Once I’d pulled myself together again, I’d realized that I was stuck in a completely un-win-able situation. If I changed into a weather-appropriate outfit, the flush of beard burn on my chest and shoulders would take less than a minute to be identified. And once Haley noticed, it wouldn’t go unmentioned.
Of course, winter apparel on a cruise was a red flag in and of itself. But it was the better of the two unappealing options.
Raucous laughter sounded behind me, and with the lilt of the giggle and masculine chuckle that accompanied it, I knew who it belonged to.
Thinking my clothing would be less noticeable if I were sitting, I sped up, power walking the rest of the way to the bar and glancing behind me surreptitiously every few steps. My muscles protested, cursing me in creative ways even Haley had yet to discover.
Wade had thoroughly worked my body over, and the feel of him between my legs winked at me each time I took a step.
Stupid big penis, mocking me despite my despair.
Darkness made me temporarily blind as I stepped into the bar and out of the sun. Worried I would bump into people and objects alike, I paused, allowing my eyes to adjust and pretending to survey the room as a way to cover.
When dark finally became normal, life continued its mocking by leaving my eyes focused dead ahead on a six foot two inch, brown-haired asshole whose skin still lingered on my taste buds. A t-shirt highlighted the sinew of his arm muscles, but the rest of his body disappeared behind the ornate wood bar.
You’d have thought somebody up there would have given me a heads up when he left his room. You know, made sure I heard the door slam closed. That kind of thing.
But no.
His eyes held mine despite the poorly hidden animosity I knew lay beneath their normal blue, and he raised his beer bottle in recognition of my arrival.
Pretending I hadn’t seen it, I moved swiftly to the near side of the bar, completely opposite from the section he was currently holding up.
I didn’t like the idea that my eyes would no doubt find his easily across the span, but I was banking on Haley coming in, sitting down next to me, and carrying on a conversation before anyone else could notice.
The bartender found me swiftly, but I waved him off, choosing to take my time before diving in. I was going to need a clear head to get through the next few minutes without stumbling over my words.
Entwined like lifetime lovers, Danny and Haley stumbled in the door, fresh-faced and exuberant. Danny noticed me immediately, his darker hazel eyes less susceptible to the blinding power of the sun than Haley’s and mine, and pointed to me, shoving Haley forward with a solid hand at the small of her tank top clad back.
She went willingly, trusting in his guidance despite her loss of vision.
Melancholy struck me, swift and meaningful, the difference in her entrance and mine all but illuminating my loneliness. My eyes drifted across the bar once more to the set of eyes that hadn’t left me. I’d noticed, such was the weight with which he watched.
Averting my gaze swiftly, I let Danny swallow me in a hug as Haley attacked me from the other side.
“Have we mentioned what a good idea this trip was?” Danny swooned, holding my cheeks in his hands playfully.
Haley giggled to herself, correcting, “It was Wade’s idea,” with the wave of a magic hand. “That’s why the folders appeared from between her legs!”
Danny chuckled to himself, pulling Haley down onto a stool beside me and taking the one on the opposite side.
“Right,” he agreed with his words, and at the same time, denied it with his eyes.
Somehow he knew the trip was my idea. I wondered if Wade had told him or if he’d figured it out all on his own.
“I guess she’s already started drinking,” I muttered, noticing the difference in her normal theatrics. The basis was the same, but when she was tipsy, I found the volume to be amplified.
“Where is the idea man?” he asked with a wink meant just for me.
“Um, I’m not sure,” I lied, making sure to keep my eyes away from the man in question as I did. I didn’t have a good enough reason for knowing he was there and avoiding him, so as much as it churned my gut, I added another lie to the pile.
Suspicious hazel eyes left my face to search the bar, and it didn’t take him long to find the one thing I pretended I couldn’t.
“Hey,” he mused lightly, “There he is. Right across the bar. Imagine that.”
I was so busted.
Thankfully, he let me off the hook.
“He must not have seen you either.”
“Must not,” I agreed, rubbing the tips of my clammy fingers together.
“Alright. Well, I’ll go see if I can wrangle him.”
“Good idea,” I fibbed. I’d heard of much better ones.
Turning to Haley, he placed one simple kiss on her cheek, whispering, “Be right back, Hales.”
Her face lit up and her shoulder just barely rose towards her face. She was a smitten kitten, keening and preening at his every word. “Okay, Dan-o.”
She watched him walk away, the sway of his ass no doubt the object of her distraction.
When the bar blocked her view, her attention finally came back to me.
“Hey, Mama!”
“Hello, daughter,” I greeted, choosing not to mention that I’d been sitting here for the past five minutes. She was newly in love, and the glow of it warmed her skin like nothing else in her life ever had.
It was the ultimate satisfaction, seeing one of my babies that happy.
Now the other one just needed to get there.
“Where’s your drink?” she asked, noticing the empty bar in front of me for the first time.
“I didn’t order one yet. I was waiting for you.”
“That’s nice,” she cooed, surveying my clothing for the first time since she entered. “Hey, why didn’t you change into your summer gear when you went back to your room?”
Here came the questions.
“I actually fell asleep. Took a little cat nap. You know.”
