Mila swallowed down the uneasy fizzing in her chest. She thought that plan had been nixed. One small victory on the path to keeping Jared in Pine Ridge. She wanted only good things for him, but if those good things kept him living five minutes away from her, all the better.
Mila’s phone buzzed in her back pocket, and she sat bolt upright on the couch, her sauvignon blanc sloshing over the rim of her glass and onto Nicole’s jeans.
“Smooth move, Lee Lee.” Nicole sent her the evil eye, but Mila barely saw it. The name on her phone had her heart beating in her throat.
Vin.
She opened the text.
Gimme a call when you can.
Mila pushed past the clusters of party guests, apologizing as she went, until she reached the kitchen. She snagged Sam’s cordless phone from the wall and slipped down the hallway into the guest bedroom, closing the door behind her.
“Hello?”
“Vin, it’s Mila. I just got your text.”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah, so I talked to corporate again. They said if all nine finalists agreed they wanted you in the competition, you’d be allowed back in.”
Her teeth chattered, the chill in the dark bedroom seeping past her T-shirt and coating her skin in goose bumps. Bob Santangelo’s sneering face floated through her mind. She had no idea why he disliked her so much, but if her success came down to his approval, she had a better shot of qualifying for the US Olympic rowing team.
“Okay?”
“I called each contestant. Bob Santangelo was on the fence, but ultimately he agreed. And so did everyone else.”
“Oh God.” Relief rushed out of her in one massive exhale, and she doubled over, letting the bed catch her as she dropped. “Thank you. Thank you so much. You didn’t have to go out on a limb for me, but you did. I really appreciate it.”
“Listen,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to be a dick. And I wasn’t trying to punish you or anything.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and remembered his disgusted face at the hotel when she started to tell him she didn’t want to go out again. No, definitely not trying to punish her.
“I didn’t think that,” she said.
“I just wanted to run the contest the right way. It’s the first time I’ve been entrusted with something like this, you know? I’m the one who found Chef Constance, I’m the one who recruited Denny. The locally sourced ingredients were my idea. This whole thing is on my shoulders.”
The bedroom door creaked open, and she turned. Backlit by the glow of the living room, Jared took one step inside. His green eyes widened.
“I understand,” Mila said to Vin. “Truly I do.”
“All right.” He sniffed. “Good luck in the rest of the competition. And if you have any questions about the rules or anything . . .”
“I’ll call you,” she said. “Promise.”
She punched the power button on the phone and looked up, her lips tightening in an attempt to control all the emotion churning inside her.
“You’re back in?” Jared said. He whispered, the words skipping across her skin and landing deep inside her chest.
“I’m back in.”
“Yes!” His eyes creased up, lost in the widest smile Mila had ever seen on him, and she leaped into his arms. With one hand firmly against her neck and the other clutching her back, he spun her around, all the adrenaline of the day seeping out of her like a sieve.
“God, I’m so relieved,” she said. “I’m so freaking relieved.”
He relaxed his grip, just enough to meet her gaze, and caught her mouth with his. She sunk into his body, letting him hold her up. Letting him support her. He’d held her hand throughout the competition, urged her forward when all she wanted was to turn back. Without him, where would she be?
His arms tightened, molding to her as if their bodies had once been cut from a single stone and were just now fitting back together. A greedy moan traveled from her throat into his, and he responded with fervor, her lips stinging from the intensity of the kiss.
“Hey.” He broke away, his mouth slightly swollen and his eyes lowered and hazy. “We can’t have sex in my brother’s guest room at his girlfriend’s birthday party. As much as I want to.”
She trailed her tongue across her lower lip, still tasting him there. “You sure?”
A half-drunk smile crossed his mouth. “I mean . . . no.”
With knowing fingers, she scraped her nails across his scalp, and he huffed out a breath as his eyelids closed. Just as she placed the tiniest flutter of a kiss on the hollow of his throat, three loud knocks broke through the moment.
“If you’re banging in there, I’ll punch you in the throat, J.”
Jared laughed as his brother’s voice effectively killed the mood, and he squeezed Mila’s butt and raised his eyebrows. “Guess he’s not cool with it.”
“Maybe we don’t have to stay too much longer,” she said. Clouds filled her head, the release of the day’s tension and the warm scent of his skin combining to turn her brain to mush. Heaven on earth.
“Once they sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ we’re out.”
With linked hands, they emerged from the bedroom and rejoined the party. Mila’s heart lightened as if a lead balloon had been released from her chest. The good news fizzled out of her, and her friends crowded around, each of their faces reflecting the relief in her words. Nicole pummeled her in a hug, and Sydney squeezed the hand Jared wasn’t already clutching.
She’d never felt so loved, so overwhelmingly in the right place at the right time. She wanted to bottle this feeling and wear it like perfume on the days she didn’t quite feel herself.
“I knew Vin would do the right thing,” Denny said. He puffed up his wide chest and grinned down at Mila with a lopsided smile. “Told you he’s not all bad.”
“Still wins Douchebag of the Year in my book,” Jared said.
