The Supermodel's Best Friend

by Gretchen Galway

  To make things worse, Krista began to cry. “Oh, God forbid somebody gets upset. Of course I am. Every guy I like would rather be with women like you. Women who treat them like shit.”

  This was not what she’d come over for. “Your theory is flawed,” she said, reaching out to the cabin’s back door. She’d have to walk through the bedroom to get out. “As you yourself pointed out, Dan left me.”

  “He would have come back in a flash if you’d shown the slightest feeling about him leaving you. He was testing you, Lucy. Making sure you loved him before you got married. And you failed the test.”

  “He started living with somebody else. That was quite a test.”

  “Extreme measures, maybe, but you yourself said they weren’t even sleeping together.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got this idea about me because you’re unhappy, and now everything has to fit into your hypothesis. It has no bearing on reality.” Lucy strode into the cabin and tripped over one of Betty’s bras. She had to put a hand on the unmade bed to regain her balance. Great, now she was upset. Couldn’t even walk.

  Krista was right behind her. “You’re the one who’s twisting reality. One of these days you’re going to get hurt and realize I’m right!”

  Where was this coming from? Lucy frowned at her, not believing so much crazy resentment had been simmering under the surface. “You’d like me to get hurt?”

  “Maybe. Yes. It would be good for you to know what it’s like.”

  She knew well enough what hurt felt like. Lucy shot her a cold look before striding out of the cabin and hurrying down the stairs. She marched off into the forest.

  How long had Krista been bottling up that little rant? Maybe they’d never been the closest friends in their group, but Lucy never suspected she’d been harboring such… venom. And because of men, no less. This gorgeous, popular woman was bitterly jealous of Lucy’s relationships with men—Lucy, who had slept with three of them in her entire life.

  It was too ridiculous.

  Irrational. Krista was unhinged.

  What had happened between Lucy and Miles had been extremely consensual. Four—five if you count the beach, which she certainly did—times. Five very consensual times. The idea that she was using him was absurd.

  And Alex? They’d met a few days ago and had barely spoken. Not like she and Miles had, not with the immediate click of understanding and friendship. Who was the user? He slept with Krista without even knowing what Lucy had done with Miles. He could guess, but he didn’t know. Hardly a trustworthy type. Probably jealous, too, the kind of guy who’d want to know where you were every minute, like you were his property. She would hate that.

  What she and Miles had was fun and healthy and wasn’t hurting anybody. He didn’t make demands on her. He didn’t need her.

  In fact, she was going to find him right away and remind herself of that.

  * * *

  Alan Girard lay on his stomach on a massage table, fully dressed and immobile. If Shawn hadn’t tipped him off, Miles never would have looked for his father in one of the massage yurts; he didn’t think of him as the type. Then again, he was still wearing his wool trousers and Italian loafers, and no spa staff was in sight. So he was was just… waiting? Resting? Drunk?

  “Dad?”

  “Go away.” He didn’t move, just spoke through the hole in the padded table.

  Miles stepped deeper inside the round building and closed the door behind him. Only tiny bluish lights along the floor lit the room. “I don’t want to talk to you any more than you want to talk to me, but I guess we’d better.”

  “I’m busy.”

  In spite of himself, Miles laughed softly. “I can see that.” When his father didn’t say anything else, he added, “I tracked Heather down.”

  Silence.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you and your current spouse—”

  Alan snorted. “‘Current spouse.’ Nice.” He didn’t lift his head.

  “Could you please sit up and talk to me?”

  “We’re talking.”

  “You’re face down and I’m staring at your back. Hard to have a conversation.”

  “Now you know how I feel.”

  Miles closed his eyes for a moment before walking across the room and sitting down on the floor under his father’s head. For a moment their eyes met through the hole in the table. “See? With a little effort the conversation becomes possible.”

  Alan sighed. He lifted his head and rubbed his eyes. “What the hell do you want?”

