InHap*pily Ever After (Incidental Happenstance) (55 page)

            “He cheated on
her?” Bo asked, shaking his head. “On Lexi? How could anyone do that? What did
Tia say? How did she find out?”

            “The way I
understand it, the girls were at the Intercontinental a few nights ago trying
on dresses for the wedding.” He paused, bowing his head. “Wow, it’s probably
going to be rough on her being in her best friend’s wedding when hers just got
cancelled.”

            Bo held his
face with the tips of his fingers and bowed his head. “I can’t even imagine,”
he said quietly.

            “No doubt.”
They were silent for a moment before Bo motioned for him to continue. “So
anyway, they were just coming out of the hotel when Lexi saw Ryan’s car pulling
up to the valet at the banquet entrance—he’s got a sweet Mustang with a custom
paint job, so it wasn’t hard to spot. The way Tia described it he climbed out
of the car and into the arms of another woman. He was supposed to be in New
York on some big project he was doing for work; Lexi even helped him pack his
bloody suitcase the night before, I guess, and then she watched him pull it out
of the boot and hand it to the valet.”

            “Son of a bitch,”
Bo growled under his breath as his hands balled up into fists.

             “Lexi
immediately called him and stood there watching while he lied to her—he told
her he was in The Big Apple, and that he might have to stay an extra night to
get the job done.” Dylan pressed lips together. “You’ll appreciate this,
though…she’s one tough chick. After she watched them walk into the hotel
together, she took her keys and added some of her own “custom touches” to his
celebrity paint job. Then, on Monday, she purged both their apartments while he
was at work. She followed him to some gym where he met the other woman, dumped
all his shit in the boot of his car, hung her engagement ring on the keychain
that held her set of keys to his car and apartment, and left them in the ignition.

            “She waited
for him to show up at the country club where they both belong and they had it
out. Needless to say, she broke it off and says she’s never going back. Knowing
Lexi, I believe her. I can’t see her taking back a guy who would do that to
her.”

            “No way,” Bo
whispered, and Dylan had a hard time interpreting whether he was agreeing with
the statement or contemplating something else entirely.

            “So, I guess
the whole wedding party will be sans dates,” Dylan said. “Tia told me that Lexi
has sworn off men forever. Max is hoping to hook up at the wedding, and I can’t
remember the last time Jessa had a serious relationship.”

            “Forever,
huh?” Bo asked absent-mindedly as Dylan took a swig and watched the myriad of
emotions once again play over Bo’s face.

            Dylan sat back
and let Bo absorb it all. The suspicion he’d planned to confirm was that Bo had
a real thing for Lexi—not just the innocent flirtation that he made it out to
be. He didn’t have any solid evidence of the crush; just a gut feeling, mostly.
Tia had told him that Lexi’s fiancé was jealous of the way she and Bo had
greeted each other the night they appeared together on
After Dark
,  but
Bo had known from the beginning that Lexi was engaged, and he too classy a
person to tread on someone else’s territory.

            “So she says,”
Dylan smirked, “but who knows? Maybe the right one just hasn’t come along yet.”

            Tammy appeared
with their burgers and looked at Dylan with a question on her face when she
took in Bo’s stunned expression. Dylan nodded her off, and she slipped away
without saying a word. He took a bite and chewed slowly, watching Bo’s eyebrows
do a dance as he processed everything. Finally, he leaned his elbows on the
table and exhaled a long breath.

            “So tell me,”
Dylan said sardonically, “this woman who’s ‘been on your mind all the time…’”

            Bo snapped
upright. “Damn it, Strummer Boy,” he said, obviously flustered. “This is like a
punch in the fuckin’ head.” He looked at Dylan wide-eyed. “How do you do it,
man?”

            “Do what?”
Dylan asked innocently, shrugging and turning up his palms.

            Bo slumped his
shoulders and rested his chin on his fist. “See right fuckin’ through me, man,”
he said simply.

