From Fake to Forever (8 page)

But not too closely. He slowed a bit as he passed the ballroom full of his colleagues and nodded to his father without stopping.
Nobody
would think it was strange they didn’t exchange a word. Jason hadn’t spoken to Paul in about six months and they both preferred it that way.

By the time he reached the sidewalk outside the hotel, Meredith had disappeared into a cab. He swore and signaled to his driver to get the car.

Where did she think she was going? She couldn’t hide from him—he had a key to her room.

“Now this seems familiar,” he muttered as he pounded on Meredith’s hotel-room door for the second time that evening.

“What?” she called from inside the room.

“Candygram.”

“Go away. I’m about Lynhursted out for the day.”

“Come on, let me in so we can have a rational discussion like adults. If that’s even possible.”

The door flew open. “What kind of a crack is that? You think I can’t act like an adult?”

At least she was still dressed. A small blessing, though that glittery dress with the tiny spaghetti straps and deep V over her cleavage had made him fantasize about unzipping it all night.

He pushed into the room, ignoring her protests, and went straight for the minibar. A fifteen-dollar shot of Jack Daniel’s sounded like a bargain. The liquor slid down his throat and soothed his temper enough to allow a response. “That comment was directed at both of us. We’re apparently only capable of insulting each other and I’d like to find a way to get past it.”

She planted herself an inch from him, fists at her hips. “And
I’d
like a divorce. Maybe we can trade.”

He threw up his hands. “Yet you stormed off from the gala when all I was trying to do was get us to the divorce faster.”

Something shiny glinted in her expression and he did a double take. He’d never seen Meredith cry. She was a woman of many extremes, but sadness wasn’t one of them. It threw him for a loop. His first response was to pull her into his arms and murmur nonsense into her hair.

She stiffened for a second and then liquefied against him, her arms snaking into place at his waist. Her head tilted against his shoulder, resting in a groove that had been waiting for her to fill it. Sniffling, she let him cradle her and the tension eased.

He pulled back so he could look into her eyes, the only way he knew to assess a person. The tears were still there, but she had a little of her normal snap back, too. His heart slowed.

“I don’t pretend to be good at relationships, and we’re not even in one. But obviously I’m messing up whatever it is that we’re doing here. Can’t you give me some clues what I’m doing wrong?”

She sighed and slipped from his embrace, which grew cool far too fast. Surprising how quickly he’d gotten used to her heat.

“That’s just it, Jason. I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. This is who you are and I’m not above admitting I’m bitterly disappointed.”

“Wait a minute.” The buzzing in his ears didn’t clear even with a hard shake of his head. “You’re disappointed in who I
am
?”

Meredith evaluated him for a long, tense moment. “The man I met in Vegas wasn’t so cold and calculating. He was passionate and open and I loved being around him.”

She crossed to the bar and found her own fifteen-dollar shot of Jack Daniel’s.

“He was also confused and misguided,” Jason added. And that guy had been heavily under the influence of Meredith’s seductive power. “I’d like to think you helped get me to the place where I am now. I owe you a debt for that, as a matter of fact.”

She rolled her eyes and splashed Sprite in her highball along with the amber liquid, then downed it in two gulps.

“Great, so I get the credit for turning you into a zombie.” She plunked the glass down and pierced him with her still-shiny gaze. “You want to know what Avery said to me? She asked me to work on a special project with her. After hours.”

Elation warmed the cold place Meredith had left behind. “That’s fantastic. It’s perfect. You play your cards right and she might start to trust you. You can cozy up to her and get far more information about her plans.”

“It’s not perfect!” She poked a finger in his chest. “It’s not even for real as best I can tell. You know why she asked me to work with her? She’s keeping me close because she can’t figure out my angle. I’m from Houston and have a background in bridal design. What am I doing horning in on New York couture, she asked.”

Inwardly, he winced. They should have thought of a good cover story. Too late now.

“It’s a logical question.” How had Meredith figured out Avery’s motivation so quickly?

He cursed as it dawned on him that Avery might be aware of his relationship with Meredith. Was that the reason behind the offer? “What did you tell her?”

