by Tessa Radley
“When I found him drunk as a skunk in my apartment. He was torn up with guilt for sleeping with my girlfriend.”
“Who seduced him,” she said with a snap of her teeth. Jeff had been very clever.
Guy’s gaze bored into her. “He begged my forgiveness.”
Another brilliant touch. “After he’d convinced you it wasn’t the first time I’d tempted him.” Oh, she could see how Jeff had played it. “He manipulated you.”
He’d manipulated her, too. She’d never even paused to call Guy and check his story out. She’d been too outraged and hurt. So she’d simply cut her losses and run. Exactly as Jeff had probably intended.
Guy had deserved more.
Guy was shaking his head. “I don’t think so. He was crying—it really cut him up. He blamed himself. He was even making statements that sounded dangerously suicidal.” More manipulation.
Yet how could she place all the blame on Guy for being taken in? She’d believed Jeff, too. Had it given her a convenient excuse to run? Deep in her heart she’d known that she and Guy would never last…he wasn’t looking for a wife, a family. He’d told her, too often, how happy he was with his life just the way it was.
Taking in the shadows under his eyes, Avery decided he didn’t look terribly happy now.
He looked strained…and tired.
She’d been so angry on the night of her birthday because he’d put work before her. She needed to try to get that frustration across to him.
“You told Jeff to get me a cab so I could meet you at Baratin.” Even now it annoyed her that he hadn’t bothered to leave his precious business and pick her up for their date. “At the time I thought you’d forgotten all about my birthday. Until Jeff arrived and told me you’d sent him to pick me up because you were too busy—”
“Wait a minute—”
Avery discovered she was shaking. “He made it clear he was supposed to be the appetizer for our dinner date—that he was the special surprise you’d promised me for a birthday I would never forget.”
Guy straightened.
“What?”
The stormy expression on Guy’s face only made her shake harder. He wanted her to bare her soul to him, while he watched her from behind slitted, shuttered eyes? Sure thing.
Clearly he didn’t believe her. She’d taken a risk telling him, and lost everything. In his eyes she was a gold digger, a slut, a liar. So what was she still doing here?
Avery stumbled unsteadily to her feet. “Take me back to the resort.” His disbelief had withered the last bloom of hope. “I’ll leave tomorrow.”
It was all over.
She couldn’t work with Guy anymore, couldn’t bear to see him. There was too much love lost, too much hurt and heartbreak.
She’d find a way to explain to her uncle. At least the two presentations were over. She’d done Uncle Art proud…. “You can’t—”
“I have to. I can’t stay here.” It was going to damage the professional reputation that she valued so highly to walk out in the middle of a contract. But she couldn’t endure Guy’s distrust any more.
Guy’s hand closed around her elbow. “Avery, listen to me!”
She froze within his grasp.
The warmth of his fingers was at odds with the harshness of his tone. She glanced up. “I’m listening.”
“I never sent Jeff to have sex with you.”
She started to laugh uncontrollably. She already knew that Jeff had lied to her. But there was a certain irony in saying, “I suppose you expect me to believe that? After all, Jeff told me, and you trust Jeff implicitly. Why shouldn’t I?”
Guy’s fingers tightened on her wrist and his skin stretched taut over his face. “He lied.”
“So you say. Did Jeff show you the bruises where I kicked him in the shin? He should’ve been limping, I can’t believe you didn’t notice.”
“I didn’t see him for a few days after he told me—” Guy paused “—that you’d begged him to make love to him. That it wasn’t the first time.”
“Now that is a lie.” Avery lifted her chin. “You always believed Jeff. So it’s pointless for me to deny it, isn’t it?”
“What do you expect when you told me nothing about it at the time?”
“I called you—”
“After you’d already packed up and left.”
“Because at the time I thought—” She broke off.
“Because you thought what?”
Because she’d believed Jeff.
She’d been put off balance by his turning up at Guy’s apartment, knowing it was her birthday and that she was having dinner with Guy—information he could only have gotten from one person. Guy. Then there’d been the way he’d made himself at home accepting her offer of a drink, his presumption that she’d let him make love to her because Guy had gifted him to her.
A monstrous lie.
But she’d been too taken aback to question it. She hadn’t trusted Guy….
“I thought that you were into sharing me with your friends—I didn’t want that. Jeff was very convincing. He made it sound like it was the kind of stunt you two pulled all the time,” she said, trying to justify it. “In the end I had to fight him off.”
“Fight him off?” Darkness—doubt?—entered his eyes. “Jeff’s not aggressive.”
“You think I’m making this up?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “God, I don’t know what to believe. I keep thinking you must’ve misunderstood Jeff—or overreacted to a joke he made.”
“He’d been drinking. He wasn’t joking. I had to kick him to let me go.”
“You should’ve called me.”
“I told you, I rushed out without my cell phone. I just wanted to get out,” Avery confessed. “And frankly I was so mad at you. Right then you occupied the number one spot on my all-men-are-bastards list. Once I reached the airport I cooled down a little and rang you from a pay phone.”
She’d needed him.
That’s when he’d told her he’d leave her bags with the doorman and said, It was fun while it lasted. Don’t call me again. Ever.
