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“As it happens, I like strong, silent types,” she went on, and the moment was gone. She waved a hand in the direction of the laundry. “The bathroom’s around the back there on the right if you want to grab a shower. Just maybe move the underwear I have hanging over the shower rail.”
“I showered on board,” he said, way too quickly, because Jesus! He didn’t need to see her underwear and he sure as shit didn’t need to touch it.
“The joys of first-class travel!” she said blithely.
“Yes.” A monosyllable was all he could manage? Seriously?
“And shaved, too, I see.”
“Yes.” Mon-o-syllable. Fuck.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you unshaven.”
Not even a monosyllable. He didn’t know how to interpret that. He suddenly felt as if being clean-shaven was tantamount to being a eunuch.
“I’ve often wondered what you’d look like,” she continued. “Late at night. Or first thing in the morning...”
Nope. He could not speak.
“Which leads me to my next offer. You probably slept on the flight—I hear those first-class suites are something else—but if you didn’t, you’re welcome to use my bed and take a nap, since I know people can’t usually check in to their hotels until the afternoon. You can get to the bedroom via the bathroom or through the living room. I can show you the way if you like...?”
What the hell did she expect him to say to that? “I... No.”
“No as in...?”
“As in I booked my hotel room from last night so I...I’m good.”
“You’re ‘good’? Still? After all these years? That’s a shame.”
“I mean—”
“Because if you weren’t good, if you were suddenly bad, I’d suggest you use my bed for some other purpose.”
Ah, Jesus, he was not up to the challenge of this conversation. It sounded so much like she wanted... But she couldn’t mean... Could she possibly...? No. Nope. Joking. All she was offering was a glass of whiskey.
“Not today, huh?” she said, and this time her laugh was more like a sigh as she turned back to the counter. “Okay, how about I get you a glass and you can take that whiskey outside and soak up some vitamin D. They say it helps with jet lag. Something about melatonin.”
“I don’t have jet lag.” God, why could he not stop sounding like a robot?
“Then screw that theory and just do it because it’s peaceful out there at this time of the morning and there are two chairs, so I won’t have to sit on your lap,” she said, opening one of the cupboards on the wall and stretching up—which required her to lift up onto her toes and hang onto the counter with her free hand.
She let out a tiny snuffle of exertion, and Teague’s chivalrous instincts kicked in, jolting him forward to reach over her to get the glass himself.
Fumbling, his fingers on hers... Frankie going completely still.
A heart crack of a moment, as it hit him somewhere in the region of his balls that this was the first time he’d touched her. The scent of gardenias was in his nostrils. Warmth—her warmth—insinuated itself into his bones. The fine tremble in her fingers vibrated through him. He was aware of the pounding of his heart, the insistent ache in his hardening cock—oh, God, please don’t let her feel that!
Madness, that she could wreak such physical havoc just by leaving her hand under his. If she knew what was happening to his body, the burn and want and awful need, she’d laugh herself sick. And yet the urge to put his mouth on her naked shoulder and taste her skin was so hard to resist. If only she meant all those things she said, he’d—
Scream. Kettle. Whistling on the hot plate.
He snatched back his hand.
Thank God.
Sanity. Reality.
He stepped back from her, leaving her with the glass.
She switched off the hot plate and turned to him, holding out the tumbler. It was expensive-looking cut crystal, but it had a chip in the rim, and that one tiny flaw twisted something in his chest.
He took the glass and their fingers touched again, and her smile faded.
There were dark smudges under her eyes—he wanted to run his fingertips gently over them. A blush—he wanted to lick the heat of it from her cheekbones. And there was something shimmering in the stillness of the moment that told him she’d let him do both those things. But how did a guy go from an accidental finger graze to such intimacy?
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
One of her hands came up to press against her cheek, as though to control the flush of blood beneath her skin, and she let out a laugh that was different from usual—disbelieving, a little embarrassed—and he felt that twist in his chest again.
“Go on out to the courtyard,” she said, and returned her attention to the counter, picking up a cloth as though preparing to wipe it down, only to knock a spoon onto the floor.
He bent to pick it up for her but she stiffened and said, “Leave it. Please just...leave it. I’m going to make myself a cup of coffee so go on out. Two minutes. Give me two minutes.”
He nodded even though he knew she couldn’t see it and carried his glass and the bottle of whiskey outside. Looking around, he decided “courtyard” was an optimistic description. It was a small paved rectangle enclosed by a border of potted plants, with a barbecue in one corner, the rickety table with those mismatched chairs in the center and a gaudily painted garden gnome that was missing a hand plonked seemingly at random.
