When I Fall

by Tamara Morgan

  Livvie made good on her end of the promise and took a bite of the energy bar. “Darling, if we make it through this night alive, we can name this outfit after you. Now come on. I think I owe you a drink.”

  Becca thought about the amount of alcohol she’d already consumed, factored in her body weight and deducted the fact that Livvie had eaten most of her food. Ha—who was she kidding? She couldn’t perform complex mathematical calculations under the best of circumstances, but she could still touch her nose. That meant she wasn’t even close to wasted yet. If she wanted a chance at actual sleep tonight, she was going to have to try a lot harder than this.

  Pausing only a moment to toss the discarded skirt into the garbage, she grabbed her clutch and followed Livvie out the door. Just one or two more hours, she promised herself. Then I’ll have Liam pull around and take me home. In bed by sunrise, when the dark wasn’t an issue anymore. Up and sober by noon, ready to face another day.

  Who knew? She might even try to make it to her mother’s house for tea tomorrow.

  Stranger things had happened.

  * * *

  “Why is there such a crowd in the VIP lounge tonight?” Jake Montgomery craned his neck to see past the crush of bodies, but he couldn’t make anything out beyond the usual writhing and overconsumption that went on behind the velvet ropes. “Is there royalty in our midst?”

  Dana followed the path of his gaze, his face pulled down in a sneer that made him look like a gargoyle. “It’s nothing but the usual drunk socialites. Why? Were you hoping for something better?”

  “Is there anything better than drunk socialites?” Jake asked. Beautiful young women with more money than common sense were his favorite kind. They demanded charm and wit and little else from him—unless you counted the occasional purse hold. Charm and wit were all he had to offer, and he’d long ago mastered the ability to dangle a sparkling bag from his fingertips without losing credibility. It was all in the posture.

  Dana clearly disagreed. “This place is getting tedious. I think it might be time for us to find a new venue to patronize.”

  “Uh-oh.” Jake shook his head in mock sympathy. Without fail, Dana got tired of a new club every month around the same date. The moon waxed and waned to his apathy. “Sounds like somebody hasn’t been having much luck with the socialites lately. Maybe we should head up there and see if we can’t find one willing to lower her standards for the night.”

  “If you’d been here all summer, you’d realize what a bore the city is becoming.”

  “And if you’d spent all summer sequestered with your family, you’d realize there are fates much worse than boredom.”

  Jake’s misery eked a smile out of Dana’s stony visage. “Still cut off from the hand that feeds you, eh? I wondered why you were staying with me instead of one of your father’s hotels.”

  Jake didn’t allow the smile to fall from his face. If the world considered it a grand joke for his family to freeze his accounts and reduce him to penury, then he intended to laugh longest and loudest. It’s all in the posture.

  “I’m proving a point,” he said mildly. “Monty suggested I’m incapable of supporting myself for any length of time. I suggested he select his favorite condiments to make his words go down easier.”

  Dana laughed. “How’d he take that?”

  “I believe he might still be sputtering.”

  “Your brother never did have much of a sense of humor.”

  Jake didn’t respond. While Monty wasn’t so much a stick-in-the-mud as he was a log in the whole fucking swamp, Jake preferred the aspersions on his brother’s name to be cast by him and him alone. He had some family loyalty.

  Dana cast one last look around the club, blinking in time to the heavy bass emanating from the dance floor. “I’m officially calling this place a bust. Ready to head out?”

  “Sure.” Jake got to his feet and shook out his slacks. It didn’t matter to him if they sat at Ma Petite and talked about how bored they were, or if they found a new, out-of-the-way hole to grow bored with. The truth was that he’d only been in town a few days and he was already beginning to falter. Without funds—or any immediate means of acquiring some—city life lost the majority of its appeal.

  He’d just grabbed his jacket and folded it carefully over his arm when a trill of feminine laughter broke free from the VIP room, whipping his interest. He leaned back and tried to peer in once more. He knew that laugh.

