Blurred Lines (Behind Closed Doors Book 2) (2 page)

So I watch Wayne lead Ashleigh away, thinking about the double standards of this whole evening and wondering if any of it is really worth the heartbreak I saw in Anna's eyes. Because I know her pain really well. I've been in her shoes, which makes what I did with Ashleigh’s guy so much worse.

My last boyfriend was the greatest guy in the world. I really thought we were heading up the aisle and then he dumped me. It came out of the blue. He said he'd found someone hotter than me. Those were his actual words. He really did a number on my self-esteem. We'd been living together for two years and I'm an intern at a fashion label. I didn't understand how he found someone better looking than me.

I don't mean to sound conceited but I work for one of the biggest fashion labels in the world. I always look like I've stepped off the front cover of a fashion magazine. It's my job to look that way. Short of dating the model on said front cover he can't get much closer to H.O.T. But guess what? He was dating a model.

So, I'd been dumped, my spirit broken and I had nowhere to live. The thought of going back to my parent's was unbearable so Sean asked Ashleigh if I could stay in her guest room until I managed to sort out something more permanent. We were dorm buddies our freshmen year, but the thing she has with my brother made our friendship stutter. He's her 'best friend' ever and there's just no competing with that, but now that we live together she's become something more permanent in my life rather than just my roommate. Its great having a girlie friend to do pamper days with. And Ashleigh, being from a celebrity-filled family in LA, knows how to do a pamper day!

I still avoid socializing with my brother though. He hasn't grown out of telling tales to our parents and I'm trying to avoid Wayne also. He knows how to make my body sing. And that is all Wayne wants from me, of this I'm sure. So now that Ashleigh's gone I can make a run for the nearest exit.

“For God's sake, Anna, what the hell have I done wrong now?” Sean's tense snap draws my eyes away from the drink's coaster to my brother. He wasn't paying attention to me. Only Anna.

“I want you to stop seeing her.”

“First you make excuses to stop Ashleigh from being around our daughter and now you're dictating when I can see her? This is getting ridiculous.”

“So you're choosing Ashleigh over us?”

“You make it sound like we’re having a sordid affair.” Sean dismisses her as he picks up his drink. I shift awkwardly in the silence. Beside me, Anna stares at Sean. Her expression says everything her lips don't. “Anna, for the last time, she's just a friend,” Sean grumbles as his eyes meet mine. “I have not and will not sleep with Ashleigh.” He looks at me as though it's me he's trying to convince, not his wife. “Why won't anyone believe me?”

Because it’s obviously not true? “I'm, um.” I scramble from the bench seat. I do not want to hang around for this one. What happens between Sean and Anna has nothing to do with me. “I'm going to the bar.”

How could anyone believe him? It is obvious my brother is as much in love with Ashleigh as she is with him. I'd walked into our apartment frequently and found them together. Only this week I'd interrupted them twice in one night.

Ashleigh was babysitting Stephi, Sean's daughter, because Anna was out of town visiting with her sick mother for a few days. Stephi was napping in the bedroom and Ashleigh was cooking. When I arrived home from work Sean stood behind her, his hands on hers showing her how to slice onions. Onions for Christ sake! If that wasn't a move then I'm a fairytale princess and Prince Charming is about to sweep me off my feet.

And then later that night when I returned home from the gym they were dancing to a slow rumba beat. Yes, hot and steamy Latin music. I was not impressed. I saw the look in my brother's eyes when I walked through the door. It was a mixture of relief and regret. They shouldn't be that close for a married man and his female best friend. Talk about putting me between the devil and the deep blue sea!

A twenty dollar bill outstretched my hand before I could pay for the three drinks I'd ordered. “Add a house draft to that.” I look up at the owner of the proffered bill. “Thought you could do with an extra pair of hands.” Wayne smiles, waving the cast. “Well, hand.” He mutters and then glances over at our table. “Besides, didn't feel like interrupting the lover's quarrel.”

I took a second to look back. Sean and Anna are still deep into their heated discussion. “Ashleigh.”

“Figured.” Wayne sighs. “I'd be okay with it if my girlfriend didn't reciprocate his feelings.” My eyes snap back to Wayne's. “It's hard not to see it when they're together, Jules.” He sighs again. “Which is always.”

