by Jae
Shells?
A wave hit the rocks, and a spray of water rained down on Drew.
“Be careful!” Annie called. She leaned forward and watched Drew on the slippery rocks. “You’ll fall in!”
“Don’t worry. I’m careful.” Without looking up from the ground, Drew continued down the beach. Sometimes, she picked up an object and looked at it before throwing it into the ocean.
After a while, Drew returned and settled back down on the blanket. She held out her hand. “Ever seen one of these?” She held out a milky-white stone. The pebble shimmered in the sunlight, looking almost like a clear opal.
Annie took the stone from Drew’s hand. Her fingers grazed Drew’s palm, making her breath catch. “I don’t think so.” She rubbed her thumb over the stone. Its surface had been smoothed by the ocean until no rough edges remained. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s a moonstone,” Drew said. “The ancient Romans thought they were created by frozen moonbeams. And the Greeks wore it as a talisman. They believed moonstones could help you find true love.”
“Oh.” Annie stared at the stone in her hand. The swirling white patterns in the stone looked as chaotic as her emotions.
Drew searched her face. She looked embarrassed. “Pretty lame, huh?”
Annie just shrugged. Something told her that she would hurt Drew’s feelings if she said yes. Drew had sent her flowers, read romance novels, and prepared a picnic on the beach—she seemed like the romantic type. Normally, Annie looked down on sentimental people. She didn’t believe in superstitions, romantic legends, and love stories. Her world was ruled by facts and figures. “Not lame, no,” she said. “But even if the stone held magic, I doubt it could help me. Maybe Patrick was right. I’m a lost cause when it comes to love.”
“Hey! No negative comments about yourself.” Drew slapped the thigh that Annie had pinched just moments before. Then she rubbed the affected body part, making Annie’s leg—and places higher up her body—tingle.
This is not happening. Annie clenched her teeth. Her insides trembled. It’s just this place and the wine that affect me like this. Not a woman. Not Drew. A picnic during sunset on a beautiful beach would put anyone in a romantic mood, right? It didn’t mean anything. But the voice inside of her that said otherwise was becoming louder.
“You’ve got to start treating yourself better. Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Drew said, her voice a soft, intimate murmur. “You’re not a lost cause. When the time is right, you’ll be in a happy, loving relationship.”
In the past, Annie never cared. Whether she ever started a relationship again hadn’t mattered. But now, sitting on a blanket with Drew, watching the setting sun dipping the ocean in bronze and copper, she longed to have someone with whom she could share special moments like this.
A man, preferably.
But try as she might, she couldn’t imagine anyone else sitting in Drew’s place.
For the first time, she had to face the fact that those feelings might not go away. She stared at the moonstone, tempted to throw it away. But then she paused. When Drew wasn’t looking, she slipped the stone into her pocket, scolding herself for the sudden sentimentality.
Drew’s knee brushed against her ankle beneath the blanket, directing her attention away from the moonstone. Despite the hard ground, Drew stretched out on her back. The setting sun threw a soft glow over the planes of her face. She blinked, and each time, her eyes remained closed for a millisecond longer.
“You look tired,” Annie said before she could stop herself. She bit her lip.
Drew forced her eyes open and sat up. Her clothes were rumpled, which looked surprisingly attractive, and the wind swept a strand of hair into her face.
When Annie caught herself almost reaching out to comb the unruly curl back into place, she stuffed her hands into her pockets. She encountered the smooth contours of the moonstone. Quickly, she pulled out her right hand and rested it beneath her thigh instead.
“Sorry,” Drew said. Her nostrils quivered as she fought to suppress a yawn. “I swear it’s not the company. Lynn kept me up way past my bedtime last night.”
Annie dug her teeth deeper into her lip. She didn’t want to imagine Drew with Lynn, but she didn’t comment. Even though at times, the lines began to blur for Annie, Drew wasn’t her girlfriend and didn’t owe her an explanation. “What about your past relationships?” she asked after a while.
