There was no doubt about it. Edouardo was facing a crisis of confidence of epic proportions beyond anything he could have imagined. Christ, there was a time when he’d gladly have indulged with someone like Gab at midnight and possibly a whole different woman by dawn. Not that this was particularly honorable of him, but he had to remind himself he had a bloody damned libido. Somewhere. Buried in his somewhat pathetic, self-loathing, twenty-four-seven pity party. The thing is, how was he going to cure himself of this? No man with a scintilla of dignity would allow himself to be reduced to turning down a very hot-and-bothered woman. He made a mental note to find a metal lash so he could self-flagellate as penance for his stupid, stupid, stupidity. And after whacking that chain across his torso for a while, he’d likely have to whack something else because dammit, she’d left him residually horny as hell with no other opportunity to satisfy his hunger.
Although the fact that the need had surfaced was perhaps a good sign: maybe he was slowly crawling out of his hidey-hole, preparing to join the real world again. He could only bloody well hope so.
~*~
It felt as if he’d been sulking in the loo for about ten days—but it was likely only ten minutes—when none other than Zander appeared in the bathroom. Zander, second in line to the throne of Monaforte, the wild ass-iest of wildasses, a man who, with nary a care in the world, once stripped naked in a Las Vegas swimming pool with a bevy of equally naked beauties. Zander was probably the last man he needed to be around at the moment. He was clearly riding on the opposite end of the life spectrum from Edouardo. The main thing they had in common was that their older brothers, Adrian and Darcy, were the very best of friends. And, well, perhaps they also had one other thing in common: they were both bypassed for the brass ring. Neither of them would amount to anything much in the eyes of the peerage, both considered also-rans based purely upon birth order.
Yet Zander seemed beyond happy with his life having settled in with his gorgeous American fiancée Andi, and never once did he exude a sense of not belonging. He was a man who was clearly comfortable in his own skin, even if that skin didn’t get the Grade-A stamp of approval from the royal peerage that determined who ranked how high in the world of aristocracy. Then again, he was at least a heartbeat away from the throne one day, whereas Edouardo was, well, a big fat zero.
“Mate,” Zander said, shaking his hand. “Everything okay? You look as if someone’s killed your dog.”
Edouardo frowned. “I’m that transparent, am I?”
Zander nodded. “’Fraid so. Can I help at all?”
Edouardo shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s help to be had.”
Zander waved his hands, dismissing that comment. “That’s a crock of shite. There’s always help to be had. What’s troubling you?”
“You want the long version or the short one?”
“Tell you what. If it’s the long one, I need to take a piss first.” He ducked into the toilet and took care of business, came out, and washed his hands as he spoke.
“So tell Uncle Zander what’s the matter.”
Edouardo rolled his eyes. Uncle Zander. They were nearly the same age.
“For starters, some bird just tried to bed me and I turned her down.”
Zander stared at him, a look of confusion on his face as if his comment would not compute. “No, really, tell me what’s going on.”
Edouardo nodded. “I’m serious. My head is so messed up I just shut down the hottest woman I’ve had the chance to bang in forever, and I’m not even sure why.”
Zander just shook his head as if shaking the cobwebs out. “Right,” he said. “So let me get this straight. You had a chance to—free and clear—get your rocks off, and you, um, what? Told her a polite no?”
Edouardo hung his head. “Worse,” he said. “Way worse. I ran away.”
Zander started to laugh. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” He glanced around the room, squinting his eyes. “Are there hidden cameras in here or something trying to gauge my reaction? Because I mean seriously, I’ve never heard of such a thing before. Do you have a physical impairment? Your pecker not pecking?” He extended his arm and then made his hand dangle limply from his wrist. “Whatsamatter? You need the little blue pill? Cause if you do, mate, there’s no shame in that. It could help you.”
Edouardo wanted to bang his head against the wall. This was just going from bad to worse.
“I can get it up,” he said with a growl. “I just don’t seem to want to.”