  “Reconciliation.”

  “Hell of a time.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “None of your business.”

  Miles stretched out his legs. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Great. Sixteen years you won’t have anything to do with me. Now you won’t leave me the hell alone.”

  “You told me when I was eighteen you never wanted to see me again.”

  His father pushed himself upright. His face was flushed. “That is such bullshit. You know I didn’t mean that.”

  “Oh, you meant it.”

  His hand came down on the table with a loud slap. “Grow up! Two years of chasing after you was enough to prove my point. Phone calls, letters. No, three years. As far as I’m concerned, the day you turned twenty-one my debt to you was paid.”

  “Not once did you say you were sorry, Dad. That’s all I wanted to hear.”

  “I’m not going to apologize for one stupid remark I made at a moment of great distress.”

  “You can’t apologize because you can’t admit you were wrong,” Miles said.

  “You know what your problem is? An inability to forgive. You get that from your mother.”

  “You can’t forgive somebody who doesn’t ask for it.”

  His father made a rude noise. “Your mother loved her high horse too.”

  Miles shifted his weight to get up. “I was stupid to think we could ever talk to each other.”

  “She laid all the blame at my feet, just like you’re doing,” his father continued. “Well, it takes two to tango, my friend. Not one person on God’s green earth is perfect, not even you.”

  Miles pointed at the door. “I’ll just go back to my little love nest now. Heather and I wanted to get in another quickie before you tracked us down.”

  “She’d like that,” his father said roughly.

  Miles stood directly in front of him and met his eyes. “I never touched her. Not then, not now. Not ever.”

  “This isn’t about you, son.”

  Miles jabbed a finger toward the door. “You just barged into my cabin looking for her. You assumed she’d be with me because you never believed what I told you—”

  “I assumed Heather was with you because she’s pissed at me, you idiot!”

  After a pause, Miles asked softly, “And you thought I was with her for the same reason?” All these years, his father still didn’t know him. “I would never do that. Even if I liked her. Even if I hated you. Which I don’t.”

  His father stared at him before dropping his gaze to his hands. He twisted the thick gold wedding band between his fingers, his face as intense as if he were defusing a bomb. “She caught me,” he said finally.

  “With another woman?”

  “You’d think so, from the way she reacted. But I haven’t cheated since, well, your mother. No, she caught me on the computer.” When Miles continued to look blank, Alan grimaced. “Porn. Don’t tell me you don’t like to look at naked girls. You can’t be that perfect.”

  Miles bit his lip. “No. Not that perfect.”

  “Hmph. Funny thing is, I was just curious. Only peeked around a bit. Got too much time on my hands since I retired. I’m not a young man anymore, with my… you know.” He slapped his thighs. “Certainly not young enough to know how to cover my tracks. I’m an intelligent man, but technology, well, it’s beyond me. Unfortunately, Heather’s a different ge
neration. A whiz on the computer. Somehow she saw that I’d been to a few websites, and ever since then I’ve been tied up in the doghouse while she keeps taking young pups for walks right in front of me. I’m chained up well enough. Don’t even have much of a bark anymore. Just have to wait until she gets it out of her system.”

  “Let her get it out of her what?”

  “She caught me. I was looking at other women. What else can I do?”

  Miles shook his head, amazed. “What do you mean? You know how to get divorced. You do it all the time.”

  His father’s sad, tired eyes met his. “She’ll get tired of torturing me eventually.”

  Miles ran his hand through the hair. He never thought he’d see his father so… defeated. “You’ve really met your match with this one, Dad.” He thought of Patty, his favorite stepmother. His mother. The other wives. None of them could have looked at another man without finding themselves in divorce court. “You finally married a woman who was more ruthless than you are.”

  “Oh, she’s much worse.”

  “You’re really going to just wait for her to get tired of sleeping around?”

  “She’s already getting bored with it. I’m starting to think it’s all for show. Like hinting she would be with you,” his father said. “She wouldn’t really do it.”

