After this semester, her life wouldn’t be her own; not for a while, anyway. Girls like Shay didn’t get chances with guys like Brody. She needed to take hers while she could. If only the blogger had exonerated her by reporting on the sex toys.
Julianne was talking animatedly about Tricia’s wedding gown when the skin at the back of Shay’s neck began to tingle. She looked toward the doorway to see Brody standing among a throng of men—presumably the groomsmen—who’d been out golfing on the Indian summer afternoon. The caress of his gaze brought a flush to her cheeks. Dressed in black slacks, a tweed sports jacket, and a crisp white shirt open at the neck, he was a devastating sight. He slowly made his way across the room, stopping to greet everyone in his path. It was all she could do not to reach up and run her fingers through his damp hair as he stopped beside her. The smile he greeted her with was warm, if not a little chagrined, and the churning in her belly twisted into a painful ache.
Introductions were made as the rest of the wedding guests joined their circle, but Shay had difficulty concentrating. Her senses drank in not only the sight of Brody, but his clean woodsy scent as well. Feeling a little lightheaded in the now crowded parlor, she released a soft breath. Brody’s hand was on her elbow immediately, but his touch caused her to sway on her feet. Tossing one of his most charming smiles over his shoulder, he quickly culled her from the herd, steering toward the butler’s pantry that joined the parlor with one of the large dining rooms in the inn.
Shay set her glass down on the counter and ran her fingers through her hair. The silky, straight locks confused her, making her feel more out of place, and she felt tears pooling in her eyes.
“Deep breath,” Brody whispered. “You can do this.”
“Not if you keep touching me.”
His hands had made their way beneath her cashmere sweater and he was slowly massaging her hips. Surprise registered on his face, almost as if his fingers had sought out her bare skin subconsciously. Pulling his hands out, he reached for her wineglass and guzzled its contents. Shay couldn’t summon the strength to admonish him.
“I’m sorry your plan didn’t work. I really wanted it to.” He placed the empty wineglass back on the counter.
That makes two of us.
“Thank you for coming anyway.”
Shay shrugged one shoulder. “Julianne went to a lot of effort. And my mama didn’t raise me to break a promise.”
His lips curved up into a soft smile. Not his usual showstopper, but one much more intimate. Her breath caught in her chest.
“You look amazing.”
“What can I say? Julianne is truly a fairy godmother. Of course, it all wears off at midnight.”
“That’s okay,” he said softly. “I’m pretty fond of the real Shannon.”
A lump the size of a boulder formed in her throat, and her body ached with something more than desire now.
“Which means I’ll get to see her later tonight.”
Shay blinked in confusion.
“Try not to react too ferociously because my lawyer sister has her laser eyes trained on us,” he murmured. “But we’re sharing that room upstairs.”
Hell’s bells, how did that part slip by? The gorgeous room she’d been shown to earlier had its own fireplace, a claw-foot tub, and a comfortable divan chair tucked beneath a window dormer. But only one bed. A fluffy four-poster queen-sized model. It seemed she’d be tortured even in her sleep. If she was able to get any, that was.
“My mom pulled a fast one on me and switched us from two double beds. I couldn’t make a scene without blowing our cover.”
She nodded. “It’s a big room with lots of floor space.”
“You might have left me some room in the drawers.” His teasing roused her out of her panic. “And Julianne should have bought you some lingerie, at least. Those panties of yours look like ones my grandmother might wear.”
Shay knew what he was doing and she was grateful. Brody couldn’t soothe her with his touch, but he could turn his charm on her. And it was actually working. She could feel her nerves settling beneath the warmth of his playful gaze.
“What I wear beneath my clothes wasn’t part of the deal.” She crossed her arms over her chest and joined in with his banter.
Brody scoffed. “My bad. It should have been.”
She acted as if she hadn’t heard him. “It’s pretty disgusting to think you actually know what kind of panties your grandmother wears.”
