CHAPTER
NINETEEN
RHETT wasn’t as drunk as everyone seemed to think he was. He could still walk a straight line and get an erection. That was all that really mattered. In fact, he already had an erection as the driver took them home, his hand making inroads into Shawn’s inner thighs through the soft fabric of her dress. Or rather, not making inroads. He kept getting caught in folds of slippery whiteness.
“Damn it,” he complained. “This dress is multiplying.”
“It’s drunk-groom-proof,” she said, and her tone was not particularly lighthearted.
Rhett was starting to get the impression that Shawn was not best pleased with him. “Honey, I am not drunk. I’m relaxed. Relaxed Rhett. Everyone always tells me I’m too serious, so here I am, letting my hair down.”
“I’ve never said that,” she said, though the corner of her mouth did turn up slightly.
“How is your head?” he asked, suddenly remembering she’d complained about it hurting.
“It’s a little better, but I just feel exhausted.”
“Let me massage your head.” Because there was no way he was letting her go to bed without a wedding bang.
Shawn shook her head. “Don’t worry about it.”
But she did undo the bun and let her hair down. It fanned around her face in some weird hair-sprayed clamshell effect. Rhett was suddenly glad he hadn’t come of age in the eighties. That hair was terrifying.
“If you’re tired, lay down.” He urged her down onto his lap and was surprised when she didn’t protest. “Just don’t fall asleep.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have a thing or two I’d like to say with my tongue before you sleep.” He waggled his tongue down at her so she could get the rather obvious hint.
Shawn rolled her eyes. “This may be the first night in our relationship that I’m immune to your heavy-handed charms.”
Uh. No. He didn’t think so. It was their wedding night, or their second wedding night. Which didn’t sound right. But the point was, he was not going to waste a good buzz and a hard-on tonight of all nights. “Heavy-handed? Is that what we’re calling it? I’ll give you heavy-handed.”
“Shh,” she whispered, her finger over her lips, and her head tilted to gesture to the driver.
“I think he probably has a good guess what we’re going to do. I don’t think you need to worry about being seen as tawdry. It’s our wedding night.” Rhett was starting to lose his buzz. Something was off with Shawn, and he didn’t like it.
It was obvious when she didn’t even wait for him to pay the driver, instead letting herself into the house and actually shutting the door behind her while he was still in the driveway. The driver shot him a look of sympathy, and Rhett felt his irritation spike.
When he went in the side door, Shawn had tossed her coat on a hook in the entry and was holding on to the kitchen counter, peeling her shoes off with a sigh.
“Is there a reason you just shut the door in my face?” he asked her, striving for an even tone.
“I wasn’t sure how long you’d be and it’s cold out there.”
That was clearly an excuse. She was bordering on petulant, and he didn’t understand why.
“Let me help you.” He shucked his suit jacket and tossed it over a kitchen chair. Bending over, he undid the buckle on her other shoe and pulled it off. He pressed his lips to her ankle, sliding his tongue up the firm calf. “You have amazing legs.”
Normally she went liquid under his touch, but she remained stiff. Rhett rose again, pulling the fabric of her dress with him so that her legs were exposed from the thigh down. “What kind of panties do you have on?” he asked curiously. He was picturing a white scrap of lace.
Which contributed to his total astonishment when he reached under the silky folds of her dress and discovered some sort of one-piece bodysuit that was clinging to her skin like a wet suit. “What the fuck are you wearing?” He immediately retreated. He didn’t want to touch that. It was like stroking a seal.
“A body shaper. So there are no lumps under my dress.”
“There aren’t any lumps anywhere on you. Except for this.” He cupped her breasts. “First order of business is getting you out of that contraption.”
But when he reached for the zipper on the side of her dress, she wiggled out of his reach. “No, I’m not going to have you take this off. Getting out of a body shaper is almost as difficult as getting into it. There’s a lot of tugging and . . . flopping.”