Drew folded her legs beneath her and faced Annie with an open expression. “Well, you’ve met Lynn.”
Is that really in the past? Annie wondered.
“And before that ...” Drew took a fistful of pebbles and let them slip through her fingers one by one. “I searched for all the wrong things in all the wrong places.”
“What do you mean?”
Drew turned her head and looked at the waves crashing against the black rocks. “When my mother lost her battle with cancer, my father just stopped living. He was the picture of health before, but within three months, he was gone too. Heart attack, the doctors said.” She turned back to Annie. Shadows of pain flickered in her eyes. “More like a broken heart, if you ask me. He just didn’t have the will to go on without my mother. That’s what I want too.” Drew paused. “I mean ... not a love that makes me want to stop living, but ...”
“I know what you mean,” Annie said. “A love that will bond you to someone in life and beyond.” Annie had never had that either, and she never thought she wanted it. But now she wasn’t so sure. She touched the moonstone that was hidden in her pocket as if that could make Drew’s wish come true. Don’t be a fool. It’s just a silly stone. She snatched her hand away. “And you’ve never found it?”
“I never searched for it,” Drew said. “I thought I just wanted to have some fun and fantastic sex. It wasn’t until my parents died that I understood what I’m really looking for. The sex was just a way to get emotional closeness ... or the illusion of closeness.”
The frank words sent a shock through Annie, but at the same time, she admired Drew’s candor. “But doesn’t being with me ... I mean ... pretending to be my girlfriend get in the way of finding someone to love?” Would prospective lovers like Lynn become jealous even if they explained their revenge plan?
Drew’s eyes darkened, but Annie couldn’t identify the emotion that had caused the change of color. “Don’t worry about it,” Drew said. “I’m sure finding the love of my life can wait two more weeks. Our ...” She paused and swallowed. “... little charade won’t last forever.”
No, Annie pressed her lips together, it won’t. The thought left her with conflicting emotions. On the one hand, she would be glad to leave all the pretenses behind and straighten out her confused feelings. On the other hand, the thought of no longer having a good reason to see Drew made her sad.
She rolled her eyes at herself. You were just fine without her before Jake set you up on that blind date. “About that ... Thanksgiving is coming up in less than two weeks, and we still haven’t talked about how we will pull it off.”
Drew took her time answering, making Annie fidget. “You’re cold,” Drew said, obviously misinterpreting the cause of Annie’s trembling. “Let’s head back. We can talk on the way to the car.”
Wordlessly, they worked together to pack up the remains of the picnic and fold the blankets.
Annie tried to hide the trembling of her hands, but the glasses clunked together as she put them back into the basket.
“You okay?” Drew asked.
Annie nodded, then turned her back under the pretense of wrapping up the remainder of the chocolate. The thought of talking about their Thanksgiving plan made her nervous.
The hazy gray of twilight mixed with the orange glow of sunset when they climbed the stairs to the boardwalk.
“About Thanksgiving,” Drew said. “You know Jake better than I do, so I’ll follow your lead.”
While Annie appreciated Drew’s willingness to give her full control, it wasn’t very helpful in this si
tuation. “I don’t know what to do,” Annie said. The admission made her feel as if she had revealed too much of herself. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Do?” Drew cocked her head. “You’re making this more complicated than it is, Annie. I told you before. Just treat me how you would act toward a man you care for. It’s really not that different.”
But somehow, it was very different for Annie. Being around Patrick had been pleasant but had never caused the rollercoaster of emotions that she was going through now. “I did some research, but it confused me even more.”
“Research? On what?”
Annie rubbed her earlobe. “Lesbianism.”
Both of Drew’s eyebrows shot up. She stopped in the middle of the boardwalk. “What did you do? Watch lesbian porn?”
Annie sucked in a sharp breath. “No,” she said so fast that she almost started to stammer. “Of course not.” She didn’t mention that she had been tempted to click on one of those links. Despite the dropping temperatures, her cheeks burned.
“Then what was so confusing?”
