by Hope Ramsay
She should have known Dad had bought the tickets. And she suddenly wondered if Tobin was going to put the dinner on his expense report.
She’d be furious if she wasn’t so woozy. But all she really wanted right at the moment was a glass of sparkling water and a place to lie down. She headed down a flight of stairs to the grand foyer and then through the Hall of Nations to the street entrance. The taxi stand was deserted this early in the evening. In another couple of hours, there would be dozens of cabs lined all the way back up onto Twenty-Fifth Street.
She walked toward the steps that would take her to New Hampshire Avenue and dug in her purse for her cell phone. Maybe it was time to give Dad a piece of her mind.
She tried his number but got no answer.
She tried Roxy Kopp and got voice mail.
Emma and Nabil were still out of town on their honeymoon so there was no point in calling them.
Ryan and Courtney were sixty miles away.
Damn, she needed a place to crash. Maybe she should just book herself into a hotel or something. But her head was pounding so hard, she could barely think. She stared down at her contacts list. There were two more options left: Brandon and Andrew.
She chose Andrew.
On Saturday evening, Andrew met his brother and cousins at the sports bar on Eighteenth Street to watch the nationally televised football game between the University of Virginia and the University of Oregon. They had just finished off their second plate of wings when the Virginia Cavaliers gave up their third interception of the first quarter. It looked as if the Ducks were going to slaughter the hapless Cavs.
UVA was not particularly known for its prowess on the gridiron. On the other hand, its law school, created by Thomas Jefferson himself, had produced such notable alums as Robert Kennedy, Woodrow Wilson, and David Baldacci, not to mention countless members of the Lyndon family, including Senator Mark Lyndon; his son, David; and his nephews, Andrew, Edward, Matthew, and Jason.
Matt finished off his Sam Adams and waggled his empty glass at the passing waitress. “I think we need to make an intervention,” he said, leaning back in his seat.
“For who, the Cavs’ quarterback?” Edward asked.
“For Brandon. I hate the fact that he’s stopped hanging out with us.” Matt scowled in Andrew’s direction. “I think he’s really ticked off at you for taking Laurie’s side. You know, for hanging out with her at The Park, and for bugging him about the mortgage.”
“Well, that’s his problem,” Andrew said, trying to invest his voice with all the innocence he could muster. But Matt had a point this time. The moment Andrew had taken Laurie to bed, he’d done irreparable damage to the fabric of relationships that defined this group. And yet, he didn’t regret doing it. That was the weird part.
“Look, dude,” Matt said. “Brandon may have said that he wanted a break from Laurie so they could both see other people. But he sure didn’t mean for Laurie to follow through on that, you know?”
“Matt, you’re an idiot,” Edward said. “Just shut up and watch the game.”
“Come on. No guy wants his girlfriend to really date other guys.”
Andrew let go of a long-suffering sigh. “Matt, are you completely blind to the fact that you have a double standard? If Brandon is going to go off to Bermuda to pick up women, shouldn’t Laurie be allowed to do the same?”
“Hell no. It’s different for women.”
Just then Andrew’s cell phone buzzed, and Laurie’s number and name flashed big as life. The guys saw it.
“Damn,” Jason said. “She calls you on Saturday nights? What’s going on, Andrew?”
A deep uneasiness swept through him. Laurie was supposed to be at the opera with Tobin, and the performance of Madame Butterfly lasted three hours at least. It was just after 9:00 p.m., too early for the show to be over. He snatched the phone from the table and hit the talk button.
“Laurie, what’s the matter?” he asked.
“I need your help.” Her voice wobbled, and every one of Andrew’s senses went on alert.
“Where are you?”
“I’m here at the Kennedy Center, and I’m sick.”
“Where’s Tobin?” he asked.
“I don’t give two shits where Tobin is. He’s a jerk and an asshole. Oh God, my head is about to explode.”
“Migraine?” he asked, and then wondered how he knew Laurie suffered from debilitating headaches. Probably because he’d known her for years and years.
“Yeah. I’m on New Hampshire Avenue trying to find a cab, but even if I find one, I don’t even know where I can go. I don’t have a key to Dad’s apartment, and he isn’t answering his phone.”
“Stay right there. I’m on my way. Don’t hang up.”
He stood. “Hey, guys, cover the bill and let me know how much I owe you. Laurie’s in trouble.”
“Since when are you her keeper?” Matt asked. “Where’s that big Marine she was with the other night?”
“I don’t know where Ryan is. Probably back in Shenandoah Falls. But Laurie is in town right now, and she’s in trouble.”
“Yeah, well, you should tell her to call Brandon. This is exactly the problem we’ve been trying to talk to you about.”
“Laurie isn’t a problem, Matt. She’s my friend. She’s in trouble and needs my help. What do you want me to do? Stand here and tell her to go screw herself? Because telling her to call Brandon after what he did to her would be the same thing. Just because Brandon dumped her doesn’t give us permission to treat her like crap.”
Laurie had never been so grateful to see anyone in her life. She took one look at Andrew, casually dressed in a navy and orange Cavs sweatshirt, his dark hair curling down over his forehead and a look of real concern deep in his brown eyes, and started to cry. She sank back into his bucket seats and let the tears roll down her face. In the meantime, her phone kept buzzing with one message after another from Tobin.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked.