He chose one of the chairs for himself and positioned it to face the apartments, away from where he could see Frankie in the kitchen, and poured a generous finger of whiskey.
A minuscule sip had him sighing in appreciation. It was piney, creamy—wonderful. He wondered how Frankie remembered he liked a whiskey straight off a flight; he couldn’t remember ever mentioning it. Hell, he wondered how she knew he liked whiskey, period, given he hadn’t been a regular at Flick’s. Veronica would have said it was because she was a “booze whisperer.” Ha. She’d reminded him of that at Matt and Romy’s wedding, where he’d been best man and could have been excused for feeling like crap. Veronica had said something about him being—hello—perfectly behaved.
“Beneath this urbane exterior is a seething mass of violent contradiction, ready to go on an imperfect rampage,” Teague had told her.
“It’s a shame you never got together with Frankie, in that case.”
“Frankie?”
“Frankie—sexy Aussie, Flick’s booze whisperer by day, exotic dancer by night.”
“Yeah, right!”
“Why not?” Veronica had queried.
“Because... Just because.”
A prophecy of sorts—gee, thanks, Veronica!—because here he was, five months later, drinking Frankie’s whiskey. He was pretty sure he wasn’t about do any rampaging, though.
He screwed his eyes shut, put his elbows on the table, clasped his head in his hands and dug his fingers into his skull. Tried to breathe out some agitation.
“Need some painkillers?” Frankie’s voice.
He opened his eyes, gave himself a moment to set his face, then looked over his shoulder to where she was standing, framed in the open doorway.
“You look like you have a headache,” she said.
“I don’t.”
“Do you want a cup of coffee instead of the whiskey?”
“No.”
“Tea?”
“Whiskey’s fine.”
With the shrug of one shoulder—which almost dislodged that damn robe again—she came over to sit opposite him, her back to the block of flats.
He topped up his barely touched whiskey to give himself something to do as Frankie raised her mug and inhaled the steam wafting up from it.
“I’m a philistine, I know,” she said, “but that year in the States got me hooked on crappy coffee. Do not tell any of my Australian friends—they’ll disown me if they discover I drink instant coffee instead of going to a café every morning for a cappuccino-piccolo latte-macchiato-whatever.”
“I don’t know any of your Australian friends.” Stating the fucking obvious as he tried to not anticipate another slinky fall of that robe.
She took a dainty sip of her coffee before answering. “We can rectify that, if you like. Sydney’s buzzing with summer parties, there are two and a half weeks until Christmas, and on Christmas day if you’re not doing anything there’s a thing on Bondi Beach for all the orphans, so—”
“I’m not an orphan.” Boorish.
“‘Orphans’ is more of a state of mind for this gig. What it really means is—is loners, I guess,” she said.
“I’m not a loner.” No, I’m a block of fucking wood.
“I mean people who are in Sydney with no one to spend Christmas with.”
Silence.
And then she cocked her head to one side, examining him. “Not a loner?”
“No.” Granite. Not wood, granite.
“’Cause you always seemed to like to be alone. Even when you were with the others you were...well, alone.”
How to explain that it wasn’t that he liked to be alone, he just was alone.
Impossible.
Because then he’d have to talk about the grief. He’d have to admit that he’d lost more than a sister when Cassandra died twelve years ago—he’d lost part of himself. And he didn’t want anyone else to know that, because they’d want him to find it again, and it was too late to look for it because that wasn’t him anymore.
Yep, impossible.
And so he raised his glass to take a sip of whiskey and said nothing.
“Or maybe it was that you just did your own thing,” she mused. “You never let yourself be pressured into any of Matt’s crazier schemes, at least not until n—” She stopped abruptly, but Teague finished the sentence in his head: not until now.
Slowly, deliberately, he put his glass on the table. “Am I—are we—in one of Matt’s schemes?” he asked. “Is that why I’m here?”
She put down her mug, licked her bottom lip. “You know why you’re here, Teague. At least, you know part of it.”
He reached into his shirt pocket for the small velvet he’d shoved in there before disembarking from the plane. The bag he’d scrupulously not looked into the whole damn flight. He held it out to her.
She watched him, not her hands, as she took the bag and unzipped it. It wasn’t until her eyes dropped that he let himself look down to see what was so important it had to come with him rather than be sent via a courier.
A ring.