  His confidence worried Miles more than his dejection. “She would, Dad. You need to know that she would.”

  “You haven’t seen her since you were a kid. You really don’t know her at all.”

  Miles sighed heavily. What else was he refusing to see about his wife? What other men, what other lies had there been? “I need to tell you exactly what happened. What she did back then. I tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “Whatever she did is between the two of you.”

  “She claims she doesn’t even remember what happened.”

  His father nodded as if he believed it, which infuriated him. “She doesn’t remember sticking her hand down my pants,” Miles said. “At my high school graduation. Then at my freshman dorm. I don’t care if she doesn’t remember it, I sure the fuck do. It ruined my—”

  Miles stopped himself and looked away, realizing what he’d been about to say. And it wasn’t true. His life was good. He’d been free to pursue what made him happy.

  But it had cost him all the years away from his father. Which, he had to admit, had been his choice.

  Now, though…

  His father watched him intently. “She wasn’t in AA then. Now she is.”

  He wasn’t denying what she did. Just making excuses for it. “So she’s an alcoholic? That makes it all right?”

  “She’s been sober for twelve years. Before that she had a few missteps, but she kept trying. She’s had to make amends to quite a few people.” Alan slid off the table and grabbed Miles’s shoulders. “If she said she doesn’t remember it you have to believe her. I hope you can talk to her about it again. Both of you need to give it a rest.”

  “You make it sound…” Miles trailed off. Like it had nothing to do with him.

  “I didn’t believe you at first. Yeah, I admit it. She was so beautiful, why wouldn’t you want her? I was too jealous to see you were my spitting image. I should’ve been flattered.” He sighed. “And I figured you were angry about your mother. Patricia, I mean, like your brother. Chas hated Heather too, though time healed that one. A little, anyway.”

  Miles pulled away from him. “I need to think.”

  “To hell with thinking,” his father said, slapping his back. “Let’s get a drink and you can tell me all about this youth foundation I keep hearing about. I’m buying.”

  “The Sterlings are buying.”

  Alan gave him a wicked smile that took thirty years off his face. “Even better.”

  * * *

  “Miles?” Lucy rapped on the door again. It was almost ten. Where was he?

  She pinched the elastic of her underwear to pull it back over her butt cheeks. The one time she wore the uncomfortable kind, the kind that looked good but felt like a sequined hair scrunchie, and she ended up wearing it for hours.

  Where was he? She pressed her ear to the door. Nothing.

  Fighting her growing embarrassment, she turned and went back down the steps.

  Something with Huntley must have come up. The wedding rehearsal was tomorrow, and the wedding first thing Saturday morning. Maybe the guys jumped the gun on a bachelor party.

  But wouldn’t Miles have called her? Sent a message? They’d parted with kisses and giddy groping. They hadn’t set an exact time, but it was understood they both wanted more.

  Dread pooled in her stomach. Was this just her overactive libido talking? Maybe five times was enough to tide him over until—

  Until next week. When they both went home.

  No, no. That wasn’t it. There hadn’t been any hint of goodbye when he kissed her over his motorcycle. And they’d specifically discussed how nice it was that he had private cabin.

  She marched up the path. She couldn’t go sit around in her own cabin waiting for him. She could go get a drink, maybe. And something to eat.

  She pivoted and headed for the Snowy Egret. A half-dozen people were mulling about the resort, most in pairs. Still older people. More of Huntley’s socialite pals had arrived, flooding the Soul of Muir with the Soul of Moolah. Maybe Miles had been roped into meeting them.

  Roped. That was a fun image. Like Gulliver. He was such a sport, she knew he’d be up for anything…

  Except right now, apparently.

  Damn it.

  She paused at the door of the Snowy Egret, looking in, and let out a long sigh of relief to see him sitting at the bar with his father.

