“What do I say?”
“I was a bitch and I’m sorry,” Jason said. Connie swatted him. “What? Are you trying to say she didn’t act like a bitch? She was treating him like a child.”
“What’s the conference about?” Cassie asked, stopping behind Jason and draping her arms around his neck.
Jason put his hands on his wife’s arms. “We’re trying to get Tessa to go apologize to Brett.”
“Oh, I think you should rush over very dramatically and propose without thinking about it. That works well for Callistos.”
Jason pulled Cassie into his lap. “Yeah, maybe you’ll get lucky and he’ll faint.”
Tessa rolled her eyes at Connie, who for once didn’t return the expression. Jason and Cassie were so well matched. He was incredibly lucky she’d taken him back after the way he’d treated her, suckering her into a sex-only arrangement and then buying land out from under her to force her to keep seeing him on the sly.
Seeing him on the sly.
Abandoning her drink, Tessa ran into the house, yelling for Suzi.
* * * *
Brett walked into his house intending to make himself a drink before grabbing the phone to invite a few people over to get the party started, but found himself dropping onto the couch and staring out the sliding glass doors at the pool. When Suzi had invited him to the party, he should have been a man and told her he couldn’t make it. Suzi had said she hadn’t been able to get anything out of Tessa when she’d talked to her. Said it was like talking to a wall. Which sounded about right after Jason’s description of his sister as an island.
Unbelievable. Millions of women would do anything to get into his bed, and the one he wanted was not right in the head.
He couldn’t help remembering the night he went to her house the first time. The vulnerable look in her eyes when he left. If he hadn’t been so busy trying to prove he didn’t need her, he might have been able to gain a beachhead on that island of hers. Not a bad little image. One glance at the piano, and he decided he didn’t have the energy to mess with it. Maybe tomorrow.
Why had she gotten so angry? All he’d done was ask a few questions, and he’d carefully chosen the people he’d asked. Suzi could be a gold medalist secret keeper when she wanted to be. Asking Jason had been a desperation move. He’d tried to talk to Cassie when they first got to WVA, but she’d acted like she thought he was going to start shooting up in front of her. By the time she’d calmed down, he’d already started working the topic of Tessa into conversation with Jason and figured if he asked Cassie, too, they would get wise. How the hell was he supposed to have known everybody in the Touchstone bunch would know everything the second he opened his mouth? He’d never known a group of people that tight before.
Well, if he’d thought about what Suzi said, he could have figured it out. Her and her mildly legendary Marc-Tessa-Brian story.
Brett dragged himself off the couch and headed for the sliding glass doors. A swim in the cool blue pool shimmering in the backyard looked like just the ticket. He stripped off his clothes and stepped into the deep end. Water closed over his head as gravity dragged him to the bottom. It filled his ears, blocking out the sounds of the city. He pushed off from the bottom and bobbed to the surface.
She’d looked fine today. Just jeans and a Buckcherry T-shirt, but the way she filled out both had been art. Trying to keep his mind on his conversation with Suzi about the brownies while Tessa stood next to him not saying anything had been enough to drive a man insane. She had to know she was dousing him with gasoline and waving a match in front of his eyes when she came over to talk to him. Of course, yelling he loved her hadn’t been the brightest thing he’d ever done, either. Although, that was about as secret as Suzi’s pregnancy.
Brett drifted into a wall and pushed away. He needed to stop falling for women he couldn’t have. It had to be some kind of mental illness. Following Suzi around on that tour had been stupid, and slightly dangerous. Every time he went near her, Logan looked as though he wanted to kick Brett’s ass. When she’d slipped that leash, had she run to him? Fuck no. She’d run with him. She let him take care of her. But the first chance she got, she’d gone straight for Brian. And he’d gone straight for the next damaged bachelorette. Tessa, the woman who was an island. Who only wanted him for sex, and then only if he kept his mouth shut about it.
The woman who was standing at the edge of his pool.