He laughed then. “Atta girl. We’ll work out the sleeping arrangements later. For now, I just want you to relax and enjoy yourself. You deserve some time off. Oh, and ignore my sisters. They all go on these crazy starvation diets trying to fit into their dresses before a big event and it makes them a little psychotic.” He waved his fingers at his head in disgust.
It was Shay’s turn to laugh. “Your sisters—your whole family, in fact—are delightful.”
“My family is a pain in the ass,” he said, his tone lacking any real conviction. “What about your family, Shannon? Surely they’re not as overbearing as mine.”
Shay considered him a moment. The differences between their two families couldn’t have been more pronounced. The Janik family was large, warm, and exuberant in the security only affluence brings. They were the type of happy family most people dreamed of being a part of. Her own family consisted of just the five of them: Mama, Daddy, Teryn, Shay, and Meemaw. No other grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins to share the joys—and heartaches—of life. Meemaw was awful, Teryn self-absorbed, her daddy locked in his own world, and her mama surviving the only way she could. They might not have been perfect, but they were all Shay had, and in the end, she answered him the only way she could.
“My family’s delightful, too.”
Brody’s eyes shone. “I couldn’t picture you with a family that was anything less.”
The lump in her throat was nearly choking her now, but she didn’t have time to think about her lie as they were joined by an elderly gray-haired gentleman with bushy black eyebrows shielding twinkling blue eyes, clearly identifying him as a Janik.
“Leave it to my grandson to keep all the pretty girls in a corner to himself.” Brody’s grandfather reached out a large sun-spotted hand to Shay. A big man who smelled of Altoids and fresh air, it wasn’t hard to see where Brody had inherited his charm from. “This boy has too many women falling at his feet. Make a widower’s evening and sit next to me at dinner, darlin’.” He placed her hand on his sleeve before she even knew what had happened.
Brody shook his head. “Shannon, this is my grandpa, Gus. Gramps, this is Shannon.”
Gus was already leading them toward the large dining room. “So, pretty lady, are you a model or an actress?”
“She’s a PhD student, Gramps,” Brody said from behind them. “She’s studying nutrition.”
“Pfft,” Gus said. “You’re too pretty to be a scientist.”
Shay laughed in delight as Gus held out a chair for her. Basking in the glow of someone actually noticing her looks before her brains, she thought to herself that she might enjoy this weekend after all.
• • •
Dinner was a circus. Brody’s nephews and niece took turns scrambling in and out of his lap while he tried to figure out what he should and shouldn’t eat. Shannon was no help. If grandpa Gus wasn’t chatting her up, one of his evil sisters was monopolizing her attention.
At least she’d begun to relax. He’d been eaten up with guilt—not to mention sexual frustration—all week at having forced her into this situation. Worse, her little plan hadn’t worked and they were both back to square one: roommates without benefits. Not that his trust issues were looming that large anymore. The more he got to know her, the more he believed Shannon was incapable of selling him out. He just didn’t know where that left them exactly.
Grandpa Gus reclined back in his chair, pat
ting his lean stomach. “Now that was an amazing meal,” he said to no one in particular. “My compliments to the chef.”
“Yeah, a meal like that makes you want your own personal chef,” Brody’s brother-in-law Skip called out from a table across the room. “Too bad you’re not Brody, Gus, or you’d have one.”
Shannon fidgeted in the chair next to him.
“Don’t tell me you cook like that every night for Brody?” Grandpa Gus’s eyes lit up and Brody could tell he was formulating a plan to spend the entire season in Baltimore.
“I’m not that kind of chef,” Shannon said demurely. “My meals aren’t gourmet, just well-balanced.”
There was snickering from some of the other tables as the room quieted to focus on what Shannon was saying. Clearly, his family and friends doubted Shannon and Brody were together because of her cooking skills.