  The two large men mirrored each other. Both had their elbows on the bar and faced each other, foreheads nearly touching, and after a moment Miles reached out and patted his father on the cheek.

  Lucy let go of the door handle.

  That was great for Miles. She was glad. Hungry and lonely, but glad.

  She went back to her cabin, telling herself how happy she was for him. Hadn’t she liked him precisely because he didn’t put any demands on her? Well, it cut both ways. She didn’t own him either.

  The calculator in her brain reminded her how few hours she had left with him before they went home. How she’d just lost a third of that time because he’d chosen to reconcile with his father instead of getting naked with her.

  She told the calculator to shut up.

  Chapter 20

  FRIDAY MORNING LUCY HAD BREAKFAST early. Still no sign of Miles. Fawn had dropped the pretense of spending her nights away from Huntley, so Lucy had the cabin to herself now.

  What a waste.

  After Krista’s tirade, and the fruitlessness of donning a sequined hair scrunchie on her private parts, she’d felt a little unpopular and had slept badly. Every bump in the night sounded like Miles at the door. None was.

  Eating her white breakfast alone didn’t help, and as soon as she’d taken the last bite of her egg white omelet, she marched to Miles’s cabin.

  They only had today and tomorrow. Sunday morning at ten, a Sterling limo would take her home. Nothing in her plans allowed for continuing strings-free sex after that. As soon as she walked into her apartment and did her laundry and cooking for the work week ahead, reality would come crashing back. She was alone and single and getting older than she’d ever thought she’d be without a mate, kids, the whole bit. She could ignore that hard truth while surrounded by cedar and egrets, but not forever.

  She had to enjoy her time with him here and now.

  Miles’s scruffy broad face appeared in the crack in the cabin door. “Lucy. Oh, shit.”

  Hardly the welcome she’d been looking for. “I’m sorry to wake you. Thing is, we don’t have much time left.”

  He squinted at her. “Time? What time is it?” He rubbed his face with both hands.

  “It’s only nine. But it’s Friday.” She heard the whiff of desper
ation in her voice. “Never mind. Maybe I’ll see you later.”

  He leaned forward and grabbed her arm as she took a step down. “Hold on! Just give me a minute.”

  “It’s okay. I’m going for a walk. Find me when you’re up.” She glanced down at his boxers. “Awake.”

  “Oh, God. Last night. I fucked up. My dad and I—”

  “It’s okay. I saw you at the bar.”

  “But I should have told you. I never meant for it to go on as long as it did. Then when we finally got out of there, I was in no condition to—”

  “No problem. Really.”

  “But you must have come here looking for me. How long did you wait? I hate to think of you knocking on the door and me not answering—”

  “Actually, I didn’t even make it this far. I saw you at the restaurant and figured we’d have to reschedule.” She felt her face get warm. She couldn’t stand the idea of him feeling sorry for her because she’d wanted to have sex with him and he hadn’t bothered to show up. “Did you have a good talk with your father?”

  “Light on substance, but it was good. Lots of scotch and sports talk.”

  “Male bonding.”

  “Exactly.” He rubbed his eyes again. “Where are you headed? I’ll catch up.”

  “Thought I’d hike out to the ocean.”

  “I’ll catch up.” Then he flinched. “Oh, damn. No, I can’t. I promised my father I’d have breakfast with Heather.”

  It was already nine. Breakfast would probably tie up the rest of his morning. Why did that fill her with panic?

  She didn’t cope well without structure. She knew this about herself. They just needed plans, however short-term. “Lunch?”

  His face fell again. “Can’t. Promised to eat with Huntley’s parents.” His lip quirked. “Unless you’d like to join us…”

  “Do I get to tell them off?”

  “Fine with me.”

  She swallowed tightly, feeling rejected, which was silly. “Tempting, but no. Maybe this afternoon.”

  “Definitely. Except—I might have to spend some time planning Huntley’s bachelor party. I can’t put it off any longer.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Shit, the wedding’s tomorrow.”