            Dylan leaned
toward him and put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s the one, isn’t she?” he
asked. He didn’t need to elaborate any further for Bo to understand what he was
asking.

            “Hell, it’s
been her since I met her,” Bo admitted quietly, as much to himself as to Dylan.
In the back of his mind he’d known it all along, really, but he’d managed to
push it back for the most part, especially in light of the fact that she was an
engaged woman. The first night he saw her, standing there with that doe-like
look on her face backstage in Chicago---hell, had it really been almost a year
ago?—he’d been flooded with a feeling that he hadn’t experienced in a long
time. She lit up the room every time she walked into it, and had started more
than a few fires in his dreams over the past nine months.

            That memory
was crystal clear, probably because he’d gone over it in his mind at least a
thousand times since that day. He’d just walked into the common room; one of
his ‘things’ was that he was always the last one to leave the stage, waving to
fans and tossing drumsticks to random people in the audience. When he walked in,
he nearly ran over Dylan and Tia engaged in a smokin’ hot PDA. He made some
comment about how hot their exchange was and turned his gaze away from the
spectacle, which then fell on Lexi. She was a bundle of nervous excitement, and
he made some sort of off-hand comment about her being his birthday present.

            Dylan and Tia
were wrapped up in each other, so he’d made it his personal mission to make
sure Lexi was looked after. She’d started out with that doe-eyed look he often
saw in the eyes of their fans, but it didn’t take her long to jump into the
game. They’d started flirting almost immediately, and she matched him dig for
dig—which was no easy task. He was working out how he’d ask her for a date, but
at some point in the evening she’d dug in her purse for a lipstick or something
and pulled out her engagement ring. Bo had no idea why she hadn’t been wearing
it initially, but the moment he watched her slip it onto her finger, he felt
true disappointment. They’d kept up the flirting—in fact, nearly everyone rolled
their eyes at the two of them every time they were together during Lexi’s visit
to Europe—but he put on the brakes damn quickly and tried to put her out of his
mind. Fat fucking chance.

            He’d thought
of her so often that he’d made up some sort of lame excuse that brought him to
Chicago in the fall just so he could see her again. The hope was that he’d
discover that what they had was nothing more than a friendship, and that he’d
be able to reclaim his sleeping hours. Unfortunately, it hadn’t had the desired
effect. In fact, the moment she walked into the restaurant with Tia, his
stomach had started rolling and he found it hard to breathe. And for the next
several nights, he’d gotten no sleep at all.

             He finally
admitted it to himself the night of the
After Dark
fiasco in California,
when she innocently cuddled up next to him on the little loveseat in the hotel
room and pulled his arm around her. He had wondered later if she would still
have sat so close to him if she had even an inkling of how badly he’d wanted to
ravage her right there on the little couch. No matter how hard he tried to
concentrate on the show, his eyes kept drifting to the way her breasts pushed
together as she rested against him and the heat that drifted off her body,
consuming him with her intoxicating scent. It affected him to the point that
he’d had to pull a pillow into his lap to hide the blatantly obvious tool of
his wanton lust, a scenario he’d only recently remembered and still beat
himself up over. He’d made a complete ass of himself, and aside from an awkward
greeting at the engagement party, they hadn’t spoken since. He wondered if
she’d ever want to speak to him again.

            “I think I
knew,” Dylan said softly, “but I wasn’t sure if you really did. This sure puts
a whole different spin on things, doesn’t it?”