  “Are you coming?” Dana asked irritably. In addition to reliable apathy, Dana also maintained a strict quantity of impatience at all times. If it was possible to bottle up dissatisfaction and sell it, it would smell exactly like Dana’s Clive Christian cologne.

  “Wait a minute.” Jake stepped away from their table, moving closer to the back of the club. Like most of the dancing/drinking/any-vice-you-want-as-long-as-you-pay-for-it establishments in Manhattan, Ma Petite was set up so that the Very Important Persons in attendance were entertained away from the riffraff, gods and demigods on high. They were kept quarantined by a rope and a burly security guard dressed all in black, neither of which Jake feared.

  “Anyone interesting in there tonight?” he asked.

  The guard sized him up in less than five seconds. Jake never knew if it was his face people recognized, or if the cut of his clothes was enough to ensure entry, but the man loosened his stance and nodded toward the back. “See for yourself.”

  He intended to. The laughter sounded again, and Jake’s gaze was drawn toward a table in the middle, where two women in an obviously intoxicated state danced while a throng of onlookers catcalled from the floor.

  “Like I said.” Dana’s voice brushed his ear. “Drunk socialites. I think the one in the short purple dress is Olivia Winston.”

  Jake nodded. He’d met the runway model a few times, usually in situations similar to this one, though the location varied. Dana wasn’t being cynical when he said these places were starting to suffer from a cycle of sameness. Same people, same sins, same hangover the next day. When Jake was in the thick of it—when he was the catcaller and, he wasn’t going to lie, the one dancing on the table—the invariability didn’t bother him. There was always something to enjoy about a roller coaster when you were on the ride. It was only now, as the guy standing on the fringes waiting for everyone else to disembark, that he was beginning to feel jaded.

  And old. Christ, he felt old.

  “I can’t tell who the other one is—she keeps turning her face.” Dana tilted his head. “Not a bad little body, though. She’s a bit young for me, but you like them that way, don’t you?”

  Jake didn’t grace that barb with a response. He enjoyed the company of women of all ages, and he wouldn’t apologize for it. Everyone needed a hobby.

  The girl turned and performed a shimmy, the sway of lithe hips draped in black making the most out of that nice little body. He dropped his shoulders as recognition settled in. “Oh, hell.”

  “What? You know her?”

  He firmed his jaw and watched her make another turn on the table, inches away from catching her heel on the edge and plummeting off. “I know her.”

  Dana pointed his dark gaze at Jake. “You sleep with her?”

  “Once.”

  For the first time that night, Dana appeared to be interested. “Oh, yeah? Who is she?”

  Jake heaved a sigh and moved toward the table. “She’s my aunt.”

  Chapter Two

  Jake paused among the lookers-on and watched as Olivia and Becca bounced and shimmied their way into a full tabletop party.

  In true nightclub fashion, it was mere minutes before their quest for attention was expanded by several more women in tight, expensive dresses and, as was inevitable, a few men eager to enjoy the dresses from a closer vantage point. An entire dance floor rested empty and unused a few feet away,
but that was hardly the point. With this crowd, being the center of attention was all that mattered.

  In theory, Jake didn’t object to being the center of attention. Discretion had never been one of his favorite virtues, and there were enough photographs of his iniquity floating around to wallpaper the White House. But Rebecca Clare—littlest sister to his father’s painfully young second wife, media train wreck, recent rehab patron—took indiscretion to whole new levels. Evidence of her iniquity could have wallpapered the Louvre.

  “Gimme a boost?” A short blonde in a dazzling array of glitter from head to toe appeared at Jake’s side. He gave her his hand and helped her to a chair before she was hoisted the rest of the way up. The addition of her body displaced the rest of the tabletop mass in true scientific fashion, and Becca teetered somewhere near the edge, her dress swaying, the rest of her not too far behind.

