CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The second time I woke was much better than the first. I could have attributed that to some of the alcohol settling or the fact that I was no longer sleeping on a lumpy couch. But mostly, I’d have to say that was because I was all wrapped up in six-feet-two inches of pure muscle, leg to leg, my back to his chest, my butt to his…well, everyone knew that if you share a full-sized bed with a full-sized male, at some point you might wind up with a full-sized boner against your backside. So statistically, we were probably okay.
The feel of him pressed so intimately against me should have made me uncomfortable. Annoyed. Instead, there was just awareness…that familiar pull low in my stomach, something wicked and wrong that made me push back instead of inching forward. He muttered sleepily in my hair and slid a hand across my stomach, nestling me even closer. A soft sigh escaped my lips as I rocked back on him again, and that low pull was rapidly turning into a pulse. The part of me that wasn’t involved in dry humping a sleeping human being realized it was time for me to get up. Take a shower. Recover my sense of decency.
But easier said than done. I tried to ease parts of me away one at a time, but every time I moved, he followed like a heat-seeking missile. All I managed to do was turn in his arms, so now my stomach was treated to a trip to Bonerville. After a few minutes of struggling, I gave up, resigning myself to the arduous task of having to stare at his gorgeous face.
I didn’t think I’d really had a chance to look at him so close before. Not unobserved, anyway. He was just so…ridiculously beautiful. Flawless, really. The golden, naturally tanned skin, the stubble-lined square jaw, and the long, straight nose. Thick gold lashes lay artfully on high cheekbones as he slept peacefully, mouth parted slightly, breathing soft and even. I had to admit that seeing him so comfortably sprawled in my domain, looking the most unbuttoned I’d ever seen him, had me feeling a certain kind of way. I had to face an undeniable truth. Mostly because I didn’t enjoy lying to myself. I was good at it, but I didn’t enjoy it. So here goes.
I want him.
There. I said it. I wanted Jackson. And not in that abstract, let’s-hold-hands-and-run-through-a-field-of-daisies, kiss-in-the-rain-under-a-colorful-umbrella kind of way. I wanted to do…such dirty things to that man. Hell, I wanted him to do dirty things to me. I wanted his mouth on me. His hands on me. His tongue on me. In me. And then, when I couldn’t stand it one more minute, I wanted him to pin me to the bed and fuck me hard. There was no way to pretty that up. Just thinking about it had my nipples hard and aching. Before I worked myself up into a ridiculous lather, I needed to remember there was no way any of that was going to happen.
With that thought in mind, I finally yanked my arm free and rolled off the bed. He yelped as the sheets came with me and reached blindly for some covers, eyes still firmly closed. I admired the way his gray boxers stretched nicely across his ass as he felt around the bed like a blind hedgehog.
“Good morning, dear,” I said sweetly.
“Tell me it’s not time to get up.”
“It’s not time to get up,” I repeated obediently. “I’m just hungry.”
“Good,” he muttered into his pillow, giving up on finding any sheets. “Go be hungry someplace else.”
“Is that how you treat your dates in the morning?”
“Fake ones, yeah.” Despite the fact that I couldn’t see any part of his face, somehow I could hear the smile in his voice. “If this was real, you’d be getting waffles right about now.”
It was almost enough to make a girl wish. Almost. “Don’t forget, you promised to go golfing with my dad at noon.” He didn’t so much as twitch and I grinned. “And Art is taking you out for drinks before dinner.”
“Ugh.” He sighed, puffing air out into the pillow. “Has anyone in your family ever heard of sleeping in? Isn’t this supposed to be a fucking vacation?”
“Noon,” I reminded him, and he groaned.
Despite his grumpy morning attitude, I graciously covered him with the sheets. I couldn’t help trailing a hand over the back of his tangled mess of hair before I left to get first dibs on the bathroom. I was pretty sure fake girlfriends did that kind of thing.
I completed my bathroom ritual as quickly as possible—showering, putting on lotion, and brushing my teeth—and threw on a sunshine-yellow sundress and a pair of sandals. I was still only half-done, wringing my damp hair with a towel, when the polite knocks began. Man, I missed having my own bathroom.
I finished blow-drying my hair to less polite knocks. I ran a straightener through my hair to dispense of some of the waves to a door kick that was probably Art. I was finally forced to vacate the bathroom when I overheard the villagers discussing where they could find torches.
I opened the door with a dramatic sigh and glared at the line of people—Bree, Brit, Art, and Rick glared right back.
“We’re imparting a new rule,” Britney said. “Seven minutes per person.”
