Anyone but Alex (The English Brothers Book 3) (8 page)

“
Again, not news to me, Barrett.”

“Jesus, no wonder you’re acting so weird.” Barrett shook his head, his eyes serious, almost grave. “
Alex, listen to me: you know hundreds girls. Thousands. Find someone else.”

Alex stared back at Barrett, his mind replaying the loveliness that was Jessica last night in the moonlight.
Someone who chooses me. Only me.
 

“You must
let this go,” said Barrett gently, but firmly. He folded his hands in his lap, looking at Alex with uncharacteristic compassion. “You’ve been popular with the ladies for as long as I can remember. And I know that Philly’s tagged you as the ‘playboy’ of the English clan, and I know that quite a lot of what’s said about you isn’t true. I know this because I’ve co-signed most of the checks that bought you out of situations that were loud and distracting, but also fabricated. As far as I know, you haven’t gotten anyone pregnant or promised to marry anyone. And those pictures we bought? You were asleep in them.”

Alex didn’t say anything, but Barrett was right on all counts. He was careful about using protection, he’d never proposed to anyone
, and while pictures and video had been taken of him, he’d never actually taken any of his own.

“But, Alex, you’ve never done anything to mend or rebuild
your reputation. If anything, you’ve encouraged it. Leaving high-profile parties with a different woman than the one you walked in with. Taking two girls for brunch on a Sunday morning wearing the same dresses they were wearing the night before. Smirking like it all might be true when asked by reporters, instead of defending your name. You’re not a bad person, but you’ve allowed the rest of the world to believe you are a complete cad. And while that might make you the edgy darling of the society pages, it makes a nice girl like Jessica Winslow off-limits.”

Alex swallowed then clenched his jaw, staring at his desk and feeling frustrated and a little bit miserable.

“Which is why I can only be friends with her.”

“Which is why you should stay away from her.”

“I
can’t
,” Alex insisted in a low, tortured whisper.

“Why?” asked Barrett, shaking his head. “Why her?”

Because she looks at me the way everyone looks at you.

Because she sees
something good in me when everyone else sees a one-night stand.

Because my chest stopped aching the moment my eyes
locked on hers.

“B
ecause she asked,” he finally answered.

“She asked to be your friend?”

Alex nodded.

“And you…what? You
can’t just say no? She’s been in England for a decade. It’s not like you have an attachment to her.”

Alex’s mind flash
ed-back to her wild black hair tumbling around the popped collar of a pink polo shirt, bright green eyes wide and trusting as they locked on his. “
Can I be on your team, Alex?”

“Maybe we have history.”

“History.”

Feeling frustrated,
Alex cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “You know, Barrett? You fell in love with the gardener’s daughter when you were eight-years-old. Would it be so impossible for you to believe that something like that could have happened to me with Jessie Winslow?”

Barrett’s face softened
at Alex’s reference to Emily, but his eyes were still concerned. “Do you truly want to be her friend?”

No,
growled his body.

“
Yes. I swear it. Her friend. That’s all.”

“You’re not going to try to get her in bed?”

Alex shook his head. As much as Alex wanted Jessica in his bed, he truly intended to keep their relationship above-board.

Barrett took a deep breath. “You
can’t spend time with her if you’re having Thursday nooners with Hope Atwell and banging Sally, Molly, and Mary on the side.”

“Done.
I’ll end things with Hope and clear the rest of my calendar.”

Barrett looked truly shocked.
“Just like that? You’ll throw over Hope and the rest of your social life to be
friends
with Jessica?”

“She’s only here for five weeks. I can go back to my old life when she goes home.”
Even as he said the words, they felt bitter in his mouth. He rubbed his chest for a moment, returning his eyes to Barrett for advice.

“Okay.
” Barrett’s voice was still worried, but more thoughtful now. “If you’re really serious about this, here are some suggestions. When you’re with her? No hotels. No tinted-glass limos. No drunken groping on the dance floor of night clubs where anyone could get a photo on their smart phone.”

“Got it.”

“You don’t hold hands with a friend or try to get her alone in dark corners.”

“Okay. Lots of don’ts. What
can
you do?”

“You can meet in public places
for breakfast or lunch and go your separate ways in separate cabs when your meal is over. You can kiss on the cheek to say hello. And otherwise? You talk.”

“Talk.”

“Talk and maybe laugh, if that feels right, and eat lunch together. I don’t know. Talk about all that history you two have. Ask her about London, where she went to school and what she does for work. Come to think of it, ask her about Devon and see if she knows anything about the shipbuil—”

“Barrett,” Alex said sharply.

“Right. You know what? Forget she’s a woman, Alex. Just be her friend.”

Alex sat back, taking a deep breath. Forget she’s a woman? Forget the sky’s blue. Forget the grass is green. Forget the onyx black of her hair and the red rosiness of her lips and the—

“
Friends
, Alex,” said Barrett meaningfully, watching Alex’s face. “And what exactly are you going to do about the Winslow’s?”

