Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (Eight Fun, Romantic Novels by Eight Bestselling Authors)

by Violet Duke

  Not Rob, whose opportunity to cheat would always be plentiful, whether or not he ever planned to act on it.

  Not Gretchen, whose betrayal was surely unintentional. Elizabeth doubted her friend even realized she was next in line for Rob’s attention. But Elizabeth knew no one escaped his magnetism unscathed, so it still hurt to see her with him.

  Not even Jacques, whose empathy had him turning several shades of sickly pale.

  She race-walked down the block and back to her car. She got in, drove as far as the park, found a shady spot and killed the ignition. Then she sobbed nonstop for forty minutes.

  *

  ELIZABETH WAS ACTING weird as hell tonight. Rob figured she must still be pissed at Camden for canceling the photo shoot at the last minute. But Jacques, who Rob had thought was warming up to him again after the Fourth of July, was back to being very, very chilly, which made no sense at all. Those moody Frenchmen.

  Nick was off in his own world most of the time, no doubt dreaming of some gay hockey-playing fantasy lover who could down a shot of ouzo without clutching his stomach and grimacing at the potency.

  Only Gretchen was being her normal self. When he’d asked her for details about Elizabeth’s experience as a cookbook writer this morning, she’d told him sidesplitting stories of some of Elizabeth’s earliest recipe attempts. Customers with delicate sensibilities were in the shop, so they had to keep their voices down…her tales involved proclaiming several very descriptive swear words, which Gretchen claimed Elizabeth hadn’t used since. But Rob laughed and laughed just imagining his sweet woman letting loose with a range of profanities a Green Beret might find offensive.

  He just loved those contradictions in her. She usually surprised him and challenged him as a result. But here they were at dinner and, try as he might, he still couldn’t figure why she could act with perfect pleasantness toward every member of his family and, yet, give him the cold shoulder. Even Tony noticed the change.

  “You two get into a fight?” Tony whispered to him.

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  His brother winced. “Oooh. Those are the worst kind. Hey, man, take my advice and just apologize now.”

  “For what?” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Yeah, you did. You just don’t know it yet. Nip it in the bud and say you’re sorry. It’s easier that way. Really. Trust me on this.”

  But games like that made Rob mad, so he ignored his brother’s wise counsel, only to regret it on the car ride home.

  “You need to keep your eyes on the road,” she informed him when he leaned over to kiss her at a stoplight.

  “O-kay.” He snapped back to the driver’s seat and stared straight ahead until the light changed and he could floor the accelerator. A Porsche can go damn fast.

  “S-Slow down,” she hissed, crossing her arms and looking all irritated.

  What was this? Driving 101?

  He didn’t slow down.

  “Rob, what do you think you’re doing?”

  He slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. He shoved the car into park with a force that probably wouldn’t be looked upon too favorably by the manufacturers.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said, none too quietly. “What is up with you tonight? I did not do anything wrong, and I’m not going to apologize. So there.” Okay, well that last part came across as kind of childish, but he really wasn’t in the mood to care much.

  Her green eyes narrowed. Her lovely lips tightened. Her soft hands clenched together so hard he worried a few of her fingers might get dislocated.

  “I saw you flirting with Gretchen this morning.” Her words were pointed, precise, as accusatory as they came and without a stutter anywhere. “She is my friend, you know, and if you’re leading her on or—”

  “You think there’s something going on between me and Gretchen?” WHAT? “Hell, Elizabeth, she’s the only one of you guys who isn’t acting like a nutcase today.”

  Oooh, she didn’t like that comment. Whoops.

  She snatched at the handle of the passenger door and began to pull it open.

  “Would you just wait a minute?” He tugged at the hem of her blouse to keep her in the car.

  Oooh, she didn’t like that move either, and he was rewarded with a glare that could freeze water in Aruba.

  “Why should I wait?” she said.

  “Because this is ridiculous! There is nothing—I repeat, nothing—going on between me and your best friend. Gretchen’s fun to talk to, that’s all. She tells goofy stories and they make me laugh.”

  Oooh, man, was he ever striking out tonight. Now she looked hurt and he remembered—too late, of course—that she was sensitive to the whole speaking thing. Not that he ever thought of her as having a speech impediment anymore. And the two of them talked constantly. How could she forget that? How could she act like an insecure seventh grader?

  Women were these crazy-making beings, which reminded him of why he’d stayed clear of them in the first place.

  “Please drive me home,” she commanded.

  “Fine.” He put the car back into gear and got them the hell out of there. Not that it helped any. A change in location didn’t change her attitude toward him.

  “I’m still very angry with you,” she said primly when they reached her apartment complex. “I’d rather you didn’t come up tonight.”

  As if! “You don’t have to worry, sweetheart. I could use a good night’s sleep for a change.” He heard—and cringed at—the bitterness in his own voice.

  Clearly, she heard it, too. Something in her expression telegraphed both fresh pain and confusion.

  “I’m s-sure you’ll have plenty of restful n-nights soon…back in Chicago.” Her tone was sad, regretful even.

