the absolute pinnacle of sexual experience.
Only he hadn’t wanted to tear off her clothes tonight. Tonight he’d wanted to pull her into his arms and beg her to forgive him—and he was the one who’d lost a thirty-thousand-dollar vehicle!
“I’m screwed up,” he said aloud. Then he grabbed the phone, determined to put Rebecca and this restless night behind him.
“Hello?” Mary’s voice was barely audible.
“It’s me.”
“Josh?”
“Yeah. Sorry to wake you.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I like hearing from you anytime. Lets me know you’re thinking of me.”
Josh winced at the guilt he couldn’t fathom, any more than he could’ve explained anything else about this crazy night.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No, nothing.” Other than the charred hunk of junk that used to be my truck. “I just want you to come over.” And help me get my head on straight.
“But it’s five o’clock in the morning.”
“Your mom’s there with Ricky. You can go back before it’s time to get him off to school.”
“That’s true….”
“And it’s not like we’re on some kind of schedule where we can only make love on Friday nights,” he said, even though their relationship had actually settled into something almost that predictable.
“Of course not. I just…I don’t want you to see me this way,” she said. “I don’t have any makeup on.”
So? What did makeup have to do with anything? Rebecca hadn’t been wearing a stitch of makeup when she’d appeared at his door. She’d stood tall and proud and looked up at him with those clear green eyes filling with tears and—
No more Rebecca! “I don’t care about makeup,” he insisted. “Just come over. Please.”
She giggled. “Boy, are you eager. Did you have a naughty dream? Or have you just been thinking about me?”
I’ve been thinking about Rebecca, and I can’t stop, and it’s scaring the hell out of me. I need you to remind me why I’m with you. Help me out here. “It…it just hasn’t been a very pleasant night.”
“But I look terrible.”
Josh rubbed one temple and gave in. He didn’t really want to see her anyway, he realized. With or without makeup. And that was when he knew he was even more screwed up than he’d thought.
“Forget it,” he said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
* * *
JOSH LEANED his elbows on his desk on Monday, and stared blankly at the stack of papers and checks awaiting his attention. After the terrible weekend he’d spent, he hadn’t been able to concentrate on a damn thing all morning, hadn’t been able to muddle through half of what he needed to get done. The memory of Rebecca at his door kept intruding, along with other memories that stirred him just as much, only in a far different way. She’d been so responsive, so aroused by him a year ago last summer—that meant she couldn’t hate him too badly, right?
Or maybe she could. He certainly had more proof of her dislike than he did of any softer emotion.
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he picked up a stack of payroll checks and started to sign them. The woman had just burned up his Excursion, and he was sitting here doing “she loves me, she loves me not.” Of course Rebecca Wells hated him. Torching someone’s vehicle wasn’t generally a sign of affection. And it wasn’t a
s though he cared for her, anyway.
Sure, there were times late at night when images of her haunted him. In his dreams, she always clung to him as he made her cry out in ecstasy, over and over again. Though last night that dream had changed a little. First he’d kissed away her tears, then he’d made her cry out in ecstasy. But every man had his fantasies. Some liked cheerleaders, others movie stars. He happened to have a thing for the girl who’d grown up across the street and put honey in his sleeping bag when he and his friends tried to camp out in the front yard.
Frowning, he wondered if that made him a masochist.
“There you are.” Janie, the freckled nineteen-year-old who exercised the studs and cleaned the paddocks and stalls, poked her head inside the room. “Mary’s downstairs,” she said, wearing her tan cowboy hat and wide-mouthed smile. “Want me to send her up?”
Mary. Josh took a deep breath and rubbed a palm against the stubble on his chin. “Does she have makeup on?” he muttered.
Janie blinked in surprise. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Tell her to come up.”
Janie’s steps receded, and Josh leaned back, waiting. He knew Mary expected a marriage proposal soon, knew she was growing almost as impatient as her parents and his. But how did a man marry one woman when way down deep, so deep he’d never admit it to anyone, he secretly desired another? Josh had tried to put Rebecca behind him, knew he’d be a damn fool not to, but this whole Buddy business, and his SUV, and last night…
“There you are, working hard, I see.” The petite Mary waltzed into the room in full regalia—dark hair curled to perfection, glossy pink lipstick, a thick coating of mascara on her lashes and a tailored, form-fitting suit. A belt at the waist highlighted her trim figure, but somehow even the thought of what lay beneath did nothing to stir Josh. For the first time, he noticed that her legs were too short.
“What brings you out here?” he said, trying to redirect his mind before he did something really stupid and broke up with her on account of a woman who hated him.
She gave him a promising smile and closed the door. When the lock clicked into place, he knew she’d come for more than talk.
“Don’t you have to be at work?” he asked curiously. Mary ran the office of the only attorney in town—the one who’d handled her divorce and everyone else’s for the past thirty years—and was usually quite busy.
“Lunchtime,” she said. Then she unbuttoned her jacket and let it gape open to reveal a sheer lace bra that left nothing to the imagination.
Josh felt his pulse kick up a few notches and welcomed the sudden infusion of testosterone as she climbed onto his lap. He didn’t need Rebecca to make his blood race. He was fine the way he’d always been.
Maybe he would propose to Mary. Maybe he’d marry her and come home to her every night and make her scream in ecstasy. Only something told him that if she screamed, it would be a calculated response. She’d be offering him what she knew he wanted to hear, not the wild abandon of Rebecca Wells—
Rebecca again. He jerked his hand from Mary’s breast and managed to stifle a curse.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. Suddenly Josh realized he hadn’t even kissed her. Maybe if he kissed her…
“Nothing,” he said and bent his head to press his lips to hers, trying to back up and approach their lovemaking from a whole new angle. But she tilted her face away before their lips could meet.
