Let Me Be the One (19 page)

Marc wandered in as she put the second batch in the oven. “How’s it coming?” he asked.

“Fine.” She focused on moving cookies from the pan to the cooling racks.

“Cookies, huh?” Marc picked up the whiskey bottle.

“Cookies.”

He put down the whiskey bottle. “They look good.”

“They’re still too hot.”

Brian yelled at her to go away. And he broke a bottle. Brian.

“What’s going on?” Ty asked, strolling in. He leaned over the bowl of dough. “Can I just eat the raw cookies?”

“If that’s what you want. I’m not your mother.”

Marc winced.

Ty laid his head on her shoulder. “I’ll let you be my mom if you want to be.”

Marc growled.

“Maybe later, Ty.” Suzi slipped away from them. “I’m gonna go get some work done. I’m probably falling behind on a deadline somewhere. Take those out when the timer goes off or the house will burn down.”

“Don’t go hide.” Ty grabbed her hand. “You know he’s just being an asshole. Tomorrow, he’ll be guilty and beggin’ your forgiveness. You know what you need? You need to get drunk.”

“I don’t drink,” Suzi protested.

“Exactly, it’ll be easy,” Marc said. On the way out of the kitchen, he grabbed the whiskey bottle. “Come on, we’ll play a game. You love to play games.”

“The last time I got drunk, I propositioned somebody,” Suzi pointed out.

Marc chuckled. “I solemnly swear if you proposition me while you are drunk, I will not take you up on it.”

They were not going to take no for an answer. They wanted to see her drunk. It might not be so bad.

“Me, too. I will not turn you down— er, take you up to my room—ah—on it. On it. I will not take you up on it.” Ty draped his arm around her shoulders. “Seriously, I promise. I will be a perfect gentleman.”

“Don’t strain yourself on my account,” Suzi muttered, allowing him to pull her toward the parlor.

Marc veered toward the liquor cabinet while Ty dragged her to the closet where the owner of the house kept a stock of board games. Half a dozen of them she didn’t recognize. On the bottom of the stack was Trivial Pursuit.

“You know all the answers to that one,” Ty said. “The point is to get drunk, not avoid getting drunk by being smart like a freak.”

“I don’t know all the answers, and it won’t take much for me to get drunk.”

Marc had collected three shot glasses and another bottle of whiskey and was headed their way.

“All right.” Ty winked at Marc. “Every time you get a wrong answer, you have to take a shot. Now, how do you play this game?”

Suzi rolled her eyes and explained the rules.

* * * *

Brian stared at the stars. He was hungry. Starved. But he didn’t have the courage to go into the kitchen to find food. Suzi might be there. Five-foot-three and a hundred pounds soaking wet, Suzette Miranda Bazian was someone to be feared.

It wasn’t her. It was her eyes. Fury masking shattered hurt. The fury he could handle. He’d earned that. The hurt, though. That had been like a knife to the chest. He’d forgotten she wasn’t like his other friends. She couldn’t take his foul mood. Hell, most of his friends couldn’t handle his foul mood right now. That’s why she was here. The guys in the band were ignoring him. The cook avoided him. Suzi had come here just to be nice to him.

Her being nice wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her in his arms, in his bed, in his life on a fixed, permanent basis. But she was still with that idiot Logan, and that didn’t seem likely to change. The whole plan three years ago when he pulled the trigger on his divorce was to wait until Logan screwed up enough that Suzi would leave him so Brian could catch her when she fell. She didn’t leave him after the sex video. Or after the multitude of times she called asking about this groupie and that groupie, and were they something to worry about? Nights, he lay awake and alone imaging how it would play out when she finally called and told him she’d left Logan. His grand plan to wait sucked. Tom Petty was right. Waiting was the hardest part.

He needed to apologize for being an ass because he’d run out of patience.

Dragging himself out of his chair, he went into the house and up the back stairs. It was late, but she never slept well when she was upset. She might be up writing a whole book or big sections of one, at least. Her door stood open, and the room was empty. He ventured in far enough to make absolutely sure she wasn’t hiding in a corner or something. Maybe she’d gone for a run. When she was upset, she ran, too. She could be out pounding the pavement. He wasn’t going to sleep until he’d spoken to her.

On the way down the front stairs, he heard Ty in the lounge. He sounded smashed. “That didn’t take mush.”

