Glitter on the Web (32 page)

With one dismissive up-and-down glance with those icy blue eyes, I had a feeling her appraisal of me wasn’t as generous.

Eli pulled her into a hug. “Hey, Mom.” She hugged him back, though barely.

“Too busy to get a haircut to visit your mother?” she said, almost teasingly, but I sensed the critical undercurrent.

“But if I cut my hair, you wouldn’t have anything to criticize,” he shot back just as playfully. That, too, had its own critical undercurrent.

Wayne Huntington slapped his hand into Eli’s. He was a rugged man, who wore a full beard and flannel. In Denver he was a noted plastic surgeon, who ran a prominent clinic with a notable clientele. In Fairplay, he was just another mountain man, ready to cut his own lumber, clear his own land and shoot stuff.

Eli turned to me. “This is my girlfriend, Carly Reynolds.”

Daphne turned to me. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she purred as she reached for a limp handshake. “Welcome to our home. Eli normally doesn’t bring his girlfriends along with him, but normally he doesn’t have them long enough to take them on a family vacation.” She laughed at her own joke. Normally I might have laughed with her, but I could tell from the look on Eli’s face her comment had cut him.

Though what she said wasn’t necessarily untrue, I wasn’t sure if he deserved that.

He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “Carly’s a keeper.”

Daphne offered another smile. “I suppose we’ll see about that, won’t we? How long are you staying?”

“Two weeks,” Eli said. “If you’ll have us.”

“Don’t be silly,” she dismissed, though oddly she didn’t answer the question. She turned back to me. “This is my husband, Dr. Wayne Huntington.”

I reached for his hand, which was a much firmer handshake. He still gave me the once-over appraisal, and I had dealt with enough doctors in my life to know exactly what he was thinking. For a guy like this, I was a fixer upper. To ice the cupcake, he said, “We’re so happy to have you. Hopefully you will be able to keep up with us. We get pretty active out here in the country.”

I felt Eli’s arm tighten around me, so I shot him a glance. Just like my assessment of his mother’s biting comment, Eli didn’t care much for his stepdad’s innuendo, either. These were things we could say to each other, but now that we were a couple, we were bound by our phony baloney relationship to prevent anyone else hurting us in the same way.

He may have been angry with me, but that was the exact moment that it became he and I against everyone else.

This fortified front continued when Beth Huntington, Wayne’s sixteen-year-old daughter from his first marriage, joined us on the porch. Like Daphne, she was short and petite, and she dressed to be cute—which, of course, she pulled off effortlessly. She wasn’t awkward like Gabby. All her curves had landed in all the right places, which seemed to impress the young man at her side.

Michael Forrester was Beth’s boyfriend, and it was clear he was completely smitten with her. My heart broke for Gabby, who had admitted to me she had a crush on this boy. I knew it had to hurt that he was cozying up to her “perfect” sister Beth instead. Every touch. Every kiss. It was an arrow right through Gabby’s heart, an indictment on her imperfections and how she fell short.

It was no one’s fault really. Of course Michael would want someone like Beth. He was older, which I assumed meant seventeen or eighteen. He had urges that someone closer to his age could fulfill.

Gabby just fell for the wrong person. It happened all the time.

But knowing that and dealing with the pain of unrequited love were two different things.

“Since you brought your girlfriend, we thought we’d let Beth bring someone along as well. The more the merrier, right?”

Eli’s smirk deepened. “Hopefully Carly and I will at least be able to share a room.”

Daphne met his glance. “Of course. Michael and Beth share a room all the time.”

I groaned inwardly. No wonder Gabby was having trouble.

“You really think that’s appropriate?” Eli questioned.

Wayne shrugged. “We were all kids once. We know that we can do our best to keep you apart, but you’ll find a way to do what you want to do anyway. At least this way there are no secrets. Everything is out in the open.”

Again Eli squeezed my shoulders. “As it should be,” was all he said.

“Go on up to your room. Unpack. Get comfortable. I’m sure you’ll want to freshen up from the trip,” she added, looking at my casual wear as if it wasn’t good enough for her $700,000 cabin. Eli was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, but I was the one who was subtly encouraged to change.