“I’ve been trying to get Brody to eat nutritiously for twenty-seven years now,” his mother chimed in. She raised her water glass in salute to Shannon. “I’m delighted to know that someone succeeded where I couldn’t.”
He could have kissed his mother for her attempt at trying to diffuse what was becoming an awkward conversation, but her little course correction didn’t take.
“No offense, Sybil,” Skip said. “But I’m pretty sure Shay has other means of getting Brody to eat nutritiously.”
“Skip!” Gwen hissed at her husband. His brother-in-law had obviously had a few too many during the afternoon’s golf outing, but that didn’t excuse him in Brody’s eyes. He was used to the rest of the world thinking he was a philandering jock, but it pissed him off that even his own family had begun buying into the image. Not to mention the embarrassment Shannon had to feel at Skip’s pointed comments.
He glared at Skip while directing his comment to his mother. “I’m sure it’s just that my tastes in food have grown as I’ve grown, Mom.” He reached under the table and squeezed Shannon’s hand in an effort to offer reassurance. “Besides, she does amazing things with vegetables.”
Somehow, the words didn’t come out exactly how Brody intended them. Judging by the way Shannon yanked her hand back and the accompanying groans from Bridgett and Julianne, he wasn’t the only one who thought so. Skip was laughing openly now and no amount of Gwen’s shushing was going to shut him up. Connelly shook his head in disgust.
“Dessert!” His mother sprang to her feet to help the waiter serve the warm apple pie, and Brody thought he heard a mumbled “thank God” from his father. Waving off the piece of pie the waiter set in front of him, he breathed a sigh of relief when the pastry distracted the attention of the guests. He glanced at Shannon, but her face was impassive. Once again, he found himself wondering what she’d had to endure growing up to develop such a thick skin.
Thirty minutes later, the rehearsal dinner mercifully ended. Gwen dragged Skip upstairs under the guise of helping put their two kids down to sleep, but everyone knew he was being sent to bed as well. Ashley and Mark had taken their son up long before dessert. Brody’s parents and their friends gravitated to the parlor, where a makeshift bar had been set up, while the rest of the wedding party headed out to a pub in town. Julianne and Will made their excuses and wandered upstairs hand in hand, leaving Brody sitting in the dining room with Shannon, Bridgett, Robbie, and his fiancée, Faith.
“If y’all will excuse me,” Shannon said. “I’ve got some studying to do.”
Brody was relieved, standing to make his exit, too. He needed to apologize to her for the remark earlier and clarify the sleeping arrangements for the night. The last thing he wanted to do tonight was to hear about Robbie—Rob’s—perfect wedding and his perfect life. Shannon’s hand on his arm stopped him, though.
“No, Brody. You stay and catch up with your family and friends.”
He wanted to shout, The hell with my family and friends, but her eyes told him she needed some space and once again his guilty conscience niggled.
“Sure,” he said, sliding back into his chair reluctantly. “I’ll be up in a little bit.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. Take your time. I’ve got lots of reading to do.”
As brush-offs go, Shannon’s couldn’t have been clearer if she’d kicked him in the nuts.
She slipped away amid a chorus of “see you in the morning,” and Brody was left to face down Bridgett’s scowl.
“You sure fumbled that pass, little brother.”
Brody flipped her off as Robbie-now-known-as-Rob laughed. “You’d better hope she doesn’t have any sharp vegetables in her suitcase,” his friend joked.
“Funny,” Brody said. He turned to Faith to initiate the one conversation that would send his sister to speeding to her own room. “So, how are the wedding plans coming?”
Sure enough, Bridgett was on her feet in ten seconds flat. “I’m out. I think grandpa Gus wanted to play gin tonight.”
Fortunately, he was saved by the arrival of Rob’s father. “Brody, I need your advice on my fantasy football roster. Step up the bar and help an old man out.”