“Aw, she’s a lightweight. She was winnin’, too,” Marc answered.

Since there was only one woman in the house now the cook had gone for the day, he went that way instead of the kitchen. Suzi lay passed out on the parlor floor beside a Trivial Pursuit board. Marc and Ty slumped against the couch and a chair respectively. An empty bottle of whiskey sat between them, and Ty held a half full one.

“What are you two doing?” Brian demanded. Suzi had an overturned shot glass in her hand with whiskey soaking into the carpet.

“Protectin’ Suzi from you, ya asshole,” Marc snarled and then laughed.

“How much did she have?”

“Oh, please. She had like five shots. She knows too many of these answers,” Ty snickered and took a swig from the bottle. “We should have made her take a shot for every one she got right.”

“Naw, she’d have been down hours ago, and she wouldn’t have had time to lord over us how smart she is.”

“Both of you should be beaten.” Brian knelt beside Suzi. He took the shot glass from her hand and pulled her upright. Her head lolled onto his shoulder.

“Boshten,” she slurred, waking up.

“Nope,” Marc said. “That’s another shot, kiddo.”

Brian lifted her off the floor. “No, it isn’t. It’s time for you to be in bed.”

“Now wait a minute.” Ty straightened, weaving. “We promised we would be good.”

“We promised. He didn’t,” Marc reminded him.

“Oh well, in that case, have fun.”

Brian shot him the evil eye as he started up the stairs. Suzi shifted in his arms, cuddling against him. “That’s right. You didn’t promise,” she said.

“Promise what?”

“They promised not to take advantage of me.” She traced her fingers along the neck of his T-shirt. “You didn’t promise.”

“I’m not going to take advantage of you.”
No matter how much I want to
.

“Why not?”

He made the mistake of glancing at her as he walked down the hall. Her drowsy, drunken brown eyes stared up at him with so much come-hither he wanted to press her against the wall and take her right here. Dodging into her room, he prayed he’d be able to escape this situation with some dignity. “Into bed with you.”

“Come on, Brian. Kiss me. Please.”

He tried to lay her down gently and back away, but she had his shirt in her clutches. “Let me go, Suzi.”

“Come on. You know you want me.” She pulled herself upright and draped one arm over his shoulder. “You’re the only one who doesn’t joke about it. Everybody else makes lewd comments, but not you. This is our chance. You could have me because I’m too drunk to stop you, and everybody knows I get horny when I’m drunk.”

He sat down before she pulled him on top of her, and then pried her fingers off his shirt, but her other hand had found its way to the base of his skull. “I don’t have a good excuse, though,” he told her. He struggled to take a deep breath. Being this close to her with her fingers tangled through his hair, he didn’t know how he managed to think straight. What had he done to deserve this? Oh yeah, he’d been an ass for three days that led to yelling at her today. Karma was a bad bitch with a nasty sense of humor.

Tomorrow, he was going on one of those castle tours with her. The next day they were going to do the Magical Mystery Tour in Liverpool. And the day after that, Sheffield. Or wherever else she wanted to go.

“Sure, you do.” She started nuzzling his neck. “You’ve been drinkin’ all day. We were just victims of circumstance.”

“Hey.” Brian grabbed her hand he’d just gotten out of his shirt and pulled it away from his fly. She’d gotten the button open before he realized what she was doing. Not only was she randy, she was an octopus. “Suzi, no. What would Logan say?”

Suzi laughed, the hot pulse of her breath swept across his skin. “I don’t care. What’s good for the gander should be good for the goose, too.” She licked his throat. “I can make you feel all better.”

He caught her shoulders and pushed her down on her back. Then he stopped. He could lean down and kiss her. A moment after, he could have her shirt off and be tasting her bare flesh. Even if he took time to close the door, he could be sampling her delights in a few seconds. And he could be doing it all night. On five shots, she wouldn’t sober up for hours, and by then the damage would be done.

Damage. For almost three years now, he’d been giving her advice on how to keep Logan. Overruling his own desire to destroy their relationship so he could be the one to help her pick up the pieces, he’d been helping her salvage it. “Suzi, you love Logan. If you wake up next to me in the morning, you’re gonna hate yourself.”
And me.