Zander did a double take. “Wait. You don’t have erectile dysfunction, you have desire dysfunction? If there is such a thing, which I have a hard time believing to be the case.”
“Well, crap, I don’t know if there’s an official diagnosis, but for a host of reasons too long to bore you with, I just can’t seem to muster up the enthusiasm to take advantage of a lovely woman’s entreaties because I don’t have it in me to follow through on anything. It wouldn’t be fair to just hit and run with the thing.”
“Fair schmair!” Zander said. “If she was the one going after you, all’s fair in love and retreat. Just because you go for a little roll in the hay doesn’t mean you have to marry the woman.”
“Yeah, but it’s more like I can’t even engage in normal behavior with the opposite sex right now. I just want to be a slug and lie around and do nothing.”
Zander held his hand to his forehead. “You don’t feel warm. You sick with some bug?”
Edouardo nodded. “Yeah, I think it’s called don’t-give-a-shit-itis, coupled with nobody-cares-if-I-occupy-space-on-this-planet malaise.”
Zander growled in a joking way. “Ack,” he said. “These are deadly ailments from which you suffer, lad. Sounds to me like life’s got you down.”
“And then some.”
Zander gave Edouardo a fake backhanded slap across the face. “Wake up, man,” he said. “You’ve got an amazing life in front of you. Things can’t be so bad that you just throw in the towel and don’t want to be part of it.”
As Edouardo stared at Zander, he suddenly felt tiny tears leaking from the corner of his eye. Fucking tears. This is what it was coming down to: Edouardo, the tall, strong, strapping young man, had turned into a weeping pile of mush. In front of another dude, no less.
This was so not good.
Chapter Ten
The morning after can be such a lonely time.
Particularly when an idea hatched under the influence of a few tasty cocktails turns into a practice in being in touch with your inner bimbo. How was it that Gabriella’s Friday night fling fantasy could turn into a Saturday morning shame-fest? She didn’t want to know. Only the crazy thing was, she didn’t have the opportunity for it to have turned into a fling, and it wasn’t even Saturday morning yet. Instead, she was embroiled in that Saturday morning mortification when it was still Friday. Here she was, still at her party, pretending she was perfectly fine while being stuck there because it was her bloody damned party and she couldn’t just send everyone home. She’d made an enormous fool of herself and now wanted to curl up in a ball in her wardrobe with her dog by her side and cry.
“Yes, I totally agree,” she said with the fakest of smiles when someone commented to her about some footballer who’d been kicked off the national team recently. Footballers. Oy. She’d like to football somebody right into the next city block. How could she have so misread him? Or worse still, how could she have been so desperate that she didn’t choose to maintain a degree of self-control? This was so not her MO. She wasn’t the horndoggy type to solicit men even if they were cute. And hot. And eligible. These were not characteristics that justified abandoning your standards. And she surely wasn’t going to start hopping into bed with any old guy she stumbled upon just to prove her mettle. That is, if she even had mettle. It was more like metal and not gold, but rather some clunky old tin. Her sex appeal was obviously a rusty old tin can that Edouardo had just kicked down the road toward the trash heap.
Ugh. After that humi
liating moment of being left alone in the guest bedroom, Gabriella had gathered herself up, allowed herself a bit of a cry, dabbed her eyes so that her makeup didn’t smear, and returned to the scene of the come-on. Nearby, some people were playing tunes on the piano while others sang. All were oblivious to the fact she had just made a fool of herself and had been shunned. Normally she’d have joined the group at the piano, but right now, there was nothing to be particularly happy about so singing was low on her list of to-dos. Drinking heavily, however, had inched its way up to the top of her hit parade, so she made her way to the bar.
“Gimme a quadruple,” she said to Ricardo, glancing around to see if her sister was still hanging with him. She wasn’t quite ready to confess her crimes to Celeste. That bloodletting could wait till morning.
