by Lori Wilde
“You’re missing the point.”
“But not the irony.”
His eyes flared and her breath caught. She felt the old flutter in her chest. Divorced two years and with just one look he could still send her heart reeling.
But Shane had moved on with his life. He had someone else. A very nice someone else. Tish had absolutely no right to feel envious.
It sounded rational and well thought out. The problem was that her emotions weren’t having any of it. She was jealous and angry and hurt. She wanted to throw back her head and howl for everything she’d let slip through her fingers. No, no, she wanted to run right out and buy the most expensive pair of shoes she could find.
What? You expected he would pine over you forever?
No, no. Yes.
Honestly, secretly, she’d always held on to the hope that some day, some way they’d find their way back to each other. When they’d both achieved their dream jobs and worked through their personal issues. How naïve was that?
If growing up with a mother who was always looking for love but never finding it had taught her anything, it was that happily ever after was nothing but a romantic myth. So why did she want so badly to believe in it?
Tish’s eyes tracked over him. His shoulders were so broad they filled almost half of the wall behind him. Her gaze snagged on the scar running across his temple; unbidden fascination had her reaching up to touch it.
He grabbed her wrist before her fingers could graze his skin. “No,” he said sharply, “no.”
They stared into each other’s eyes, both of them breathing hard. Her heart slammed against her chest, pounding erratically.
Kiss me! she thought, crazily, wildly. As if a kiss would fix everything. She tossed her head and pursed her lips, mentally daring him to do it.
He looked hard into her eyes, as if assessing the depth of her soul. Their lungs moved in tandem, drawing in great gasps of ragged air. There was such raw hunger in his eyes she couldn’t help but gasp. The look was naked, completely without guile, a mirror image of her heart.
He cupped her face with his left hand, tilted her chin up to look at him. This time she did gasp. The harsh sound echoed in the tiny room.
Was he going to kiss her?
She held her breath and waited. If she were to lay her palm against his chest would she feel the wild thunder crashing under her hand? She looked into his eyes and knew if she lived to be a hundred she’d never forget the starving look in his eyes at that moment.
He hungered for her.
Shane did not kiss her. In fact, he raised his head, let out his breath in quiet exhalation. Disappointment smashed down on her like a windowpane shattering.
But his eyes blazed black as lump coal. Heated, sizzling, eating her up.
I can still make this man… burn, she thought, and a powerful thrill rippled through her.
You could kiss him.
No. No way. Tish wasn’t going to be the one to step across that line. If he wanted her, he was going to have to be the one to come after her.
“Why did you pretend not to know me?” he asked, sliding his hands down her shoulders to her upper arms. “Why didn’t you tell Elysee who you were?”
“What? And blow my chances for videotaping this wedding?”
“You’re not seriously thinking of going through with this. You can’t take this job and not tell Elysee who you are,” he said.
“Why not?” She wrenched herself from his grasp. “I’m just trying to spare Elysee’s feelings.”
“And make your career.” He clenched his teeth.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said, bitterness tingeing his voice. A twist of panic went through her as his pupils constricted and his eyes darkened disapprovingly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re still hiding. Still keeping secrets.”
She opened her mouth to deny it, but what was the point? He’d made up his mind about her. There was nothing she could say to change it. Instead she muttered, “I’m not the only one who keeps secrets.”
Scowling, he drew himself up. “Is there something you want to say?”
Oh yeah. Things she should have said two years ago. But it was too late, water under the proverbial bridge and all that. They stood glaring at each other. The past was a brick wall between them that they couldn’t climb over. They’d been at this impasse before. Unable to understand each other, unable to move forward.
“You’re going to go back out there and tell Elysee who you are.”
Defeat and despair crowded out any lingering hope. Not for the chance to videotape the President’s daughter’s wedding, but for the possibility that Shane still loved her in the same way she loved him.
“And if I don’t?” Tish asked, challenging his authority.
