Irresistible Rogue, page 40
I was dimly aware that she was holding up a pair of earrings that she’d made and I was supposed to be paying attention. I heard her, sort of, but I was too enamored with a perfect spiral. The tiny, white, ice cream cone shaped seashell in my palm was an absolutely flawless design, except for one thing. The little crack running right through it.
“Hello?” Danica waved in my peripheral vision and I blinked up at her. God, it was bright in here. The late afternoon sun was sloping through the window behind her and I squinted. I’d slept in the car on the drive up to Whistler today, because I’d been up so much last night, unable to sleep.
We were supposed to be getting ready for the wedding. Tomorrow was the welcome party for all the out of town guests who were arriving tonight and tomorrow. The next day was the rehearsal dinner. And the next day was the big day.
The last full day I’d spend in Canada until who knew when.
Mom and her sisters and my cousins were already here. Jacob was here, too, with his sons.
Except Shane.
Madeleine had run recon for my sad ass and informed me that he wasn’t here.
Danica sighed, putting down whatever she was holding. I’d already forgotten what we were supposed to be doing right now. Because every time Shane popped into my head, everything else just fell away. “Is that a seashell?” she said.
I blinked at the tiny, perfect thing in my hand. “Yeah. Isn’t it perfect?”
“That’s the one you were telling me about?” She leaned in to look at it in my palm.
“Yes. Please tell me you can make it into a necklace or something.”
“It’s really small, Jolie. I don’t know how I’d make that happen.” She poked it gently. “It looks like it would crumble if I tried to drill through it.”
“It won’t,” I said, almost feverishly. “It’s strong.”
She looked at me like I was Gollum, clutching the One Ring.
“I hate to tell you,” she said, “but it isn’t perfect.”
“It is!”
“It’s cracked right through.”
“That’s what makes it perfect.” I held it up to examine the crack. “The way it holds together, against all odds. It’s… magical.”
Now she was looking at me like she was seriously worried about me. “Are you okay, sweetie? You seem a little… distracted.”
“I’m fine. I just want this in a necklace. It’s important. I want to keep it, okay?” And now she was looking at me like I was getting hysterical. Was I? “It’s just… I got it on the beach in Vancouver and I want to take it back to California with me. You know… for the memories.”
Danica’s face softened with compassion. “I see. Well, I’m sure we can do something…”
“Can’t we like, mount it or encase it in something? So it lasts forever?”
The worried look was back. “Sure. I’m sure we can do that.”
I sighed. “I’m just emotional. I’m sorry. The wedding… and being here and then leaving again… it’s all very emotional.”
“Of course it is.” She sat down on the couch with me. “We’re gonna miss you, too. You have no idea how much. It feels like there’s a big hole in the family when you’re gone.”
I almost started crying right there.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “We try not to tell you that stuff so you don’t feel bad. But we miss you, badly.”
“I know,” I sighed.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” she asked me with concern. “Is it just missing your life here? Or is it more than that? Are things with your dad…?”
“Things with my dad are as bad as usual,” I told her honestly. “Which means they’re basically nonexistent.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I have Jacob now, right?”
I tried not to visibly cringe, but I couldn’t help it. I was still dreading being in the same room as Jacob and Shane, at the wedding. And at the rehearsal, if Shane actually showed up for it.
It still felt wrong. Like I’d betrayed Jacob by doing the nasty with his son behind his back. Over and fucking over.
Yet I wouldn’t change a thing. Not a moment we’d spent together.
Except maybe that stupid non-fight or whatever it was in the limo the other night.
“Okay, I need to get this off my chest,” I told her. “If I don’t tell one of you, I’m gonna lose my mind. I mean, Madeleine knows, but that’s it.”
Danica looked both concerned and intrigued now. “Oh?”
“I did something you might think is crazy. I guess I’ve been… kind of afraid to tell you.”
“Okay,” she said carefully. Then she rubbed my knee. “Lay it on me, Jolie. Don’t be afraid. I love you.”
I sighed again.“I think I’m falling in love with Shane.”
She blinked at me. “You’re… falling… for Shane? Madrigal?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Uh…” She looked unsure of which way to go with this information. And from the look of awkward concern on her face, I realized she figured this was some unfortunate puppy love thing, on my part.
“Oh. Wait,” I added. “I didn’t mention that I had sex with him. We screwed. A lot. I probably should’ve led with that. It would’ve made more sense.”
Her eyes went wide. “You had sex with him?”
“Yes.”
And that’s when Dani walked in. Because the woman could probably smell sex talk in the air.
“Hey. What am I missing?” she demanded, instantly sensing gossip as she put down her bag from the liquor store.
Danica looked at me like Are we telling her?
There was no reason not to tell her. Dani was the one who told me to screw him in the first place.
“I was just telling Danica,” I confessed. “Remember that night when you told me to have sex with Shane? Well, you kind of got into my head, and…”
Dani’s face absolutely lit up. “You had sex with him.”
“Like, lots of sex.”
“That night??”
“Yeah, that night. And… many nights since then. And, um… days, too.”
