July (Calendar Girl #7) (12 page)

Wes moved to the bar at the side of the room. He lifted the whiskey and I nodded. I’d need a drink to get through all of this. He took two tumblers and filled them with three fingers full of the amber liquid. Yep, it was going to be one of those nights. A straight confessional. I could only hope he wouldn’t crucify me for my sins.

He handed me the tumbler, and I took a sip. The liquor burned down my throat like those Hot Tamale candies, leaving an even thicker aftertaste that sizzled on the tongue and warmed the belly nicely.

“Did you sleep with him?” He sat in the chair opposite me. We were separated by a long, slim glass table. The distance he put between us, whether intentional or not, wasn’t lost on me. Didn’t matter. This is what needed to happen.

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. Not that he didn’t try.” I grinned, and he frowned. Okay, moving on. “Then before him was Tony Fasano.”

He cocked his head. “The food guy?”

That made me smile. “Yeah.”

“What did he hire you for?” This time when he spoke, it was a little lighter, carried less of that nervous weight.

“To be his fiancée.” I snickered and Wes cringed. “Best part is
why
he hired me.” I grinned.

The grin must have given Wes relief because he gave a half-hearted smile in return. “Why’s that?”

I pushed my feet under my booty and got comfortable, setting my glass on the arm of the chair. “In order to tell you that, I have to set the scene.”

Wes’s lips lifted into a crack of a smile and I thought that was definitely a tiny victory. “Okay, shoot.” He leaned back and took a swallow of his whiskey. I loved watching his neck and Adam’s Apple bob with the effort. Everything about Wes interested me, especially now that we were together. Hopefully together for longer than this conversation.

“After I arrived in Chicago, the house help put my bag in a room. It was a huge room, much bigger than I expected, even though Tony lived in a penthouse apartment in the city.” Wes didn’t say anything just waited for me to continue. “When the guy left me there with my luggage, I heard the shower running. You can’t imagine how freaked out I was knowing that I was in a room, probably the master bedroom and a guy I didn’t know, a stranger, was in the shower.” For a chick, this would be entertaining and funny. For Wes…not so much. His jaw clenched and he worked a nice grinding motion while I rushed to continue. “So he opens the door and this huge hulking dude is standing there in a towel and that’s when things get really interesting…” I tried to lead into the whammy but Wes just looked pissed off.

“I won’t hold my breath,” he gripped and I rolled my eyes.

“Well I stood there like a fish out of water, not knowing what to say and then out from behind him, another guy with a towel wrapped around his waist hugged my client. As in bare-chested hugging. As in they’d been in the shower…together.”

That’s when Wes gave me the full, beaming pearly whites. “He’s gay!”

“Don’t you read the news? Pay attention to the gossipmongers?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. I avoid that shit like the plague. It’s rarely based on truth, and usually, just ends up hurting the person they are featuring.”

“Anyway, to answer your question, Tony is gay. Been in a long-term relationship with an amazing attorney named Hector Chavez. Actually, during the month I was there, I became really close with Tony and Hector. More Hector than Tony for obvious reasons,” I winked.

“Obvious,” he mouthed.

I drummed my fingers against my leg and took a drink. “Then before Tony was Alec.” Remembering my time with Alec put that pit back in my stomach. I gave a piece of myself to Alec that month. A piece I never wanted back. Simple truth: I loved my filthy talking Frenchie, and I enjoyed being in his bed just as much. Not more than with Wes, but way up there on the list of great people to have sex with, same as Tai.

“And Alec was the artist,” he grumbled. How he knew that, I couldn’t recall. It’s possible that I mentioned Alec and our time together but Wes wasn’t giving anything away.

Pursing my lips, I looked away and down at my half-filled drink and took another large wallop of whiskey.

“You had a sexual relationship with him.” Wes asked in a way that wasn’t accusing, which I hoped meant it would be okay.

I nodded.

He shrugged and looked out at the setting sun. “But it was just casual, like Gina.”

The mere mention of that bitch’s name made the jealousy flags wave, the green-eyed monster sing, and the two-faced bitch shake hands with the Devil. “Alec was special. He means something to me.” I’d become defensive, not realizing I was showing my hand in a way I hadn’t been ready to deal with.

