Calling His Bluff

by Amy Jo Cousins

  A man had to defend himself. “Hey, the whole thing was your idea.” He turned toward Grace. “It was your husband’s idea to have me check her out, and now he’s pissed because I gave her one lousy kiss.”

  “I asked you to check on her, not ‘check her out,’” Tyler retorted with air quotes.

  “Stop!” Grace threw her hands in the air. She pointed at her son. “You, go to the kitchen and ask nicely for some tortellini and broccoli. You can pretend to eat the broccoli if you go now.” Daniel went. Grace passed her youngest back to J.D. and ducked behind the counter to pour herself more wine. Propping her elbows on the bar, she rested her head on her interlaced fingers and grinned at J.D. “You, tell me about that kiss. No, wait. First things first. Why were you checking her out?”

  “On, checking on,” Tyler protested. “I wanted J.D. to see if he could feel her out.” As he snagged the baby from J.D.’s lap, he gave his friend a sharp look and said, “I said out, not up, buddy. Don’t get any ideas. I told him how we’re a little concerned about Sarah.”

  “Worried sick and not a little pissed off is what he means,” Grace added in a helpful and pleasant tone of voice. J.D. knew that Grace and Sarah had formed a close bond from day one. The two women joked that they didn’t need to bother with the “in-law” part of the phrase “sister-in-law” since they were already sisters, separated at birth. “We’ve been trying to get her in on the planning for Susannah’s birthday, but she’s been blowing off all our calls.” He knew that the Tyler kids went all out for their mom’s birthday every year. It was a family tradition that he couldn’t imagine Sarah skipping out on, but maybe she’d been busy with work. “Plus, it just wasn’t like her to miss Daniel’s birthday last week.”

  Or maybe it was serious.

  “She forgot her godson’s birthday?” Shoot, he could find her right now and tie her to a chair until she explained what was going on with her.

  “Well, not exactly. I mean, she sent over a gift and a card, but she made up some excuse about why she couldn’t make it to the party. We haven’t seen her in weeks. If she blows off Susannah’s party, I’m calling the police.”

  J.D. settled back into his seat with a sigh. She’d remembered the boy’s birthday, hadn’t she? She came from a terrific family, but everyone needed a break from time to time. With a family like his, that break was better made permanently. All the same, he could see why Tyler and Grace were worried. Sarah had always been the responsible, quiet one, despite her unbelievably bad taste in high school boyfriends. She’d dated a kid who was busted for stealing equipment from the AV club in the hopes of making a porno, after breaking up with a guy who was caught taking bets on the football team. What were the odds?

  Still. The memory of an ace of hearts etched on smooth skin flashed before him. Maybe he didn’t know Sarah as well as he thought he did. Maybe none of them did.

  “What did Aunt Sarah send you for your birthday, buddy?” he called to Daniel as the boy wobbled back into the room clutching a bowlful of pasta. Spotting a disaster in the making, he scooped the kid up and deposited him in a chair, pushing his bowl away from the edge of the table.

  “A book ‘bout dinosaurs.”

  J.D. shook his head, reassured. That was Sarah. If the girl wasn’t trying to splint the broken leg of a squirrel, she was sitting somewhere with her nose in a book.

  “I don’t know. All I can say is that she seemed fine to me. Better than fine,” he added with a grin.

  “Watch yourself, buddy.”

  “Aha, which brings us back to that kiss,” Grace lunged for the topic as if it were one of her children about to run off a cliff. “C’mon, J.D., fess up. Pretend you’re a girl and give me all the gory details.”

  “The man is wearing a ponytail,” Tyler said as he swooped his baby girl through the air on a roller coaster ride before handing her off to Grace.

  J.D. tugged on his hair where it was tied back with a leather cord. He was starting to think that this entire conversation was a remarkably bad idea. “What kind of details?”

  “Was it good?” Grace, cool and classy woman that she was, looked like she was about to start breathing heavily and maybe drooling. She bounced her daughter on her hip. “Did she enjoy it?”

  Tyler stuck his fingers in his ears and started humming “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

  “Aw, Grace, I was just fooling around. I don’t know if she enjoyed it or not.”