He held up his arms, palms out in surrender. “Okay, hands off.”
“You can’t watch either.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” This seduction was not unfolding at all the way he had intended.
“No.”
Rhett tore his tie off and dropped it on the counter. “Do you think this counts as disobedience?”
For the first time all night, he saw her breath hitch with desire. But she shook her head. “No. You said that you would never force me to degrade myself. Shoving this off my body while you watch constitutes degradation.”
Rhett laughed. “I can respect that.” He ran his finger over her lip. “Thank you for being honest with me. Thank you for being you.”
But for some reason, his words didn’t have the effect he had assumed they would. She pulled a face.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
Studying her expression, he couldn’t read her. She wasn’t even meeting his eye. “Then go take your dress off.”
There it was again, another face. “I suck at these parties. I was awful tonight. I’m sure your family is wondering what you see in me.”
It wasn’t like Shawn to dive into a pool of self-pity, and he was taken aback. “I’m sure they’ll love you like I do.”
Then she totally threw him when she suddenly reached out and started to undo the buttons on his dress shirt, with a sort of manic fervor. He had no idea what this was about, but he wanted no part of it. Something was going on, and they were going to talk about it, not bury those feelings behind sex.
He took her hands firmly and pulled them down by her hips, pinning them in place. “No.”
• • •
SHAWN wasn’t even sure what she was doing. She had just suddenly been overcome with the need to prove herself, to be independent, to be in charge of something because it felt like her whole life had suddenly skittered out of her control. Why did everyone else get to determine her future? Hell, her orgasms.
Feeling mutinous, she pulled a pout, ready to protest.
But Rhett shook his head and gave her a very unexpected crack on her backside. “No pouting, Shawn. You’re better than that. Pouting is for three-year-olds wanting a cookie.”
Maybe he had a point about the pouting. But she was not in the mood for submissive sex play. “You’re not my father.”
“No. I’m your husband. And I’m just trying to get you to see that you’re really much more amazing than you give yourself credit for being. If something is bothering you, tell me. None of this avoidance crap.”
This just wasn’t the way she had operated most of her adult life. She was used to wheedling with the men she dated and using a circular back-door approach to get what she wanted. Rhett despised that.
Which she could understand. But there was direct, then there was just being a dick. She didn’t feel like playing the game tonight, and he should know to back down.
“What I’m feeling is that my husband is an asshole,” she said. The night had been too much. Clinton’s confession. Rhett’s lack of attentiveness. Her own guilt for frauding everyone and their mother. It was all just too much and she wanted, needed to lash out, irrational or not. “Stop treating me like a student whose behavior you need to correct.”
He studied her in that careful way he had. “If I say no or you say no, then the other one should respect that, right?”
She was not in the mood to have him speak carefully to her. She wanted to scream out her emotions, all these unexplained feelings, all this fear, and she wanted him to crack, to break down, and lose it like her. “Of course. But this is about you telling me I’m doing something wrong and I’m tired of it.”
“It’s called communication. When I left a wet towel on the floor, you made it pretty damn clear to me that I was in the wrong, and if I did it again there would be consequences. How is this any different?”
He had a point, but she wasn’t going to admit it. “Because I was pointing out something that is easy to fix and it’s not personal. You were correcting something about me.”
“Tomato, tomato. It’s all the same thing. It’s a matter of letting each other know how we feel so the other can respect it.”
“Well, I don’t feel like being told what to do tonight.” With that, Shawn picked up her swirly bridal gown and stomped off in the direction of the bedroom, tears in her eyes.
She was breaking down. She couldn’t do this. She didn’t want to feel inadequate.
“Where are you going?”
“To Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. Where do you think I’m going? To take my dress off.”
“Come back to the kitchen when you’re changed.”
“No!” she hurled over her shoulder. “I am not having sex with you tonight, so stick that in your libido and smoke it.” She wasn’t sure what that even meant, but it felt good to say it.