“Seven minutes?” I scowled. “When was this decided? I didn’t get a vote.”
“We created and voted on the new rule in the twenty-five minutes you were in the shower, and it was unanimous,” Rick said, glancing at his pricey watch. “You could have voted if you hadn’t decided to go for that last chorus of ‘Wildest Dreams.’”
He didn’t understand. Because of my paper-thin townhouse walls, I’d been conditioned to hearing certain songs in the shower. Like someone in a torture camp. Now I heard a shower running and I thought of Taylor Swift music. My neighbor had trained me like a Pavlovian dog, for crying out loud. Shouldn’t she be in jail? I didn’t bother to enlighten my judging audience of my mitigating circumstances.
“Looking good takes time, people,” I informed them.
“Then you’re not done,” Art said sweetly. “But unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.”
I scowled. “Bite me.”
“Not even if you were made of sugar,” he called after me as I headed downstairs, my hair still a little damp against my neck.
I was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, eating a yogurt and watching the under-cabinet TV when my father passed through. He stuck a mug and a pod in the Keurig and hit the start button.
“Morning,” I said.
“Morning? It’s practically the middle of the day.” He proceeded to stare at me for a moment, watching me pick around the toppings on my YoCrunch yogurt.
“What?” I finally asked.
“Why don’t you just admit you buy it for the candy on top?”
I shrugged. “So.”
“So buying a yogurt for ten M&Ms is insane.”
“It’s my reward for doing something marginally healthy.” I pointed a spoon at him. “So mind your own Yoplait business.”
He leaned back on the counter as the coffee began to brew. “You have plans today?”
“Not really. I’ll probably go down to the beach a little later on, but nothing big.”
“Never could keep you guys off the water. Any time after school, I knew where to find my kids.” His mouth quirked. “It’s good to have you here, Avery.”
“It’s good to be here. I’m glad I came, especially since you guys are…selling the house,” I finished awkwardly. I hadn’t meant to bring it up, but it was definitely on my mind.
“You didn’t have much to say about it at dinner. None of you did. That’s certainly not what I expected from my opinionated kids,” he said.
That steady gaze was non-accusatory, but I felt defensive. I stabbed my spoon back in the yogurt. “What is there to say?”
“Something other than plastic platitudes might be nice. I’m a forthright man, and I’ve taught you guys to speak your mind. I like to know where I stand.”
I snorted. “Trust me, you don’t want to know what I think.”
“Then why would I ask? What’s the big hairy deal with saying exactly what you’re thinking?”
“Because some things can’t be unsaid,” I said to my yogurt.
What could I say that he didn’t already know? That it felt like he was moving on too soon? I was going to be a supportive daughter, support his decision, and that was it.
He silently stared at me for a moment before the Keurig sputtered. He pulled his cup of coffee from under the spout and began to sip it. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but the unspoken words floated between us like motes of dust—not intrusive, but visible if we look hard enough.
Lane came bustling in, looking restored from our midnight binge. She was wearing tailored jeans and a button-down blouse, and her hair was brushed to a shine. She smelled faintly of Gucci Guilty and her pearls were firmly in place.
I couldn’t help but grin. Someone had fully utilized her seven minutes in the bathroom. “Don’t you look spiffy.”
She did a little turn to model her jeans. “That I do.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Going to the mall. I need to find something to wear for the wedding.” She readjusted her purse strap over her arm. “You want to come with me?”
To the mall? “The moment an asteroid hits Earth,” I promised.
She made a face and pulled out another yogurt from the fridge. We were still giving one another a hard time when Irene came in. She waved at us both and leaned in to kiss my dad’s cheek. The kiss was brief. Chaste. The kiss that couples do without even realizing they’re doing it, and it felt so…wrong. My father kissing another woman in my mother’s kitchen, right there under the smiling sunflowers painted on the cupboard. My mother had loved those damn sunflowers.
I’d seen them prepare breakfast like this a million times over. My mother would be in charge of the biscuits and the sausage gravy, and my dad would prepare the eggs. Well, everyone’s eggs but mine. I liked mine so dry and well-done that he’d get pissy as Wolfgang Puck and refuse to cook them. “If you want to burn your eggs, burn them yourself,” he’d instruct, and then watched me with a gimlet eye over a cup of coffee as I pushed my well-done eggs around in the skillet.
Get over it, Avery, I warned myself silently. Jesus, maybe it was better that he sell this house. It was nothing but a boneyard of what used to be. I was going to try hard…really hard to accept what was.
Irene’s nimble fingers worked the stove controls as she slapped a skillet on one of the eyes. “You guys want breakfast?”