Suzi groaned. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I got fucked? And the amount of testosterone floating around this house is ridiculous. I’m gonna have to spend a solid week in bed with Logan to work it off. It might kill him.” She reached for him again, but he caught her hand before she connected. Thwarted, she licked her lips. “You could be saving Logan’s life.”

“I’m afraid it’s a chance I’ll have to take.” He kissed her hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“Aw shit,” Suzi muttered.

Brian stood and threw a blanket from the foot of the bed over her. “G’night.” He risked leaning over to kiss her forehead. When she didn’t make another grab for him, it felt enough like kissing his daughter good night that the room stopped spinning.

Pulling the door closed behind him, he sighed having escaped his own lion’s den. She was hot, she was randy, and she wanted him. How stupid did he have to be to walk away?

No, not stupid. Tomorrow morning there would have been screaming and tears. She’d have left within the day. The other guys in the band would forgive him for being a greedy bastard, but he’d still have to live with himself.

Then he noticed the door down the hall standing open. Ty’s room. Ty, who had promised not to take advantage of Suzi. Ty obviously took that promise seriously. Brian walked down the hall, calling a cheery good night on his way past the door.

When Suzi opened her eyes the next morning, they were sticky. Her brain throbbed with the effort of focusing.
Play a game
, they’d said.
It’ll be fun
, they’d said.
You need a drink to relax
, they’d said.

Delinquents, both of them.

But this was her bedroom. How did she get up here?

Brian. Oh Jesus, Brian. And she distinctly remembered asking him to kiss her. Suzi groped under the blanket. T-shirt. Shorts. Everything still intact. Plus, she was alone. She was alone, wasn’t she?

She sat up, and the room lurched around her. The door was closed, and there wasn’t another soul in sight. Okay, apparently Brian brought her up here, refused to kiss her, and left her here to sleep. Hopefully, all she’d done was ask him to kiss her.

Stumbling across the room to the bathroom, she drank two glasses of water before stripping down and stepping under the shower. What was the likelihood that all she’d done was ask him to kiss her?

Well, she’d only been drunk four times in her life. The first time she’d been with friends in her dorm room at school, and she’d tried to seduce her very straight roommate. The second time she’d been with Logan, and he said the sex had been fun. She didn’t remember too well. The third time she’d been with Logan and Greg in Portland. What she did remember of that, she wished she didn’t. She never had planned to be that kind of girl. And last night, she’d gotten drunk with Marc and Ty and, at the very least, had asked Brian to kiss her.

“Crap,” Suzi muttered. She shut off the water, dried off, and stepped out. Checking herself over in the mirror, she decided it could have been worse. Much worse. She could have needed to explain to Logan how she ended up in a compromising position with Marc and Ty in the scattered remains of a Trivial Pursuit game. They’d promised to behave, but Logan had told her that when she was drunk, her persistence bordered relentless. Now that would have been something for the resume.

Pulling on some clothes, she brushed her hair and then braided it. No run today.

In the kitchen, Betsy was cleaning up from last night’s dinner. “Good morning, Miss Suzi. How are you this morning?”

“Little headache. Too much to drink last night.”

“I have a remedy. Would you like it?”

Suzi rubbed her forehead. “Is it worse than the headache?”

Betsy laughed. “Could anything be worse?”

“Okay, I’ll try it.” Suzi made some toast and sat down at the table, trying not to watch what Betsy was putting in the blender.

Marc walked in and stole one of her pieces of toast.

“Good morning, Mr. Marc. Do you have a headache as well this morning?” Betsy glanced at Suzi.

“No.” Marc grinned. “Does kitten have a hangover?”

Suzi growled at him, and he put his arm around her shoulders, still munching on her toast.

“Breakfast?” Betsy asked.

“Yes, thanks Betsy.” Marc said to her, “Admit it, you had fun.”

“I would have had more fun if you two hadn’t started cheating.”

“Cheating? We weren’t cheating.”

Suzi glared at him. “You weren’t even reading questions off the cards. You were asking me random shit about sports.”

“The point was to get drunk, not answer a bunch of silly questions.” He gave her a squeeze and let her go so he could finish her toast.

Betsy set a glass full of purple slush in front of Suzi.

Bracing herself, Suzi picked it up and drank it as quickly as possible. It was vile, horrible, and grotesque, but better than the headache. Ty waltzed in and had a quick conversation with Betsy about breakfast before sitting across the table from her and Marc.