“Then why do you put up with her? You deserve better than that.” Damn it! But I swear my motives are pure. I am not trying to break them up. “Everyone does.”

“C'mon, Jules, she doesn't need this crap from me right now.” Wayne shrugs. “We both know it's over; why do you think she's pulling away instead of leaning on me at a time like this? Do you expect me to be a total bastard and break it off just a few weeks after her dad died?”

“But you're willing to cheat instead?” My brow arches. “I think you and I have different definitions of a total bastard.”

“In that case you're no prime example of a best friend.”

Okay, so as the other guilty party in said cheating, I guess I deserve that and I've tried talking myself out of feeling guilty. I've told myself Ashleigh doesn't deserve Wayne. She was always studying, or making excuses not to see him and lying to him so she could see Sean instead. He wouldn't have looked elsewhere in the first place if she'd been a better girlfriend over the last few months. But still, I live with Ashleigh and as attracted to Wayne as I am, I can't steal Ashleigh's boyfriend.

“I'm trying to politely ignore your advances because it can't ever happen again,” I say, looking away. “Regardless of how good it was or how much you'd like to, we can't do that to Ashleigh, okay?”

He leans closer and whispers into my ear. “It wasn't good, Julia.” I can't believe he is insulting me and yet my body hums with awareness. He stands really close. Every nerve ending reaches out toward him, begging me to touch him. “It was phenomenal.” My head spins. “So I'd really like to spend the whole day in bed with you again sometime soon.” Did I grip his t-shirt to stop him? Yes. And to keep my balance? Yes. And to feel his firm chest beneath it? Hell yes! “What's it going to be, a night? A week? A month? Tell me, Julia, how long are you going to torture us both?”

My head falls forward against his shoulder as my resolve melts. Oh, for about a minute if he keeps talking like this. My entire body, mind and soul, and even my heart are on his side in this. How is that possible? How is it possible to want something so much, to know that something feels so right when it's morally wrong? It is unjust on so many different levels. And I just want to give in to the temptation and take what felt like is mine already.

“What's going on here?” God damn my brother! No wait. Sean's my savior. Don't I want to stop sucking at being a decent human being? And don't I want to ditch my world's worst friend title? So I don't want to do this to Ashleigh, do I? “Jules, are you okay?”

Is this lying to get out of a worse situation still sucking at being decent? Who cares? From the scowl he's sending Wayne right now he's seen straight through me anyway. “Seanie?” I whine, fake a stumbling lean towards him and drape my arm around him.

“Jeez, Jules, have you been downing shots up here? You’re wasted.”

No, I’m not. Not by a long shot, but I pull away from Wayne and what I really want. “Can you take me home?”

Chapter Two

“Is she here yet?”

I send Wayne a sympathetic smile. He looks harassed, like he's about to kill someone and that someone is Ashleigh. He looks quite bedraggled too. His hair's all ruffled like he's run his hand through it one too many times. I'm sure the doorman felt comfortable letting him up to our apartment but I don't feel comfortable being here alone with him. Not after what happened the last time. I lean against the door frame as I say, “I don't know if she's coming back tonight.”

“She is.” Wayne sighs. “She's going back to intern at Worthington and Associates for the summer. She called, asked me to meet her here. She said she wanted to talk. Did you tell her?” I shake my head and his shoulders deflate as he leans against the wall in the hallway. “I was going to tell her you know.” He sighs again as he looks at the floor. “I was going to tell her that weekend. I couldn't get what we'd done and how much I wanted to do it again off my mind. I felt so bad for feeling this way about you. So I'd decided it couldn't wait. Jules, I rang her to tell her anyway. She was crying. And I thought maybe you'd already told her because she threatened to kill me.”

I step back. Open the door a little wider to invite him inside. This isn't a conversation our neighbors should be overhearing, considering Ashleigh's famous family. It was likely she'd be recognized at the moment and she's a prime target for tabloid fodder right now.