Going into her bedroom, she slammed the door shut behind her and locked it. It was a challenge to get the zipper down solo, but Shawn wrestled her way out of the dress while Rhett rattled the doorknob and said, in a very calm voice, “Open the door. Now.”
“No.”
“You’re being childish.”
“I am well aware of that, thank you very much! But I don’t give a shit.” Huffing and puffing, she yanked and shoved and peeled the body shaper until it finally gave way and her entire body let out a huge sigh of relief. All her hills sprang forth like an army of flesh unleashed on the enemy. Instantly her stomach felt less queasy.
Balling the torture chamber of spandex up, she threw it into the corner, where it landed in Coconut’s lap.
Naked, she was stepping into a pair of panties when the door flew open, wood splintering as Rhett broke the lock and shoved his way in with his shoulder. She jumped about three feet and almost fell over, given that she was one foot in, one foot out.
“Are you fucking crazy?” she shrieked at him. “You just broke the door!”
“I’m well aware of that,” he said, echoing her words. “But I refuse to be shut out until we discuss what is bothering you.”
Hurriedly pulling her panties up and into place, she tried to figure out what the hell to do now. She felt vulnerable, her literal nakedness exemplifying her emotions. “I can’t do this,” she admitted. “I don’t want to do this.”
“What this are you referring to? This discussion or something more than that?”
“I don’t know. I think all of it. I feel like everything is spiraling out of my control, that everyone else is dictating what happens in my life. First my father by leaving, then my mother by being a flake, then my grandfather for the stipulations in his will, now you. I need to be the one calling the shots for a change.”
“If you wanted to go straight to bed tonight, you could have just said that. I would never force you to have sex if you’re not in the mood. It was a long day.”
Was he deliberately misunderstanding her? Shawn crossed her arms over her breasts and watched him unbutton his dress shirt and peel if off his shoulders. What the hell was he doing? “What are you doing?”
“Going to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. Or undressing to go to bed.”
Okay, that had asshole written all over it. And he called her passive-aggressive? “Why are you so afraid to let me have some control, Rhett? Why is it so important to you?”
He paused with his fingers on the zipper of his dress pants. “It’s just a sexual preference, Shawn. Don’t psychoanalyze me.”
“You called me a three-year-old.” Shawn turned her back on him to get herself a T-shirt out of the dresser.
He came up behind her and kissed the side of her neck. “I am not trying to control you. I told you I would be a model husband outside of bed, and I meant it. Just tell me what you need from me.”
Shawn shuddered, the agony of her emotions overwhelming her. “Maybe I need to slow down. Maybe I need you to give me some space.”
He stiffened, then his hands fell away from her arms. “Do you want me to sleep on the couch tonight?”
She nodded. “I would appreciate that.”
“I’m only agreeing to this because I know you’re tired. We’re not done with this discussion,” he warned her.
That was the problem. Her anger spiked all over again. “We’re done with it if I say we’re done with it!”
He didn’t even respond to her. He just zipped his pants again, then started toward the door.
“My lawyer says I don’t need to be married,” she hurled after him, because the secret was weighing on her like ten thousand tons of concrete.
He stopped walking, but he didn’t turn around. “Is that true?”
“Yes. He said that I could contest the will and would most definitely win.”
When he turned around, his expression actually froze her in fear that she had just done something irrevocable. “Is that what you want?” he asked, and his voice was cold, even, devoid of any emotion.
“Maybe.” She was so deep in shit now, she didn’t know where to walk to get out of it.
Rhett slowly shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. You’re either in all the way, or you’re out all the way.”
She swallowed hard, not sure what to say, not sure what she felt.
“I don’t believe in hedging my bets, or taking it slow, or living separate lives that we invite each other into on occasion. If you love someone, ‘me’ becomes ‘we.’ That’s it. One car, two drivers.”
Could she do that? She didn’t know. She honestly didn’t know. “I can’t . . .” She wasn’t even sure what she was going to say, but Rhett sighed.
