SEVEN
WHY? WHY DID I do that?
The obvious answers were scotch and the world’s most beautiful redhead within arm’s reach. But that shouldn’t have mattered. Alex wasn’t given to impulse. Alex was up every day at five to exercise and lift weights for an hour and a half before a twenty-minute shower, a veggie-laden egg-white omelet, and polishing his shoes. From there it was checking emails and texts while he drank green tea in his office, a ten- to twelve-hour workday, volunteerism, and the occasional game of tennis when he could convince Darren to go to the courts with him, which wasn’t happening anymore because Darren was gallivanting around the world with Sol’s ex-wife on her superyacht.
Alex ate salad a lot. He liked protein shakes. He was in bed no later than nine every night barring hotel shenanigans, and he hadn’t missed Mass or his biweekly confession for nearly half a decade. His favorite show was Frasier, and that had been off the air for more than ten years.
He was not the type of man to pull a woman onto him, kiss her senseless, and think about carrying her to bed and fucking her brains out. He just wasn’t.
What the hell has gotten into me?
“Again, I am so very sorry.” He was mortified, even more so because he was as hard as a rock and there was no way she didn’t know it, even if she was good enough not to look at his lap. He breathed deep, in through his nose, out through his mouth, in hopes of calming himself inside and out.
“Forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. I wanted it as much as you did,” she said matter-of-factly.
He groaned. Hearing that in no way helped his ardent pants problem. She was so lovely, and so flushed, and her nipples were hard against her shirt, and all he wanted to do was to grab her again and bury his face in her neck and appreciate the smell of vanilla and flowers.
“Bed,” he said, and then quickly added, “I’m going to my own. In my room. Alone. And I’ll . . . tomorrow. See you tomorrow.” He practically lunged for the door, tearing himself from Theresa’s couch and crossing the room in four strides. He heard her mutter a goodbye behind him, he grunted a reply, and practically ran down the hall, praying to God the entire time Sol didn’t appear with his shitty smile to goad him about anything.
His breathing. His coloring. His erection.
Damn it.
His hand was sweaty when he tried to use his key card on the room door. He felt like one of those people trying to use their car keys in horror movies—there was so much adrenaline his motor skills were compromised. Three tries later, he managed to get inside and started tearing off his clothes. He could have rubbed one out, sating his body’s need for all things redheaded, indulging the memory of Theresa’s soft skin, ample curves, and incredible taste, or he could stomp the desire demon right into the ground with a cold shower.
He picked the shower. It pummeled his body and made him grit his teeth. It punished him for being so damned weak despite having promised himself he would save his carnal inclinations for the confines of marriage. When he was absolutely certain that he’d frozen any desire from his body—when he was so cold he wasn’t sure his dick would ever work again, never mind in that moment—he climbed from the stall and wrapped himself in a towel.
And went to the living room and did fifty push-ups.
He collapsed on the floor and stared up at the ceiling, hair wet, breath short. He could go to confession Saturday. He’d do proper penance. It’d be over.
That’s the right thing to do. Sol will understand.
No, he wouldn’t, but Alex pretended he would as he found his feet, his pajamas, and his bed in that order. It probably should have occurred to him to drink some water before he fell asleep, but he was distracted. Thoughts of guilt, thoughts of girl competed for his attention, and he snarled into his pillow, tossing and turning for a good half hour before he hit on the idea of starting a Rosary. Halfway through, he drifted off, which meant when he woke to his alarm the next morning at five, his head pounded. His fingers found the center of his forehead and rubbed. It’d been a long time since Alex had done anything to excess, never mind indulged in a vice like alcohol, and he crawled out of his bed to guzzle water and Tylenol. The ache didn’t stop him from donning his gym clothes, though, and going down to The Seaside’s gym, nor did it stop him from a straight hour on the treadmill.
He felt like human garbage, almost threw up once or twice during the workout, but when it was all over he was oddly satisfied that he’d prevailed. The headache was still there, through the shower and ensuing dressing, but that’d go away with time, and he could take with him the valuable reminder that moderation was key to everything.
He was repeating that to himself when he read the text message from Sol telling him he was waiting at Gustav’s with a fresh pile of beignets.