Ricardo looked at her with disbelief. “Nothing can be that bad.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Gab said. “If you don’t know how to make a quadruple, or if your highball glasses aren’t big enough, then I’ll be more than fine with four individual shots. A liquor medley sounds perfect—make one tequila, a Scotch shot for sure (and I dare you to say that ten times fast), how about an absinthe one for good measure, hold the fire, and, what, something strong and a bit punishing on its own, maybe gin for the fourth? If only I were still in America, I’d be looking for the moonshine right about now.”
“Drinking to forget?” Sawyer said as he wandered nearby. “Care if I join you in that endeavor?”
Gabriella was poised to throw back the tequila first off. “Is there any other way? Besides, haven’t you ever heard? Misery loves company.”
Sawyer, who Gab had seen not long ago wandering off with Isabella, seemed on edge, drumming his fingers hard on the bar, his eyes scanning the horizon like a radar antenna trying to seek a signal. “In that case, as long as misery loves miserable company, I’m your man.”
“Bartender,” Gabriella said, nodding to Ricardo, “Make that an octuple.”
The bartender lined up four more shot glasses and filled them accordingly.
“At least give me a chance to catch up,” Sawyer said to her as he tossed his tequila down his throat then gasped.
“Time’s a-wasting,” she said, next with the Scotch, shaking her head against the harsh taste of the alcohol on her throat.
“You still mooning over that American, then?” Sawyer said.
Gab shook her head. “I’m not mooning over anyone. Ever again.”
“Then why the need to drink away your sorrows?”
She shook her head. “It’s a long story. Suffice it to say I’ve lost my charms.”
Sawyer reached over to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear before it dipped into her next shot. “I would argue you have charms to spare, my friend.”
The absinthe was harder to get down than the other two combined. “Sheesh,” she said, her eyes watering from the harsh liquor. “Why do people drink this stuff?”
“To forget?”
“In that case, I’d better have some more.”
“Seriously, Gabriella, you’ll be regretting this in the morning when your head feels like it’s a space rocket ready to blast off.”
“I’ll worry about that then,” she said. “Besides, you’ll be in the same boat.”
“Yeah, but I’ll probably deserve it. Just taking my licks rather than someone else dispensing them.”
“Sounds bad,” she said.
He shrugged. “I’ve lost track of bad from good.”
“Maybe it’s easier that way.”
“Bartender,” Gab said, pointing at the empty shot glasses. If she had to be at her own party and couldn’t cry if she wanted, well, she was going to be completely shitfaced and deal with it in the morning.
Chapter Eleven
“Oh you sad, sad sack, you,” Zander said, seeing how Edouardo was falling apart before his very eyes. “I’m afraid this calls for tougher measures.”
Edouardo shook his head. “I don’t think I even want to know what that entails.”
“This, my good man,” Zander said,” is what I call my man-up pep talk.”
“You’ve given this before?”
Zander shrugged. “Not so much.”
“Yet you’ve got some useful insight for me?”
“You could say that.”
“Okay, fine, give it to me.”
Zander turned to face Edouardo, placing a hand on each shoulder. “It’s like this. See, sometimes in your life, when you’re feeling like complete shite, you’ve just gotta stop feeling like shite.”
Edouardo tried to register this revelatory advice. “So like that”—he snapped his fingers—“you just stop feeling like shite? But what if you can’t?”
“Well, that’s where the pep talk comes in,” Zander said. “You see, you have to man up, my friend.”
“Man up,” Edouardo said with a pause as he stood there, hands in his pockets, swiping his tongue against his teeth as if contemplating this deep concept.
“Yeah. Man up. Grow a set and move on, dude.”
“So you’re telling me all I need to end my woes is to just end my woes.”
“Precisely,” Zander said. He held up one finger after another to count. “Stop wallowing. Buck up and get over it.”
Edouardo crossed his arms, reaching up to scratch his chin. “Gee, Zander. You might want to consider not quitting your day job. With advice like that you’d probably send people jumping out of windows.”
Zander laughed. “I’m telling you, it’s all about attitude. Attitude and testosterone.”