  “Well, did she stick her tongue down your throat or just sit there like a bump on a log?”

  The visceral memory of that kiss slammed into him and his stomach dropped like he’d just crested a hill at high speed. She damn near climbed me like a tree was what he wanted to say. At first she hadn’t moved and he thought that he’d crossed a line, that he’d pushed the teasing too far this time and pissed her off. But then her mouth had melted beneath his and a second later he’d felt her hands gripping his hair as fiercely as his own were pulling her up higher against him.

  Even Lana showing up in Chicago with her fantasy that they were still married couldn’t block that memory, although the hassle of dealing with his ex-wife’s efforts to track him down and lure him back as some kind of career move had complicated his life enough to be distracting.

  He’d avoided thinking about that kiss ever since that night because each time he did, he relived the entire thing in every snatch-your-breath-away detail, and he wasn’t comfortable with the fact that its impact hadn’t faded at all in two weeks. To recover, he kept forcing himself to strategize about how to convince Lana that that door was closed for good.

  Thank god Tyler was humming.

  “She definitely didn’t just sit there.”

  Grace’s “Excellent!” was drowned out by Tyler’s “Dude, that’s my sister!”

  “Shush.” Grace stopped her husband’s mouth with her palm. “So tell me, what’s the plan?”

  “Plan? There is no plan. It was just one lousy kiss!”

  Tyler chorused, “That’s right! No plan!” and punched a fist in the air as he poured water from the soda gun into Daniel’s sippy cup one-handed. J.D. shook his head and said, “The last genius step of this plan gave me these—” he yanked up a sleeve to show off the scratches where the damn alley cat had nailed him “—and still poops in my house.”

  “Hey, I just thought you’d borrow a cat. Not go all Great White Hunter on me.”

  “Yeah, well, give me a couple of painkillers and I come up with all kinds of great ideas.”

  “It was just an excuse to get her over there. I asked J.D. to talk to Sarah. The two of them always got on like secret pals when we were growing up,” he explained to his wife.

  “Okay, A, that was a decade ago.” The door creaked open, drafting cold air inside. J.D. was grateful for whatever customer would put this conversation on hold. “And, B, I just felt sorry for Sarah because she was always mooning around about some guy she liked.”

  “Mooning around?”

  The new arrival’s voice was female. And deadly.

  Yeah, he had a feeling that his gratitude that someone had walked in on this conversation was going to be very short-lived. He gritted his teeth, smiled and prepared to take his punishment like a man.

  J.D. swiveled around on his stool in slow motion, but not even one hundred and eighty degrees gave him enough time to figure out a way to take back the words that had just come out of his mouth.

  “Hey, Sarah. You look, um…” Scary, would have fit neatly at the end of that sentence. Her eyes were slits and her heeled boots clicked sharply on the floor, measuring out a straight line that brought her slowly closer to him, step by precise step. “So, figures of speech are funny things, aren’t they?”

  “I was mooning,” the words were ground to a powder between clenched teeth, “over you,” she stabbed him in the shoulder with a pointed finger he was pretty sure she wished were a knife, “you jackass.”

  “Right,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “Sorry about that
. Didn’t notice at the time. Won’t happen again.”

  “You’re damn right about that.” She turned to her brother. “And you! Is it too much to ask for a little sympathy around here? I’ve had an awful day.” She waved Tyler off before he could even open his mouth. “My car was hit by someone last night who didn’t leave a note, surprise, surprise. Today, two hookers told me that I should try to get a little color in my face if I want a man, and Officer Buttinski wrote me three, count ’em, three tickets because he’s got the heart of the Grinch at the start of the movie. And you—” a hand flung out like the finger of death in J.D.’s direction “—you ask for my help and then kiss me? And you can’t even call to say thanks or explain the damn kiss? So I come here for a little comfort, a little empathy, and what’s the first thing I hear when I walk in the door? ‘I felt sorry for poor, moony Sarah!’”

  * * *

  She stood in the middle of a silent room.