Wes inclined his head, leaned forward, and rested his elbows on his knees as he steepled his hands together under his chin. “Is that so? Special how?”

Tears pricked at the edges of my eyes. “Alec made me feel beautiful.”

“And I didn’t?” he challenged.

My hackles rose. “You did, but he made me feel like the Mia that everyone didn’t see, the same one I was with you, but not the rest of the world was okay to let out. Forced me to put down the mask and let the world in. I learned a very valuable lesson from Alec.”

“And that was?” His tone was hurt and scared.

“To love myself.”

Wes closed his eyes, inhaled, let out the breath and relaxed. “Mia, you have every reason in the world to love yourself.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t believe it. Not before Alec. Not before his art made me see what everyone else saw. Even though I was broken, was struggling in life, that I’d become an escort because my gambling, drunk father couldn’t hold his shit long enough to take care of his own debts, that I”—I slapped my chest”—“me, Mia Saunders, the waitress from Vegas, deserved more. I deserved happiness. Deserved love.”

“And I don’t give you that?” His voice cracked when he said it.

“You do, only at the time, Alec did too. In a way, he still does.”

Wes’s eyes hardened and then sadness swept across his features. “He loves you.”

I nodded and he closed his eyes. I was quick to respond. “Alec believes that you love the one you’re with for however long you’re with them. That it’s okay to take a piece of each other with you as you carry on throughout your life.”

“Does he want you back?”

And there was the jealousy on my normally laid-back, movie-making, surfer. “No. Not in that way. Alec loves every woman he’s with or he wouldn’t be with her. There are probably hearts all over the globe breaking daily because he’s loving someone new right this very moment.”

“That’s not how I operate. Mia. I’m a one-woman man when I commit, and I’m committing to
you
. To
us
. In order for this to work, you have to commit, too.” He cleared his throat. “And we have to get past all this history. Because, honey, that’s what it is. It’s history.”

I thought briefly of Gina, but I didn’t know the timeframe of when he was fucking her and making love to me. I only knew that now he wouldn’t be, and I believed him.

“That’s all the months. So you only slept with one man since we’ve been together?” His gaze was incredulous. He had reason to be so.

Closing my eyes I braced for it. “No. I was with Tai Niko, the male model, in Hawaii.”

“Hawaii? In May?”

“Yeah.”

“Like a one-time thing?” There was so much riding on my response.

My voice shook. “No.” I admitted because if anything, I wasn’t a liar. There was no way I was going to start out my first real relationship in years built on lies.

“Fuck!” he stood and started pacing, tugging on his hair and cursing. This seemed to be his go-to response.

“You don’t understand. Wes, it was just fun! He’s already with someone else right now. Someone he plans on marrying!” I yelled to get my point across. Wes was too important to not get past this.

Wes shook his head from side to side. His shoulder slumped once more. “Shit. Sweetheart, you’re killing me. You spent a month in paradise loving someone else?”

He used the word paradise to torture me. Playing fair was off the table. “And you spent the last how many months fucking Gina DeLuca, America’s goddamned sweetheart, hot throb, sexiest woman alive and I’m supposed to be okay with that?”

Like a shot from a cannon he backed up several steps and clasped the side-table behind him. “Mia, she means nothing to me!” He clutched at his chest. “Nothing!” he reiterated.

“I find that hard to believe. You’ve been
casually
fucking her for months.” I gestured with air quotes at the word casually. “You don’t think she believes it’s something more?”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t. I swear.”

“Whatever. Tell yourself that until you believe it. At least I can say that I’ve had my time with Alec and Tai and moved on from it. I’m in a different place. I. Love. You! I’ve never said those words that way to them. I may love them as friends, as people I care about who I know care about me in return, but I’m not
in love
with them. Monumental difference. I’ve never been
in love
with them. Can you say the same about Gina? Huh?” My voice was at a screech, and I knew I’d lost it when I stood up and threw my tumbler at the wall. It didn’t even break. No satisfaction what-so-ever. Damn Anton and his love for quality glassware.

I groaned and flopped back down to the couch and cradled my head in my hands. “This is why I never fall in love,” I said the words aloud and repeated them in my head, over and over like a chant.

Without warning, Wes pulled me up and turned around so that my knees hit each side of hips in a straddle.