Edouardo rolled his eyes. “Now this I gotta hear. The clinical connection between mindset and male hormones. Go on, then—I’m all ears.”
Zander opened the door to the bathroom and put the toilet lid down. He extended his arm out in invitation. “You might want to have a seat for this one.”
Edouardo laughed for the first time all night. “In lieu of a therapist’s couch? Thanks, but I think I can take this standing up. Or manning up, if you will.”
“Be my guest,” Zander said. “So the deal is this: first you have to have the right attitude. Why, you may ask, do you need to have the right attitude?”
Edouardo shrugged. “Ya’ got me.”
“Well because without attitude, you’re not gonna get laid.”
“All roads lead to that.”
“Indeed, my son,” Zander said. “All roads do lead to the lay. The big kahuna. And with no swag, you’re gonna get no hag. No swag, no hag.”
“By hag you’re talking about the opposite sex?”
“Euphemistically, of course,” he said. “For the sake of the rhyme.”
Edouardo shot him a finger pistol. “The rhyme. Gotcha.”
“But there’s more,” Zander continued. “So no hookups means testosterone buildup. And the more you don’t get laid, the more your swag takes a hit. The more your swag takes a hit, the more you’re not gonna get any. The more you don’t get any, well, I think you get my drift. It’s a vicious cycle. And you, my friend, have spiraled dangerously downward.”
“So your solution is?”
Zander grabbed Edouardo’s shoulders, turned him around, and began to frog-march him toward the exit door. “Hair of the dog, my friend,” he said. “Get back out there and hop on the horse that threw you. Because if you don’t ride that horse, well, I’m afraid you won’t ride the horse, if you catch my drift.”
As they walked down the hallway toward the crowd, Zander pointed toward a woman in a purple dress. “If I’m not mistaken, that is the pony you’ve been looking for. And now,” he said, dusting off his hands, “my work here is done, so I’ll leave you to it.”
He saluted Edouardo and walked away.
“Attitude and testosterone,” Edouardo whispered as he approached Gab, who was talking with Sawyer, a line of empty shot glasses on the bar in front of her.
Sawyer gave him a nod and stood up to walk away.
“Gabriella,” Edouardo said, “I’d like to have
a word with you.”
~*~
Edouardo nodded toward the bar. “Looks like you’ve been thirsty.”
“Go away, Edouardo,” Gab said. “I’m busy chatting with Ricardo.” She pointed to the handsome bartender with dark wavy hair and thirsty brown eyes that looked like they could drink a woman right up. Which didn’t set too well with Edouardo, which in turn unnerved him a bit.
“I know, but I owe you an explanation,” he said. “I’m afraid I was dreadfully rude back there.”
Gab glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Gee, you think?”
“I don’t think,” he said. “I know.”
She waved her hand at him. “I’m fine, really I am. You don’t owe me a thing. I was out of line, and I’m sure it was unnerving for me to be so aggressive toward you. Especially when you gave me pretty much no sign that you were interested in me in that way.”
“But I am.”
“Am what?”
“Interested in you. In that way.”
She laughed briefly. “You have an interesting way of showing it then.”
“Pretty abysmal, I’ll admit,” he said. “I want you to know it’s just very complicated. I’m not myself. Well, I am me, of course. Who else would I be? But I’m not who I was. I’m—”
“You’re jabbering.”
He nodded. “I am that. But what I’m trying to say is even though I’m kind of a mess right now—although that probably doesn’t make me sound very appealing, does it? Even though I’m a bit under the weather. Well, wait, I’m not under the weather. Under the—”
“Radar? Gun? Wire?”
He half laughed. “I’m just kind of screwed up is what I am. But to tell you the truth, you’re the first woman in a long time who made me think for even a split second that maybe there was something more to life than The Bachelor and boxer shorts.”
“Should I know what that means?”
He rolled his eyes. “Pathetic, I know. But what I’m trying to say is I’d like to take you out on a proper date, where maybe we could get to know each other a little bit.”
Gabriella pointed at herself. “Me? You’d like to get to know moi?”
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