I Brake For Bad Boys (31 page)

The rough, trembling honesty in his voice went straight to her heart, and her heart took over in an instant. Needing him, wanting him. All of him: his strength, his his confusion, his anger. His unknown past, his untold secrets, whatever they were. Hers, damn it. All hers.

She wrapped herself around him. Squeezed him. “No,” she whispered. “Don't leave me.”

His breath escaped in a sob of relief. “Then stop playing games with me. I can't take it. Deal with me straight.”

“That goes for you, too,” she said.

They gave each other one last searching look. He nodded. “Deal.”

He gathered her close and breathlessly tight into his arms, nudging and arranging her until her her legs were twined around his. The look in his eyes made her want to cry. He kissed her, with heartbreaking intensity as his body surged into hers, and she accepted him.

All her tricks and games and efforts to protect herself seemed so vain and foolish now. Her heart was laid bare. There was no hiding from the fierce attention in his penetrating eyes. No denying the power he wielded over her. His very existence excited and moved her. His beautiful body, his strength, his restless intelligence, his sensitivity.

And his passion was like a key to a lock, opening up a whole new secret world inside her. A tidal wave began to gather, building higher and higher. They cried out together as it broke. It swept her under, and she felt him following her. Joined with her.

Reality crept back slowly. They were glued together by sweat, hearts pounding. He had gotten what he wanted. There was no going back. Too late now to put up walls or close doors. She'd taken her chances coming up here. She'd rolled her dice.

And she'd lost everything to him.

She dissolved into silent tears, her face against his chest.

He clutched her, alarmed. “God. What is it now? Did I hurt you?”

“Just shut up and just hold me,” she snapped.

His arms tightened fiercely. “OK,” he said. “That I can do.”

A small eternity later she calmed down, and Jonah disentangled himself. He went out on the deck, tossed the plastic cover off the hot tub, and checked the water. Nice and hot against the evening chill. He flipped on the deck light to its lowest setting, a dim golden glow no more obtrusive than candlelight, and went back inside.

Tess was a lump under the covers and two shadowy eyes that regarded him solemnly.

“You OK?” How embarrassing that he should have to bleat out his insecurity by asking her that question, over and over.

“I don't know,” she said. “I don't even know myself around you. All my demons wake up and go nuts.”

“Oh.” He could think of nothing comforting or cheerful to say to that. It didn't sound very goddamn promising. “Uh, sorry.”

“It's not your fault,” she told him.

“I guess that's a relief.” He twitched the comforter off her and tugged on her hand. “Come try out my hot tub.”

She sat up. “Oh, please. Is this another one of your tricks? Next you're going to show me your etchings.”

He pulled her up off the bed. “Actually, no. To be honest, I'm kind of freaked out myself. I want to just sit in hot water and mellow out for a while.”

Tendrils of steam rose up, illuminated by the underwater lights. They sank slowly down into the hot water, and silence spread out between them, becoming more vast and heavy with each passing minute. He took a deep breath, and forced himself to break it.

“It was perfect between us. Why are you so upset?”

She twisted her hair up into a knot, her eyes downcast. “Perfection is impossible,” she said quietly. “No one knows that better than me. I want to hang on, but I know that I can't.”

Vague, restless anger churned in his gut. “Why not?”

She looked away. “Because I can't. Things end. It's the nature of life.”

Her bleak word foretold doom for this fragile, beautiful thing budding between them. She was jinxing it. It made him feel panicked.

“It doesn't have to end,” he said. “I certainly don't want it to.”

Her gaze snapped up to him. “Don't you dare dangle that in front of me, like all the other bait,” she said, her eyes blazing with unexpected anger. “The foot rub, the chocolate soufflé, the queen of the universe. I won't bite this time. I may be stupid, but I'm not
that
stupid.”

“Do not ever let me hear you call yourself stupid again,” he said.

She sat up, her nipples just clearing the waterline. “Do not scold me,” she said, enunciating very clearly.

They stared at each other, at a blind impasse. He'd never felt so baffled, so helpless. “What's happening, Tess?” he asked. “Tell me what I'm doing wrong. Tell me what you want from me.”

Her eyes squeezed shut. “I don't know,” she whispered.

He stared at her beautiful, averted face, praying to find the right formula not to fuck this up. He was starting to need her. Her sweetness, her sharpness, her beauty. She made him feel so alive. And the more he wanted her, the more she seemed determined to slip away.