The last person Alex wanted to see when he was grouchy with a hangover was his brother, but he’d driven from Dallas to help with the wedding, and that’s what he would do. He headed for the elevator and descended to the ground floor. He was normally a tea man, but by the time he’d reached the double doors of the restaurant, he’d determined he’d be ordering his own carafe of black coffee. It was a good plan, a solid plan, especially when his first view of his brother was Sol in his perfectly tailored brown suit playing with two misshapen origami cranes.
He made them collide midair like jets and then made pathetic warbling sounds as the cranes plummeted to the table.
It’s going to be a long day.
Alex sighed and beelined for the kitchen to retrieve a carafe of coffee. He got a shifty eye from one of the sous chefs for treading in their sacred chrome-plated realm, but Alex ignored him and kept right on pouring; experience told him all chefs were territorial. Experience also told him that hotel managers generally didn’t give much of a shit about a sous chef’s feelings.
He headed back to the dining room.
“Alex!” Sol called. “Theresa will be right back. She’s a bit under the weather and had to dash to the ladies’ room. Since you look terrible, I’m assuming you both have a mutual case of Glenlivet-itis?”
“Shut up, please.” Alex sat across from him in the booth, brusquely shoving the vase of flowers with the pretty pink roses and ivy between them to the side so they could see each other. Sol beamed. Alex groused. All was working as intended.
“I have to give you both credit. These cranes make terrible wedding favors, but they’re fantastic for other things. I’m not sure what those other things are, but you gave it the old college try for kitten’s sake. I appreciate that.”
“Theresa did all the work.” Alex poured himself a first cup of coffee, drank half of it despite the burn, and topped off the mug to go at it again. “I gave up after a couple, but she stuck with it. She’s determined Rain will have a good day. Where is she anyway? Rain, not Theresa.”
His eyes strayed to the ladies’ room door.
I want to see her almost as much as I want to crawl under the table and hide from her. This is awkward.
“In bed still. She’s exhausted, the poor thing.”
Considering what Alex saw in the pantry the night before, he had a pretty good notion of why she was tired, and he pursed his lips, refusing to rise to the occasion, which delighted Sol even more, if the resulting smile oozing across his face was any indication. Fortunately, he was spared any smarmy nonsense by Theresa’s timely arrival. He didn’t think it was possible for a girl the color of moonlight to look pale, but somehow she managed it. The blue of her sundress was the same shade as the spidery veins around her eyes.
Her hangover was worse than his, the poor thing.
“Too much of a good thing,” Theresa said in greeting. He nodded but said nothing, mostly because he was admiring her. Sure, she had bags under her eyes the color of plum pudding, and sure, her hair and clothes were ragged, and yes, she was dabbing at the sides of her mouth like she might have just vomited. But she made it all look so good.
I am far too attracted to this woman.
Coffee. Look at your coffee.
He did just that.
Sol picked up another crane and examined it before perching it on top of one of the roses in the vase so it loomed over them like a lopsided false god. “It’s obvious you spent time on these, and I feel terrible suggesting that they won’t work, but—”
“But they’re awful,” Theresa said, gingerly sipping from the glass of water in front of her. “I know that. We need another plan.”
Sol nodded. “How bad were the swans? Decimated or . . . ?”
“Seventy-three broken out of three hundred,” Alex said. “Almost a third.”
Sol tipped his head thoughtfully. A waitress stopped by with fresh beignets, the powdered donuts golden brown and perfect. On any other day, Alex would have refused them in lieu of healthier fare, but hungover with a bellyful of poison, he snagged one, hoping the grease could counter it.
Sol followed suit, biting into the corner and wiping sugar off his lip. “Realistically, only a third of the swans are broken. Can we get more? Obviously not the same type, but something similar?”
Alex wasn’t sure where they’d get glass birds so close to the wire, but Theresa pulled out her phone and started typing. “Swarovski,” she said moments before producing a too-bright phone screen and shoving it beneath his nose. “Swarovski crystal. You’ll find the stores in malls a lot. They’re also carried in jewelry stores. I’m wondering if we couldn’t get some swans from them.”
Alex was just blinking the store logo into focus when Sol snatched the phone from Theresa’s hand. He swiped a few times, tutting when he got beignet grease on her smartphone, before gasping with delight. “They do have swans in their collection.”
Theresa glanced at Alex. Alex glanced back.
“Looks like we’re going on an adventure,” she said.
Oh goody.