            “Does it?” Bo
asked, taking an angry bite out of his burger and giving it a more than
thorough chewing. “How so?” he asked around the mouthful. He swallowed, and
poured himself a second mug of Rainer. “We’re friends, D, and she trusts me
completely as a friend,” he said even as he wondered if it were still true.
“She sees me as flirty ole’ Bo; life of the party. Not as a potential
boyfriend. She’s probably really busted up over the whole situation, and
knowing her, she’s not going to be willing to jump into another relationship
any time soon. Especially not with someone like me…”

            “Someone like
you?” Dylan pressed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He tucked a
strand of hair behind his ear and leaned toward Bo. “At the risk of sounding
like a bloody woman, I can tell you that you are one of the most honest and
decent people I know, and you know I wouldn’t bullshit about something like
that. Lexi sees
you,
my friend,” Dylan said, “and she of all people
knows you’re the real deal. I’m not saying you should ask her to marry you
tomorrow or anything…I’m just saying that if you were looking for a chance, it
seems you might get one. Of course it’s all fresh right now, the whole break-up
thing, but in the future, who knows? If you really want something to happen…”

            “The life we
live isn’t conducive to lasting relationships, Miller…” He stopped. They’d had
this conversation at least a thousand times over the years, but things had
certainly changed for Dylan over the past nine months. He believed that he and
Tia would make it, and Bo was sure they would, too. They had something
incredibly special, and it was obvious to him, as someone who’d known Dylan for
a very long time, that he’d found the right person to spend his life with.
Could he dare to hope for the same kind of happiness? He spoke again as Dylan
raised his eyebrows at him, waiting for him to figure it out for himself.

            “Don’t even
say it, man,” Bo warned, taking another bite of the burger and chewing
contemplatively.

            Dylan
shrugged. “I wasn’t going to say a word. You’ll figure out what’s best for
you.” He bit off a chunk of his own burger and let Bo roll things around his
brain for a minute. “Oh, bloody hell—I have to say it,” he continued. “A
semi-wise man once told Tia, when she was feeling like a relationship between a
rock star and an average person couldn’t work, that it was pointless wasting
the time you did have worrying about time you might not get later, or something
to that effect. Those words helped her put things into perspective, and helped
get us through what might have been our last night together.”

            Bo smiled
wanly and shook his head. “I said that?”

            “You did.”

            “Ah, shit,
man, this is fucked up.”

            “Nothing
fucked up about it, mate. You think about it for a bit, work on getting over
your commitment issues, and follow your heart. I’ll be rooting for you, either
way.” 

            “I don’t have
commitment issues,” Bo said, but there was no force behind his words. Dylan
just looked at him hard, his head tilted to the side, until Bo surrendered.
“Maybe a little. But there’s reason behind it. Two ex-wives and a half dozen
ex-girlfriends…” He shook his head.

            “Bloody hell,
Bo, are you still worrying over the ex-wives? You were nineteen for the first
one, and the second one was a money grubbing whore…neither was your fault. God,
I’d like to think we’ve grown a little bit over the last decade, I can tell you
that. You can’t think that because those relationships didn’t work out that
nothing will.”

            “Damn. I don’t
even know what to think about the whole thing right now. But I think it’s
pretty safe to say that I won’t be sleeping much tonight.” He took another pull
of his beer and bowed his head. “I really want her to be OK.”

            “She’s a
strong woman,” Dylan stated. “It sucks, but if there’s anyone who can bounce
back, it’ll be her.”

            Bo smiled.
“Now that, I know,” he agreed, raising his glass for a toast. “Listen, Dyl,” he
added, “I don’t need to ask you to be on the down-low about this, do I? I
wouldn’t want her getting scared off because she heard I was something
different than what she thought before I get a chance to assess the situation…”

            Dylan smirked,
and raised one eyebrow. “So it comes full circle, does it? Lexi had to bear the
burden of hiding my and Tia’s relationship for months, and now you want me to
hide from Tia that you’ve got the hots for her best friend?” Bo looked
perplexed for a moment, but Dylan jumped back in. “Don’t worry; I’m just
messing with you, BoBo. It’s not any of my business, and it isn’t Tia’s either.
You don’t need to worry about me mentioning a word. I just find the whole thing
a little ironic, is all.”

            “Yeah. Here’s
to fucking irony,” Bo smirked, topping off their glasses with the last of the
beer.