  If he’d have stopped right there and apologized for losing his temper—and let her apologize, as he sensed she probably wanted to—he could’ve gone up to her place with her and they could’ve made love and their kisses would’ve removed the stingers they’d thoughtlessly inflicted on each other.

  But, dumbass that he was, he didn’t stop there and apologize for his part in letting this silly battle escalate—even though she was wrong about the flirting. Oh, no.

  Instead he said the genius line, “My nights in Chicago aren’t restful at all. I’ve been taking it easy up here.”

  The fury in her eyes told him he’d better get used to Tony’s sofa sleeper again. The hurt on her face told him that they were now paying the price for a relationship that should’ve never happened in the first place. He could see her practically computing the hours until she could watch him leave the city limits of Wilmington Bay—and leave her alone.

  *

  TONY COCKED AN eyebrow at him when he returned to his brother’s house that night after a ten-day absence.

  “I told you, you should’ve apologized. No questions asked,” Tony said.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Ah-huh.” Tony flung some sheets and blankets at him. “I believe you. Really.”

  Something in his head exploded. “Women are crazy.”

  Tony nodded like a freaking TV shrink. “Yep.”

  “They get these damn fool ideas into their heads about something and they won’t listen to logic or to reason or to anything that remotely makes sense.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “And I was not flirting with Gretchen.”

  Tony laughed. “Oh, boy.”

  “I am really pissed off.” He massaged his temples with his fingers and collapsed onto the sofa sleeper.

  His br
other slapped his shoulder on his way out of the room. “Love does that to you,” Mr. Family Man said.

  “Dammit,” Rob said back.

  And, just for the record, he did not have a restful night.

  *

  ELIZABETH KNEW JACQUES didn’t own much black—it didn’t suit his coloring—but, whatever he’d collected in mourning colors, he was wearing all of it the next day.

  “I haven’t been much of a friend lately, have I?” she said to him in the early-morning, pre-opening-shift hours at Tutti-Frutti. She enjoyed coming up here before the crowds. It was peaceful, and she needed that these days. She’d be long gone before Rob and Gretchen waltzed in at ten.

  She leaned against the counter and finished filling out the order forms she had to complete. Then she handed Jacques one of the blueberry muffins she baked oh-so-late last night when she was not with Rob.

  “I’ve been pretty self-absorbed with my own bizarre life, and I’m sorry,” she told him. “I know something’s bothering you. Do you want to talk about it?”

  He took a deep breath then a big bite of muffin. “Mmm,” he said without enthusiasm.

  She smiled slightly. “Are they that bad?”

  His brow wrinkled. “Well, chéri, let’s just say they aren’t your best effort.”

  “I was mad when I made them. And sad. And…well, I don’t know.”

  “Just as it was in that film Like Water for Chocolate. How the family’s reactions to the foods the heroine served depended on her emotions when she cooked them.” He sighed. Jacques was a longtime fan of foreign flicks that played at independent artsy theaters.

  Of course, in this case, he was probably drawing an accurate comparison.

  She snatched the muffin plate away. “Better not eat these then. I don’t want you suffering through my reactions from last night.”

  “Rob—he’s a short-term thing, yes?” He looked up at her with big worried eyes.

  She hated to admit it, but she couldn’t lie to her good friend. “I suppose so.”

  He reached past the plates and papers and gave her a long hug and then a soft kiss on her cheek. “You know, my marriage proposal—it still stands. We could be very, very happy together. Good friends, comfortable. Not this constant and unpleasant churning of emotion.” He smiled at her. “Why don’t you marry me, Elizabeth?”

  She glanced at him sharply before being distracted by a noise. “Did you hear something?” she said.

  He shook his head then grinned a little wickedly. “Just my beating heart.”

  “Nice try.” She thought about his words. What he’d described as a “constant and unpleasant churning of emotion.” He wasn’t just talking about her feelings for Rob. Something was definitely up with him. Then it suddenly hit her. “Jacques, are you in love with someone?”

  He gave her a stricken look. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t like this. I don’t want this.”

  “You are in love with someone.” And she knew, with certainty, that this someone wasn’t her. For a moment she felt a sting of hurt, but she and Jacques had always worked best together as friends. She knew that even before Rob Gabinarri returned to put a big crimp in her life.

  Jacques still wasn’t talking.

  “Why won’t you tell me?” she asked him. “You know you can trust me.”

  “Oh, I know. It’s just—I’m just—” He paused and she saw actual tears in his eyes. Tears she knew he wouldn’t let fall. “She’s a good friend, too, but there was always something…more to it. A spark of something beyond friendship, which made everything more frightening.”

  Elizabeth covered her mouth as the connections in her brain began to zig and zag and reach an amazing—but not really so unbelievable—conclusion. “Gretchen?” she whispered.

  Jacques nodded. “For maybe two years now,” he admitted. “She’s like the smell of bread dough rising. Like thick chocolate icing on a fresh pastry. Like powdered sugar on Mexican wedding cakes.” He gave her a small smile. “Like all the things I love best.”