“What do you mean you only have one? You said you had six on the phone,” Alex demanded of the girl at the counter, who couldn’t have been more than twenty and appeared terrified of him. Between Alex’s two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle and the throbbing vein in his temple, he probably looked like the embodiment of rage. He was vaguely aware that Theresa was scowling at him from her position by his elbow, but what was he supposed to do? Pretend to be happy that the girl had misread the inventory screen when they’d called? He’d been steadily losing patience as they’d traveled around the city from shop to shop looking for swans and coming up short.
Having the foresight to call first was supposed to spare them the time, but now . . . this.
How hard is it to count them? Just go to your shelf, look, and then tell me so I don’t waste a trip.
“I’m sorry,” the girl reiterated, her cheeks flushed. “I can order more, but it’ll take a week—”
“We’ll take the one,” Alex said, slapping his credit card down on the counter. He flinched and cleared his throat. “Pardon. I’m . . . mmm. We’re running low on time is all. Next week isn’t soon enough. The wedding is in a few days. So thank you. For this. One. Swan.”
The clerk eyed him like he’d gone feral before scampering over to her register.
He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth so maybe—just maybe—he’d stop turning red. He could feel the heat in his cheeks, and he knew what that meant.
The Swarovski employee said nothing the rest of the time he was there, not as she rang his transaction, not as she packaged his swan. Theresa was just as quiet as they left the store. She climbed back into the car, her arms crossed in front of her stomach as if she was trying to hold her vomit inside.
Which would have been a change from the previous hour. It’d been a harrowing adventure, thanks to scotch and bad life choices.
“Well, I hope you’re happy. That girl’s half your age and half your size and probably shitting herself right now,” Theresa spat. “She’s terrified.”
“I apologized! But that’s six swans in two hours. We’re running out of options,” Alex replied, his hands clenched on the wheel as he drove out of the parking lot. “We’ll be dead before we have them all.”
“Those are just the New Orleans shops! You heard the lady at the jewelry store—they have more out in Metairie.”
“And it will take us two hours to get through the Metairie stores.”
Alex guided the Porsche onto the highway with a grimace on his face. Five shops in New Orleans carried Swarovski, but none of them had more than two swans in stock, with no hope of getting more before the wedding. Theresa had even called the company directly, but the swans were backordered until further notice.
“Might take us four hours, but we’ll still do it, won’t we? Unless you’ve got any other bright ideas on where to get glass swans in bulk?” Theresa shot back. “If not, how about we stop our bitching, be nice to people making minimum wage, and keep driving?”
Alex bit his tongue so he wouldn’t escalate the situation. Neither he nor Theresa were feeling well. They’d been in the car awhile and it looked like they’d continue to be in the car together until the end of time. To add insult to injury, Troy from the garage texted him, and Alex’s SUV needed a part they had to order, so the earliest he’d get his own car back was the Monday after the wedding. The roads were busy, the traffic annoying, the success rate of their venture anything but guaranteed.
Breathe. Suck it up and breathe.
He continued driving. It was how he spent the bulk of the day. Four shops in Metairie carried Swarovski, and with the six they had, that brought their total up to twenty swans—still a far cry from the seventy-three needed, so they continued on to Baton Rouge. Forty-one swans. More driving, almost all in silence, because any words they shared devolved quickly into a sniping contest. It was so at odds with the heated kisses from the night before. There’d been chemistry—enough chemistry that Alex deviated from his chaste lifestyle. How could it get so topsy-turvy so fast? They’d started off on the wrong foot, but he’d fixed it, and now . . .
Extend an olive branch. Be the bigger person.
If someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
That’s not an olive branch or a cheek. That’s a sandwich request.
Do better.
“So stop somewhere.” Theresa was looking out the window, half of her face hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses. She looked better than she had, less green anyway, and she was no longer shriveling in her seat.
“What can you eat?” he asked.
“Nothing probably, but I’ll try.”
He fidgeted.
She probably doesn’t want my advice, but one thing guys are good at is giving women their unsolicited opinions. In for a penny, out for a pound, I suppose.
“Grease helps cut the acid in the stomach after alcohol. Seems counterintuitive, I know, but it works,” he said.
“Fine, then find grease.” She still sounded as friendly as a marauding bear, so he stopped talking, easing off the highway when he saw a sign for Popeyes. Food acquired, eaten, and fortunately not regurgitated, they continued on their quest. Baton Rouge became Lafayette. Afternoon became early evening. Forty-one swans became sixty-four after one particular shop had bulk swans in the back room.