“You’ll get lipstick all over both of us, silly,” she laughed. “This has to be a quickie. I’ve got to get back.”
“Oh, right,” he mumbled, but when he hesitated, she lifted his hand to her breast again. As her nipple responded to the attention he gave it, he felt his desire build—but then she started telling him about some pointless incident that had happened at work, and he almost snapped that he needed to concentrate if she wanted this to happen.
To prevent himself from snapping at her, he started thinking about Rebecca again, and suddenly he didn’t need to concentrate at all. He had Mary on his desk and was just about to make her scream in ecstasy—at least that was the next step in his fantasy—when she chose that moment to mention seeing a wedding dress she really liked.
“After we’re married, you won’t have to wait until lunch to get what you want,” she added with a little laugh.
He pictured them making love in twenty years with her chatting about something inconsequential and wearing lipstick she wouldn’t let him kiss away, and somehow his desire—and everything else—withered on the spot.
Suppressing a groan of frustration, he withdrew and fastened his pants.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again.
“It’s not you. It’s…it’s just not going to happen this time. This hasn’t been a very good day.”
He saw the same pouty expression she gave her son when he scraped his knee. For a moment Josh was afraid she’d say something like, “Joshy got a boo boo?” Much to her credit, she didn’t. “You want to talk about it?” she asked.
Suddenly she looked so undignified on top of his desk, her skirt around her waist, her jacket open, that he helped her off and felt relieved when she started righting her clothes.
“Someone set fire to my Excursion last night.”
“You’re kidding! Who would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” he lied.
“That’s terrible.”
He nodded but began to feel a little uncomfortable again when her eyes fastened intently on his face. She had something to say, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. “What?” he asked.
She straightened the lapels of her jacket. “I just don’t want you to feel I’ll think any less of you after this.”
“After—”
“You know…” She nodded toward the desk and all the papers they’d wrinkled before aborting his fantasy. “An upsetting event would impair any man’s ability to…perform. So don’t give it another thought. I certainly won’t.”
She already had. Josh winced at the insult to his masculinity and nearly told her that he would’ve been able to perform just fine had her mind been anywhere in the room. If she hadn’t given the impression that she looked at sex as servicing her man, as relationship maintenance that seemed no more meaningful to her than having the oil changed in her car. Who would find that arousing? He didn’t want her to look at lovemaking as some kind of favor. He wanted the absolute honesty he’d experienced with Rebecca. In the few minutes they’d been together, they hadn’t been able to remove their clothes fast enough, touch enough, kiss enough…
He shoved his hands in his pockets because he didn’t know where else to put them. “Thanks for your understanding,” he said so she’d leave. No need to debate the issue. In the first place, he wasn’t convinced his lukewarm response was really her fault. She’d come over to give him what she thought he wanted. She deserved some credit for that. In the second place, Mary wasn’t used to criticism. She probably wouldn’t understand his complaints even if he tried to explain them.
Regardless, the past ten minutes had taught him one thing, and he definitely wasn’t happy about it. Mary wasn’t his problem; Rebecca was. And he wasn’t going to be right in the head until he found some way to get her out of his system.
* * *
BOOKER LEANED BACK to accept the beer he’d ordered as Rebecca cast a wary glance around the Honky Tonk. Not much excitement tonight—only two couples swaying on the dance floor to a rather tired Luther Van Dross ballad and maybe half a dozen men at the bar. But it was Friday and early yet. The tempo would pick up as the evening progressed. At a minimum, Billy Joe and Bobby would come for their usual game of darts. They visited the bar as regularly as the hired help.
She shouldn’t have come.
“Why’d I let you drag me here?” she demanded, wearing sunglasses despite the dim lighting.
“It’s been almost two weeks, Rebecca. You can’t hide forever.”
Rebecca would’ve argued that sh
e wasn’t hiding from anything. Except she knew she’d never convince Booker. Buddy had broken off their engagement for good just two days after Josh had called him, nearly two weeks ago. On impulse, she’d taken some time off work and scarcely gotten out of bed since then—except to go outside and smoke. Her attempt to quit had failed at precisely the moment her hope of marriage to Buddy disappeared.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, reaching for the pack of cigarettes she’d dropped onto the table when they first arrived.
She knew Booker thought she should quit, because she really wanted to quit. But he made no attempt to stop her.
“So how’s this gonna be good for me?” she asked as she lit up. “Are you going to psychoanalyze me or something?”
He lit his own cigarette. “I thought it couldn’t hurt to listen to a little music, play some pool.”
She took a sip of the margarita the waitress had delivered with Booker’s beer. “I don’t feel like playing pool.”
“What do you feel like doing?”
“Nothing.”
“That would explain why you haven’t been working.”
Rebecca looked around the bar, hoping for a distraction. She didn’t really want to talk about the past two weeks. The argument she’d had with Buddy was still too fresh in her mind. He’d said his mother was coming to visit him. She’d said she wanted to meet her. He’d told her now wasn’t the time. She’d felt hurt and rejected and accused him of stalling. He’d said there wasn’t any point in “rocking the boat” since they weren’t even getting married anytime soon. And things had escalated from there.
“I’m going back to work on Tuesday, if it makes you feel any better,” she said.
“That’s good.” He rested his elbows on the table. “Katie’s been worried about you.”
Although Rebecca doubted he’d ever admit it, Booker was probably more worried than anyone, except perhaps Delaney, who’d called incessantly. “If you say so.”
“When did you tell everyone at the salon about Buddy?” he asked.
“I dropped by the day after it happened. I had to. I needed Katie and Erma to cover my appointments. And someone had to train Ashleigh, the new girl,” she said, making circles in the condensation from her glass. “Besides, I figured the sooner I let the truth out, the better. Everyone will have their laugh, then I’ll face them all on Tuesday.”