And cut the connection.
That had convinced her that he was angry with her for not fulfilling Jeff’s drunken fantasies, and that Guy Jarrod was a total, hedonistic bastard. That she was well out of the relationship. To top it off, she’d had to catch a cab back to his apartment to retrieve her bags from a curious doorman. It had been the final straw in her humiliation.
Guy raked his hands through his hair. “Avery. I’ve been in business with Jeff for three years. I’ve never known him to hurt a fly.”
“So you don’t believe me,” she said tonelessly.
It stung that he hadn’t accepted her word. But she’d expected this. She could hardly whine about it. After all, her pride had caused her to make that ridiculous intimation that she’d slept with Jeff.
And she hadn’t trusted Guy, either. She’d been so busy thinking of herself as the victim, that she hadn’t even realized she’d done Guy a disservice too.
They were both a pair of fools.
“I didn’t say that I don’t believe you. But I have to give him an opportunity to give me his side of the story.” There was a hesitant note in his voice.
Was it possible that she was gaining ground?
“You didn’t let me give my side when I called from the airport,” she pointed out.
“Because I barely knew—”
“Because you barely knew me,” she finished for him. “I was only the woman who’d spent two weeks in your bed.” The woman who’d fallen in love with him. “What’s that compared to male friendship?”
“Hey, wait a minute, this has nothing to do with sexism.”
“Doesn’t it? You think Jeff is less likely to lie to you?” Irrationally she ignored the fact that he had known Jeff for a lot longer than he’d known her. That there might be merit in his argument. But she wasn’t in the mood to be reasonable right now. Her throat was tight with unshed tears. D
amn Guy Jarrod. He was breaking her heart all over again.
“The point you’re not getting is that Jeff didn’t just walk out without a word and leave. You did.”
The silence simmered after his outburst.
Guy clenched his fists and let out a hissing breath. “Look, I didn’t intend to say that. I think we both need to calm down. I’ll put the hamper in the SUV. Why don’t you change out of that damp swimsuit?”
Ten
Avery ducked under the large willow tree and swapped her still-damp bikini bottoms for a panties and jeans, and started to untangle her hair and finger-comb it out.
Why had Guy been so wound up by the idea that she’d walked away from him? She’d never thought that would’ve caused any resentment at all. He’d made it more than clear that she wasn’t an important fixture in his life.
Had she misunderstood his casual, carefree manner? Had she meant more to Guy than he revealed?
Avery put her bikini in her tote and hefted it onto her shoulder, then shook her towel out. But the actions were performed without thought. She couldn’t get Guy’s face out her mind.
Surely what she was imagining was insane? Guy had never cared for her—not in any way that mattered.
The snapping of a twig caused her head to turn.
“Guy?”
Instead of Guy she found herself looking into the furry black face and inquisitive eyes of a bear.
A very young bear.
A cub.
Oh, help! Where was Momma? Her towel falling from her numb fingers, Avery started to back up.
The bear started to sniff at the hedge on the far side of the willow. Leaves rustled on Avery’s left. She whipped around in time to see a second large cub come gamboling into the green cave under the willow. Damn.
Momma definitely wouldn’t be far away.
Her pulse pounding, Avery eyed the trunk of the willow tree. It wouldn’t be too difficult to pull herself up onto the lowest branch. Then she remembered the bartender in town saying that a bear had invaded the tree outside the courthouse.
Momma bear would probably have her butt before she reached the first branch.
The newcomer leapt on the smaller cub and they started to roll around on the thick mat of grass. Then the smaller cub rolled onto his feet and shambled over to her towel.
Get away, she willed.
He didn’t heed her silent urgings. After sniffing it, he pawed it. The other cub joined in and before long they were playing tug-of-war with Avery’s towel.
Where was Momma?
A loud snort answered that question. The bottom fell out of Avery’s stomach as both cubs paused and pricked their ears, turning their heads toward where the sound had come from. Yes, that’s right. Good babies. Go find Momma. Then they turned their attention back to the bright yellow towel.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
Avery knew she didn’t have long before Momma came looking for her recalcitrant cubs. But her legs didn’t seem to want to work, a result of the adrenaline rush that the cubs’ arrival had brought.
Dry-mouthed, she swallowed, but the coppery taste of fear stayed on her tongue.
She took another step back and came up against a wall of flesh.
“Easy,” Guy whispered in her ear. “Keep still.”
Her legs, already weak, turned to liquid with relief at the sound of his voice. Avery leaned back, grateful for his presence, the feel of his chest solid against her shoulders.
“Where’s the mother?”
“At the river bank. I saw her when I came back.”
Thank goodness he had.
“She’ll come looking for her cubs.”
Even as she spoke the cubs tired of the game of tugging and clawing at her towel. Dropping it, the larger cub trotted through the willow fronds and then after a few seconds the smaller cub followed.
“Whew.” Avery darted forward to pick up her towel, then linked her trembling fingers through Guy’s. “I have never been so glad to hear your voice.”
“You kept your head. Although I will admit I got a shock when I saw the bear knowing you were nearby. When I heard the cubs cavorting I grew more worried. Luckily I found you before their mother did. Look,” Guy parted the fronds of willow, “there’s the sow.”
