Blown Away (9 page)

Brent looked
into his father’s pale blue eyes, trying to understand how he could
have let the love of his life fall for another man. Why hadn’t he
tried harder to keep her where she’d belonged, with her family?
“I’m never going to let that happen to me.”

“It already
happened with Jamie.”

“That was
different.”

“Why? Because
you didn’t really love her?”

“Dad, that’s
not fair.” It was accurate, but it wasn’t fair of his father to
call him out on it. His ex-fiancée had cheated on him, not the
other way around.

“Is that why
you’ve never let yourself fall in love? You’re afraid she’ll leave
you, just like your mama left us?” He and his father had never
discussed his mother’s betrayal. They just accepted it because they
knew they didn’t have a choice. The moment she left, Brent decided
he would be the one calling the shots, dictating what happened in
his life. “Are you afraid this woman will leave you if you let her
in?” his father asked.

Brent
remembered the cold fear gripping him when Ava had told him it
would never work between them. He could only imagine how much it
would hurt in several years when they shared kids and memories.
What if he gave her his heart and she left him? How would he
survive?

His father
didn’t need verbal confirmation. The truth was in Brent’s eyes.
“You are. You can’t ask this young lady to pay for your mother’s
sins, son.”

Was that what
he was doing? “She’s going out with another man tonight. She says
it’s just business.” He covered his face with his hands.

“Maybe it
is.”

“But what if
it’s not?” He looked his father in the eye. “What if she likes him?
What if she…” He couldn’t say it, but that didn’t erase the visual
of Ava ending the night in another man’s bed.

“You have to
trust her, Brent. If you can’t, maybe you don’t deserve her.”

***

Ava listened
intently as her client told her why the women she’d set him up with
didn’t have the intangible quality he was looking for.

“Sometimes you
just know, Ava. It’s not something you can explain. It’s something
you feel. You know what I mean?”

She knew
exactly what he meant. She’d felt it the first time she saw Brent
Armstrong. She’d almost convinced herself she’d been imagining it,
but last night, it came back with a vengeance. “I do.”

“Have you ever
felt that way?” he asked, picking up his glass of red wine. He
swirled the contents before asking, “Have you ever met a man you
didn’t think you could live without?”

Her clients
frequently asked whether she’d had similar experiences. Knowing she
understood their journey helped them, so she was usually
forthcoming. That night, she felt too raw to be honest. She was
still trying to process her feelings for Brent, and defining them
for a virtual stranger seemed impossible. “I think everyone’s felt
that way at one time or another, Steven.”

He sighed. “I
just want to move on to the next phase of my life. I’m ready to get
married and have kids, but I don’t want to settle.”

“You shouldn’t
have to.” Ava firmly believed in holding out until the right person
came along, no matter how long that took. She would never try to
convince one of her clients they’d found the right person simply
because they seemed like a good match on paper. “We’ll help you
find the person you’re looking for. It’ll just take some time.”

He smiled
before taking a sip of his wine. “How do you know you’re not the
woman I’ve been waiting for?”

“Because she’s
already spoken for, Banks.”

Ava closed her
eyes. Brent’s hand came down on her shoulder. How dare he interrupt
a business meeting! She should be furious, not getting a little
flutter in her stomach.

Steven rose to
shake Brent’s hand, a small smile on his face. “Brent Armstrong,
you son of a gun. I haven’t seen you in ages. What have you been up
to?”

Brent tipped
his head toward Ava. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that.
You know how it is.”

Ava wasn’t
surprised Brent was acquainted with her high profile client. Steven
Banks was a criminal attorney who routinely handled celebrity
clients. His demanding career and notoriety made finding the time
and energy to hand-pick suitable partners difficult, which
explained why he was a forty-five-year-old bachelor. He routinely
rubbed shoulders with everyone who was anyone in Tennessee.

“How did you
know where to find me?” she asked, glaring at Brent.

Brent looked
like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar when he
responded. “I stopped by your office. Tara and I had a nice chat.
She may have mentioned this restaurant in passing.”