“She was really pissed at me because I wasn't there when she needed me, and the captain had told her I hadn't turned in for work, so she was even more pissed at me for making her worry at a time like this, when there was no reason to. I wasn't going to lie to her. But I had to ask what was going on. So she yelled at me some more for not listening to my voicemails because she'd left me dozens. And when I asked if she wanted me to come out there she said no, because unlike me Sean had listened to his voicemails and he had returned her calls. And unlike me Sean was at the airport when her dad's jet came to pick her up. So unlike me Sean was already there.”

I flinched. Poor Wayne. Ashleigh could be a bitch when she wanted to be and I'm not sure what excuse he could have given her to stop her from taking everything out on him that day. At the time her twin was in pieces, Ash had to go with her mom to the hospital and they had to sedate her mom afterwards. The press were clambering at the gates to her mom's house, and outside the hospital, they were so bad that Ash's dad flew over from Florida and took control of security. And things must have been bad. Ashleigh’s mom and dad haven’t been in the same room since they divorced nearly twenty years ago.

When she came home Ash said she hadn't handled it very well at all, she'd needed someone to help her. So she asked Wayne, albeit through voicemail, and he didn't step up. She looked almost ashamed that she’d taken the worst of the situation out on Wayne and then gave him the silent treatment. But now, two months later, I still can't tell if she's heartbroken over the fact he let her down, or relieved she didn't have to explain to him that her mom is one of the biggest stars on television, her stepdad was a famous director, her sister is about to marry a movie star and that they starred in the biggest sitcom of the nineties. I assume he knows now. How else did she explain her stepdad dying in a car accident in the same place and at the same time as Roberto Valentina? Coincidence? Wayne isn’t dumb enough to believe her even if she had.

I keep telling myself that it doesn't matter, she didn't really want him there and Wayne was always a second choice, but part of me feels responsible for the iciness between them now. She pretends everything's alright but it's not, evidently. And maybe that's why I haven't told her what happened two months ago. I want them to work this out naturally. Whatever that means for them as a couple. I don't want to be the reason they break up.

And now I feel guilty because Wayne took the brunt of her anger when both of us were to blame for what happened that weekend. She reduced him to less than unimportant at the worst possible time.

“You know, she even banned me from his funeral. Told me she didn't need me and that I'd never get another chance to let her down ever again. And I should have told her there and then we’d never work but how could I?” He let out a long sigh as he stepped a little bit closer to me. “I understand why she was so vicious, Jules. The guy who'd been her dad for the last fifteen years had just died. Her head was all over the place and she had a reason to be mad at me. Ending it then would have been easier for both of us.” The back of his fingers trace a line across my cheek. “How do I do it now? She's still so fragile.”

That wasn't a word I would associate with my Ashleigh but I couldn't argue with him. As much as my heart longed to tell him she was one of the strongest people I knew and would handle anything anyone threw at her, I couldn't. I couldn't encourage him to break up with my best friend. No matter what I felt, or how I spent my days dreaming, he belongs to Ashleigh, at least for now anyway.

“I want you, Julia.” His head dips towards me. Before I can protest he's claimed my lips with his own. It's so fast the floor of my stomach drops and it takes my breath away. Instantly, I put my hands up in protest. I know I'm supposed to push him away but I don't have the strength in me to do it. This is what I want and I can't fight it. If he pursues this any longer I'll end up giving in and giving him everything all over again.

But he doesn't.

He pulls away just enough so he can look into my eyes. “You know we can't do this, Julia.” Your best friend's boyfriend is right, Julia! I attempt to step away. There should be more distance between us but his hand curls around my waist and he stops me from going anywhere. I shouldn't like that he has. I more than like it, actually. “You know, it's going to hurt Ashleigh either way when she finds out about us. Isn't it better for her that we do this all at once rather than hurt her with what we've done already, then hurt her all over again when we stop fighting how we feel?”

“Um, no!” I gasp. I'd convinced myself he was teasing me Friday night and amused by my reaction. But he's serious. He's actually breaking up with my best friend for me. This isn't right. It's not fair! I've been here before, remember? Except I was the one in Ashleigh's shoes and it isn't a nice place to be.

“Why are you putting me in this position?” I force myself from him and the alluring embrace that makes me feel all gooey inside. I need to keep a clear head when I tell him no. “I keep telling you I don't want to be here.”