by Robin Kaye
She just shook her head.
“So, now I know two of your secrets. I know how gorgeous you are when you don’t dress like a bag lady, in clothes ten times too big, and I know your voice could make angels weep.”
“Jaime . . . please—”
He put a finger on her lips to stop her. “Addie, I’d never do anything to make you feel uncomfortable. If you choose not to share your talent with anyone but me, that’s your choice. But, baby, it’s a real loss to everyone else.”
“So you won’t tell anyone?”
“No, I won’t.” He stepped closer. “So, I was thinking. How about you and I take a trip into Boston next Saturday. What do you say?”
Her gray eyes widened, her lips trembled, and so did her hands. “I . . . no, I can’t.”
He took two steps back. “Addie?”
She turned around and grabbed her purse out of a cabinet. “I need to leave, Jaime. I have an appointment.”
“Okay. Let me walk you to your car.”
“No. Please, just go.”
He backed out of the storage room. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you Addie.”
“You didn’t.”
She was as bad at lying as she was with fashion.
*
Kendall pulled into her parking space and stared at the elevator. God, she didn’t want to go back to the apartment and rip apart her old life and be forced to take a long walk down her not so happy memory lane alone. All she could think about was how much of her life she’d wasted on David. She didn’t know if that was an improvement over crying about Jack . . . shit, Jax. His name was Jax—maybe someday she would remember that. Maybe someday she wouldn’t feel physical pain when she thought of him. Maybe someday she’d stop loving the lying jerk.
She wished she had the money to pay people to pack the place up so she wouldn’t have to face her old life and see what a sham it had been. Unfortunately, she couldn’t afford to waste a cent. No, she’d need all her savings just to get into a new apartment. As it was, Erin had volunteered the moving services of her fiancé, Cam, and his brothers, Adam and Butch, for the price of beer and homemade pizza. She wasn’t sure how the men felt about being volunteered, but she had enough on her plate to worry and cry over, without taking on more.
Someone pulled into David’s space, and when Kendall recognized her best friend’s car, she smiled for the first time since the night before. She jumped out and threw her arms around her friend. “Erin, what are you doing here?”
“I knew you had a lot to face and I didn’t think you should have to do it alone, especially without wine and chocolate.” Erin reached into the backseat and pulled out a big bottle of Shiraz and a one-pound box of Godiva Dark Chocolate Truffles.
“Oh, my God, I love you. You know that, right?”
“Of course.” Erin threw a bag over her shoulder. “We’re having a sleepover, too. After we finish the wine, I’ll be in no shape to drive, and I thought you might not want to stay here alone.”
“And Cameron’s okay with that?”
Erin smiled, “Oh, don’t worry about him. He wasn’t happy about it, but I promised I’d pay him back. He’ll have the whole night to figure out an interesting way to collect. I can’t wait to hear what he comes up with.” She waggled her eyebrows.
Kendall could only imagine what Jack would do if he had carte blanche in the bedroom or anywhere else, for that matter. But Jax wasn’t Jack. Tears stung the back of her eyes. She blinked them back while she opened up the hatch and grabbed her bags. “I guess I can’t avoid it any longer. At least we have all the necessary provisions to get over disastrous love affairs and heal a broken heart, right?” They headed to the elevator.
Erin pressed the call button. “Disastrous love affairs, as in plural?”
“Jack turned out to be someone else.”
“Is he married?”
“No”
“Engaged?”
“Not that I know of, but it’s worse. He’s Jackson Sullivan—my dad’s boss, the man who owns half the town of Harmony and a bunch of banks in Chicago.”
“He’s single and rich? I would think that would be an improvement over married or engaged.”
“Erin, he made me think he was some kind of carpenter who was working in lieu of paying full rent.”
“You didn’t recognize him?”