“Well.” Dani blinked at me. “Good for you.”
“It’s not good. It’s very not good.”
“Why?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “How was it? Did he not make it rain for you?”
“Oh, don’t do that,” Danica said.
“Why the hell not?” Dani demanded.
Danica kind of chewed her lip for a moment. “Okay, fine. How was it?”
“There are no words for how it was,” I told them. “That’s how good it was.”
“That’s the problem,” Danica surmised.
“Yeah. It’s a huge fucking problem. Because I’m getting all attached to him and I’m leaving soon.”
“So, then, maybe you don’t have to leave?” Danica said hopefully, shooting her sister a look.
“Ugh. It’s so not like that. He doesn’t want me to stay or anything.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the feelings I’m having here are not mutual. If they were, he’d say so.”
“How do you know that?” Danica asked.
“Because. He tells me all the things.”
“What things?”
“Like, everything. Everything he wants from me.”
Dani looked skeptical. “Men don’t always say what they want, Jolie. They’re like, world famous for their shitty communication skills.”
“This one does say. Believe me.” I groaned. “He’s dominant, okay?”
They both stared at me, like, Huh?
“You know that stuff you guys are always whispering that Madeleine is into?” I said. “Well, she is. She told me so. And… Shane’s into that stuff, too.”
“With Madeleine?” Danica gasped.
“No. No, no, no. Not with Madeleine. Just with women. With… me.”
They were both way too silent now and I couldn’t stand it. I finally dragged myself vertical, and I noticed the boxes Danica had laid out on the table, opened, to display the jewelry she’d made. For the wedding party.
“Shit, Danica. We’re supposed to be looking at your jewelry.”
“It’s okay. We’ll get to that.”
“But you did all this work. Does everyone else have their pieces already?”
“No, just my mom. Your mom, Mireille and Madeleine still need theirs. And I’ve got your earrings here.”
She held them out to me, and I went to try them on in front of the mirror. They were gorgeous. Gold tear drops with rubies in them. Gifts from Mom and Jacob, simplified versions of what she’d be wearing when she walked up the aisle.
“Wow. They’re beautiful, Danica.”
“I’m so glad you like them.”
They looked killer with my outfit. A simple white tube top and nice jeans. My hair looked pretty good, too. I’d wanted to look nice if Shane showed up today and we ran into each other.
Which he didn’t.
A surge of emotion flooded me and I pressed my face into my hands. “What if I never see him again?!”
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Danica said quickly, soothingly.
“Relationships are supposed to have time! To see if they’re going to work or not!” I exploded. “That’s the normal flow of things! But we have all this pressure! It’s gotta be a secret so no one freaks out. And I might not see him until the wedding, and then at the wedding we have to pretend like we’re nothing to each other. And I’m leaving, so soon. We didn’t even have any time…” I made myself stop ranting. Because there was no point.
I got myself into this mess. It wasn’t their fault I was in this situation. My cousins didn’t need to be yelled at because I was falling apart.
I sucked back a deep, calming breath, and when I finally peeled my hands from my face, Danica was standing in front of me.
“Jolie. If you want to stay and see if it could work with him, then do that.”
“I can’t. Even if I wanted to… even if I was brave enough to do that, I can’t. My whole life is down in San Diego now.”
“Your whole life?” Dani challenged.
“You know what I mean, you guys. I miss you. I really do. But I have a job and school and my apartment…”
“All of which you can have up here,” Dani said simply. “Plus, you get us and Alyssa.”
“I know, but… I just can’t.”
“Maybe you can,” Danica said gently. “Have you even let yourself think about that?”
I hadn’t, really. But it all just seemed too… hard.
“Think it through,” she said. “You could still take classes up here if you want to. You could get a job. Even if it takes a while to get settled, make some money, you have places you can stay. You know your mom would let you stay with her, as long as you need to.”
“I can’t live with my mom. I love her, but I can’t.”
“Then you could stay in our condo,” Danica said. Which was incredibly generous and kind.
But I couldn’t.
She meant Ashley’s condo, downtown, which they now just kept empty so they could use it when they came into the city. And it only had one bedroom.
“I’d be in the way,” I told her. “Ashley and Matt need to use it all the time when they’re in and out of the city.”
“You could stay with Dani.”
“I have a very nice couch,” Dani said seriously.
“I appreciate it. I really do, but—”
“It wouldn’t be that hard to get a job,” Danica pressed. “Madeleine would hire you back. As a junior decorator. You could work on one of her teams, keep learning as you go.”
“It’s not like that. I can’t just waltz in and out of her design firm whenever I want and expect her to hire me back.”
“Why not?” she said. “I do it all the time. I have quit that place so many times, and every time I come back from touring she’s offering me a contract to work for some client. She needs good people and she trusts us. We’re family.”
“I don’t know…”
“So, your life is so much better down in San Diego?” Dani pressed. “Is that it?”
“No.”
“You’re being stubborn right now, Jolie,” she informed me. “You’re making excuses. Because we all know you could damn sure get hired in some thrift shop and sleep on my couch until you get on your feet and then get a roommate here, just like you did in San Diego. Everything you’re doing there you could do here. The question is, do you want to?”