Her brows drew down as the slits of her eyes narrowed.
“You don’t ever nap.”
“That’s not true,” I argued, trying really hard to make myself look her directly in the eyes. It was a real struggle. Thankfully my vision blurred a little as I transformed into the lying rat I was, making it a little bit easier.
“Okay, you rarely nap.”
“It’s been a busy day,” I explained, glancing down to my jeans and back up again.
As she looked to Danny and Wade and back again, I could see the moment it happened.
She’d just noticed that while Danny had gone to fetch Wade in a simple ‘we’re over here’ transaction, he’d yet to return.
“Oh my God.” Realization cut through her face like a knife, drawing blood to the surface through a blush and flattening every single line other than the arch of her eyebrows. “You slept with him.”
“What?” I asked innocently, averting my eyes and praying we weren’t about to have the conversation I feared we were.
A harsh whisper threatened to burn the inside of my ear. “You pickled his cucumber!”
Clinging to my last vestiges of hope, I refused to let the charade die. “Who?”
“Wade!” she accused.
“No!”
“Yes! You so did. I can see it all over your face as clear as if he’d just shot his load and missed your mouth!”
Disgust bubbled and boiled out of my skin so fast I could already feel the lifelong scars starting to form.
“Ah! Stop! My ears are bleeding!”
“Yours?! You think it’s easy for me to talk about you buttering his roll?”
“Where do you get this shit?”
“Well, it’s not! But somebody’s gotta do it, Allison, and it turns out I’m the only woman for the job.”
“God, you scare me.”
“Don’t you dare avoid this.”
“Ah, Jesus. Fine. I sl
ept with him,” I humphed.
“SWEET BABY CHRIST—” she managed to scream before I could cover her mouth.
“Shhhh!”
“You did. You tamed the wild cobra. I can’t actually believe it,” she kept on, grabbing her throat with an open hand.
“Will you stop making up metaphors?!” I demanded, grabbing the hand at her throat and pulling her harshly away from the bar and down the hall where we could get a little privacy.
“How many times?” she queried unabashedly as soon as we came to a stop.
“Stop this.”
“Allison!”
“Just once,” I admitted reluctantly, rubbing my forehead and one eye with the palm of my hand.
“Once?! You don’t hit and quit people you know, Allison! It’s just not done.”
“Stop calling me Allison!” I whisper-yelled, unavoidably caught up in her insanity. “Who’s the parent here?”
“In this situation? Neither of us. That’s why you are not mom. No mom exists in this situation. You. Are. Friend. Makes . . . sex . . . talk . . . tolerable. Repeat after me.”
“Stop!” I insisted, poking her in the chest only to have her swat it away with a feminine flail.
The sting of her skin led to a return slap, and before I knew it, we were caught up in a full on fake slapping fight, hands wheeling and whirling and smacking each other with abandon.
“Enough!” I whispered harshly after a few seconds, desperately ready to be done with this ridiculous encounter.
As her arms came to a stop, she huffed out a breath and pulled her ruffled hair out of her eyes, settling it back behind her ears.
Awe suffused her slowly calming features, and her tone was reverent. “You boned the Tim-alike.”
“Shh,” I commanded again, looking around nervously.
“I just can’t believe it. I bet you even rode him reverse cowgirl. Spurred him and stuff.”
“Shut. Up.” Blowing out a deep breath, I couldn’t help the little smile that curved my lips.
“Once. That’s outrageous! How could you only do it once?”
“Haley.”
“No, seriously!”
“Look, when I woke up, he was gone. End of story.”
Her mouth floundered like a fish.
“End. Of. Story,” I declared, and she eyed me warily.
Her silence seemed genuine, and I didn’t think she’d go blabbing.
Still. “Do not say anything.”
“Me? Pshh. Please. I got this secret locked up tighter than my virginity. And you know I held out on that one.”
I just shook my head in wonder. Sometimes I couldn’t believe I’d grown this outrageous human in my body.
“Huuuuh,” I breathed out, trying to decompress from the craziness. “All this back and forth put too much pressure on my bladder. Go on back to the bar, and I’ll be back after I pee.”
Most women wanted a boob job; I wanted my bladder lifted.
“Alright,” she agreed easily.
Almost too easily.
ALLI HAD DISAPPEARED IN THE bathroom a couple of minutes ago, the first move she’d made that didn’t seem like a strategic move to avoid me, and soon after, Haley had commandeered Danny for a quick chat. I’d figured they’d gone somewhere to fondle each other, but as it turns out, I was wrong.
“So I hear you pulled a dong and dash close to home?” Danny asked, only moments after returning from his rendezvous.
“Excuse me?” I asked, knowing I must have misheard him.
“Alli,” he clarified, stressing the deliberate shortening of her name. “You put your pole in her pipe.”
Beer sputtered, crawling its way up the back of my throat like a volcano. Appropriately, the lava burned.
“Your hot dog in her bun.”
My eyes bugged nearly out of my head, and I glanced around to find any nearby ears that might be too open.
“Spud in her launcher. Potato in her sack. Finger in her glove.”