She rocked her head back and forth, each movement excruciating. “I just want to lie down somewhere until my head stops hurting. And I probably need to tell Tobin I’ve gone home, but I can’t really focus.”
Andrew took the phone out of her hand. “I’m going to tell Tobin you didn’t feel well and took a taxi home, okay?”
She managed a nod.
When he’d finished sending the message, he put the car in gear and started driving back up Rock Creek Parkway to his apartment. He drove like a sedate old lady, taking each turn in the curvy road at a ridiculously slow rate of speed. She wondered if he always drove like that until she realized that he was just being careful not to jar her head.
Wow. Brandon always had to be reminded to slow down, and even then, he always took turns too fast in his Camaro. Brandon also had no patience for her headaches. Sometimes he acted as if she should be able to control them.
But Andrew wasn’t like that at all. He seemed to understand what was needed in a moment of crisis. Just like he’d known what to do on that horrible day when Brandon had walked away from her. She could remember the feel of Andrew’s hand in hers, leading her away from the altar and the disturbing murmur of the wedding guests. He’d taken her to safety that day. He’d done the same thing when Connor Strickland got the wrong idea.
He was a terrific wingman.
But wasn’t he more than that? A wingman was a sidekick, and she’d stopped thinking of Andrew that way.
When they arrived at his place, he helped her up the stairs of his walk-up apartment and right into his bedroom, which had a gigantic picture window overlooking a shared courtyard. He quickly drew the curtains to shut out the light from the streetlamps.
“Lie down,” he said as he guided her to the bed.
He slept on one of those memory foam mattresses, and when she sank down into his bed, she felt cradled. He retreated to the hallway and turned off the light. A moment later, he returned with a cool washcloth.
“Which eye?” he asked as
if he knew something about migraines.
“The right one.”
He pressed the cloth to her head above her right eye. The cold soothed as nothing could.
“Do you feel sick?”
“No. I threw up already in one of the Opera House bathrooms.”
“Did you take anything?”
“A couple of Excedrin, but then I threw up.”
He left again but returned shortly with two Excedrin and a cup of strong, black coffee. “Here, take the pills and drink the coffee.”
She did as directed. “How do you know about the coffee?”
“My mother had migraines,” he said. “I guess I learned by watching my dad.”
She sank back into the mattress, insanely glad to know that Andrew hadn’t learned about migraines by taking care of a girlfriend. She pressed the washcloth to her forehead and curled up on her side, waiting for the caffeine in the Excedrin and the coffee to kick in.
Andrew sat next to her, his weight shifting the mattress slightly. He didn’t talk, but his presence was like an unmovable rock in the middle of a raging stream. He’d be there for her to cling to if she needed him.
Andrew didn’t leave Laurie’s side until she drifted off to sleep about thirty minutes after she’d taken the Excedrin. He strolled into the living room and turned on the big-screen television.
He’d recently redecorated, and he truly loved his living space once he’d given the final heave-ho to Val and her shabby chic style. The decorator Aunt Pam recommended had done a terrific job of capturing his clean, modern, no-nonsense style.
The living room featured a comfortable sectional sofa and glass-topped end tables with steel frames. His kitchen was nothing short of a stainless steel temple dedicated to gourmet cooking, which was kind of funny because he didn’t cook unless it involved heating something in the microwave or making coffee in his expensive, pod-style coffeemaker.
He employed the coffeemaker for a second time that evening and settled on his couch with his cup to watch the last quarter of the football game. Virginia was down by twenty-eight points but making a heroic effort at a comeback. Unfortunately, less than ten minutes remained on the clock so it was doubtful they would prevail.
He sipped his coffee and focused on the game in a vain attempt to forget about the woman sleeping in his bedroom. He was utterly unsuccessful, but that didn’t change the situation. Laurie was a pipe dream. A fantasy that he would never have.
Five minutes later, the buzz of his cell phone called him back from his thoughts. But when he glanced at the caller ID, he swore out loud and pressed the ignore button. He did not want to talk to Brandon.
A moment later, his message app lit up.
C’mon Andrew, I know u r home. I’m outside ur door & I can see the TV is on.
His doorbell rang.
Damn. There was no escaping this awkward situation, was there? Maybe the time had come to tell the unvarnished truth. But how could he do that to Laurie? How could he do that to his friends and family? The truth would not set Andrew or Laurie free; it would embroil them in a big, messy, emotional morass.
But he couldn’t avoid Brandon forever so he buzzed him in.
“What gives?” Brandon asked a moment later as he strolled into the apartment. “I’m starting to think you’ve been avoiding me.”
Which was the truth. But Andrew could hardly admit that. “I’m not in a talkative mood tonight,” Andrew said.
Brandon gazed at the football game. Two minutes remained in the fourth quarter, and Virginia had closed the scoring gap to fourteen points. “Hey, why didn’t you and the guys meet up at the sports bar on Eighteenth to watch the game? I dropped by the place a little while ago. I was kind of surprised that none of you were there. I know I’m late, but I got hung up at the Capitol, working overtime. Heather is a tough boss.”