Nine more to go. That’s it. Nine swans and we can put this debacle behind us.
“I’m pushing to Lake Charles unless you have objections,” he announced after refueling the car. “It’ll be tight, but we can try to get there before the malls close. And then it’ll be four hours back to New Orleans.”
“Lovely.” If possible, her answers were more clipped than they’d been when he’d been crotchety that morning. How? How was that possible?
“Theresa.” He didn’t put the car into drive. He didn’t pull out of the gas station. He sat in the seat, cramped because he was a large man in a tuna can of a sports car, and stared straight ahead at the long expanse of highway and the last vestiges of sunglow along the horizon. “What do I have to do to fix this? We’re stuck together for the rest of the week. We need to make this work.”
“Apologizing would be a good start! For being miserable all day.” Her head whipped around, her brown eyes flashing fury. “Do you think I let just any man kiss me? Well, maybe you do because you don’t know me very well, but I don’t. I’ve dated five men in my entire life. I’ve only ever slept with my ex, who was my fiancé at the time. I don’t engage lightly, so not only was I sick all morning, I felt stupid about what we did last night. I hate that we did it and I hate that it reminded me that I’m better off keeping my hands to myself.”
It was a whole hell of a lot more of an answer than he’d bargained for. He didn’t know what to say to it, either, so he said nothing, putting the car into drive, his jaw clenched. He wanted to shout back that he was in the same boat she was—he didn’t just randomly kiss women. He hadn’t touched anyone since college, and that was more years ago than he liked to admit. Hell, when they’d started touching, he was terrified he’d forgotten how, that he’d come off as passionate as a dead catfish, but he’d quickly discovered it was like riding a bike. His lips had fastened to hers like they belonged there, and by the pleasing, gaspy moans she’d made, he hadn’t lost his touch. But he’d been afraid. And to hear her posturing like this was a burden only she carried?
But that’s not why she’s upset. She’s upset because you got frustrated about the swans and you took it out on everyone, including her when she was sick and vulnerable.
“I am . . . sorry,” he said. “I was . . . I’m sorry.”
He didn’t feel great about the day, but an apology was the least he could do, even if a petty part of him thought she needed to consider his feelings in all of this, too.
“Fine,” she threw at him. “You’re sorry. Good. Thank you. Keep going.”
It wasn’t fine for either one of them. It was tense and miserable all the way to Lake Charles. It wasn’t until they dashed into Jamal Jewelers at five minutes to nine that things became bearable. The woman behind the counter, a lovely heavyset black woman in a red suit with matching lipstick and a name tag that read Gloria asked what she could do for them.
“Swarovski swans, if you have them,” Theresa said with a weary, manufactured smile. “Sorry to barge in right before closing.”
“No apologies needed. We’re open until we’re not. Just a minute.” Gloria disappeared into the back room of the store, rummaged around, and two minutes later emerged empty-handed. Alex’s stomach sank. They could and would venture out farther if they had to, into Texas if absolutely necessary, but he wanted to be done. He wanted to let Theresa escape his company. He wanted to maybe maintain some semblance of his dignity, because apparently he turned into a raging asshole when his temper got the best of him.
You know, you never pull that with the clients at the hotel. You learned how to cloak the anger. There’s something about her that’s letting you feel familiar, and familiar means exposing her to your sometimes indelicate disposition.
Distance yourself. Treat her like a customer. It’ll spare both of you.
“We have them,” Gloria announced. “How many did you need?”
“All of them,” Alex blurted. “Or, pardon, as many as you have.”
“You’re certain?” Gloria glanced behind her. “We have a dozen.”
A dozen.
Sixty-four and twelve makes seventy-six swans.
We needed seventy-three.
“I could kiss you right now,” Theresa said, her plastic smile becoming genuine. Her eyes widened, her cheeks flushed pink, and she showed off a row of straight teeth. “That’s the last we’d need for the wedding favors. We’ll take ’em all, okay? Thank you, Gloria. Thank you!”
She’s happy. It’s cute.
Distance, Alex. Distance.
“Yes, thank you,” he managed to say, voice choked. “We’ve been on a hunt all day.”
Gloria smiled at them both, grabbed a box from the floor of the jewelry shop, and returned to the back room to end a journey more epic than a couple of short hairy Hobbits walking to Mount Doom with a ring.
Now if we can survive the ride back without Theresa killing me . . .
Well. That’d be a real feat.