  Even Daniel was staring at her, jaw dropped, head braced back and a little to the side, as if braced for the next bombshell to explode. She did a mental review of her outburst and grimaced.

  “Sorry ‘bout the language, kiddo,” she whispered at him. He grinned.

  The answer to her challenge, when it came, was completely unexpected.

  J.D. rose off his bar stool, tugged on his stub of a ponytail for a second, and then held his hand out to her in a gesture that Sarah’s boiling-over brain was having a hard time understanding.

  “Sounds to me like you need to get out of town for a bit. If I say thank-you and promise to explain the next time I kiss you, do you wanna go to Vegas tonight?”

  Well, that cleared things up. Not.

  Chapter Three

  “Buster, you aren’t even one of my main problems.” Sarah waved her hand languidly in the air. She wondered if she’d see sparkles trailing from her fingertips if she drank a third glass of champagne before the plane landed. Maybe it took something quite a bit stronger than champagne for that to happen? What did it matter? Life with the rich and famous was good.

  Besides, she’d decided even before getting on the private plane that she didn’t want any explanations from J.D. Not now, not ever. No kissing, no explanations. That was why she kept on cutting him off whenever he tried to mention their kiss. She didn’t care to hear, in greater detail than before, about how sorry he was for her or how he’d meant to call her if only he hadn’t been busy with his wife. She’d use J.D. for this free ride out to Vegas, her favorite place to escape, for the weekend and then forget about him the minute they got back to Chicago. She’d already laid down her ground rules for this junket.

  Vegas had a dramatically negative impact on her good judgment. The tattoo she’d gotten on one of her trips there was a rather tame example of the impulsive decisions she made there. Rules were necessary.

  “You know, flying on a private jet really is a lot nicer than coach,” she announced. J.D.’s friend had loaned them the plane for the quick hop, and Sarah had already purchased her one-way ticket for the return flight. J.D. could glower all he wanted, she was not going to get dragged into a conversation about the kiss. “How much does it cost to charter one of these babies, anyway?”

  “I don’t know, twenty grand?”

  She frowned and took another sip of champagne. Swished it around in her mouth some. “Well, I don’t know if it’s twenty-thousand-bucks nicer. This ain’t Dom we’re being served.”

  “Actually, it is. Sarah—”

  “New York Times or People?” She pulled copies of both out of her med bag, which sat at her feet. After the one time she’d been caught off guard in an emergency, trying without an intubation kit to get alcohol into the stomach of a pup that had swallowed antifreeze before it killed him, she’d made a new rule: never leave home without the bag. Thank god this wasn’t a commercial flight where they wouldn’t have let her bring liquids in a carry on. She’d have to check it on the way home, but it was worth the hassle. “I stocked up on both at the terminal bookstore. You never know when the movie might turn out to be a snoozer.”

  “I’m sure there’s a whole library of films, Sarah. But I think we should talk—”

  “Really? Do you think they have anything with a good car chase?” Sheesh. Ignoring him was like trying to shake a terrier. She kept on kicking and kicking him away, but he kept coming back for more, nipping at her ankles every time she took her eyes off him for a moment. They were somewhere over the Rockies, she thought. She’d been warned that there might be some turbulence over the mountains. If she didn’t find a way to shut him up, she was going to have to spend the rest of the flight chattering like an idiot to keep him from getting a word in edgewise.

  When slipping on her headphones and pretending to listen to music didn’t deter him, she resigned herself to soaring the rest of the way to Las Vegas with her eyes closed. She swigged the last of her champagne with a grand flourish and then waited a couple of minutes before yawning and wondering out loud why two glasses had made her so sleepy. Giving a big stretch and one last yawn for verisimilitude, she reclined her seat until it wouldn’t go back any farther and closed her eyes. She would console herself with fantasies of meeting U2 and convincing one of those lovely Irish gents to fall madly in love with her. Bono was married, she thought, but surely one of the other band members had to be single. The Edge or Adam Clayton or, or…darn it, she could never remember the fourth guy’s name.

  She heard J.D.’s seat creak as he leaned back next to her. Too bad they were barely speaking to each other, much less romantically involved. It was probably fun as hell to make out on a private plane.