Given Wayne wore flannel and jeans, while Daphne was flawless in a sundress, heels and full makeup, I could tell this was the standard they set. Men could be rugged, manly and dirty.

Women were part of the natural decorations.

Eli led me into the spectacular log cabin, which sat on 10 private acres along a backdrop of towering pine trees, where wildlife like deer meandered across the meadow just yards away from the house.

The inside of the cabin was just as impressive as the outside. It had tall beamed ceilings, relying on the natural pine wood and the stone accents, like the fireplace, to set a rugged but regal tone. The fine furniture was all natural, either in deep, rich leather or pine wood. Everything had a decorator flare that walked the line between luxury and rustic.

Eli led me upstairs to our room, with warmly paneled walls, deep hunter green carpet and vaulted ceilings. From the window I could see the snow-capped mountains. It was a breathtaking view I had to instantly stop to admire. Eli paused behind me. “That’s Mt. Lincoln,” he said as he pointed to it. “At an elevation over 14,000 feet, it’s the eighth highest summit of the Rocky Mountains.”

My eyes met his. He was talking about mountains, but somehow I knew he was calling a truce. I smiled, to show him I accepted it. He smiled at me for the first time in a week.

We both changed into something more suitable for dinner, before joining his folks downstairs for some conversation over wine and cheese. I sat next to Eli on the love seat, and he wrapped a protective arm around me, as if to shield me from barbs from the enemy.

Daphne decided to get down to brass tacks. “So tell us the truth, Eli. Is this relationship real, or just a sham to keep selling records?”

The question was so direct that I nearly choked on my wine. Eli merely pulled me closer. “It’s as real a relationship as I’ve ever had,” he said softly. “Why do you ask?”

“You have to admit that you’ve never dated anyone like Carly before,” Daphne responded. She didn’t even look at me. “And we all know your songs were written to fill a demand. You don’t really mean the things you sing.”

I gulped hard before I placed the glass on the table. “There’s a little truth in every lie,” Eli told them.

Daphne conceded that point with a slight nod. “So how did you two meet? What was the spark that set it off?”

“We met at the office,” Eli filled in. After months of answering this question, it was automated response by this point. “The spark was that she couldn’t stand me. I couldn’t impress her, and that was a new challenge for me.” He glanced back at his mother. “Well, almost new.”

Her eyes narrowed. She finally turned to me. “What changed your mind about Eli?”

This was a loaded question. I knew what my answer should be, and I knew what my answer was. That they were getting closer and closer together as the months went by only confused me. I wasn’t happy about it, but had to sell the fact that I was. Worse, I could see in my peripheral vision that Eli was watching me intently for my answer, and he was the one person on the whole entire planet I didn’t want to admit any of this to. There was no way to come out a winner in this. “He is a lot more three-dimensional than I originally thought. Like you, I thought he didn’t mean any of the things he sang. I thought he was just an opportunist, looking for a way to cash in on a trend, that he didn’t care how it might affect others if the truth was ever revealed.”

“What changed your mind?” Daphne asked again.

I spared him a glance, and nearly lost myself in those endless blue eyes. “I spent time with him. There’s more to him than people can see. You see it in the quiet moments, when there’s no one around to impress. It’s in the way he looks after his sister, or the way he loves his cat. I don’t even think Eli himself knows how great he can be.”

Daphne chuckled. “My son has never lacked confidence, Miss Reynolds.”

My eyes met hers. “Confidence, no. He knows what he can do and he knows it’s special. He’s got an iron-clad ego, that’s no secret. But he has the ability to be better than great. He can be extraordinary. He can be the kind of man who can take care of someone when they’re sick, or herd an entire group of kids all over Disneyland, making every one of them feel special. He can say something uplifting to some outcast in pain, and they walk away feeling like they’ve finally been seen, heard and appreciated. What he does is important. Watching him figure that out has been amazing. Your son is a game-changer. And these months together have been priceless.”

I could feel Eli watching me, perhaps weighing how much of what I said was true.

