“Good,” she said. “But also…I just wish you could let up on yourself a little.”
“What does that mean?”
“I figured out that I don’t have to keep being the person Dad’s death made me into, right? You don’t have to either. I think you’re on autopilot just as much as I was. You work all the time, for one thing.”
“I like my job.”
“I know, and that’s great, but it’s like it’s an imperative for you more than a job. And it’s not just that. You have to be in control of everything all the time. The sending me money is a symptom of it, just like the workaholism.” He started to protest, but she held up a hand. “I’m not criticizing. I get it. You had to stay in such control for so long to keep us afloat. But you don’t have to anymore. You can let up on the gas a little. Have some fun.”
Holy shit. Was she…right? Bennett had said a variation on the same thing, that night in his restaurant with Wendy. Had outright called him a control freak. Noah had always thought there was nothing wrong with being a perfectionist. With being dedicated to a certain way of doing things, whether those things were work or relationships. But if all the people closest to him were coming to the same conclusion, maybe that conclusion was worth considering.
“Have some fun,” he echoed. “I don’t…I don’t really know how to do that.”
Not in the way she meant, anyway. He had fun hanging out with Bennett. Going running. Or at least he thought he had. But none of that had been as much fun as—
“Ha! I’m new at this, too. But, hey, for once you’re not in a long-term relationship, so maybe go out and get drunk and meet a nice young lady who’s interested in a little ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ action?”
—as that.
Already took care of that one, Jane.
He got up and walked to the window so she wouldn’t see his face, which felt like it was on fire. His brain was burning, too, feverishly churning through the astonishing new information she’d dumped into it.
Jane was still chuckling at the apparent ludicrousness of her suggestion that he find someone to hook up with. “Seriously, though, just let yourself relax a bit. Follow your interests.”
“I do follow my interests.” But of course that was a hollow protest, because as this whole conversation had highlighted, what were his interests? Beyond running, putting away criminals, and, to use Wendy’s word for it, “obsessing” over his sister?
Jane swatted him on the shoulder—she always saw through him. “Maybe you should start by getting some interests. What about traveling? Remember that big map you had on the wall in your bedroom when you were little? You’d read a book about a country, then stick a pin in that country. Maybe you should actually go see some of them. Take a cue from Wendy.”
He had totally forgotten about that. He had been captivated by the rest of the world when he was young—he’d had the National Geographic subscription and everything.
There was a lot he’d forgotten about who he used to be. It had all been swept aside, in service of survival.
“Eh,” he said, trying to inject some levity into the conversation, because, honestly, he couldn’t take any more. “I also used to skateboard. Remember that? Putting in some time at the skate park would be a hell of a lot cheaper than becoming a jet-setter.”
Jane rolled her eyes, but she smiled as she rolled off the bed and said, “Good talk, brother-mine.” She snapped her fingers. “Now put your shoes on. It’s almost time to go. And speaking of world travelers, Wendy picked tonight’s restaurant, and she never leads me astray in that department.” She walked over to the window and did that thing women do when they’ve been crying in makeup, swiping her fingers below her eyes. “I love Wendy, and not just because she picks the best restaurants. Damn, this wedding is making me all emotional, but, seriously, don’t you just love Wendy?”
A noncommittal murmur was all Noah could muster as Jane’s earlier words echoed through his brain. Maybe you should start by getting some interests.
He was pretty sure that by “start getting some interests,” Jane didn’t intend for one of those interests to be her best friend.
As she grabbed her purse, he said, “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“I’m kind of pissed you never told me any of the stuff about how you were feeling. I thought we told each other everything.” God, listen to him. He sounded like a junior high girl in a spat with a friend. But he couldn’t help feeling a little betrayed. “Everything important, anyway.”
“We do!” she protested. “I’m just a little…late with this one.” Then, seeming to realize he was serious, she sobered and said, “I’m sorry.” But it wasn’t long before she was back in mischievous little-sister mode. She raised her right hand. “I, Jane Denning, do solemnly swear that from here on out my brother and I will tell each other everything.” She threw her head back and laughed. “You’re going to live to regret this.”
* * *
Maybe he could get into fine dining, Noah thought as he tried to slow his rate of inhalation of the most incredible steak he’d ever tasted. Fine dining was an “interest,” right?
“I’m sorry this place only has one Michelin star, but getting a table at the better places takes literally months,” Wendy said as they all tucked into their main dishes.
Noah had been pretty sure that the lobster cocktail he had ordered to start with—on Wendy’s recommendation—was not going to be topped, but, yeah, as incredible as it had been, one bite of his flatiron had topped it.
As soon as the bite was safely swallowed, he laughed. “You’re sorry you took us to this place?”
She shot him a look he couldn’t decode. “Where would you have taken us if you’d been in charge, Noah?”
“Nowhere this good.” But then he belatedly realized that she’d been baiting him, trying to pick a fight. Probably attempting to get things between them back to normal—he had been in that position himself. In fact, that’s the whole reason they were both here in Vegas, with their competing parties.
Great job on the whole “getting back to normal” front.