Brett thrashed. He sank below the surface, sucking in a lungful of water before he found footing. Standing, he grabbed for the side. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded between choking gasps.
“Are you okay?” She crouched at the edge and put her hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You broke into my house!”
“You didn’t answer when I knocked, and the door was unlocked.”
“So you just walked in?” He should pull away from her hand, but didn’t want to. He was such a pussy.
“I felt bad about the way we left things at the party.”
“The way you’ve been leaving things for the past month? I figured you’d be happy I finally took the hint.” All logic and past experience told him that a fully dressed woman at the side of a pool should end up in that pool. Wouldn’t take much to yank her in. Then her clothes would be wet and she’d have to get out of them.
Which would put him right back where he’d started.
Brett pulled away from her and crossed the pool to the ladder. If the water was colder, it would be easier to get his body back under control. Nah, it would have to be a few degrees above frozen to have any effect. All she had to do was show up, and he was horny.
“Brett, I’m sorry. I think I may have handled things badly and hurt you.” Tessa came around the pool, scooping up his jeans on the way. She met him at the top of the ladder.
“Really? And what do you want now?” Brett pulled on the jeans. Wet, aroused family jewels crammed into blue jeans were uncomfortable as hell.
“Marry me.”
Brett shook his head to get the water out of his ears. “Come again?”
“Marry me.”
Brett peered into the cool blue water. What would she think if he just jumped back in? Did it matter what she thought? She’d just asked him to marry her. “Gosh, let me go grab the keys to the Jag. We can be in Vegas in a couple of hours.” He stalked into the house and made that drink he’d been wanting since he’d gotten home.
She came up behind him and put her hands on his arms, kissing his back. The soft touch of her lips on his skin made him forget the ache in his jeans because his entire body now ached with the need to gather her in his arms. Which he couldn’t do. Not again.
“Please Brett. I screwed this up from the beginning, and I’m sorry. I just want to make it right.”
“Yeah, for the next fifteen minutes. Then you’re going to change your mind, get mad at me for doing something horrible or childish. You want a drink?”
“No.” She backed away.
Brett sat down on the couch, sipping his drink. The liquor burned more than usual. Probably because he’d ripped up his throat choking on pool water when she broke into his house. As much as she thought she’d changed, she still thought she had the right to come and go in his life without his permission. ’Course, she couldn’t do that if he didn’t keep leaving the door open for her. Dumbass. Pussy dumbass.
She looked pathetic, standing in the middle of the living room, staring at the floor with her hands clasped in front of her. He clenched his teeth against the desire to forgive her. That would just start the cycle all over again.
“Tessa, why did you come here today?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter.” Her voice hitched.
Brett clutched his glass. She wasn’t going to be allowed in again. If he did that, he’d spend the rest of his life wishing for just a little more from her and getting only what she was willing to give. No more. He couldn’
t keep servicing her like a hired hand working on her schedule. “Why doesn’t it matter?”
“You said no. You won’t marry me. You’re done with me.”
“Oh, I’d marry you. You’d just never marry me.”
She raised her face, wiping tears away. “I asked you, and you were sarcastic. And you’re sitting there like this is funny.”
“What I mean is I would marry you. I’d love you with every fiber. I already do. But you can’t. You have yourself so isolated, I’d spend the rest of my life yanking petals off flowers saying ‘she loves me, she loves me not’ and be right every time.”
“Like I couldn’t do the same thing. I’d call you on tour, and you’d tell me how much you loved me and missed me while some slut was lying in your bed.”
“Tessa, there haven’t been any other women since you.” Brett set aside his drink before he threw it across the room. Maturity. Must finally be learning some.
“Bullshit! You have your furniture cleaned weekly because of bodily fluids.”
“Things have changed. My friends have all been giving me shit about it, and I couldn’t tell them why because there was no why. I wasn’t dating you. I was just screwing you. I couldn’t tell them that now that I had you, I didn’t want anybody else.” Brett leaned forward and pressed his elbows against his knees.