Shane cocked his head and studied her face for a long moment. Same old Tish. She never accepted anything without question. It was one of the things he had always respected about her, but it had irritated him as well: her inability to put her faith in him.
Shane knew her distrust stemmed from the fact that Tish’s father had taken off when she was a kid and that she’d rarely seen him after that. Men leave, she’d learned. Why should she trust him when he’d spectacularly reinforced that lesson when he’d walked out on their marriage?
He was sorry for it now. So damned sorry. His arms ached to hold her. Lips burned to kiss her. There were no words, which was just as well. It was too late.
How had this happened? The day after asking Elysee to marry him, he found himself locked in the bathroom with the one woman who could still send his senses reeling and his heart thumping.
“Well?” Tish’s chin trembled defiantly. “Are you going to tattle on me?”
“No,” he answered quietly. “Because I know you’ll do the right thing and tell her yourself.”
“Bastard,” she said.
“That’s beside the point.” He quirked an eyebrow.
She flashed him a smile, brief, but it was there.
He grinned. “God, Tish, it’s good to see you again.”
“You mean it?”
“I missed you.” Why had he said that? It was true, but he was courting trouble.
“Really?”
“You find that so hard to believe?”
“Well, you are engaged to another woman.”
“I’m just saying you look good.”
“Thank you.” Her earlobes pinked and she peered up at him from underneath those long auburn eyelashes. His heart knocked when he saw the vulnerability she struggled so hard to hide in those green depths. Her eyes narrowed, condensing the world to him.
Only him.
She raised a hand and nervously slipped her fingers through her hair, trying to tame the springy curls that defied taming. Her breasts rose and fell beneath the stretchy material of her turquoise V-neck T-shirt. She looked damned good in turquoise, the way it contrasted with her red hair—like springtime in Arizona.
Her fingers dropped from her hair in one long graceful movement and fell to the pocket of her purple hippie skirt. Her fingernails, he noted, were painted an avant-garde color of silver, as always, flaunting convention.
He wondered, not for the first time, why she’d ever married him. Look up “conventional” in the dictionary, he thought, and you’d find a picture of Shane Tremont.
His eyes fixed on her lips. Rich, ripe, painted the color of sweet raspberries. He held his breath. Waiting for what, he did not know, but he was sure waiting for something.
Tish pulled a small round red-capped pot of cinnamon lip gloss from her pocket, unscrewed the lid and dipped the tip of her index finger into the petroleum jelly laced with cinnamon flavoring. She lifted her finger, slick and glistening, and slowly traced the glossy residue over her bottom lip with the cool certainty of a woman who knew just what it took to keep her lips supple and ready for a kissing. She recapped the lip gloss and slippe
d it back into her pocket, and the startling sienna-colored smell of cinnamon floated toward him.
The overhead lamp slanted a shaft of light across her face, bathing one half in light, the other in shadow. He looked down at her, glimpsing something melancholy there. Old feelings—both good and bad—rose between them like soap bubbles, rainbow-prism shiny and fragile as a whisper.
A balance was struck, only for a moment, but enough to pull the air from their lungs in a simultaneous exhale.
His heart slunk back against his spine in shame. What in God’s name had he been thinking to ever let her go?
You were hurting.
But so was she, and he’d selfishly let his hurt mean more than hers. She’d betrayed him, yes, but in the end, hadn’t he ultimately betrayed her more?
He fixed on those lips. Lips he craved to kiss. Lips that called to him late in the middle of the night, in the dark of his dreams. He leaned forward. Not thinking, just wanting.
She didn’t draw away.
Shane never took his eyes off her face, and then suddenly realized their noses were almost touching. She used to give him what she called Eskimo kisses. Whimsically rubbing her nose back and forth against his, until he begged her to stop because it made him want to sneeze. How he wished for one of those Eskimo kisses right now.
It would be so easy for him to kiss her, Eskimo style or otherwise. The most natural thing in the world.