I pointed to my yogurt. “I’m good, thanks.”
“That’s not breakfast!” she trilled. “My goodness, AJ, you need something that’ll stick to your bones!”
And if I hadn’t spent the night deep in a bottle of rum, that might sound remotely appealing. Lane passed me as she headed for the door, and I grabbed her arm. “I’m coming with you.”
“I’m not sure if I have room anymore,” Lane said smugly.
I didn’t care if she had to tie me to the roof like a goddamned elk. “We’ll be back,” I said loudly, towing her out the front door.
*
The mall truly was Lane’s mothership.
The walking never seemed to end as she dragged me from store to store, only stopping for a short break to grab a smoothie in the food court. I stalled as long as I could, fiddling with the straw in my Orange Julius and sucking the froth on the bottom until the straw bent in my mouth, but eventually, Lane confiscated the cup from me. Then it was back to the shops.
My feet ached in a way I didn’t realize feet could ache. I was seriously considering lopping them off and replacing them with bionic ones when we stumbled upon a store that made her squeal. “This is it!” she cried, nearly supersonic by this point.
I winced and let myself be pulled into the trendy boutique shop. Clearly, the store had been decorated by someone who enjoyed the color black way too much. I could just see it now—some rabid designer throwing an orange piece of fabric at an unsuspecting supplier. Color is verboten! Even the mannequins were made of a black, polished material. Their scrawny limbs were posed in ways that Anna Wintour would deem appropriate. I eyeballed one with her hands in a position that was remarkably close to Madonna’s vogue. Yaaass, bitch. You betta werk.
Looking for a dress with Lane went pretty much like I’d thought it would. Within ten minutes of our arrival, she found eight things that were perfect for her porcelain complexion and willowy body type. Of course. All in the color Irene demanded we wear—the oh-so-flattering bubblegum pink. We’d only managed to talk her into different shades of pink, mostly to avoid looking like bottles of Pepto Bismol bobbing for a bouquet. Undaunted, I continued to prowl the aisles like some sort of retail panther.
Lane rolled her eyes at my impatience as I moved clothes about the rack. She often accused me of shopping like a man, and it was hard to argue with her. I came to the store with one thing in mind. Then I purchased that exact thing and got the hell out of Dodge. I preferred to think of it as shopping smart.
I’d almost given up when I found it. The long dress was soft pink, and would look great with my newly acquired tan. When I tried it on, the ends swirled around my legs and feet in a pool of wispy, gauzy fabric. It was beachy, casual, and dressy all at the same time. Perfect for a beach wedding.
As I turned in the mirror, eyeing the surprising plunging backline, I added “sexy” to the list. Business in the front, party in the back. I smiled gleefully—I’d found the dress version of the mullet.
Lane came up behind me in the mirror, clad in a pale-pink dress, the tags marring the smooth line in the front. She looked at me critically, running a hand down the torso area. “I love this,” she breathed. “Maybe this one would look better on me.”
A good sister would probably offer up the dress. But because life was not the sisterhood of the traveling fucking pants, I gave her a dirty look. “Touch this dress and you die.” I headed for the dressing room. “I’m not going to spend another two hours in this place looking for something in my size.”
She scoffed, taking my place on the upraised dais in front of the mirror. I saw her spin around once before I snapped the dressing room curtain shut. “There were plenty of things in your size,” she said.
“Something that doesn’t look like it was made of outdated curtains.”
“Well, I know Jackson’s going to be pleased.”
Would he? I was glad she couldn’t see my suddenly blushing skin. “I don’t know about all that.”
“Well, I do.” She suddenly sounded closer than before and I turned to find her peering around my curtain. “If you’re not sure about that dress, let me try it on.”
“We’re not even the same size,” I protested, snatching the curtain closed.
“I can have it taken in and hemmed.”
“I’m getting the dress,” I growled. “Beat it, munchkin.”
“Fine.” I heard the curtain rattle as she disappeared into her dressing room next door. “We should get the guys ties to match our dresses.”
“Oh, I don’t think Jackson would want…”
I trailed off because that was something a girlfriend would do. Well, I could buy it, and if he didn’t want to wear it, he didn’t have to.
It wasn’t a big deal. Even if I could still see the image of us entangled together this morning, could still feel his soft breathing stirring my hair. He probably had crazy, off-the-walls kind of sex. I blew out a breath and let the dress pool at my feet, ignoring the sudden rash of goosebumps popping up on my skin. That should probably be less appealing than it was.
It didn’t matter what kind of sex he had. This was fake. I bit my lip. The key was I had to remember it was fake.