Denny gave Jared a gentle shove and laughed, tossing back the last of his beer. “Hey, dude, this town’s all right. I thought this was gonna be the most boring three weeks of my life, but I’m having a pretty good time.”
“Glad we could bust up your small-town stereotypes,” Mila said with a smile. She watched Jared’s face, hoping some of Denny’s poeticism about Pine Ridge rubbed off on her not-yet-boyfriend. As content as she was with what they were doing now, she wanted more.
She couldn’t help herself. The tiny flicker of a dream that Aunt Georgie breathed life into had turned into an inferno. Everything seemed possible now. And if she could overcome odds and make it to the final round of a contest she’d always been too intimidated to enter, why couldn’t she have the man of her dreams and a family in her hometown to boot?
Mila poured herself another glass of wine, content to stay at the party as long as she wanted. There would be no hurrying home tonight, no escaping to her apartment for a night of good sleep before an early shift at the diner. Jared and her friends filled Sam’s house, and she wanted nothing more than to remain a part of it.
“Holy shit!” Sam’s buddy Greg’s voice bellowed through the house. His large frame half filled the view out the sliding glass door, but everyone crowded around, eager to claim a bit of the space.
Mila wandered over as the words “engaged” and “proposal” wove through the group like steam. She peered through the sliding glass doors and down the darkened hill to where Sam and Sydney stood next to the water, their silhouettes illuminated by the moonlit lake.
“He’s proposing!” one of the women squealed.
There was no bended knee, no grandiose gesture with lifted arms and fireworks and a massive diamond visible from the house. Syd and Sam stood without a slip of space between them, Sydney’s chin bowed and Sam’s hands trailing through her hair.
Huddled around the window, the group let out a collective gasp as he reached into his
back pocket, pulled something tiny out, and clutched her hand at her chest. Another moment passed, and she was off her feet, Sam’s arms wrapped tightly around her.
“Ho-ly shit,” Jared whispered.
“Did you know he was doing this?” Mila asked. She couldn’t believe her tears, couldn’t believe something so sweet and removed from her own life could tug at her heart this way. But it was Sam and Syd. Two people so perfect together you had to wonder what kind of pod they came from.
Mila tore her eyes away from the window, ready to share the joy radiating from her skin with the man she hoped to someday share a similar future with.
Jared’s face pinched. Cold and shadowed in gray. He sucked his bottom lip between his teeth, eyes fixed on the scene outside.
His lips tensed and tightened, a tiny muscle flexing and releasing at the sharp angle of his jaw.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
chapter eighteen
The scene played out in front of him like a bad rom-com. The happy couple. Clinging to each other as if their very existence depended on physical connection.
Jared knew about Sam’s plan to propose, but seeing it play out with his own eyes turned his stomach in ways he wasn’t prepared for. And Mila’s eyes bore into him, tears sparkling on her lashes, as if to say, Am I next?
“What’s wrong with you?” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re not happy about this. You love Sydney.”
He clenched his teeth. What could he say? Please don’t ask this of me.
“I . . . I’m fine.” It was all he could muster. “I’m just surprised.”
He couldn’t look at her. She’d see right through him. With his stomach twisting, he turned away from the window and went into the kitchen. He dug through the fridge in search of a fresh beer. The rush of cold revived him, gave him a moment to himself. He knew he’d have to face Mila eventually.
The sliding glass doors opened, and a raucous cheer rose up from Sam and Syd’s best friends and family. Jared watched from a safe distance as the group swallowed them up, squealing and bubbling over with excitement.
Jared gulped his beer, his stomach still in knots. What in the actual fuck was wrong with him? Every move Sydney made, every word she said, only proved how much she loved his brother. She and Sam had been through hell and back, both separately and together, and as a couple, they just made sense.
Something in his gut, though, clanged like warning bells. You’re next. Every bad sitcom he’d ever seen played on a loop inside his mind, the nagging wives, the exhausted husbands, the screaming kids. He saw his parents, actively avoiding each other within the walls of their little house and speaking to Jared and Sam but rarely to each other.
Syd and Sam deserved each other. But the unbridled joy surrounding their engagement made Jared feel like a fraud.
“You’re being an asshole.” Mila’s voice cut through his anxiety.
He crossed one arm across his chest and refused her pointed gaze. “I’m just giving them some space.”
“No, you’re not. I know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Don’t analyze me.” His words lashed out, sharper than he’d meant them. But he didn’t want to answer to anyone. Not now. And not to the one person who was supposed to understand him and everything he’d seen, everything he’d been through.
“Fine, Jared. You want to be a pouty little boy and take the focus away from your brother right now? Go ahead. But I’d be a terrible friend if I didn’t tell you how selfish you’re being.”
She spun away, leaving him shakier than ever in a cloud of her new, sultry perfume. Despite his frayed nerves, his mind traveled back to their night at the hotel and a different part of him awoke. The softness of her skin, the way she shattered at his touch. He’d loved her as a friend his whole life, and now he needed her with something deeper, something more primal. He couldn’t shake it, despite his gut reaction to the idea of forever.
Jared hovered near the kitchen table, unable to avoid his brother any longer. Sydney busted free of the crowd ahead of Sam and shrieked at Jared, launching herself at him and nearly propelling him into the table.