His vision narrowed to the glitter of the platinum band in the sunlight, the cool glow of the emerald center stone, the intense sparkle of surrounding diamonds. But the telling thing was that she’d slipped it onto the third finger of her left hand.
“It’s prettier than I remembered,” she said.
White-hot rage coursed through him at those words. Prettier than she remembered? How the fuck could she not remember it exactly? God, what had Matt done to him? Why lay the burden of this history on him now, when it was too damn late? He didn’t want it. Didn’t want to know. But it was there. No going back.
Matt had once proposed to Frankie.
Matt had once been in love with Frankie.
Matt had waited until he and Teague were alone and pressed for time before co-opting Teague into returning the ring to Frankie—which had to mean Romy knew nothing about it.
Teague picked up his glass again, raised it to his mouth and knocked back a gulp of whiskey as the enormity of what it meant almost overwhelmed him. The enormity of what he’d lost.
Romy, he’d lost Romy. No, worse than that—he’d given her away. He’d pleaded Matt’s case for him when Romy had been prepared to move on from Matt, because Matt had never loved anyone except her and Matt was torturing himself over her. A once-in-a-lifetime love shouldn’t be denied—that was how Teague had consoled himself. And now...
Oh, God! God! Now to discover Romy wasn’t Matt’s once-in-a-lifetime love? To learn Matt had loved another woman enough to propose to her?
He shot to his feet, knowing he was about to lose his shit.
“Where are you going?” Frankie asked, startled.
Hell—I’m going to hell. “Thanks for the whiskey.”
She stayed sitting, giving him a quizzical look. “Why are you brooding at me?”
“I’m not brooding.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I don’t brood. Rafael broods.”
“Rafael only ever brooded in Veronica’s direction. You brood all over the place, you always did. It’s just that you’re an iceberg, so it’s hidden beneath the surface. It’s irresistible, you know. Makes women wonder what lies beneath.”
That threw him, so much that it took him a moment to relocate his voice. “I don’t brood,” he said again—it seemed to be the best he could come up with.
She leaned back in her chair. “Okay, you don’t brood, and you’re not irresistible. Happy?”
“Yes. No. I don’t—” He stopped abruptly, telling his feet to move. Frustrating as hell when they wouldn’t.
She sighed gustily. “Taking a wild guess here, but did Matt not explain any of the background to the ring?”
“He doesn’t have to explain it to me, only to—” He cut himself off again, bit his lip to stop her name from coming out of his mouth.
Her eyes narrowed. “Not to you, but to...Romy?” She sighed. “Romy. Of course. I see.”
And because the thought of her “seeing” enraged him when he’d been hiding it for so long, the words “You see what?” snapped out of him like a whip. He was almost vibrating with the need to tell her she was wrong.
“Things you don’t see, Teague. Things you could never see, things you seem to be unready to see even now, things you might never see even if someone waves them in front of your face before beating you over the head with them.” She stood then, too, as though spoiling for a fight. “But you know what? Good for Romy. Lucky Romy, to have two men so devoted to her, so in love with her for so damn long their brains turn to mush!”
“I didn’t say I’m in love with her,” he said, way too loud.
She snorted. “Oh, please, don’t even. That year I spent in DC there were plenty of women who wanted a piece of you, but they all knew they were wasting their time. The only one who didn’t know how you felt about Romy was Romy—and that was willful ignorance, because if she’d let herself see it she’d have had to let you go.”
“She did let me go. She’s married. They’re married! They have Rose now.”
“And Romy made you Rose’s godfather—which means, bozo, she’s not letting you go.” She rubbed the heels of her hands over her forehead and made a sound redolent of both frustration and disgust. “And why should she when you won’t let yourself go?”
“There’s nothing left to let go of.”
“Sure there is. Your propensity to wallow in misery over what you can’t have! How many years have you chalked up pining for her? Eleven? And it was hardly the love story of the century—only two measly months, and nobody ever saw you hold hands, let alone kiss! So perfectly discreet, so completely passionless! Yet you hung in there and let no one take her place with you. And now to find you’re still hanging in there?” She laughed, but there was a jeer in it. “All I can say is you must enjoy being miserable.”
“I don’t enjoy it!”
“No? Then get over it, the way the rest of us do. ’Cause I can tell you, lots of us want people who don’t have the good sense to want us back.”
“If you’re talking about Matt—”
“I’m not talking about Matt. God! I’m not interested in Matt and I never have been—not like that. And he’s never been interested in me that way.”
“How can you say that when he bought you an engagement ring?”
“I can say it because he wasn’t my fiancé—you were.”
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