“That won’t last.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was that slut!” Tessa screamed. “I laid in those beds and listened to those guys tell their wives and girlfriends how much they missed them and how lonely they were. And then when they got off the phone, they rolled over and fucked me again!”
That explained some of the photographs on her walls. She’d been running with Touchstone in their heyday. He couldn’t throw stones either. “I never called a girlfriend like that.”
“Why? Were you trying to spare your groupie’s feelings?” Tessa wiped her cheeks again.
“No. I wouldn’t do that. When I’m committed to a woman, I’m committed.” Maybe she would take him if he just waited her out. “Tessa, you’re beautiful and you’re smart and even the little bits of you that you’ve been doling out to me like candy for the past couple of months have been amazing. If you let me have all of you, if you trusted me, I would never betray you.”
“Oh, fuck off.” She spun on her heel and walked to the door.
“Tessa!”
She stopped with her hand on the doorknob.
“Why did you come here today?”
“I told you. Didn’t you listen?”
“No, why me? Why did you decide to chase after me when there’s a hundred guys who’ve tried and failed with you? You let all of them go without a second look. Jason told me.”
Her shoulders went up and her whole back stiffened. “You kept trying. No matter how hard I pushed you away, you kept coming back. I thought that meant you might not be like other guys who would just slink away in the night when the weather turns or the grass gets younger on the other side of the hill.”
Brett crossed the room and put his hands on her shoulders. “Tessa, I promise I won’t slink away. If I ever left you, I’d be making a lot of noise, and you’d probably be throwing stuff at me.”
She spun around and wrapped her arms around him.
Brett leaned his cheek on the top of her head. Strong, tough Tessa was trembling. Her cheek suctioned to his chest. That night at her house, he’d been wrong. This is what vulnerable really looked like. He’d never gotten farther than her front door before, but he was really inside now, and he never wanted to leave. “Tessa,” he whispered. “Will you marry me?”
She sobbed. “Yes.”
* * * *
As Tessa climbed out of the car like a newborn foal, her legs wanted to fold up under her. Brett met her at the front fender and put his arm around her waist as though he knew she needed the support. Every car was right where it had been when she’d left. “I told you they’d all wait,” she said.
“I believed you.” He led her up to the house and through the front door.
Suzi scurried out of the kitchen the moment they walked in. “You’re back. Together. You’re back and you’re together.”
“You know, Suzi, for a writer, you’re not very articulate sometimes,” Tessa said.
“Oh, stop.” Suzi smirked. “Well? What happened?”
He leaned down into her face, grinning. “You want all the kinky details?”
Suzi’s eyes sparkled. “Not right now, but maybe later. For research.” She put her hand over his face and pushed him away, then turned to Tessa. “Well?”
“We’re getting married.” Something ballooned in her chest. Like her heart had grown three sizes in the last hour.
“Really?” She clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh, my God. That means Ty won the betting pool. Come on, we have to go tell them.” Suzi grabbed Tessa’s hand and dragged her through the house. As soon as they cleared the back door Suzi shouted, “They’re getting married!”
“I knew it! I knew it!” Ty shouted. “Pay up, suckers. I’m going to need the dough to start bringing my own water. There’s some kind of marrying virus going around, and I don’t want any part of it.”
Jason sidled over to Brett and elbowed him. “Good job. Now, if you hurt her, I have to kill you.”
Brett looked into her eyes. Party-hearty Brett Cherney really was the best cure for a broken heart. “I’m pretty sure if I hurt her, she’ll kill me herself.”
“Oh, cut it out with the mushy stuff.” Marc gave Jason a shove and hugged Tessa. “Congratulations.”
“I’m pretty sure you say congratulations to the man and good luck to the woman,” Sandy said. “Because the man has finally landed a woman, and the woman has all the work ahead of her.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Good luck, sweetheart.”
“Hey, when do we start betting on when Ty gets hooked?” Bear yelled from across the yard.