“Nothing.” Everything. “I’m just not sure what we should and shouldn’t be doing to make Jake believe we’re a couple. When I kissed you ...” Annie squeezed her eyes shut when the mental images flashed through her mind. “It wasn’t enough to convince him. Not that first kiss, anyway.”
Drew rubbed her eyes.
Is she thinking about the second kiss too? Annie wondered. Or was it just one more meaningless kiss to her because it wasn’t coming from the woman who holds her heart?
“Listen, Annie.” Drew took her hand away from her eyes and looked at Annie. “I know I offered to just drop the whole plan before and you said you wanted to go through with it, but I can tell that this is stressing you out and it’s just not worth it.”
Part of Annie wanted to say yes, let’s forget the whole thing, and that scared her even more. She had never given up on anything once she had committed to it. Doing so now would only prove that she was running away because she was afraid of her own feelings.
Oh, you mean you’re not? Annie grimaced and then squared her shoulders. “No,” she said. “No backing out now. I can do this. If you help me.”
“Whatever you want.” Drew looked deeply into her eyes and nodded. “It’s your choice.”
They started walking down the boardwalk again.
Annie exhaled a shaky breath. “Then I choose to stick to the plan. Or rather come up with a plan. Any suggestions?”
“Maybe we need to start with simple things,” Drew said. “When you took your boyfriend home to meet your parents—”
“I’ve never done that.” Annie pretended to be fascinated by the ocean below them, too embarrassed to look Drew in the eyes and see her reaction. She knew people found it strange that at thirty, she had only been in one relationship and had never taken her boyfriend home to meet her family.
Drew’s step faltered for a moment. “But if you did, I assume you wouldn’t French-kiss him in front of your parents, right?”
“No,” Annie said. “That’s not my style.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t do that either. If you act out of character, Jake will smell a rat. We could start with little things and then take it from there, depending on Jake’s reactions.”
“Little things?” Annie repeated. Half a dozen images flashed through her mind—Drew nibbling her neck, sucking her earlobe, or—
Stop it! Christ!
Drew shrugged. “For starters, I could wrap my arm around you when we’re standing or sitting next to each other.” She stopped walking and set down the basket. When Annie halted next to her, she wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close. “Are you comfortable with that?”
Annie’s throat was bone-dry. She swallowed and nodded.
“You might want to wrap your arms around me too,” Drew said.
After a moment’s hesitation, Annie slid her arms around Drew. Slowly, she exhaled and relaxed against Drew. The contours of their bodies fit together surprisingly well. Instead of feeling like an intrusion into her private space, Drew’s arms around her felt like a protective layer sheltering her from the cool ocean breeze.
Drew let her arms drop from around Annie.
Annie pulled her arms back too and shivered in the wind.
“I could also touch your arm when we’re talking,” Drew said. She demonstrated a fleeting brush of her fingers over Annie’s forearm, making goose bumps break out along Annie’s arm. “Or I might hold your hand. Would you be comfortable with that?” Drew reached out her hand and offered it, palm up, to Annie.
Her fingers and palm were stained with what looked like printer’s ink or engine oil.
Drew’s gaze followed Annie’s. “Oh.” Drew curled her fingers into a fist. “Sorry, I forgot. Not very attractive, I know, but I don’t want you to think I have dirty hands. That’s just what the hands of a winemaker look like in fall. The tannins from the grape skins practically carve themselves into my skin.” She glanced at her hands with an uncharacteristic frown. “I usually scrub them with lemon juice, but today, I just didn’t have the time after I got the picnic idea.”
Annie reached over and stroked along Drew’s hand to ease open her fingers. She didn’t want Drew to feel bad about any part of her job. Drew’s skin felt rough, but her fingers wrapped warmly and safely around Annie’s own. “I’m sure your mother didn’t mind when your father’s hands looked like this.”
“No,” Drew said, her voice sounding hoarse. “She didn’t. She held my father’s hand whenever she could, even after almost forty years of marriage.” Instead of letting go, Drew continued to hold her hand as she picked up the basket and they continued walking toward the car.