“Yeah, I guess I know you can’t. But the truth is, I can’t do this if you can’t commit to me. I love with everything, Shawn, not in bite-size portions. And I do love you.”
Anxiety crawled up her throat. Shawn opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She just stood there in her underwear and made nothing but a tiny nonsensical sound.
Rhett nodded. “I’ll sleep on the couch. Tomorrow I can move out.”
That startled her into speech. “Move out? What do you mean?”
“Well, what do you think we’re going to do? Float along, not totally committed to each other, playing house, each wondering when the other one is going to bail? I can’t do that.”
“But . . .”
“We had an agreement, right? Yeah, we did. But that was before I fell in love with you.”
“But . . .” Shawn didn’t know how to deal with this. She didn’t want him to move out. She would miss him. But she knew it was unreasonable to expect him to stay when she had no clue what she was doing or how she really felt.
“I don’t want you to submit to me. I want you to submit to love.” With that, he went out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
Shawn was left standing in the middle of the old carpet, wondering how to fix something when she wasn’t even sure what was broken.
• • •
RHETT woke up, his head pounding and his heart aching. He was slightly hungover and he had a crick in his neck from sleeping on the couch, but more painful than either of those was knowing that Shawn didn’t really want to be married to him. It had been on her face the night before at the party, in her panicked eyes, and the stiffness of her body. He had thought it was just nerves, but it wasn’t.
The truth was, she had learned to give in to her desire, to jump off the cliff and trust him, but she couldn’t trust his love, their marriage.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stay there day after day wanting something more from her, trying to drag it out of her, until she withdrew and he resented that his needs weren’t being met.
Sitting up with a muffled groan, Rhett pulled on his dress pants and pushed off the blanket. Trying not to make any noise, he went down the hall and crept into the bedroom to find a shirt to wear. Shawn was sleeping soundly, her mouth open on a slight snore, her hands tucked under her cheek. He loved her with everything in him, and for that very reason, he knew he had to let her go. He would emotionally bleed her dry. She didn’t feel the same intensity of emotion that he did, and he couldn’t make her feel it.
Without opening the closet, he wasn’t going to be able to find any shirt other than the dress shirt from the night before, and he didn’t want to risk waking her up, given how rough the day before had been for her. So with a sigh, he pulled on the crumpled-up shirt and by the side door shoved his feet into his work boots. He would call Shawn later.
He left the house, but his heart stayed behind, tucked up beside the only woman he knew he could ever love.
• • •
NOLAN was in the kitchen, eyeballing the coffeemaker through bloodshot eyes, wondering how it was possible he was even awake when there was a knock on the apartment door.
“Eve?” he called. “Can you tell whoever that is to go the hell away?” It was his wife’s specialty, telling people off. Besides, she was closer, curled up on the couch, still where they had landed after the party, ripping each other’s clothes off and making pro wrestling look like a low-contact sport. They had never made it to the bedroom.
“My pleasure,” she mumbled.
As Nolan poured grounds into the filter, he heard the door open. Then Eve yelled back to him. “Uh, Nolan, it’s your brother. You might want to come in here.”
“What?” Nolan abandoned what he was doing and went into the living room in his underwear. Rhett was in the doorway wearing his rumpled wedding clothes, the shirt not even buttoned, his feet in boots, his hair standing on end, his face weary. “What the hell are you doing here? Did you get arrested last night or something?”
It was the only explanation his brain could produce for why his brother was dressed like that and at his apartment at eight in the morning the day after his wedding reception.
“Where’s Shawn?” Eve asked, wearing nothing but Nolan’s own dress shirt from the night before.
They were quite the trio of post-party fashion Don’ts.
“She’s sleeping still.” Rhett came in and shut the door, then fell into a chair, his hands going into his hair. “We broke up.”