“You know what I want?” I kinda snapped. “I just want things to get better. I don’t want to make my life any worse. Because no, it’s not great. And I don’t want to make the wrong move and just make things worse for myself.”
“So, you’re paralyzed.”
Maybe I was. But I breathed, “I don’t know. What do you guys think I should do, really?”
“I think you should move your ass back here, like, yesterday,” Dani said bluntly. “Unless you can give me one good reason why your life should continue on in San Diego. And I’m not hearing it. Danica?”
We both looked at Danica. “I don’t want to pile up on you here, but I agree,” she told me. “I know Madeleine would be thrilled to have you back. She wants to keep Voilà in the family. She doesn’t have children. Who do you think she wants to leave her business to in the future?”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“Well, if you’re Madeleine,” she said, “we’re it. Her only hope of passing along the business she poured her heart and soul into, keeping it in the family, instead of selling it off when she wants to retire one day.”
Great. Now I felt guilty that I’d left Voilà in the first place.
“I never knew it was that important to her…”
“It is. It’s worth a conversation with Madeleine, anyway,” Danica said gently. “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Maybe. I know it probably seems like a no brainer to you. But moving across distances is hard. Even with support. I upended and relocated my whole life just three years ago and started fresh down there. What if I do it all again and it’s a mistake? If I cancel my life down there to come back up here, and Shane doesn’t even want what I want… It’s humiliating.”
“Why?” Danica said. “It’s very human to take a chance on love, Jolie. We should all do it once in a while.” She gave her sister a pointed look, which Dani ignored.
“Because he’s my stepbrother in a few days,” I groaned. “That’s why. If he doesn’t want me, me, for more than just a few weeks of dirty, forbidden sex… I’ll be fucking crushed.”
“No. You will not be crushed,” Dani said firmly. “If he doesn’t want you? His loss.”
“Dani…” I pressed my face in my hands again. “Not now, okay?”
She was right, of course. I knew that, because I’d say the exact same thing to her or anyone else I loved if they were going through this right now. But I did not want to hear it.
Because thinking about how I was going to suck it up and deal with it if he truly didn’t want any more time with me was not something I was ready to do.
“What can we do, babe?” Danica asked me.
“Nothing. Just have my back.” I peered up at them. “And if I cry like a baby at the wedding, just tell everyone it’s happy tears.”
“It will be happy tears,” Dani insisted. “Over his grave, if he’s not careful,” she muttered.
Danica frowned at her. “We have your back,” she told me.
“Always,” Dani agreed.
“I just… can’t even believe I’m in this mess.” I flopped onto the couch again. “It was just supposed to be one night. One fucking night.”
“One night, huh?” Dani mused.
“Yes.”
“So how did it become more than that?”
I stared at her, feeling helpless. Because that was the question, wasn’t it. “How do you think?”
They both seemed to be considering that, and I couldn’t even stand it. “He calls me his little dove,” I lamented quietly.
Holy God, I was gonna miss him so much.
It was visceral, this pain. My organs felt like they were revolting against me. It wasn’t a sick feeling. Or an empty feeling. It was like everything just didn’t fit together anymore and my whole system was trying to tell me I’d screwed up. My body and my mind and my fucking soul were all angry with me.
Without another word, Danica pulled a bottle of white wine from the fridge and started pouring. Dani took two full glasses and sat down next to me, trying to look like she wasn’t as curious as she was. “So, dominant, huh?” She handed me a glass
“Totally dominant.”
“What are we talking? Satin sheets and handcuffs? Or whips and chains and hot candle wax?”
I didn’t indulge her with an answer to that.
“I don’t need satin sheets and handcuffs,” I told her instead. “I just need that man.”
She exchanged a look with her sister.
I figured they were both finally realizing how serious this was, because they both went silent. For once in her life, even Dani didn’t have an opinion to share.
Or maybe she just felt too sorry for me to lay it on me right now.
That night, I lay on the couch in my mom’s hotel room, flat on my back, while she tried on her wedding dress. I’d gone from staring at the seashell to straight-up staring at the ceiling. As if it might have answers for me.
But all it had for me, like most everything else, were memories of Shane’s face.
When Mom walked out of the bathroom in her wedding dress, I snapped to attention. My jaw actually dropped.
She gasped a little at my reaction. “Oh.” Then she sobbed, like she might burst into tears, but caught herself.
“Mom.” I jumped to my feet. “You. Look. Stunning.”
“Please, help me with this.” She was clutching at the ivory silk bodice. “The whole thing is about to fall down.”
I went and fastened all the silk-covered buttons up the back. When she turned to face me, I just shook my head. “You’re a vision, Margot Vola. Jacob is so lucky.”
She laughed softly. “I never thought I’d be a bride this late in life. But I think I can still pull it off?”
“Of course you can. And maybe sometimes, this is just how long it takes to find your unicorn.” I tried to hold onto my smile for her, to be happy for my mom.