  Larry Mullen! That was the fourth guy’s name! Was he married?

  The rustling noises of J.D. settling himself more comfortably in the seat next to her finally eased into relative silence. Bored with her fantasies already, she dared to crack an eye open and sneak a glance at him. She caught him rubbing the heel of his palm against his thigh. Leg cramps again, she’d bet.

  It was a shame really, about the wife. He was just so lovely to look at. All thickly muscled limbs and darkly forged features. Funny. Because she could look at Spencer, her sister Addy’s husband, and see dispassionately what a good-looking man he was. Tall and long and lean, throwing off an aura of whiplike strength and intensity. He was attractive, definitely. But when she turned her thoughts to J.D… J.D. with the bunching weightlifter muscles, J.D. with the wicked cheekbones and half-hidden grin and speculative glint in his eye that didn’t say, “I wonder what it would be like to know that woman on an intellectual level,” J.D. with the pirate’s long hair and the poet’s mouth, J.D. just, hmm…

  Yum.

  And, purr.

  A giggle slipped out and she shut her eyes in a panic. When she thought the coast was clear, she peeked again. Safe. He was still napping.

  If only his good looks weren’t matched by an equally fine ability to make her feel like an awkward teenager all over again. It had been bad enough to feel like an alien species the first time around, waiting for her boobs to grow in and the braces to finish straightening her teeth, all the while watching the older and oh-so-handsome Joey Damico charm and disarm older girls who needed the bras they wore and were past the terrible pimples of adolescence. No doubt nothing much had changed for him—women, she was sure, still fell at his feet with swooning regularity. But things had changed for her. She was a grown woman, sure of herself and fully aware that she was at least cute, with a possible upgrade to foxy if she put the time in on her hair and makeup. Of course, his wife had been asked to pose for Playboy.

  Nothing like a nude pictorial to make a girl feel intimidated. Classier, yes, but intimidated nonetheless.

  She closed her eyes. Better to remove temptation from sight. She was doing just fine so far in her unspoken vow to stop thinking of J.D. as a potential…well, anything, and return to treating him like the old childhood chum he was.

  Return to.

  Who was she fooling? At no point in her life h
ad she thought of J.D. with anything other than lust in her heart. Even if at first she’d only been lusting for a chance to hold his hand. She huffed out a breath and shook her head.

  Foolishness.

  It had been made clear to her long ago that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, but Sarah Tyler would never be the kind of woman who could hold the attention of a man like J.D.

  * * *

  “So I’m not your main problem? What is?”

  Sarah answered without thinking, which made this the first time he’d managed to get an uncalculated answer out of her in the past two hours. He spread his legs and settled a little deeper into his seat, trying to get comfortable on the plane.

  “Convincing my brother that I’m not gonna sleep with you in Vegas.”

  Sarah had always been easy to catch off guard as a kid. It had taken two glasses of champagne to achieve the same feat now that she was an adult.

  Not that he’d had any luck whatsoever in getting her to listen to his attempt to explain the kiss. He’d meant to tell her that there’d just been something in that moment, leftover heat from the fire maybe, a certain look in her eyes. Something that had made it impossible for him to let her walk away.

  Now, he couldn’t imagine what had possessed him. Maybe too many painkillers?

  “You’re not going to sleep with me? Then why the hell did I invite you?”

  Her eyes flew open.

  It sure was fun to tease her, though.

  “Ha ha ha. Very funny,” she said and threw herself back into her own seat. “You remember the ground rules.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And they are?”

  “Really?”

  Silence.

  He ticked the rules off on his fingers, one by one. “No kissing.” The glance he shot her was pure sin wrapped in a red velvet ribbon. “I didn’t actually agree to follow any of these rules, you know.” She raised an eyebrow, and he scowled back. “I didn’t know what I was agreeing to when I said we’d do whatever you wanted. Yeah, yeah, rule number two: no salsa. That was confusing. At first, I thought you had something against Mexican food, and I was going to scrap this whole trip. A woman who doesn’t dig jalapeños isn’t worth knowing—”