“I haven’t seen him since I was twelve. He looked like a construction worker—he wasn’t walking around in a three-piece suit. It’s not like I’ve been cyberstalking him all these years.” She stepped into the elevator and hit 4. “What is it with me and men who are out for total world financial domination?”
“It sounds as if one of them was at least successful. Frankly, I never thought David had the brains—I mean, he knew which asses to kiss. That was easy enough to see at all those damn events you dragged me to, but I’ve always wondered if he had the goods to really get the job done.”
“Not in his pants, that’s for damn sure.”
Erin broke into peals of laughter, leaned against the wall, and crossed her legs. “Oh, damn, Kendall. Stop. You’re going to make me pee my pants.”
They made it to her apartment without further incident, and as soon as Kendall unlocked the door, Erin ran for the bathroom. “Pour the wine and keep talking—I’ll leave the door open. I have to hear more about this.”
Kendall stepped in and shivered—the place exuded the transitional yuppie style that David had insisted upon and had all the warmth of the arctic circle. She’d gotten so used to the feel of the cabin, she was shocked by the difference between the two places.
Kendall checked the thermostat and stepped into the kitchen. Even the granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances threw off a chill. “Sounds like a heck of an idea—pouring the wine, that is. I’m not sure about the talking part.” What she wouldn’t give to be in the kitchen at the cabin. She missed the comfort of the old, chipped yellow starburst Formica counter and antique white stove and the hum of the ancient refrigerator with the old-fashioned ice trays. Kendall opened the bottle with David’s absurdly expensive, four-hundred-dollar Code38 Stealth corkscrew. He ordered it just as soon as he read about it in the New York Times and then hosted a wine tasting to show it off. He seemed to be the only one who was impressed with the titanium tool. At least it worked well. Lord knew she’d opened enough bottles with it for the tasting after David realized the corkscrew wasn’t receiving the admiration he’d spent a small fortune to achieve. She was surprised he’d forgotten to pack it.
Kendall poured two big glasses and cut the cellophane wrapper off the chocolate. She took a sip of Shiraz and a bite of an Aztec Spice truffle and groaned at the mingling of the sweet, spicy taste with the wine—at one time she would have said it was better than sex. Now she knew just how lacking it was. Still, for a combination of chocolate and wine, it was almost perfection. Almost, but not quite. When she thought of perfection, she saw Jack—her Jack. She took another swig of wine to anesthetize her heart. She’d always known he was too good to be true. Too beautiful, too loving, too perfect to be real.
“Where did you just go?” Erin walked in when she was daydreaming, joined her on the couch, and grabbed her wine. “You had a smile on your face, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you quite so radiant.”
“It’s the wine and chocolate.” Kendall got up to grab a throw that David always insisted she keep hidden away. He’d say, “You wouldn’t want to ruin the lines of the furniture or, God forbid, make the place look cluttered.” Or lived in. Living here was like living in a model home. There was nothing personal, no knickknacks or goofy photos, no notes on the refrigerator door held up by the tacky magnets she collected on vacation. No pictures that Janie, Erin’s soon-to-be-adopted daughter, drew for her and decorated with glitter that left sparkles around, no matter how often you cleaned.
“Honey, I’ve plied you with wine and chocolate before and I’ve never seen that look. Spill.”
“It doesn’t mat
ter. It wasn’t real.”
“What wasn’t real?”
“Jack and everything I thought we had together.” Her face tightened and she blinked back the tears, her eyes felt gritty and hot, and her heart felt as if it was in a vise that grew tighter and tighter with each beat.
“Kendall, I want all the details. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
Kendall got up and turned on the gas fireplace, and Erin stretched out, pulled a throw over them both, and got comfy—or as comfy as you could on these über-firm cushions. Kendall missed the smell of burning wood, the crackle of a real fire, the life it contained.
She started and got lost in the story. She was surprised when Erin kicked her. “You did not call him the Grand Pooh-Bah to his face!”
She smiled thinking of it. No wonder he’d looked shocked. “I did. I just didn’t know I was doing it.”