“You’ve certainly been positively affected by the relationship,” she agreed. “A million-dollar modeling contract for someone who would normally be overlooked by the media. Dating someone famous certainly has worked out in your favor.”

“She deserved that break,” Eli told them, as if he, too, sensed the criticism. He defended me much in the same way I defended him, only there was no way in the world I could tell if he meant the things he said, or just needed to stick it to his mother. He held me tight, and watched me with those unreadable eyes, as he said the things I never, ever thought Eli Blake would ever say. “She’s beautiful. More beautiful than she knows. She’s sexy. I find myself staring at her for hours, wondering how I missed it before. She’s fearless. She doesn’t take any shit, from me or from anybody else,” he added pointedly as he looked back at his mother. “She deserves every good break and more.”

Daphne’s face broke apart in a tolerant smile, as if she didn’t believe a word of what we said, but she wasn’t going to challenge it either. “I guess there’s nothing more to do than to get to know each other,” she said.

Why did that sound like a threat?

The evening was filled with subtle little chides that came out sounding like playful jokes, but had an edge to them. This was particularly true when Gabby joined us. It was like she was a different girl altogether. Instead of being cheerful and outgoing, she was guarded, bordering on shy. Now that Eli had been trained to pick up on all the unspoken cues, I watched him take it all in as he listened to how both Wayne and Daphne, and even Beth, chipped away—perhaps unknowingly—at Gabby’s self-esteem.

“Are you really going to eat that?”

“Looks like your eyes are bigger than your stomach. You might want to put some of that back.”

“Your clothes are looking just a little snug. And I just bought you that outfit.”

With every criticism, Gabby’s spirit wilted just a little more. Eli digested all of it, with unspoken glances my direction, to see if I saw it too.

Oddly, whenever the Huntingtons would chip away at Gabby, Michael tried to say something to help her feel better. It was a nice thing to do, but I knew it only exacerbated the crush. No wonder she was crazy about him. He was the only one who treated her like she was special.

I knew this was a dangerous precedence for her family to set. There were some not-so-nice guys out there who might prey upon her desperation to belong, to be loved.

I knew from experience.

Michael was a nice guy, which would only make the fall that much harder. While Gabby struggled to figure out if she was okay or normal, his ultimate rejection, when he was such a nice guy, might reinforce all these negative mindsets.

Eli kept an eye on that too.

He was quiet as we went to bed that first night. We took turns changing in our own private bathroom, before we settled under the hand-stitched quilt on the smaller, queen-sized bed. He turned towards me. “How did you know, Carly?”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters a lot,” he corrected gently. “How did you know?”

I couldn’t even look at him. “I told you. I’ve seen it happen before.”

He read what went unspoken beneath that as well. He slid his hand down my arm until it tangled with my fingers. “I’m so sorry,” was all he said.

I nodded and turned away from him, facing the other direction before any traitorous tears fell. He scooted closer, gathering me in his arms, and the dam burst anyway. I sobbed softly as he held onto me, hugging me tight. He didn’t say anything. He simply planted kisses against my hair as we rode the storm together.

That night I didn’t dream at all.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

Eli was nowhere to be found the next morning when I woke up. My eyes peeled apart, crusty and swollen. I looked as if I had I had spent the whole night embroiled in some kind of epic battle.

If only anyone knew.

I dragged myself to the bathroom, where I tried to wash away some of the damage. My eyes were puffy, so I splashed my face with cold water. I was completely mortified by my little breakdown. To have one at all was bad enough. That Eli Blake had to see it…well…

That was going to be hard to live down.

I dressed in more casual wear, even though I knew Daphne would likely disapprove. The way I saw it she already disapproved of me. I wasn’t about to twist myself into a pretzel to try and impress her. It wasn’t my job to change her mind, especially since that was something she made up long before I even got there.

Granted she was right. I was a fake girlfriend that Eli was simply using to save face. Of course she would know that. He was her son. His behavior surely wouldn’t come as any surprise to her. And she wasn’t afraid to let me know that.

Likewise I wasn’t afraid to show her that I didn’t care what she thought of me. I dressed in shorts and my FFF T-shirt and headed downstairs.