  “Does she know how you feel?”

  A single tear escaped his eye, but he brushed it away before it rolled down his cheek. “I was going to try to tell her yesterday. Then I saw her with Rob. And I realized that, even if there’s nothing between them, she has higher standards than just me.” He looked utterly, inconsolably miserable.

  “Jacques, don’t say things like. It’s so, so not true. You’re a wonderful man who’s incredibly caring. Gretchen, or any woman, would be delighted to know you were interested in her. Even when I knew you were just playing around with the marriage proposals, I was still flattered that you’d thought enough of me to pretend.” She took his hands in her. “Please, d-don’t sell yourself short.”

  “Guys like Rob are tall. They have a head full of hair, muscles and no flab. They don’t have a silly accent and they know how to play all sports. There’s no comparison between him and me.”

  “But Jacques, you and Gretchen can literally see eye-to-eye. She laughs when she’s with you and has told me a trillion times that she loves your French accent and wishes it were even thicker.”

  This made him grin. “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. And you know darned well that appearances aren’t everything. Hair and flab don’t matter where there’s true affection.”

  He tilted his head to one side and regarded her strangely. “You believe this?”

  She paused for a moment of personal honesty. “Well—” she began.

  “You’re saying you believe, although your hair was so frizzy and you were a little chubby in high school, that these things didn’t matter? That a boy who cared about you wouldn’t have cared about those features? What you always considered to be your flaws?” He shook his head. “Mais non, il n’est-ce pas vrai. It’s not true that you believe this.”

  “But that was high school, Jacques, not now. That same kind of shallowness doesn’t hold up anymore. We’re all smarter and wiser. At least most of us are.” She grinned at him and tried to make herself project total belief in this position despite all of her evidence opposing it.

  If only Rob would have ever said that he thought she was beautiful to him. He must’ve said a thousand times he thought she was brilliant. But, to her, that was decades-old praise. And, perhaps her grand wish was just an expression of human nature. Everybody craved the one compliment they never got.

  Jacques still looked sad as he stood up and tossed the rest of his blueberry muffin in the trash. “Ah, mon amie, thank you for the advice. I will consider every thought. Although—” He grinned. “I’ll wait for the next batch of muffins you bake, if you don’t mind. Those were dreadful, you know.”

  “I know,” she said, pitching the remaining ones into the trash bin one at a time as Jacques left. Without Rob, most everything was dreadful.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ROB FOUND HIMSELF on US-41 driving a good twenty miles per hour above the speed limit. He didn’t care. He was headed southbound to Chicago and, by God, he couldn’t get there soon enough.

  There were times in a man’s life when standing and fighting were the best options. There were also times to head for the hills. Or, in his case, a high-rise condo overlooking the Windy City’s Lake Shore Drive. Go Bears.

  Even now, an hour later, he still couldn’t believe what he’d overheard. Monsieur Jacques saying so breezily to his secret love interest, “Rob—he’s a short-term thing, yes?”

  And Elizabeth—damn her!—saying, “I suppose so.”

  And then the two of them mumbled some
stuff he couldn’t hear because he was too busy picking his heart up off the floor. Oh, except for the last, extra-special bit: “Why don’t you marry me, Elizabeth?”

  Why? He could sure give good ole Jacques a few hundred reasons why not…in English or in français, for that matter. He’d taken two whole years of French in high school. He could put a few fairly graphic sentences together if he ever found his battered old dictionary.

  He stepped a little harder on the gas pedal.

  Huh. So that’s how it was, then. Elizabeth…and Jacques. He knew there’d been something simmering between them, even if she hadn’t fully opened her eyes to it. Why had he ever overlooked, overruled, overridden his first impression? The casual friendship those two shared. All that time spent baking and talking about recipes together. They had mutual interests. And what could he add to the conversation? “I used to play football a lot. Cool, eh?”

  Rob saw the police siren before he heard it but, no doubt about it, the black-and-white car was headed toward him.

  “Oh, hell.”

  He pulled over and the officer got out and sidled up to his Porsche.

  “Nice car,” she said.

  And he thought, Nice body, nice lips, nice skin… But he said, “Thanks.”

  She asked for his driver’s license. “You realize you were going close to thirty miles above the speed limit, Mr. Gabinarri, don’t you?”

  He nodded then managed to shoot a warm smile at her.

  She grinned back. Attractive lady, no doubt. But, dammit, not his particular type of attractive these days.

  “No way are you getting out of this speeding ticket,” she told him. “And it’s going to be an expensive one.”

  He sighed and squeezed his eyes shut while she did all of her police officer stuff back in the squad car. A few minutes later she came back, notepad in hand.

  “Here you go,” she said, scribbling down the rest of his ticket information. One that probably would have his insurance company tossing him in driving school.

  “Um, thanks,” he said, when she handed the paper to him. He noticed an address scrawled on the top and glanced up at her in question.