  His first thought—one of alarm—had him stepping forward, prepared to catch her as she fell. But she managed to maintain her upright position through a particularly impressive gyration, leaving him with empty hands and a considerable dose of respect.

  Becca had never been what Jake would consider a striking woman, whether dancing on a table or more appropriately seated at the edge of it. She wasn’t particularly tall or well-built. Her hair was a nondescript shade of brown that hit her shoulders during those rare moments she wasn’t in motion. She had the sleek skin and smooth limbs that all women in their twenties and in this circle had, her eyes a muddy green that most people would have lazily called gray. In fact, there was nothing about Becca that stood out in a place like this, and she could have been any number of rich, pretty white girls out for a night on the town. One of Dana’s drunk socialites, another face in the crowd.

  But it was impossible not to notice her tonight. Not because of her good looks or because her dance movements were calculated to appeal to anyone with functioning sex organs—though both of these things were true. This had much more to do with the fact that she would cheerfully dance on the table, her skirt swishing around the tops of her thighs, for the next eight hours. And not once would she give a flying fuck that she was totally commando underneath.

  With a sigh and another eyeful of the curve of her naked ass, Jake realized it had become his official responsibility to get her down and home in one piece. He might be flaunting convention and his family’s wishes by refusing to bend to their will, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see his step-aunt come to any harm. He liked her. She was a good kid, if not always of sound judgment.

  “Jake! What are you doing here?” Becca caught sight of a familiar face at her ankle and stopped dancing. The sudden halt to her movements was a mistake, because even though her body stopped spinning, the room took over for her—and the room was moving a lot faster than she had been.

  “I’m here to help you off that table.”

  She puzzled over the stern note in his voice for a second before taking the hand he held up to her. If the room was going to start taking off into space—which seemed likely all of a sudden—perhaps it was better to be on solid ground again.

  “I didn’t know you were back from Connecticut,” she said happily. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was happy, but she suspected it had something to do with the way his arm wound naturally around her waist, helping her to stay standing and move through the blur of a room. A familiar arm was always nice when you were feeling tipsy. So was the man attached to it. He could do helpful things like call your driver and find your shoes and tell you if there was lipstick on your teeth.

  If one planned it right, a man on the arm also meant not sleeping alone.

  “How long have you been in town?” she asked.

  “Not long and obviously long enough.” Jake stopped her and peered carefully into each eye. “What are we dealing with?”

  “Um, a good time? I’m here with my friend Olivia. Do you know Livvie? I’ll introduce you. She’s great.”

  “I’ve met her.” He shook her shoulders, causing her head to flop and the familiar creep of a headache to begin at the base of her skull. “I mean it, Becca. I can’t get you home safely if I don’t know what you’re on.”

  She wrinkled her nose. Did he mean drugs?

  “Yes. I mean drugs.”

  Since when did Jake Montgomery sound so stern? “Oh, don’t worry. I’m totally fine. Watch.”

  She took a step back and showed him her move with her nose and her fingers. Except she might have missed on that last one. And, ow, was that her eyeball? “Okay. Maybe I’m a little drunk.”

  “A little?”

  “I’m sober enough to admire your tie.” She reached up and tugged on the dark blue knot, pulling the fabric tight around his neck. “There. Now you’re turning the right shade of red to yell at me. You look just like your father.”

  He sighed and loosened his tie, continuing his close examination of her face. She knew what he was looking for—dilated pupils, chattering teeth, sweat beyond the usual signs of exertion—and stood still to give him a better look. He wouldn’t find much. Contrary to very popular, very widespread opinion, she preferred to stick to legal vices.

  He nodded once, apparently satisfied with what he saw. “Come on. Let’s call a cab and get you home to sleep it off. It’s long past time for this Cinderella to be tucked in bed.”

  “Why, Jake Montgomery. Are you trying to lure me into the sack?” She batted her eyes at him, but the mascara on her right eye was clumped, so it was more like clunky winking. “That’s a terrible line. Last time you told me I was a goddess of the night.”