“And you told him your ex was a Jackson Sullivan wannabe?”
Kendall shrugged.
“What else did you say about him?”
Kendal cringed. “When he said he was working in lieu of paying full rent, I was incensed. I may have called him Harmony’s own Scrooge McDuck and told him he was too cheap to pay for labor.”
“And you wonder why he didn’t introduce himself?” Erin nudged Kendall with her foot and almost spilled Kendall’s wine. “And it’s not as if he really lied. I mean, technically, Jack is a derivative of Jackson.”
“He knew I didn’t know who he was, and he ran with it.”
“You were pissed at David and took it out on this poor, nameless, faceless guy who just happened to be helping you out of a jam. You made him sound like the devil incarnate. Did you ever think that maybe he was just trying to save you embarrassment? I mean, could you imagine how you would have felt if he told you who he was?”
“I thought you were here to make me feel better, not to rub my mistakes in my face.”
Erin refilled both their wineglasses. “Yeah, but sometimes a friend needs tough love and a good bullshit meter. You’ve been mine often enough. It’s nice to be able to return the favor.”
“I know I should say thank you, but I’m just not feelin’ it.”
“Don’t worry—there’s plenty of wine left. I’m sure after another glass or two, you’ll change your tune. Go on with the story. I heard about both sex sightings. The rest of the story is a little spotty.”
It took two more glasses of wine for Kendall to spit it all out.
“Damn, girl. In a week, Jax took you from the frigid depths of despair over David to sexual satisfaction and multiple, screaming orgasms. The man could get you off fully clothed, without ever touching you below the waist, and you’re complaining about him withholding a little information?”
“It was his name.”
“That’s debatable and totally understandable too. You sounded like you hated him.”
“He played me for a fool.”
“And you paved the way for him. Sounds to me like he did all he could to resist your sexy self. Face it: you wanted a piece of that, and you teased him until he folded like a cheap suit at the Laundromat.”
“I did. He was so different from David in every way. Erin, I’d been having bad sex for seven years and I didn’t know any better. I had no idea what I was missing. David made me feel like there was something wrong with me.”
“There is something seriously wrong with David. It’s just not normal. I mean, look at you. You’re better-looking than Liv Tyler. If I were a guy, I’d be all over you.”
“Jack thinks David might be asexual. Not that anything is wrong with that—it’s just wrong to blame any problems on your unwitting partner. I never thought about it before, but Jack might be onto something there.”
“You talked to Jack about your sex life with David?”
“Well, yeah. There was so much I didn’t know about sex. It was kind of embarrassing. And David was never interested in . . . um, you know, other things.”
Erin giggled. “Have more wine. I need to know what the hell David wasn’t interested in.”
Kendall finished off her glass. “Oral sex.”
“For your benefit or his?”
“Both.”
“You mean he never . . . ?”
Kendall shook her head, and it felt like she was watching a slow-motion 3-D movie. She thought she’d better slow down on the wine consumption.
“Not even to try it?”
“No. David had a thing about saliva. I was curious . . . and, well, Jack had never asked.”
Erin almost choked on her wine. “Kendall, there are some things men don’t ask for, and blow jobs are one of them. If a woman is willing to tame the one-eyed monster, they usually just give it a lick, and the guy’s in heaven. I’ve never had to ask for permission, and I’ve never heard of a man who didn’t love it—well, except for maybe John Wayne Bobbitt, but that would be understandable.”
“How many men have you talked to about blow jobs?”
“Just a few. You know how it is. You go to a bar, you’re talking to a strange guy you’ll never see again, and the conversation turns to sex. You can ask anything and tell him anything—there’s no pressure, as long as the man in question isn’t buying you drinks.”
Kendall’s head lolled back onto the cushions and felt heavy. “No, I don’t know how it is. I never went to bars unless I was with David. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have talked to a strange man about sex. I could hardly talk to Jack about it, and I loved him.”