Ava would kill
her best friend tomorrow. She had to conclude her business meeting
so she could kill her lover first. “Steven and I just ordered
appetizers. Perhaps you can call me later.”

“Oh, I didn’t
mean to intrude. I’m just meeting a friend for drinks.”

A voluptuous
redhead in an emerald dress sauntered up. “There you are.” She
kissed Brent’s cheek.

Ava stared at
the other woman in disbelief. He was on a date? And he brought her
to the same restaurant where he knew she would be dining with a
client?

Brent said,
“Ava Cooper, Steven Banks, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine,
Kelly Warner.”

“Nice to meet
you,” Kelly said, barely acknowledging them. She threaded her arm
through Brent’s. “Our table is ready.”

“If you’ll
excuse us,” Brent said.

Ava tossed her
napkin on the table and stared at Brent with contempt. “If you
don’t mind, I’d like to have a word with you… in private.” Ava
smiled at Steven, not caring that her professional mask was
slipping. “I’ll be right back.”

“Take your
time,” Steven said, waving his hand. “I have to respond to a few
emails anyway.”

Brent caressed
Kelly’s upper arm. “Just give me a minute to have a word with my
friend.”

Friend?
Ava’d been relegated to friend status when just that morning he’d
been making love to her as though he’d never be able to get enough?
Was he just saying that to get under her skin or was he so fickle
he’d already decided to discard her? Either way, she intended to
find out.

Ava led him up
to the V.I.P. lounge. She was a regular customer, so when she
offered the attendant a tight smile, he opened the velvet barrier.
Once she and Brent were in the lounge, she turned on him. “What the
hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I plan to have
dinner with a friend, same as you. Is there a problem?”

“Steven isn’t
my friend. He’s my client, and he doesn’t look like an underwear
model!”

Brent smirked.
“So you recognized Kelly?”

“You pompous
ass!” She pushed his chest, barely moving him.

“Would you
stop?” He chuckled, seizing her wrists as he lowered his head to
whisper in her ear. “You’re making a scene, baby.”

As far as Ava
could tell, his date was the only one watching them. “I don’t care
what that little twit thinks.”

“That’s not a
very attractive shade of green on you, sweetness.”

Sweetness.
He used to call her that back in college. She
should have trusted her instincts about him back then. “You think
I’m jealous?”

He laughed.
“Aren’t you?”

Yes.
“No. I have no reason to be.” She shook free of his grip. “I’m not
your girlfriend. I’m not even your lover anymore. Enjoy the
underwear model. It was nice catching up.” She smiled. “Maybe we
can do it again in another ten years? No, wait, we can’t. I’ll be
married to the love of my life by then, and you’ll still be…
pathetic.”

“Just ask Ava to help
you find a wife,” Keith said, scanning his emails.

It had been
seven nights and six days since Brent’s argument with Ava. Dozens
of emails and texts, three dozen roses, and half a dozen calls, and
she still hadn’t agreed to speak to him. “Don’t be an ass,” Brent
said, aiming a pencil at Keith’s head. Brent smiled briefly when
the lead tip grazed his brother’s forehead. It was his first
genuine smile in days.

“That could’ve
taken my eye out, shithead,” Keith said, scowling while he rubbed
his forehead.

Brent rolled
his eyes as he kicked his feet up on the corner of his desk.
“You’re such a girl. If you don’t have anything useful to add, get
out.”

“I’m telling
you, asking her to hook you up is the best shot you’ve got.”

“That’s the
stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

Keith laughed
and slipped his phone into the front pocket of his dress shirt.
“This coming from the guy who had a private investigator stalk her
after y’all had a one-night stand?”

“Get out!”
Brent was tired and cranky and running out of ideas. The last thing
he needed was someone reminding him of all the reasons Ava didn’t
want to see him again.

“I’m trying to
help you, if you’d just shut up and listen.”

His brother and
father were the only people who could get away with talking to
Brent like that. They routinely took advantage of their untouchable
status to give him a reality check.