Like a teenager proving her mettle in a test of courage, Annie didn’t want to be the first to let go. Did holding Patrick’s hand ever make me aware of every inch of skin that was touching his? She doubted it. Her ex-boyfriend had never affected her like this. Barely stopping herself from stroking her thumb across Drew’s hand, she tried to focus on the conversation. “What else can we do to convince Jake?”
“Well,” Drew said, a glint in her eyes, “I could give you a hickey.”
Heat curled in Annie’s belly. “What?” She withdrew her hand and pressed her fingers to her neck. The thought of Drew sucking on the tender skin of her neck made goose bumps erupt all over her body.
Drew laughed. “Relax. I’m just kidding. Remember that we’re doing this to have some fun at Jake’s expense.”
Annie swallowed. Thank God. She wasn’t sure she could handle getting a hickey from Drew. Still, a tiny part of her wondered what it might have felt like to have Drew’s lips wander down her neck and—
Cut it out!
She filled her lungs with air and then exhaled quickly when she breathed in Drew’s scent—fresh air, sandalwood soap, and a hint of chocolate. God, she had never met a person who was so distracting. Focus, focus, focus! “Why can’t I be the one to give you a hickey?” she asked, trying for a cool, bantering tone.
Drew grinned and met Annie’s challenging gaze. “Have you ever given anyone a hickey?”
Blood rushed to Annie’s cheeks. “No,” she said. If she compared her sexual experience with Drew’s, she felt like a clueless virgin. Not that she would ever admit it to Drew.
“I have and Jake knows it,” Drew said. “He used to tease me in college about my dates looking like a Rottweiler mauled them.”
Annie fingered her neck. “Then I definitely think I should be the one to give you a hickey. Looking like a Rottweiler victim is not a very appealing thought.”
They reached the car. Drew locked the basket in the trunk and opened the passenger door for Annie before she got in on her side. “Hmm.” Drew rubbed her chin as if she was really thinking about it. “How do I know your technique is any better than mine?” Her eyes glinted in the fading light.
This time, Annie squared her shoulders and willed herself not to blush when she said, �
�Want to sample my technique?”
Drew dropped the key that she was about to put into the ignition. She bent, hitting her head on the steering wheel as she fished for the key beneath her seat. When she straightened, it wasn’t just the sunset that made her cheeks glow. “Are you flirting with me?”
Am I? Annie had never been one to flirt—not with men and certainly not with women. Despite the attraction she felt, she wasn’t ready to act on it. If she let that genie out of the bottle, she couldn’t put it back. She’d lose control. Keeping her feelings to herself was safer. “No,” she said, “of course not.”
“Too bad.” Drew winked at her and started the car.
Chapter 15
Annie watched the blonde on the TV screen knock over a table. Coffee cups crashed at the feet of her cheating female lover.
Jesus Christ! Is that really what a relationship between two women is like? Twice the estrogen means twice the drama? She shook her head at herself. Oh, come on. Be fair. If you had been deeply in love with Patrick, you would have been this upset about his cheating too.
The phone rang, making Annie jump. Stop being so paranoid. It’s not the heterosexual mafia calling to make sure you’re staying away from lesbian TV shows. Even Sarah and her other straight colleagues had watched this particular show when it had first aired, so there was no reason to be embarrassed. She paused the DVD that was the latest part of her private research and glanced at the caller ID.
She smiled when she saw the name on the display. See? Not the heterosexual mafia. She picked up the phone. “Hi, Drew.”
“What are you wearing?”
Drew’s husky voice sent a shiver through Annie. She had to clear her voice twice before she could speak. “Excuse me?” she stammered.
“For Thanksgiving,” Drew said, now in a more normal tone. “I’m wondering about the dress code at your parents’ house.”
“Oh.” Annie fell against the backrest of the couch.
“What?” Drew laughed. “You thought I was trying to have phone sex?”