He felt the heat of her skin, so warm near his.
So damned easy.
But he could not. Would not. Should not.
She flicked out her tongue, tracing it over the lips that her fingertips had just touched, making the lip gloss application moot. The gesture wasn’t calculated. She wasn’t trying for seduction. She was just anxious. He recognized the nervous way she hugged her elbows against her body. Unsettled, just as he was, by the chemistry that time had not erased.
They stared at each other with a stunned mix of surprise and affection and stark sexual heat.
It was still there. The old spark. The embers that had never gone out. Two years and they were still burning.
Hope blossomed.
They were still undeniably connected. And that connection was incredibly complicated. Guilt clutched his gut in a slippery fist. He had no right to hope.
Then a knock sounded at the bathroom door, severing the tenuous chain.
Gently, Elysee knocked on the door a second time. She prayed her plan was going to work. It might be unorthodox, but it was the only way she could know for sure that Shane was indeed The One her mother had promised. She’d mistaken men for The One when they were not. This time, she was taking a different approach.
“Tish? Shane? Are you guys still in there?”
The door wrenched open to reveal Shane standing there, Tish hovering in the corner just behind him.
Elysee put a perky smile on her face. “Hi, guys.”
Tish raised her hand in a halfhearted, guilty-looking wave. She should be feeling guilty. She hadn’t come clean about her relationship with Shane, but Elysee understood why Tish had lied and didn’t hold it against her. She believed in giving everyone the benefit of the doubt.
Even her fiancé’s ex-wife.
Besides, she liked Tish. A lot more than she had thought she would. She could see why Shane had married her. Tish was passionate and beautiful and talented. What she didn’t know was why they’d broken up.
That was the reason she’d asked Tish to video their wedding. She wanted to see if Shane could have a civil relationship with his ex. Elysee also had an added agenda. She wanted to discover how to avoid the problems Tish and Shane had faced in their marriage. What better way to do that than to ask Tish herself?
Plus, Shane had never talked about his ex-wife. This was certainly one way to get him to open up and face his feelings about her and resolve them once and for all. This way, she and Shane could have a fresh start.
It might be rocky for a bit, until Tish and Shane ironed out their differences, but in the long run, Elysee was convinced hiring Tish to video their wedding was the best thing for all concerned.
“Hi,” Shane said, but didn’t meet Elysee’s gaze. Was he feeling guilty, too?
A momentary panic gripped Elysee. What if Shane still cared about Tish? If he still cared about her, he wouldn’t have left her. Shane’s a loyal guy.
That idea made her wonder what Tish had done to chase him away. Had she cheated on him? She seemed to be a very adventuresome and passionate woman, with her snapping green eyes and sassy red hair.
Elysee’s heartstrings tugged, and she smiled sympathetically at Shane. Poor baby. She was going to make everything all right in his world again. She glanced from Shane to Tish and back again.
“Did you two have a nice chat?”
Tish cleared her throat. “We’ve… er… I’ve, got something to tell you.”
“Oh?”
“Shane’s my ex-husband.” Tish cringed as if waiting for a bomb to detonate.
“I know.” Elysee grinned. “Isn’t it great?”
“You knew?” Tish sounded stunned.
“You knew?” Shane echoed, looking bushwhacked.
Elysee shook her head at Shane. “You know that I don’t hire anyone without doing a thorough background check. Of course I knew.”
“And you hired me anyway?” A suspicious frown furrowed Tish’s brow. “What’s this all about?”
“I want us all to get along. Like Demi and Bruce and Ashton,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be great?”
Tish looked at her as if she was seriously delusional. Elysee supposed it might appear that way to her. She winnowed into the bathroom with them, threw one arm around Shane’s neck and the other around Tish’s.
“Call me naïve,” she said, “but I think this is the emotionally healthiest thing we can do. So, are you still on board, Tish? Please know that we both want you here. Don’t we, Shane?”