Avery took in the black bear, her brown muzzle snuffling at her cubs.
“She can smell your scent on her cubs from the towel.”
“Thanks—that reassures me.”
Guy chuckled softly. “I’m not going to chase her away. Let’s leave them to their world.”
Avery was only too ready to follow him through the hedge at the rear of the willow and scramble up the slope to where the SUV was parked. Once safely inside she said, “Strange as it may seem, I don’t think I would’ve missed that experience for the world.”
“What? You weren’t terrified?”
“Oh, I was terrified all right. But it was worth it.”
Guy shot her a narrow-eyed look. “You know what? I may still get you up in that balloon after all.”
The first thing Guy did on his return to the resort was to close himself up in the wood-paneled study that had been his father’s and put a call through to Jeff Morse.
Vivienne, his partner’s very efficient PA, promised to have Jeff call him back shortly. An hour later, Jeff hadn’t called. So Guy tried again. By the third call, Vivienne sounded uncharacteristically flustered as she advised that Jeff had just left to go hunting for a couple of days on a property that was out of cell phone range.
Guy set the phone down, propped his elbows on the walnut desk and stared for a long time at his steepled fingers.
Finally he moved to the computer in the corner of the study and booted it up. Fifteen minutes later he was satisfied with the e-mail he’d drafted. He hit Send.
Notifying Jeff of his intention to dissolve their Go Green partnership would provoke a response.
The picnic beside the river changed something between them.
Guy didn’t raise the confession Avery had made about Jeff. But every night they met for dinner at Chagall's, obstensibly to discuss work, and afterward Guy would escort her to her room, and here they would make love. Not sex. Silent, desperate love.
After the first night Guy had refused to leave and they’d ended up sleeping in each other’s arms. Even though the next morning Avery had complained that he would be missed on the family floor.
“I have my own suite, it’s self-contained,” Guy said. “Melissa prefers the peace of Willow Lodge. Erica’s moved out into Christian’s house. Trevor’s living in town. And Blake probably spends more time at airports commuting between Aspen and New York than he does at Jarrod Ridge. We’re hardly living in each other’s pockets. Too often I’m down in the kitchens checking the produce coming in from the markets early in the morning. Trust me, no one’s going to miss me if I don’t come to breakfast in the family kitchen.”
When Guy put it like that, her reservations sounded absurd.
“You should move in with me.”
“I don’t want to be seen emerging from the private elevator early each morning,” she said stubbornly clinging to her convictions. “People…staff…will talk.”
“Then I’ll fire them.”
Her eyes went wide.
“Hey, that’s a joke—bad one, but still a joke.”
But it did remind her of the kind of power a man like Guy Jarrod had. He did have the power to make decisions about people’s lives. Even hers.
Later that day Avery felt restless and found herself needing more space than the resort, crowded with the continuous bustle of the Food and Wine Gala, allowed.
A drive into Aspen accomplished that. Without any conscious volition, Avery found herself back at the gallery where Margaret Jarrod’s work hung. The gallery owner greeted her, and she smiled politely back before walking to the alcove in the back of the gallery to stare at the riverscape, as though that might give her the answers she sought.
Clearly Guy must’ve g
rieved when his mother had died. He’d missed her. Yet he never spoke about her.
Speak to me, Avery implored the painting. Help me understand.
But the picture remained a swirl of angry color and eventually Avery sighed and took herself off for a cup of coffee at a sidewalk cafe. Half an hour later she returned to her hatchback and made her way back to the resort.
On the stretch of tarmac just before the right turn onto the bridge that crossed the Roaring Fork River, a red sports car swerved to pass an oncoming white van.
Avery suppressed the fierce urge to scream. Faced by the sports car blocking her vision, Avery gritted her teeth and swung the steering wheel hard to one side.
The car bumped across the verge and lurched to a bone-jolting stop in a roadside ditch. Avery was flung forward as the airbags activated.
The radio hummed country music. Beyond the window she glimpsed bits of a tilted world. Dirt and shrubs and blue sky. Closing her eyes Avery said a silent prayer of thanks. When she opened them, it was to find herself staring through the windshield into a pair of feminine eyes.
“Are you okay?” The young woman asked, pushing her dark hair off her face.
“I think so.”
Avery unclipped her seatbelt and tried to open the door. It was jammed solid. A wild sense of panic filled her. She had to get out!
“The car is on its side. You’ll have to climb out. Are you sure you should be moving? Maybe it would be better to wait for the paramedics?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” Avery couldn’t bear the thought of being trapped. The opposite door swung open. Avery clambered over the gearstick and hoisted herself out.
“I thought we were both finished when that idiot overtook me so recklessly.” The other woman’s expression turned to concern. “You’re bleeding. There’s a graze on your forehead.”
Avery touched a hand to her head. “I’m fine—but I’m not sure if the other driver will be if I ever lay my hands on his throat.”
“I’ve called 911, help is on its way.”
Oh, thank God. “You must be an angel,” Avery said with relief. “He was driving like a maniac, I didn’t think I was going to be able to avoid a crash.” Reaction was starting to set in.