“Don’t you ever regret loving me. That would hurt worse than anything you could ever say or do to me.” He cupped my cheeks. “Is that all? That everything. Two guys? One attacker, and a handful of new friends?”

I licked my lips and nodded.

“Okay, sweetheart.” He swallowed and admitted his own truths. “For me it was just Gina on and off. We can both move past this.” The words made my heart sing. Like a bedtime lullaby, I softened. Being with him, like this, in his lap, his hands caressing my sides made me that easy.

We can work with this.

My eyes filled again with tears. His thumbs swiped them away as they fell. “No, no, baby. Right now, from here on out, it’s just you and me. We put it out there and it’s done. I know what I need to know, you know that Gina is gone. G-O-N-E,” he repeated spelling it out. “Only thing left is this. You and me. Now we can build on it.”

I nodded and shoved my head into his neck inhaling that ocean and Wes scent I adored. “I love you.” I spoke the words to him so that he could hear them and know that I needed to hear them in return.

“Sweetheart, I love you too. Me and you. Just me and you.”

The trill of my cellphone woke me from the best dream. Wes and I were touring castles in Germany, hand-in-hand, a young couple very much in love. Until the ringing started. As soon as it stopped, it would start again.

Wes leaned over me, grabbed the offending object and answered it. Shit. No. Bad idea. It could be anyone. If it was one of my ex-clients, friend or not, it could go bad. Really bad, insanely fast.

He yawned. “Yeah, yeah. Okay, just a sec.”

“It’s Ms. Milan.” I rolled my eyes. Aunt Millie.

I grabbed the phone and held my hand over the speaker, muffling any sound. “She’s actually my Aunt Millie. As in, her name is Millie, not Milan.”

“Really?”

“Thought I told you that.”

“Pretty sure I’d remember that,” he leaned up and kissed the top of my shoulder. “I’ll go make us some coffee before you hit the studio today.”

I squeezed his bicep, caught him behind the head and kissed him sweetly. He grinned and pulled back.

I put the phone to my ear. “Aunt Millie. What on Earth would make you call so early? I mean, it has to be ridiculously early for you.”

I heard her fingers tapping in the background. “Yeah, yeah, haven’t gone to bed yet. You’ve ignored my calls all week, and I needed to give you the details on your next client since I’m heading out on vacation tomorrow. Want to make sure it’s booked in advance. This one is…I don’t know. Something’s off about it.” Aunt Millie had never sounded anything other than one hundred percent self-assured.

“What do you mean? Why is it off? The guy a creep?”

She sighed. “No, no, it’s actually that he’s too clean on paper. He’s been insistent that he reserve you as soon as you’re available. Checks in every couple weeks to see if you’ve had a cancellation. Which you haven’t, of course.”

“Okay, so he really wants me. Did he say why?”

“Apparently, he needs you to be his long lost sister. Something about a business landing in the wrong hands if he doesn’t produce his sibling for the investors, blah, blah. Her name popped up in some random agreement regarding the business, but he never knew her. They couldn’t really discern the scribbled name. It could be Mia Saunders or Mia Sanders, or Sonders with an “O” but you share the individual’s birthdate exactly and your name is Mia Saunders. Hence, why he had to have you.”

I plucked at my lips. “This is weird. Did you check him out?”

Millie gave an overwrought sigh that seemed to strangle my heart in the process. “Do you think I’d ever risk your safety?”

Laughter sat at the tip of my tongue, especially after the Aaron debacle, but she didn’t know much about that. Basically nothing. I’d hidden that whopper well. “I know you have my best interests in mind, Auntie. Sorry.”

She tsked and all was well again. Pushover. “He’s been thoroughly vetted. Young. Only thirty and he’s been at the helm of one of the top oil businesses headquartered in Texas.”

“Wow. Oil’s big money, right?”

Aunt Millie hummed. “Yesiree. I don’t know all the details aside from him being very anxious to meet you. And you’ll love this, too. He’s not an old. stodgy gentleman caller. He’s a hot cowboy, lives on a ranch and everything!” She paused. “Haven’t seen the extra twenty-five grand come through for our Latin-Lovah. Guessing you haven’t been having as much fun as I’d thought you would.”