“Fine, say what
you have to say and get the hell out. I’ve got work to do.”

“Ava only knows
one side of you. She sees you as this control-freak egomaniac who
wants to tell her what to do, where to go, and who to go with. She
doesn’t understand why you are the way you are,” Keith said.

“If you’re
going to talk about
her
again, don’t bother. I’m not in the
mood.” His mother was the last person Brent wanted to talk
about.

“Ava doesn’t
realize family comes first to you. She doesn’t know that the first
thing you did when you started making money was pay off Dad’s
mortgage and my student loans.”

“Why should she
know?” Taking care of his family didn’t deserve honorary mention.
He was doing what any good son and brother would have done. Just
because he was a ruthless businessman who would stop at nothing to
get what he wanted didn’t mean he didn’t have another side. He
would shower Ava with attention, affection, and trinkets until her
heart was content, but if she ever betrayed him… she would see how
vicious he could become.

“You want her
to fall in love with you, don’t you?”

Brent stared at
his brother, trying to process the question. Was that what he
wanted? Was he trying to win Ava, to convince her he was the man
she’d been saving herself for? “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”
Keith sighed. “No one goes to the lengths you’ve gone unless you
know damn well she’s the one. You knew it back in college. You were
just too damn stubborn to admit it.”

“You think
so?”

“You’ve never
pursued a woman like that before or since. You used to wait outside
of our English Lit class just to give her a ride home.
Remember?”

He remembered
every moment he spent with Ava. “Yeah.”

“You were like
a man possessed when she took off to Europe after y’all hooked up.
It took me a week to convince you not to hop on a plane and track
her down.” Keith’s eyes shifted and regret crossed his face. “I
made a mistake. I should’ve let you go.”

“What?” Brent
set his feet on the floor and leaned forward. “What’re you talking
about?”

“Maybe if I’d
let you go, she would’ve realized how much you cared about her. She
might have come home instead of staying in Germany. Maybe y’all
would be married with a couple of kids by now.”

Brent’s heart
clenched at the thought of how different his life could have been
if he’d gone after Ava ten years ago. He couldn’t change the past,
but he would be damned if he let her walk out of his life without a
fight again. “You have nothing to feel guilty about, Keith. I made
the decision not to get on the plane.”

“Only because I
convinced you that you’d seem desperate and pathetic.” Keith rested
his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. “That’s why I had to
try to make it up to you.”

“What are you
talking about?” Brent narrowed his eyes when Keith didn’t respond.
“What the hell did you do?”

“I didn’t run
into Ava by chance like I said. I looked her up.”

“You did?” If
Brent hadn’t been so preoccupied making his millions, he may have
thought to do the same.

“I found out
she would be at that party, so I got an invite. I wanted to talk to
her, to find out if she was single.”

Brent smiled.
Sometimes his kid brother surprised him. “So, running into Ava at
that benefit wasn’t a coincidence?”

He chuckled.
“No. I called the benefit organizer and told her our company would
like four tickets. I said we’d make a sizeable donation to her
cause, but we didn’t want your name attached to the event since I
didn’t think you’d be able to make it. Then I called Leslie and
told her I had a couple of extra tickets. I told her she should ask
you.”

“I can’t
believe you did all this on the q.t.”

“It worked,
didn’t it?” Keith gave him a disparaging look. “Or it almost worked
until you pulled that dumbass stunt. What the hell were you
thinking? You had the girl back in your bed, so you show up
somewhere you know she’ll be with another woman? If that doesn’t
redefine stupid, I don’t know what does.”

Brent knew it
wasn’t one of his finer moments. “Kelly’s just a friend, you know
that.”

“You think that
mattered to Ava? You were sending her a clear message that you
didn’t trust her and she couldn’t trust you.”

“I would never
cheat on Ava.” Given what his mother and Jamie did, infidelity was
an unforgiveable sin in Brent’s opinion.

“I know that
and you know that, but she doesn’t.” Keith sank back in his chair.
“You need to let her get to know you, no pressure.”