“You loved him?”
“I do. . . . I mean, I did. I wish Jack were here. If he hadn’t gotten the mother of all headaches, I’d be happily clueless. We’d have had more time. You know, it was no wonder he looked so relieved when I told him my parents weren’t coming back until Thursday.”
“You said they were back.”
“They are. I thought they were coming in on Thursday, but they were supposed to arrive on Tuesday. Because of delays, they arrived early this morning—really early. I just keep thinking that if he hadn’t gotten sick, we might have made it out before Dad came by the cabin.”
“Your dad walked in on you?”
“I was clothed, thank God, which was unusual, since Jack introduced me to the adventures of cooking half-naked. It’s fun, if you haven’t tried it. Counters are cold, though.”
“Back to your dad.”
“I found Jack’s prescription bottle for his pain pills with his name on it.” A tear leaked out, followed by another and another. Shit. “So I gave him his medicine, ’cause he looked really bad, and told him I knew who he was.”
“What did he say?”
“The usual bullshit. He said he loved me and that he could explain. But I’d heard it all before, and I wasn’t about to fall for it again.”
Erin sat forward and grabbed Kendall’s foot. “He said he loved you?”
She shrugged and wiped her face on the throw. “He didn’t mean it.”
“What if he did? Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to find out? Here’s a guy who is smart, talented, gorgeous, a gentleman, an amazing lover, rich, and he says he loves you—I’m not seeing the downside here. Kendall, what do you have to lose?”
“I don’t know who he is. How do I know his name is all he lied about?”
Erin reached into her bag and got out her iPad. “That’s easy. Let’s Google him, shall we?” She typed in his name and hit Images—Erin was very visual. “Wow, the man was born to wear a tux. Look at him. I’m almost happily married, and I’m drooling.”
There was a full page of pictures, most of which were taken at black-tie charity events in Chicago. It didn’t look as if he was ever photographed with the same woman twice. What did he do, call 1-800-DIAL-A-D8? All the women he was photographed with were Kendall’s basic nightmare—blond-haired, blue-eyed blow-up dolls. Kendall’s exact opposite. Kendall might hold her own in formal wear, but she hated attending those functions. David would always dump her before the hors d’oe
uvres were served, and she’d spend the rest of the night on her own, fending off drunken bankers.
“See? I’m not even his type.”
“No, you’re exactly his type. Look at these women—they’re just dates. There’s no connection. Look at the body language on his part—he looks as if he’s posing for pictures before his turn in the electric chair.”
Kendall rolled her eyes. “Right. I bet he slept with almost every one of them.”
“Probably. A guy who looks like Jax would be expected to put out, but he doesn’t care about them. Now let’s look at his Wiki page.” Erin fiddled around on her iPad while Kendall tried to ignore the voice in her head that sounded just like Jack’s telling her she was the first woman he ever cared about.
“Wow, an Olympic-level swimmer. It says here his time would have beaten the winner of the Olympic Trials, and that a family tragedy prevented his attending. What happened?”
“His parents were killed in a car accident, and his sister was seriously injured. He mentioned the Olympics, but I thought he was talking figuratively.”
“He started college when he was, like, sixteen or something, and graduated with an MBA in three and a half years after just losing his parents.”
“He wanted to be able to take his sister in. I guess his family situation was nightmarish after his parents’ death.”
“Kendall, this guy’s a freakin’ genius. He was the youngest fund manager ever to hit Wall Street. He was written up in the Wall Street Journal.”
“No wonder losing his ability to deal with numbers threw him for a loop.”
“What?”
“Oh, my God. I didn’t just say that out loud, did I?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“He was in a skiing accident last month. Suffered a pretty serious brain injury and lost his ability to deal with numbers. It’s coming back, though. I mean, I’ve seen real improvement over the past two weeks, but who knows if he’ll ever be able to do what he did before?”