So the guys had left shortly after Andrew had gone to rescue Laurie. And Brandon had intended to meet them there after all. Damn.
“We were there, but Virginia was losing and we left early. Sorry. You want a beer?”
“Yeah, sure.” Brandon dropped onto the sofa and made himself comfortable.
Andrew escaped to the kitchen and snagged a beer from his outrageously expensive drawer-style beverage cooler.
There were no two ways about it. Andrew was trapped in an ethical quagmire. He needed to get Brandon out of the apartment as fast as possible before he discovered that Laurie was there.
He returned to the living room and handed Brandon his beer. “So, what’s up?” he asked, trying for nonchalance and failing miserably.
“I’ve been thinking,” Brandon said, just as time ran out for the Cavaliers.
“About what?”
He took a long pull on his beer. “About Laurie.”
Oh, crap. This was not happening. “What about her?”
Brandon threw his head back onto the couch and let go of the longest, most mournful sigh possible. “I really messed up.”
“Are you saying that you want to get back together with her?”
He nodded his head. “I’ve been thinking about this since that night when her girlfriends tried to trash the Camaro and we all ended up together at the Jay Bird. It drove me crazy watching that cop flirt with her. And then she takes him to the Harvest Ball and now everyone is talking about how great they looked together.”
“It was the Marine dress uniform,” Andrew said. He could totally empathize with Brandon’s feelings on the subject of Ryan Pierce.
Brandon took another sip of beer and nodded. “I guess I didn’t expect her to just get on with her life like that. A couple of weeks and she’s fine. I guess I didn’t think guys would come on to her like that.”
“Uh, buddy, I hate to point this out but Laurie is a beautiful woman.”
“Yes, she is.”
“And you’re the one who walked away from her and told her to go experiment.”
“Yeah, I did. I thought I’d…I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I thought I would feel free once we split. That it would be fun, you know, going out. But I haven’t found a single woman who was half as interesting as Laurie. And freedom is highly overrated.”
Brandon drained his beer. Andrew said nothing. Anything he might say would be held against him when the crap hit the fan. As it would…inevitably.
“So the last laugh is on me,” Brandon said. “I thought I could be free, and she would just wait for me, you know. But it hasn’t worked out that way.”
“Being a single guy is nothing to write home about,” Andrew said.
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, there are always women who are happy to hook up for a night, but they aren’t interested in relationships. And after a while, that sort of thing is kind of…sad, really. No matter what Matt says.”
“Matt’s an idiot.”
“Yeah, he is. A lovable idiot, and I hope one day some woman turns his head and makes him realize the truth.”
“And you’re saying you realize the truth now?”
He nodded and sat forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “I called Laurie last Monday and asked her to meet with me so we could talk things over. She refused. She told me to go find a life.”
“Really?” Something wonderful took flight in Andrew’s heart. And then it crashed and burned. Even if Laurie had fully ended her relationship with Brandon, there was no hope for the two of them together. How would he explain that to Brandon? Or his brother and cousins? They would see it as a betrayal or something. Especially now that Brandon wanted her back.
“Yeah, that’s what she told me. But the only life that means anything to me is with her.”
“So what are you going to do?” Andrew asked.
“I need your help.”
Adrenaline almost jolted Andrew right out of his chair. “Why on earth do you need me?”
“Because you’re a whiz at patching things up for people, you know, for making peace. I need you to do this for me. Laurie admires you. She’ll listen to yo
u if you tell her she should cool her jewels and rethink.”
“No,” Andrew said firmly, folding his arms even though he knew the body language was way too aggressive for the moment.
“Why not?”
“Because a good mediator needs to be impartial.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like you’re automatically on my side either. Look, I know what Matt, Jason, and Edward are saying—that you’re siding with Laurie. But they’re wrong. I mean, they seem to think that this is some kind of battle. But it isn’t. You’re the only one who’s realized how important it is to keep the lines of communication going. Plus you’ve done me a favor or two, like that night at the Jay Bird when you whisked Laurie away from that annoying cop.”
Oh, if Brandon only knew what he’d done that night, he wouldn’t be very appreciative. “Yeah, but she went to the ball with that cop anyway.”
Brandon shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You’re still the best friend anyone could ever hope to have,” Brandon said, looking up at Andrew with a totally open expression on his face. “I’m asking, Andrew. No, I’m begging you. I need you to carry my brief to Laurie and make her listen. All I want is a meeting where we can talk things out. Is that too much to ask?”
“No, it’s not,” Andrew said, feeling as if Brandon had just dropped a gigantic lead weight on his shoulders.
Chapter Twenty-One
Laurie dozed for an indeterminate period of time before her buzzing cell phone awakened her. She cracked an eye and found the device on the bedside table. Tobin had sent another message, to know if she’d gotten home. He seemed a little frantic. And with good reason since he didn’t want to piss off Daddy.
She sent another text telling him she was fine and then lay back in the bed, her headache still throbbing but not totally out of control. The Excedrin had helped. She closed her eyes and became aware of voices coming from the living room.