“Bet on never. That’s the safe one,” Ty yelled back. “Besides, I’m not the last single one. There’s Sandy and Jody and a couple of the roadies. I’m not going down that path. No way.”
“The gentleman doth protest too much,” Alex said, slipping her arm through Marc’s and grinning at him.
Everybody laughed.
Tessa leaned on Brett, smiling up at him. He wasn’t such a bad bet. He wasn’t second best, either.
Meet the Author
Christa Maurice has been obsessed with rock stars from early childhood when her older brother started randomly quizzing her on rock trivia. How many first graders knew who the headliners were on the Black and Blue Tour? Christa did. (Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult.) When not listening to music and/or writing, she enjoys traveling, reading and science fiction. Not Second Best is the fifth book in her Drawn to the Rhythm
Romance series. Readers can find Christa on Facebook or visit her website at christamaurice.com and sign up for her newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/4VZuD)
Be sure not to miss Christa Maurice’s One Ring to Rule, available now!
One Ring to Rule
One spurned editor, one groveling prodigal artist and one hundred thousand eavesdropping fans.
Lindsey Cartwright didn’t set out to become the Wicked Witch of Comics. But then she fell for hot-shot artist Kent Farrington…and got dumped. When he walked out, he left her with no explanation and zero sense of humor.
Kent knows he’s got a hard road ahead if he wants to win Lindsey back. He’ll need to catch her at the perfect time, in the perfect place. What could be better than the biggest comic book convention of the year?
WARNING: Nosy fans, extreme cinnamon buns and vulgar lemons.
Chapter 1
“Gary, put that thing out or go outside. You know there’s no smoking in the convention center,” Lindsey said through gritted teeth.
Gary glared at her as he pinched out his cigarette and slid it back into the carton. He reminded her of a
kitten trying to intimidate a boa constrictor. She also had a pretty good idea what was running through his mind. One didn’t become the ‘Wicked Witch of Comics’ without knowing how one got there. Snapping open her gold compact, she ran a hand across her sleek chignon of caramel-colored hair before fixing her golden eyes on the convention room doors. The ultimate fanboys, the ones who’d paid extra so they could come in an hour earlier than the regular fans, would be waddling through them any moment. Thus would begin the longest weekend of her life.
Or the longest weekend of her life since the last convention she’d been forced to attend before she’d sworn off them in humiliation.
“Here they come,” Brad said as the doors swung open. He slipped his sunglasses up his nose and closed his eyes. Brad was one of the hottest artists going, which was why he was scheduled for this early signing session, but he started bar-Con last night. He was so hung over he hadn’t managed breakfast this morning.
Frank, the line’s main writer, shot Brad a dirty look.
Lindsey ground her teeth, annoyed that Brad thought it was okay to show up at a Con dressed like a bum, reeking of alcohol, and hungover within an inch of his life. If she’d known he was going to pull this, she would have scheduled him for a later slot and a night lecture just to keep him out of the bar for a few extra hours. The fanboys paid too much money to meet him. They deserved better.
Kent had never appeared at a Con less than impeccably groomed and completely alert. Kent valued his fans. Unlike Brad, Kent had known who made him a fan favorite—the fans.
Of course, Kent had also walked out on his lover and disappeared from the face of the Earth without warning, so maybe he hadn’t been aware of who made him a fan favorite. He hadn’t gotten those plum assignments on his own. He’d had a good fairy on the editorial staff helping him. A very stupid fairy.
Lindsey turned her back to the table to give herself time to recover, away from the grueling scrutiny of the first visitors. Four years later and the memory of Kent still made her run hot and cold. Hot because her skin remembered his hands. Cold because her heart remembered coming home from work to find him gone, down to the last scrap of watercolor paper. His studio had looked like Whoville on Christmas morning. Nothing but a rime of dust on the carpet around where his drawing table sat and a note telling her he was sorry he wasn’t the man she needed.
Not Second Best Page 9