Meredith was smart and quick on her feet. Their plans could still work.

“I told her exactly what she wanted to hear. Because I did not want to mess up a golden opportunity. The goal is for me to help you, right?”

“Of course. So thanks.” Why did it sound like the incident had upset her?

She muttered a very unladylike curse. “Geez, Jason. You don’t get it. I’m standing there listening to her talk and all I could think about was how the two of you are exactly alike. Cold-blooded and only interested in one-upping each other. And both of you are thrilled to use me to do it.”

“I’m not using you,” Jason protested instantly. He and Avery were not alike. He always used a situation to his advantage, but he wasn’t taking advantage of
Meredith
. “We have a deal. You get something out of it, too, and I wouldn’t even have the divorce to use as leverage if you hadn’t allowed the papers to get filed.”

Suddenly, he felt like a heel. He didn’t like the thought of Meredith being disappointed in him, either. He hadn’t always been so cold, but it was a necessity in the cutthroat world of fashion.

Nice guys finished last. And they didn’t manage hostile mergers or win CEO spots away from their conniving sisters.

She strangled over a disgusted sound and leaned in, indignation sweeping through her expression. “There you go again. This marriage is not all my fault. You stood in front of that Elvis impersonator with me.
You.
I didn’t drag you to the altar. If I recall, it was your idea.”

He stepped back, away from her prodding finger, away from her anger and, most important, away from the truth. “Yeah, I can man up and admit it. I made a mistake in the heat of the moment.”

She advanced on him again, charging into the space he’d created and bringing her sensual onslaught with her. “I’ll say. And that moment was smoking hot. You can pretend that this—” she waved stiff fingers in a circle around Jason’s tuxedoed torso “—is the place you were trying to get to, but I know the real you. The one you hide under this rigid CEO exterior. The man under there doesn’t have a problem acknowledging his passion. He owns it, takes what he wants. That’s the man I spent two years dreaming about.”

Mesmerized, he watched the flicker in Meredith’s gaze flare into something far hotter than any sane man should touch.

“Yeah? What do you dream about?”

That had not been what he’d meant to say. He cleared his throat, but it was too late. It was already out there.

“Your mouth.” She reached up and traced it with her index finger, and his flesh sparked under her touch. “Your abs. The way you sigh after you come. The way my fingers look in your hair when you’re under me.”

Her fingers wound through his hair in a full-on demonstration. His body strained to close the small gap between them, begging to feel her one last time.

She was trying to goad him into losing his careful guard. It wasn’t going to work. “I thought you didn’t want to complicate this with sex.”

“It’s already so complicated it couldn’t get much worse.” Her smile turned wicked. “And I said that before you chased me back to my hotel room. Are you sure
you
know what you want?”

The smartest thing to do would be to keep his mouth shut. Because she’d called it—his middle name should be Mixed Signals. “Yeah. I know exactly what I want.”

“Me, too. I want that man,” she murmured. “Inside and out. I want to know it wasn’t all a lie, that I don’t misremember how amazing we were together. I want you inside me and to be so far from disappointed, I forget the meaning of the word.”

The undisguised longing in her voice, in her touch, found the answering longing inside him. He hadn’t realized it was there, waiting for her to unearth it, but it flared to life nonetheless. And in that moment, he wanted to give her what she wanted, to erase her disillusionment and embrace the devil-may-care Jason of Vegas again.

Would it really be so bad to indulge in a few hours of Meredith, burn it out of their systems and go back to real life tomorrow?

Yes, it would. Because he wasn’t that man she remembered. That wasn’t the real Jason Lynhurst. He’d only dabbled on the wild side because he’d been so messed up. Only that unique combination of confusion and Meredith could have enticed him to act so unlike himself and so much like his father.

Meredith’s odd sway over him would only intensify if he gave in now. There would be no going back to real life once he tasted her particular brand of recklessness again. And then she’d use every bit of his weakness to her advantage. That he could never allow—he had a vision for the future of Lynhurst Enterprises and it did not involve Meredith. It would be unfair to her to let her believe he could be the man she seemed to want.