“Well, I know exactly what I want from you,” he said rashly. “I already know what I want to cook for you, what I want to show you, how I want to touch you. I want to help you open your studio, too. I'll do a business plan for you—”

“Jonah—”

“Let me finish. I can give you double the money I was planning to give you this weekend right away. If that's not enough, then I can—”

“Don't be ridiculous!” She jerked back, horrified. “I can't take money from you! What would that make me?”

“Get real. You turned down paying work to come up here. I was the one who seduced you and turned everything upside down. You're entitled to that money. Call it a start-up loan if you insist, but—”

“Jonah. Not one more word.”

The coldness of her voice stopped him.
Shit.
He'd bombed again.

“I can do this on my own,” she said. “I don't need anybody to rescue me. I am not a child. Or an idiot.”

He pushed his hair back off his forehead with a silent groan. Everything he said came out wrong, everything he did flew back in his face. It was like a bad dream. “I never meant to imply otherwise,” he said stiffly. “Please don't be offended.”

She hunched down in the tub, her arms wrapped across her chest. She looked so lost that his heart thudded painfully. He would offer her anything to make her smile again, anything. He stretched out his arms. “Please, Tess. Come here.”

She drifted toward him, her chin lifted. He ached to soothe the proud hurt in her eyes. “Come home with me tomorrow,” he urged. “Move into my apartment. I've got plenty of space. I want you in my bed. You can even have your own bathroom, if you want. I've got two.”

Her eyes went wide and startled. “Wow. That's bold.”

“Bold. Yeah. That's me,” he said. “Will you? Pretty please?”

She opened and closed her mouth. “But I . . . my roommate will be expecting . . . and I'll need my clothes—”

“To hell with your clothes,” he broke in. “I'm going to buy you a new wardrobe, anyhow. Enough of those ugly burlap dresses you wear, particularly if you're opening a business. You need stuff that—”

She sprang to her feet. Water sloshed into his mouth, blocking off the rest of his phrase,
“shows off how sexy and beautiful you are.”

She clambered out of the tub. “No way.” Her voice shook with anger. “I dress the way I dress, Jonah Markham. I am what I am, and to hell with you if it's not good enough.”

Oh, hell. He should have remembered. The clothes were a hot button, and he'd stomped all over it. He reached for her, but she wrenched her wet arm away from him with such desperate violence that he shrank back. “Tess, I'm sorry. I—”

“I mean it, Jonah. Don't touch me.”

He stared at her trembling back. “I can't believe this. Dealing with you is like walking through a fucking minefield. I can see what your ex's problem with you was, if you were always this hysterical and unreasonable. I guess I've got some goddamn high standards of my own.”

His shot met its mark, but the devastated look she shot back over her shoulder gave him no satisfaction at all.

In fact, it made him feel like five different kinds of shit.

 

 

Her clothes were scattered all over the house. She searched for them feverishly, pulling them on as she found them. This was worse than she had ever dreamed. Painful memories crowded through her mind: Larry gently suggesting a fitness trainer, to “help get rid of that puppy fat.” An image consultant, for her clothes. A makeup expert, to teach her to compensate for her beauty problems. A wine-tasting course. Diction classes, to get rid of that lingering California college girl flavor in her accent. Larry believed in investing time, money, and effort in one's greatest personal resource: oneself; and Tess's mother had applauded his efforts.
“It's good that you have someone who pushes you to be the best that you can be, honey. A mother can only do so much.”

Well, wasn't that the truth, and thank God for it.

She had to get out of here, before she started to sink into the cracks in the floorboards, the incredible shrinking Tess. Embarrassed to take up space, apologizing for the very air she breathed. She thought she had worked through these awful feelings and left them behind, but here they were, stronger than ever, and it was Jonah's face, Jonah's voice superimposed over Larry's. And that was a thousand times worse.

Jonah appeared at the foot of the stairs, watching as she broke down her massage table. He hadn't bothered to dry himself. He just stood there, naked, a puddle forming around his feet. The silent reproach in his shadowy eyes tore at her. She had to get away before she shrank too small to even see over the dashboard of her VW Bug. There seemed to be no end to how bad she could feel about this.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

He did not reply for a long moment. “Me, too,” he said finally.

It took over two and a half hours in the rain to get home, sniffling all the way. Trish turned away from the TV and regarded her with blank astonishment when she stumbled in the door.

“What are you doing back already?”

“It didn't work out.” Her voice was dull and flat.

Trish switched off the TV and stared at Tess with big, worried blue eyes. “Are you, um, OK?” she asked cautiously.