“Anyway, I didn’t take us to this place,” Wendy said to the table. “I just recommended it. We only got in because Gia’s agent made some calls.”
After they toasted their resident semi-famous person, Jane said, “Wendy claims it’s easy to find good fancy restaurants. She says the greater culinary triumph is in finding holes in the wall with great food.” His sister shot her best friend an affectionate look. “She still talks about the frog porridge she had in Singapore!” Jane went on. “Isn’t that the grossest thing you’ve ever heard?”
Singapore. Was it safe to travel there alone? He had no idea.
Wendy looked up from her plate. Her eyes found his immediately. So now probably wasn’t the best time to get out his phone and google the aforementioned question.
Dinner passed like that—with Noah watching Wendy, and Wendy occasionally catching him doing it. Noah felt like he was perpetually two steps behind everyone else, like his brain was moving at half its normal speed.
It also wasn’t helping matters that she was wearing another dress that managed to be effortlessly beautiful. It was totally different from yesterday’s dress, but the effect was the same—turning him into a drooling idiot. Instead of the vivid red from yesterday, this one was a subdued ivory. A swingy minidress, it was sleeveless and high-necked, but the top part was made of mesh or something similar. It allowed a hint of what lay beneath, but only a hint. The outline of collarbones but not the overt display of them.
What the hell was up with him and collarbones lately?
He sighed and tried to focus on his steak. It was going to be a long dinner.
Chapter Fifteen
Wendy wasn’t a game player. Usually.
She didn’t do things like manipulate a situation so she could be alone with a guy she was lusting over. Usually.
But no matter how much she was trying to hid
e it, and no matter how fucked up it was, she wanted to sleep with Noah again.
The problem was she didn’t see how she could get him alone without a little manipulation.
When dinner broke up, it was nearly eleven thirty and everyone was tired. Both the girls and the boys had had late nights yesterday. As they stood in a circle in the lobby of the Venetian, people started proclaiming that they were going to call it a night. Elise and Jane were headed to Paris with their respective men. Gia, however, wanted to go out.
“Come on!” she wheedled, making puppy-dog eyes at Wendy. Then, lowering her voice, she whispered in her ear, “Don’t leave me alone with Hector!”
“Sorry, Gia, I’m done. I’m going to head back to the hotel.”
Normally, Wendy would have womaned up and kept Gia company, but she was wagering on another scenario. If Gia went out, and if Elise and Jane stayed at Paris, that would leave Wendy to head back to New York, which was on the southern end of the Strip, by herself, something Noah would never—
“I’ll walk you back to your hotel, Wendy,” Noah said.
—allow. Ha. Once the surrogate big brother, always the surrogate big brother.
Or something.
Really, she had to stop thinking of him in those terms, even if she wasn’t successful in talking Mr. Control into letting loose one more time.
“We’re on the Vegas Strip, Noah,” she said, reciting the next line in her script of manipulation. “I’ll be fine. There are a million people out there.” And now he was thinking of a million different harms that could befall her in Sin City on the twenty-minute walk back to her hotel.
“Let’s go,” he said, as if her objection wasn’t even worth the effort it would have taken to dismiss. She tried not to smirk as he pressed his hand against her lower back and started propelling her through a replica of St. Mark’s Square. She didn’t bother pointing out that since the Paris hotel was actually on their way, if on the other side of the wide Las Vegas Boulevard, they might as well walk part of the way with the others.
No, her mind was set. Her mind might be making a big mistake, but it was set on that mistake.
And she wasn’t kidding herself. What she was about to do was wrong. It was the difference between first and second degree murder: premeditation. It was one thing to get carried away in the moment, quite another to plan for the moment.
What she hadn’t planned for, though, was getting to that moment. In her imaginings, the successful culmination of this evening involved some very hot sex. Some hot meaningless sex. Some “get the boy out of your system” sex.
It did not involve Noah keeping his hand pressed against her lower back, the way guys always did in movies to show they cared about a girl.
It did not involve him grabbing her hand and pulling her back when she stepped off the curb slightly prematurely as the light was changing from red to green.
Wendy had traveled the world. By herself. She didn’t need anyone to take care of her.
More to the point, she didn’t want anyone to take care of her.
No, the real truth was that she didn’t want to enjoy being taken care of.
Goddammit.
Well, she would just have to turn that part of her brain off. She could do that.
“I suppose you’ve been to Venice. The real one, I mean.” Noah waved his free hand at the hotel complex behind them. She thought back to the fake St. Mark’s Square with its fake clouds painted on the ceiling and its fake gondolas gliding under its fake bridges.
“I have.” And that was a perfect example of what she’d just been thinking. She’d been to Italy twice, alone, and without any knowledge of the language. She’d deflected pickpockets and Casanovas alike with no help from anyone.
“You must be rolling your eyes at all this Vegas stuff—Venice, Paris, ancient Egypt. Probably all places you’ve been.”
“Well, I haven’t been to ancient Egypt,” she teased.
He chuckled. “Touché.”