Brody managed to escape his father’s cronies an hour later. The main inn building had twenty guestrooms and as he wandered the long upstairs hall to the room he was sharing with Shannon, he hoped she’d already gone to sleep. His body rebelled at the thought of bunking down on the hard floor, but sharing a bed with her would be even more punishing. If he had to endure any pillow talk, the night would progress to torturous.
Too bad he hadn’t packed his body armor because the scene greeting him inside the bedroom was more intimate than he imagined. This wasn’t the first time Brody had walked into a hotel room where a woman waited for him. But on those occasions, his guest would be wearing nothing but a G-string and stilettos. Tonight, the sight of Shannon innocently seated on the bed, wearing purple flannel pajamas, her face scrubbed clean, and her hair twisted up on her head with—he did a double take—a number two pencil stuck in the knot aroused him more than any other hotel tryst. Instead of mood lighting and silk sheets, a laptop rested on her crossed legs and she’d spread out papers containing her data around her on the comforter.
“Hey,” she said quietly.
Closing the door behind him, Brody leaned a shoulder against the mantel as the fire crackled inside the grate. He swirled his Scotch—now diluted with melted ice—in the glass in his hand. “You weren’t fibbing about having to work. I thought you were just saying that to escape.”
She piled her papers into a neat stack before slipping them into her book bag. “Sorry to abandon you down there, but the weekends are when I get most of my schoolwork done. I need to get ahead if we’re going to be spending all day tomorrow at the wedding.”
“Still think my family’s delightful?”
“I think you could have left the remark about the vegetables in the locker room where it belonged.”
He pushed away from the fireplace, charging toward the bed. “Ah, come on, you know that didn’t come out the way I meant it. Besides, it would have sounded innocent if they weren’t all thinking you’re some kind of bimbo.”
She chuckled softly. “Actually, that’s a first for me, so I was kind of enjoying it.”
Brody stared down at her as she closed her laptop and placed it on the trunk that doubled as an end table. Maybe he’d mistaken the desire in her eyes earlier because she was cool and composed now, reclining against the pillows as if sharing a room with him wouldn’t affect her at all. She’d arranged a row of throw pillows along the length of the bed, forming a bulkhead of sorts to separate the two halves.
Sighing heavily, Brody flopped down on the mattress, crossing his wingtips at the ankles, the Scotch sloshing in the glass as he rested it on his stomach. “Glad we can provide you with some cheap thrills. But my family should at least take you seriously, even if they can’t do the same for me.”
Shannon gazed at him speculatively. “Your family a
dores you, Brody.”
“Sure they do. They treat me like the overindulged puppy that never grew into his feet.”
She laughed merrily, the sound stirring something inside him. He looked over at her long feet, her slender toes painted a sexy bright red. Stifling a groan, he forced his eyes up to study the crown molding.
“I’m serious. I just spent the last hour with my father, my uncles, and their friends, and all they ever want to talk to me about is football, my stats, or their fantasy teams. Almost as if I’m not capable of conversing in any other subject.”
“Doesn’t that kind of come with the territory?”
“Even you do it. You did it the other day when you were explaining your research to me.”
He saw from the corner of his eye that she had the grace to cringe before she rolled on her side to face him, tucking her hands beneath her cheek. “I did. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made assumptions. But don’t you like being a professional football player, Brody? You’re one of the best in the game.”
“Not one of the best. I am the best.” He took a swallow of the Scotch, its bitterness burning his throat, before turning his head on the pillow to glare at her. “I’m the best tight end in the league. And I don’t like being a football player. I love it. I love being on the field, outmaneuvering the defense and making the catches no one else can.”
A slow smile spread over her face as she took the glass from his hand. “But?”
And there was the million-dollar question. Brody had been struggling with the “but” issue for months now. The problem was, he couldn’t articulate why he was so unhappy. “I just wonder if it’s enough, you know. I know it sounds selfish to you. I get paid millions to play a game. Little boys—and big boys, too—dream about having that opportunity all their lives.” Sighing, he shook his head, unable to come up with anything else.
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