“Let me give you the short version, because I can't handle a full-scale debriefing right now. Did I earn four thousand bucks? No. Did I have sex? Yes. Was it good? Yes, it was so unbelievably good that it practically destroyed me. Do I want to jump off a bridge? Maybe.”

“Oh, dear.” Trish bit her lip. “No money, hmm? How about the start-up? What are you going to tell your mom?”

Trish let the massage table fall to the ground with a rattling thud. “I'll tell her what I should've told her all along. That it's none of her goddamn business. I'll find the money some other way, in my own good time. And I am never, ever going to let anybody push me around, ever again. Not my parents, not Jonah, not Jeanette, not even you, Trish.”

Trish blinked. “Not even me? That is some serious stuff, chica. I'm not sure whether to break out the champagne or dial 911.”

Tess's chin started to shake. “How about you just give me a hug?”

Trish almost fell over her feet rushing to her.

 

 

It was a damn good thing he had more important things to occupy his mind, he kept telling himself.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Right. The fuck-up with Tess looped endlessly through his mind, whenever he wasn't worrying about Granddad.

It was driving him nuts. He didn't need a woman like that in his life. Too much trouble, too oversensitive, too quick to take offense. Life was too short to spend it tiptoeing around her tender little feelings.

But she was so sweet, and funny, and sensual. He'd never had sex like that in his life. He was ruined for normal women.

His office staff were whispering and circling around him like he was a rabid animal. He kept calling the MMC, and slamming the phone down before it started to ring. He would have called her at home, if he had her number, but she wasn't in the book, and he didn't know the roommate's last name, and besides, why bother? She had his number. If she wanted to talk to him, she could call him anytime.

But she hadn't. She wouldn't. He had to get that through his thick skull, and let it go, and that left Granddad to worry about.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Days ticked into nights that ticked relentlessly back into days again.

Wednesday morning dawned. The day stretched out ahead of him, long and bleak. He had to sit through the surgery sharing the waiting room with his asshole cousins and their bitchy wives. Oh, it wasn't that big of a deal. He'd survive. Those clowns didn't make his life bad, they just made it stupid. He didn't have the energy to deal with stupidity.

Hah. Then why did he keep dialing the goddamn MMC?

Maybe he could just drop by today, and ask her to wish him luck. There wouldn't be any other friendly face to pat him on the back today, and he was going to sit in a hard plastic chair in a hospital waiting room, clutching an outdated
Field & Stream
magazine, facing his deepest fears today for God alone knew how many hours. It would be really nice to get a hug first. Just to have those strong, warm hands on him for a minute would soothe that jittery ache inside him. He had just enough time to go down to the MMC on the hour and catch her between clients before he headed to the hospital.

He had to get over himself. Granddad was an old man; he had to go sometime. Everyone did. Just not quite yet. Please, not yet.

He got there five minutes early, and was doomed to deal with the Martian receptionist. Great. As if he weren't going to get enough hostile glares from his cousins at the hospital today.

“She's booked all day. And she's with a client now,” the receptionist informed him, with a sugary, fuck-you smile. “And she can't bag somebody else's appointment for you, because Jeanette chewed her out for that last week. Big time. So don't even think it.”

He glanced at his watch, exercising all the self-control at his command. “Just tell her I'm here, please,” he said, rigidly polite.

The receptionist rolled her eyes and flounced into the back rooms. She came back moments later, with a long-suffering look. He grinned at her with all his teeth. She got very busy with her appointment book.

Tess came out a few moments later. Her hair was screwed into the most severe knot he had ever seen, and her face was pale, washed out by the white dress. Her rubber-soled shoes squeaked with every step. He glanced down at them. She'd either done a superhuman job getting the mud off, or she had more than one pair. They were snow white. As if the primeval sex in the forest had never happened.

Her face was just like her shoes. She had an it-never-happened expression: cool, polite, ever so slightly strained. With a professional, can-I-help-you-you-pathetic-bastard smile.

Dread gathered in his gut like an ice-cold stone. “Can I, uh, speak to you for a few minutes?”

“I have a client, Jonah.”

He clenched his teeth and he swallowed, resolved to see this through, one way or the other. “Please,” he said. “It's important.”

She sighed and circled the receptionist's desk. The
squeak-squeak-squeak
of her shoes was driving him nuts. She stood in front of him in the waiting room, in front of everyone. Arms crossed over her chest. Waiting. Her foot would tap, if she weren't so fucking polite.