“I know what you mean about Vegas, but I’m not sure I agree. Everyone talks about how fake Las Vegas is, but to my mind, that’s part of its charm. It’s not pretending to be something it’s not, not really. It revels in its artificiality.”
“There’s no self-delusion,” he said.
“Exactly.” She swiveled her head to look at him as they walked. He was regarding her curiously.
“You’re not a fan of self-delusion, are you, Wendy Lou Who?”
She was not. “Self-delusion is for the weak.”
Usually.
Weakness was not something she could generally afford. Other people, maybe, people with big families and best friends who weren’t getting married. People with support networks.
He laughed, though she hadn’t been kidding.
“Let’s get a cab,” she said, hailing one even as she spoke. Talking too much wasn’t a good idea. Better to get there quickly and get on with it.
He looked down at her feet. “Sure. Those shoes look killer.”
She followed his gaze. She was wearing her standard four-inch black stilettos, her favorite pair that could go from work to evening with ease. They did hurt her feet, but some things in life hurt. “Oh, no, I’m used to these. These are my court shoes.”
He was still looking at her feet. Suddenly, her feet really hurt, burned in fact, like she’d been outside in the freezing cold and come in to an overheated house. Then his gaze started to move, a slow elevator working its way up her body, bringing with it that same dangerous heat.
When he finally met her eyes, he said, “I suppose pain is for the weak, too?”
She had to clear her throat to ensure that what came out sounded clear, strong. “Something like that.”
A few minutes later, they were disembarking from the cab, and before she could lose her nerve—this premeditation shit was terrifying—she hopped out of her side and took off, trusting he would follow. Noah wasn’t going to be satisfied until he’d seen her safely to her room.
She burst through the doors and made a beeline for the part of the lobby next to the gambling floor.
And there was that goddamned hand again. She needed to get that hand off her. Well, she needed to get that hand on her, but under the correct circumstances.
So she sped up, shaking off his touch.
“Hey,” he said. “Everything okay?”
She had to pivot out of his way, do an undignified little half pirouette in the name of self-preservation. Then she speed-walked toward the stupid fake neighborhood section of the hotel. There was a mini Times Square and fake cobblestone streets lined with fake brownstones, complete with fake fire escapes.
There was even a fake manhole cover emitting fake steam.
Perfect.
She stopped suddenly, standing nearly on top of the manhole cover, and turned to face him. “Where are we?
His brow furrowed. He was probably worried about her sanity. She couldn’t disagree there. She had, after all, just made a little speech inside her head about self-delusion being for pansy-asses, and here she was about to embark on the mother of all delusions.
“We’re in Vegas.”
“No.” She did a Vanna White thing with her hands, gesturing around to encompass their immediate surroundings. “Where are we?”
“Uh, New York?”
“Correct. And what do we say about New York?”
He was still looking at her like the men in white coats would be appearing any moment. “It’s the city that never sleeps?”
“No.”
“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere?”
“No.” She stamped her foot in frustration. “What do we say about New York?” She changed the direction of her Vanna-White-ing and gestured from her chest to him and back again, the same way she had that night on the High Line.
She saw the precise moment he got it. Bewilderment was replaced, briefly, by astonishment, which was in turn supplanted by, if she wasn’t mistaken, pure, unadulterated lust. He tamp
ed that down pretty fast, too, though, got his shit together and said, with a remarkable lack of inflection, “I see. And if the court will allow it, we’re also in Vegas, and you know what they say about Vegas?”
Well, wasn’t that a nice little bit of window dressing for her argument? Noah wasn’t a brilliant legal mind for nothing. She bit back a smile. She was trying to project confidence bordering on entitlement, not “OMG, I’m so thrilled you just agreed to have meaningless sex with me again!”
“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” he said, answering his own question. “So the way I see it, that’s like an extra layer of protection.” He was clearly suppressing his own smile as he raised his eyebrows suggestively.
“Speaking of protection…” Her face heated. Gah. She could outright proposition him but she couldn’t manage the necessary logistical discussion? What was the matter with her? She wasn’t shy about these sorts of things. Usually. But hadn’t she just been thinking that she didn’t go in for self-delusion, either? It was a night of firsts, apparently, and right now, to utter the word “condom” felt like she might as well shout, “I want you to fuck me.”
But, hell, Wendy had learned that the only way to deal with things that were scary or uncomfortable was to embrace them head on. Afraid of traveling alone in a place you don’t speak the language? Book a goddamn ticket. Facing off against a legendary prosecutor in front of an unsympathetic judge? Get a freaking manicure, put on your court shoes, and slay.
So she just said it. “I want you to fuck me this time, so we’re gonna need a condom.”
Something sparked in his eyes. Good, upstanding, responsible Noah liked that idea. So she added, “Condoms. Plural.”
“I’m on it,” he said quickly. Gratifyingly quickly. “Go upstairs. I’ll come to you soon.”
* * *
Noah had had a lot of sex in his life.
Okay, maybe not a lot. The handful of one-night stands he’d had in his youth, before he’d decided they weren’t for him, had ended awkwardly at best. One had led to a harrowing pregnancy scare.
It Takes Two Page 19