“Stop!” I demanded, when I finally recovered from the shock of his musings. “Where do you even get these things?”
“There’s a committee. We meet on Wednesdays,” he deadpanned.
“Danny!”
“Okay. But seriously. You get in there—you pollinate her flower—”
I gave him a look that clearly conveyed that was the last one of those I’d let fall from his lips.
“And then you sneak out in the middle of the night with your balls between your legs?”
“Isn’t that where they always are?” I asked, looking around, tightening my jaw, and using my confusion to avoid the real issue.
“She’s out of your league, man—”
“Thanks,” I muttered dryly.
“You know what I mean. Allison is one of a kind.”
Fuck if I didn’t whole heartedly agree with that.
Shit.
Tension started to pound through my temples, urging my restless fingers up to rub the lines of my forehead.
“I didn’t think you had it in you to get in there. The heartache, the avoidance. It’s been years that you’ve been living by that mystique. You finally find a way around that, and then you go and ruin it.”
“Hey!”
“You did.” He raised his brows skeptically. “Skipping out in the middle of the cuddle?” His hair just barely moved as he shook his head back and forth. “No woman likes that.”
“You don’t know the whole story,” I hedged, trying like hell to defend myself against unchangeable, yet undeniably shitty transgressions.
But he didn’t know the whole, sordid story. He didn’t know what had led up to those moments. He didn’t know how I’d been feeling; how the need to breathe fresh air was so all consuming I thought it would eat me alive.
Narrowing my eyes, I pondered aloud, “How do you know any of the story?”
“Those details aren’t important,” he murmured with a wave, pretty much confirming that the carrier pigeon with the message went by the name Haley.
Glancing down to the other end of the bar, I watched as the talkative little birdie chattered into Alli’s ear, the nonsense she was spouting eliciting an eye roll that had her blue swirling in a circle.
I watched the older of the Whitfield women’s lips move in response, just barely hearing the words that went along with each motion.
“I need a cocktail.”
My chest tightened. She seemed stressed. Extra stressed.
Yeah, that was probably my fault. Good going, Wade.
Like a fairy—a sincerely unwanted fairy—Danny seemed to hover at the back of my right shoulder.
“What’d she say about your cock?”
I turned my upper body to question him, but he continued talking before I could.
“It has a tail?” He took a swig of his beer, and then tipped the top of the bottle toward me as he swallowed. “You might want to get that checked out.”
“You know, as much as your commentary normally entertains me, in this instance, you’re not helping.”
“Oh?” he jerked in mock surprise. His condescending hand went straight to his chest. “Did you want me to help? I didn’t realize you actually wanted me to help.”
“Of course I want you to help, asshole. I sure I hell don’t need you to make it worse.” Taking a deep breath as I looked over the lines of her beautiful face, I swore under my breath. “I’ve messed it up enough all on my own.”
“So you’re admitting you want to heal the breach?” he carried on, dragging me through the mud as much as possible. Apparently, he got some kind of sadistic pleasure out of it. “You don’t want to tuck your tail between your legs and run? I mean, it’d be just as easy. Allison’s a reasonable woman. You guys are going to have to be around each other, and she’ll play the part.”
“I don’t want her to play the part,” I admitted. “For the first time in a long ass time, I think she’s worth the risk.”
“What risk?” he interrogated, making sure I completely h
umiliated myself.
“The risk of putting it all out there for the chance to have everything, even though the odds say I’ll probably walk away with nothing.”
A flash of cocky dimples nearly blinded me.
“Good. Good. I’m glad you came to that conclusion on your own. I’d say she’s worth it, and I don’t even have the intimate knowledge you do—”
“Cool it,” I warned, feeling the edges of my temper fray just slightly.
“Hey, relax. I’m just saying I don’t even know the entire package, and I’d still say she’s worth the effort and then some.”
“I know,” I snapped, my anxiety dialing up a notch with every word he uttered.
Assessing my mood wisely for once, Danny nodded.
“So what’s the plan? You’re obviously going to have to do a hell of a lot of digging.”
I agreed, though I didn’t verbalize it.
“Like a lot. I don’t think a shovel is gonna do it. You’re gonna need an auger. Or a jackhammer. Crawling out of bed with no notice pretty much sealed it with concrete.”
“You’re being helpful again,” I remarked sarcastically.
“I’m just trying to convey what a slippery situation you’re in.”
“I understand,” I assured him, with a lift of my palm. “Thanks.”
He couldn’t resist one last comment. “I mean it. This shit is slicker than a snail’s pussy.”
I shook my head in mild disdain. “You know, I seem to remember actually helping you when you were going through your situation with Haley.”
“Then you must be aging quicker than we’d feared.” His lip fake-quivered.
“What?”
“Your memory’s obviously on its way out, Grandpa. Because, the way I remember it, you did a whole lot of telling me I shouldn’t do the things I was doing.”
“I told you to follow your heart and stuff,” I defended, albeit shakily and like a man. “I was just trying not to get you killed at the same time.”
A hard stare pinned me from over the top of his beer bottle.
After several seconds, I had no choice but to concede. “Fine. Be a better man than I was then.”
Accidental Alpha Page 10