“It was a lie,” he said. “You misremember. We can never get Vegas back and it would be madness to try.”

He nearly choked on the words and immediately wished he’d said something else, anything else. Because he knew good and well it wasn’t a lie and she didn’t misremember.

Worst of all, he wanted it, too. Wanted to indulge in a woman who made him feel, made him forget. An oasis of connection and understanding far removed from the ugly battles playing out across the remnants of Lynhurst Enterprises.

She banked the hurt in her gaze and nodded. “See ya. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”

* * *

Meredith gave up on the idea of sleeping at around 2:00 a.m. Tomorrow—correction,
today
—already promised to be brutal since she’d spend hours in Allo’s torture chamber. But coupled with no sleep and Jason’s thorough rejection, she might as well get on a plane back to Houston.

Surely a conversation with her father in which she admitted her mistake in Vegas and begged his forgiveness would be easier than the ups and downs of Jason’s deal. The worst part was she’d known what would happen last night when she went for broke. But she’d done it anyway because she couldn’t stop herself.

She yearned for the thrill Jason evoked when he slid into her and the kinship they’d shared. Then there was the communication and affinity—they’d had it all once upon a time, and for some reason, he refused to acknowledge how great the two of them naked had been.

But what if the Jason she couldn’t forget never surfaced? Hanging on to that fantasy was the surest path to never moving on.

She slogged through the day, earning cutting remarks from Allo without even trying, a real bonus that went well with her mood. Avery never contacted her, and in an apparent attempt to give her what she’d asked for, Jason didn’t call, either.

When she got back to her hotel, she booted up her laptop in an attempt to distract herself from the day, and an email from her mother put the cap on a supremely awful day.
Thought you might want to see this
, the note said and included a link to an online article titled:
Miss Texas—Where Is She Now?

Dread knotted Meredith’s stomach as she clicked the link. Exactly as she expected, a professional head shot from her pageant days filled the screen alongside the photos of two other women. She recognized Brandi MacArthur and LaTisha Kelley easily. Brandi had handed over her crown to Meredith when she won. And the following year, Meredith had handed her crown to LaTisha.

Kicking off her heels, Meredith sank down in the plush chair, determined to read every word on the screen.

The article wasn’t a smear job or a puff piece. It was a well-written factual chronicle of the three women’s lives since their respective reigns ended. Brandi was now a neonatal neurosurgeon working at the Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, married to David Thomason, the renowned heart-transplant specialist. LaTisha had taken a different path, receiving a master’s degree in theology and then signing on to become a missionary in Haiti. The writer expanded on their achievements in several glowing paragraphs, highlighting that the Miss Texas pageant had opened doors for these ladies, which they had walked through to enormous success.

Meredith’s sole mention painted a sad but true picture—“Meredith Chandler-Harris works for her sister and is a second-generation Miss Texas. Her mother, Valerie Chandler, won the title in the eighties.”

The article was kind enough to leave out the part where Meredith hadn’t achieved a tenth of what her fellow title-holders had. But it was implied quite well.

Her mother hadn’t sent the link to be malicious. She probably saw nothing wrong with the fact that of the two lines devoted to her daughter, fifty percent were about Valerie. As a major contributor to the Houston social scene, her mother thought nothing of seeing her name in print.

She also didn’t have a shred of ambition. But Meredith, unlike her mother, had always wanted to be more than a wife to someone important. The Grown-Up Pact was supposed to help Meredith figure out what she might be good at besides smiling and traipsing down a runway.

Instead, she’d left Vegas hung up on a man who didn’t long to recreate their connection the way she did. He’d rather lie about whether it had existed in the first place.

Perhaps part of her problem with not embracing her inner adult lay in being so stuck in the past. She sighed. She should really let Fantasy Jason go, get Real-Life Jason’s signature on the divorce papers and move on.

Her cell phone beeped, and when she tapped open the new text message, her brow arched. It was from Jason, with the simple question:
Thai for dinner?