  He frowned. “Did I really say that? How awful.”

  She giggled. “I dunno. I thought it was sweet. It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Is there anything that doesn’t work on you?” He didn’t give her a chance to reply. Gripping her elbow, he ushered her toward the back door of the club. Good call. That was the clandestine door, the door you snuck out when you were too shitfaced to face the press at the front—or when you didn’t necessarily want your mother to find out you were being escorted home by your nephew.

  Well, sort-of nephew. By marriage. One who was seven years older and had pretty hair.

  She dug her heels into the floor. “Hey, you. Pretty Hair. I forgot.”

  “What did you just call me?”

  “It’s so pretty.” She reached out and gave his tall coif a pat. A rich, thick, burnished auburn, Jake’s hair was a thing every woman under the age of forty coveted for her own. The locks flattened under her ministrations and bounced right back again. “But that’s not what I forgot.”

  He waited next to the bouncer while Becca tried to remember what it was she’d wanted to say. It was in there somewhere, buried underneath energy bars and vodka tonics and Livvie’s bathroom disaster. She snapped her fingers. “Oh, I know. I have Liam tonight. There’s no need to call a cab. He’ll make sure I get home safely.”

  Jake blinked. “Who’s Liam?”

  “Liam is the boss of me.”

  “I find that hard to believe. It doesn’t seem to me that anyone is capable of restraining you.”

  Coming from Jake—a man famous for doing what he wanted, when he wanted, and without a care for the consequences—that was a compliment. Patently untrue, but a compliment all the same. “I left my purse over on the banquette. Be a doll and get it, would you? Liam’s number is programmed in.”

  Ever the gallant, Jake nodded once and went to retrieve her bag. She closed her eyes and let the room spin around her, taking comfort in the knowledge that for at least tonight, she’d be safe in the care of someone she trusted.

  “Well, well, well. What do we have here?” A man who wasn’t Jake approached her from the side. Under normal circumstances, she’d have ignored him and let her disinterest carry him away, but there was something about his overt familiarity that twinged in her st
omach.

  Becca made it a habit not to overlook those kinds of twinges. You could call it instinct, intuition or indigestion—she didn’t care. It was never a good idea to ignore the universe when it was trying to tell you something.

  She opened her eyes to find a bulldog-like face surveying her with interest. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

  “Rebecca Clare, right?” He leaned close in a deliberate way that pricked at her skin. “I didn’t recognize you before. I believe we met at the Callahans’ Christmas party last year.”

  “Did we?”

  “Yes. I remember now. You dared me to eat the mistletoe.”

  This was an inauspicious start to the conversation. Challenging men to taste the poisonous plant was her standard response when they got overly friendly with the holiday traditions.

  “It looks like you didn’t take me up on it,” she said blandly.

  He laughed, his expression taking on a distinct leer. “No, but it was a close call. Your friend saved me right before I was about to take a bite.”

  Recognition hit her like a brick to the heart. Although her memory was never at its best when she’d been drinking—thus its appeal—flashes hit her from all sides, sending her into physical recoil.

  She and Sara in matching reindeer sweaters, which they’d found in the kids’ section at Bergdorf’s and forced their adult-sized torsos into for the party. Sara saving her from some bulldog-faced creeper under the mistletoe, saying she’d met him once at a party and wouldn’t mind following up. Sara disappearing into yet another relationship a few weeks later, the same way she always did whenever a new man entered her life.

  No way. This isn’t happening. Not here. Not like this. Getting hit on by Dana Carstairs in a nightclub couldn’t possibly be what the universe wanted for her right now.

  “It’s you.” The word was venom on her tongue and in her veins.

  “Yes, it is,” he agreed, seemingly oblivious to the explosions taking place behind Becca’s eyes. “And even though it’s a little early for mistletoe, I still wouldn’t say no to that kiss.”