Oh, Lord. Nolan was going to need coffee for this. “What are you talking about? You got married two weeks ago. Last night you were celebrating.” Though now that he thought about it, Shawn hadn’t exactly been a beaming bride. She had mostly sat and looked like she was mildly nauseated.
“She doesn’t want to be with me,” Rhett said, sounding hungover and miserable.
“I’m going to put pants on, then I want to know what the hell you’re talking about,” Eve said. “That girl is crazy about you.”
“Eve’s right,” Nolan said as his wife went down the hallway. “Whatever you said last night when you were drunk doesn’t matter today. Talk it out, bro.”
Rhett shook his head. “It’s over. Can I stay here for a few weeks?”
Hell, no. Nolan sat down on the couch, his head pounding a little bit. He started to worry that this was more serious than Rhett and Shawn having a drunken fight. “Look, I’m going to give you the same advice you gave me when Eve and I had a disagreement about a minute after we got married—go home and deal with your wife. You can’t stay here.”
“You’re a dick.” Rhett scowled at him.
“You were right, you know. Eve and I talked, and look at where we are. You need to talk to Shawn, sort this out with emotions calmed down.”
Eve came back out of the bedroom in yoga pants. “I agree. I’ve never seen Shawn fall for someone this hard.”
“Except it’s all bullshit,” Rhett said. “We only got married because if she wasn’t married by next month, she wouldn’t inherit the track.”
Nolan blinked. “Excuse me?” God, he really needed that coffee. He hadn’t even put the water in and turned it on, yet he clearly needed it because his brain didn’t seem to be firing at full capacity.
“I mean it was a set-up. She offered me money to marry her, and I agreed because I know how important the speedway is to her. And I wanted an in to her bed, I admit it.”
“What?” Eve exploded. “Are you both insane? Marriage is not something you play around with!”
Nolan recovered from his initial shock to second that opinion. “Holy shit, Rhett.”
“You two have no business judging us. You got married impulsively.”
“Impulse is one thing—for money or sex is another.” Nolan couldn’t even believe what he hearing. “Oh, my God, Mom is going to die. She thinks the two of you are in love.”
“You can’t tell anyone for fuck’s sake. It still has to be a secret, for Shawn’s dignity. And the truth is, we do love each other. We fell in love, which in a way, was my plan all along. But that doesn’t mean every plan works out in the end.”
“I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I knew something was fishy,” Eve said, pacing back and forth, her hands on her hips. “I told you, Nolan. I said Shawn didn’t do shit like this, and I said the whole prenup thing was a red flag.”
“You did.” Nolan should have trusted her suspicions. Then they could have all been spared a wedding reception that was based on a complete lie. “So you’re telling me that even after starting a marriage based on something as mercenary as cash and sex, you do want to be with Shawn.”
“Yes.” Rhett said this like it was obvious.
“If there was no money, would you still want to be with Shawn?”
Now his brother looked downright offended. “Of course.”
It was a legit question. This whole thing was crazy. “Then tell her that.”
“I did. She just stood there and stared at me. I can’t do this, man. I can’t be in love with her and have her unsure if she wants to really be with me.”
“So you snuck out of the house in your wedding clothes while she was sleeping? Bro, seriously. Go talk to her.”
“I told her how I felt. The ball is in her court.”
Oh, God. “I need some coffee.”
“Can I sleep on your couch for a few hours?”
“Yes. We had sex on it last night, though, just full disclosure.”
Rhett made a face. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“Fine.”
“I’m going for a run,” Eve announced. “I need to clear my head.”
If Nolan knew his wife, she was going over to Shawn’s.
Which was confirmed when she went and got her keys. Last time he checked she didn’t need her car to jog. Hopefully, Eve would have more luck talking sense into Shawn than he had with Rhett.
Total disaster.
He scratched the tattoo of his wife’s name on his chest as he stumbled back to the coffeepot. The path of true love never ran smooth. More likely you ran out of gas, blew a tire, and hit the wall before you crossed the finish line.
But you were always glad you entered the race.