“We do?” Shane said it more as a question than a confirmation, but she pretended he was one hundred percent behind her.
Elysee operated on the assumption if you believed the best about people they usually lived up to your expectations. Well, except in the case of her three ex-fiancés—but those relationships hadn’t worked out because they hadn’t been The One. Elysee was a firm believer that everything happened for a reason.
“See.” She beamed at Tish. “We’re all in agreement. You’re going to videotape our wedding and it’s going to be fabulous. Now let’s get out of the bathroom and go have dinner. I’m starving!”
Chapter 8
I’m in serious need of an intervention,” Tish wailed to Delaney over the telephone.
It was after ten o’clock at night and it was really too late to call, especially since her best friend was a newlywed and it was a Monday. But Tish was drowning deep in emotional quicksand and Delaney was the only one who would know how to pull her out of it.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a half-gallon of Blue Bell mint chocolate chip in my refrigerator and a very big spoon in my hand and I’m afraid of what will happen next.”
“Don’t do anything drastic. I’ll zip right over.”
Ten minutes later her doorbell rang. Dressed in one of Shane’s old T-shirts, fuzzy yellow Tweety Bird slippers, and a purple chenille bathrobe, Tish shuffled to the door, the half-gallon of mint-chocolate-chip Blue Bell tucked in the crook of one arm. She flung open the door without even checking the peephole first, something she never did. That’s how depressed I am.
“I brought reinforcements,” Delaney said, “and they’ve all got spoons.”
Tish had to smile at the sight of her two other close friends, Jillian Samuels and Rachael Henderson, standing on the porch beside Delaney. All three held up white plastic spoons.
Swinging the door wide, Tish sighed with relief at the cavalry and said, “Move your fannies in here now. I need all the help I can get.”
They ended up piled in the middle of the king-siz
ed bed she had once shared with Shane. Tish sat cross-legged in the center, with Rachael on her left, Jillian to her right, and Delaney right in front of her. Tish held the Blue Bell in her lap while everyone dug in. What good friends they were! They weren’t about to let her get fat alone.
“So let me get this straight.” Delaney licked a dab of mint-green ice cream dotted with chocolate off her upper lip. “Elysee Benedict hired you specifically because you were Shane’s ex-wife?”
Tish nodded. “No kidding, you guys, the first daughter is a nutcase. She’s impossibly nice. When I had to tell her who I was, it felt like I was a rabbit hunter looking down the barrel of a rifle at Flopsy Cottontail.”
“I still can’t believe your Shane is engaged to marry the President’s daughter.” Delaney shook her head. “How did that happen?”
“He was on her protective detail and he saved her life.”
“Ah,” Jillian said. “She’s got him up on a pedestal. He’s her hero.”
“Which is perfect,” Tish said, “because Shane has a desperate need to be a hero. It bodes well for their marriage. I’m happy for them.”
“You don’t have to lie to us,” Delaney said. “Go ahead, dis the President’s daughter. We won’t tell.”
“Do you think they could have your bedroom bugged?” Jillian, who was a bit on the paranoid side, asked and eyed the corners of the room as if she were going to spy a radio transmitter recording their conversation and sending it along to the FBI.
“I’m confused. Why would the President’s daughter want her fiancé’s ex-wife to videotape their wedding?” Rachael interjected. Rachael was a sweet-natured kindergarten teacher, with dazzling green eyes, long-flowing blond hair, and creamy porcelain skin. She was the starry-eyed romantic of the group. If she couldn’t understand Elysee’s motives, no one could.
“Apparently, Shane would never talk about me to her.” Inwardly Tish winced. It hurt to think that he disliked her so much he wouldn’t even discuss her with his fiancée. “So Elysee had someone do a little digging into his background, learned my name, and found out I was a wedding videographer. She believes this will help me and Shane ‘confront our baggage’ as she put it over dinner, help us ‘assimilate the trauma’ of our marriage.”