“Jesus,” he said, wrapping an arm around her as she rocked back and forth. “You almost killed me, woman.”
She pulled back, her face glowing and shiny with joy. “You’re gonna be my brother, Jared! Does that terrify you?”
He laughed, a tiny fissure forming in his concrete heart. “Of course. You always make me feel so dumb when we watch football together.”
Her face settled into forced seriousness. “I’ll smarten you up yet, kid.”
She squeezed his neck one more time before turning away and slipping back into Sam’s arms. Jared watched cautiously as she nuzzled his brother’s neck.
They’re so happy. He shook the thought away. They were one in a million.
As Sydney trailed away, returning to the buzzing group behind her, Sam walked slowly toward his brother. One eyebrow raised in question.
“Congrats,” Jared said, his voice as tight as his chest. “Smooth, too. Private, then public.”
Sam shrugged. “I knew she’d want it that way.”
How would Mila want it? He forced the thought away, chasing it from his brain with another swig of beer. Mila’s engagement wouldn’t involve Jared. Some other guy, some reliable, boring dude would ask her to marry him. He’d give her babies and a big house and a family of in-laws to spend holidays with. They’d all gather around the Bailey family dinner table, a picture-perfect postcard of something unsustainable.
“Best man?” Sam asked.
Jared groaned, even the thought of strip clubs and tuxes unable to get his juices flowing. “Fine.”
Sam shook his head. “You really can’t get it up for my engagement? You can’t even fake it? The idea of marriage is so repulsive to you that you can’t be happy when it happens to someone else?”
Shame sluiced through Jared. His issues with marriage were his alone, and he shuddered at the idea that he’d diminished Sam’s night in any way. He didn’t know why his heart hammered in his chest as if he’d just stared down a black bear. But Mila lingered across the room, her eyes finding him every other minute, and he knew what he was setting himself up for. Disappointment. Hers and his.
“That’s not it,” Jared said. “I’m . . .”
What could he say? I’m a selfish prick, and I should get out of this town as soon as possible. Not so it doesn’t ruin me, but so that I don’t ruin it.
“I’m sorry,” Jared said. “I’m really freaking happy for you guys. You’re getting everything you wanted, dude. It’s all working out for you. That’s it.”
Sam hesitated, weighing his little brother with a thoughtful stare. He ran a hand across his beard. “I don’t believe you.”
“Just because I’d rather be dead than married doesn’t mean I can’t be happy for you.”
A wry smile tugged at Sam’s lips. “Hate to tell you, Jare, but I think you’re inching closer to it than you even realize. You accidentally fell into the most perfect relationship you could find.”
Jared’s throat dried up. “We’re just having fun.”
Sam laughed. “Sure.”
“Seriously,” Jared said. “She’s the one who said it first.”
Sam turned, already on his way back to Sydney. “Just call me when you need help figuring out what kind of proposal you think Mila might want, all right?”
Jared stood alone in the kitchen until his beer bottle ran dry.
* * *
* * *
The room tilted and swayed in front of him, but it wasn’t the alcohol. He’d had only a couple of drinks, but he’d had them quickly.
“I got him from here.” Mila’s voice cut through his soupy brain. “Thanks, Greg.”
Jared collapsed into his couch, the squishy fabric enveloping him l
ike the hug Mila had refused him all night long. He couldn’t blame her. No one at the party seemed especially happy to talk to him.
The front door closed behind Greg, leaving Jared and Mila submerged in a stony silence. She stood in front of the couch with one hand on her hip, the other lifted to her face. The thumb wedged between her straight, white teeth, and her eyebrows told an entire story of her disappointment in him.
“Did you have fun tonight?” he asked. “I didn’t need Greg to escort me home, by the way. I’m perfectly fine to drive myself home from my brother’s house. I’ve done it a billion times.”
Mila lowered her gaze, a subtle shake of her head sending her curls dancing around her face. She pushed the hair away with a labored motion, as if even that movement proved inconvenient.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m gonna go. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“No,” he said. “Don’t go. Why? Why are you going?”
“Because you’re hammered.” Her lips flattened. That wasn’t the reason. He could see it in her face.
“I’m not hammered. I had three drinks.”
“I’m not arguing with you right now. It doesn’t matter how many drinks you had. You’ve been annoying as shit all night long, and I’m not dealing with pissed-off Jared who is also intoxicated. Okay?”
He swallowed past his gummy tongue and pushed himself to the edge of the couch. He looked up at her. She hadn’t turned on the lights, but the moon shone so bright tonight it might as well have been a spotlight. Her dark, glossy curls glowed, and her eyes bore into him like glowing orbs threatening to tell the future.
He owed her something. He raked a hand through his hair and cleared his throat. Sober up. Sober up. Sober up.
“Just . . . don’t go,” he said. “Please?”
The crease between her brows softened slightly, and her chest rose and fell on a contemplative breath. Her breasts pressed against her thin, striped cotton T-shirt, and he scolded himself for ruining the opportunity to sleep with her tonight. He’d been dreaming about it all day. And now this.
Sweet Love Page 23