Alex sighed loudly. “The proof will be in the pudding. If my behavior is above reproach, they won’t have anything to worry about.”

“God help you,” said Barrett, standing and pushing in the guest chair. “If you hurt a hair on that girl’s head, God help all of us. We’re no slouches, but English brothers against Winslow brothers? We’d lose.”

Alex watched as his big brother headed out the door, then turned his chair to the Philadelphia skyline. Hurt her? He’d die before hurting her. He’d die before watching that trusting light go dark in her eyes.

For the first time in his life, Alex knew… if anyone was going to get hurt, it would be him.

***

By ten o’clock on Tuesday morning, Jessica was a wreck.

She and Alex hadn’t exchanged phone numbers, nor had he called her at Westerly to reconfirm their lunch date, which made her fear the
worst. Maybe the scotch and the moonlight had momentarily addled his brain and upon further reflection he had probably decided that there was no way in hell he was interested in a friendship with Jess when there were thousands of willing females ready to please him.

Alex didn’t
do
friends, right? Her brother said it and Alex said it—and regardless of their brief, sweet history as children and blatant attraction to one another as adults, there was no reason for her to think she was the exception to that rule. Her heart clenched painfully as she wondered if she’d be stood up.

“More’s the better,” she declared
crisply, thinking of her brothers, who’d be a massive complication to her “friendship” with Alex.

From the very
un
subtle comments her brothers had made at Sunday dinner about Alex—Preston coughing the word “manslut” every few minutes was especially delightful—she knew that Cameron had shared the news of her balcony rendezvous. She hadn’t confirmed or denied, or even acknowledged, their suspicions, but it was amply clear that if they found out she was spending time with Alex, the proverbial shit would hit the proverbial fan
tout suite
. And since they all moved in the same social circles and their family estates were next door to each other, keeping their friendship a secret would be next to impossible.

“So, good. He didn’t want to be your friend in the first place. He’s probably not sending a car anyway. You haven’t a thing to worry about.”

She snapped her laptop shut and shoved it across her comforter, looking at it with distrust and disdain.

Jess was so ridiculously infatuated with him, she’d made a major tactical error. She’d spent all of Monday and a few hours of Tuesday morning surfing Alex English
online.

She’d kept up with Alex’s colorful and prolific dating life over the years, of course, but from the distance of England and the improbability of ever knowing him again, she could review the news and accompanying photos with a lot of fascination, a good bit of wistfulness, a little bit of
voyeurism, and a pinch of defensiveness. Back in Philly, after a dance in the moonlight, with a lunch date on the table (maybe), it was harder to feel removed from Alex’s shenanigans.

There were several stories about women claiming he fathered their children, though when she cross-referenced these claims with “DNA testing” none came up with any verification. There were women moaning and crying about Alex promising them things: cars, jewelry, apartments, a wedding. All of these women made their claims loudly and bitterly then disappeared soon after, leading Jessica to assume they were paid to stay quiet and wondering—as many others did—if pay-offs were an admission of guilt, or just a way to silence false claims against the English name. There were several other dramatic stories that included pictures of Alex asleep in boxers and one of his bare ass aired out for all the world to see.
Sighing, Jessica grudgingly admitted she had looked a little longer at those pictures than was necessary to ascertain his probable lack of consent.

Cameron had described Alex as a “dog” and a “
manwhore” and yet, despite the fact that Alex was obviously a prolific womanizer with no evidence of ever having had a short or long term girlfriend, Jessica couldn’t quite accept that description as the sum and total of his character.

She leaned back against the pillows on her bed, her face softening with yearning as she thought about Saturday night. He’d been so concerned, so conflicted about her offer of friendship, as though even sharing a lunch with him could somehow hurt her reputation or her heart. Despite her obvious attraction to him, he had looked deeply into her eyes and refused to take advantage of her. More than once he insisted that he wasn’t any good for her, and she’d seen the regret on his face when he assessed how different he was from what she was looking for.

How could she reconcile the Alex she knew with the man splashed all over the internet? With the man about whom her brothers were so passionately against her dating?

She kicked the laptop with her foot and hopped out of bed, crossing the plush pale pink carpet of her room to her dressing table, which had a full skirt covered with pink cabbage roses. She sat down on the puffy stool and looked at herself in the same mirror she’d stared into all those years ago when Alex was a freshman heartthrob at St. Michael’s Academy
, and she was a third grader at Miss Thoroughgood’s Prep. For hours she’d stared at her face—at her crooked, pre-braces teeth and freckled nose—before going downstairs for their Bon Voyage party. That was the night Alex English kissed her on the forehead and whispered “No Girls Allowed doesn’t mean you” in her ear. That was the night she’d lost a piece of her heart.

And since seeing Alex on Saturday, she felt
that lost piece within her grasp—in the warmth of his presence, in his teasing grin and bright, blue eyes. She knew what people said about him, and she’d even read the accounts with her own eyes, but it didn’t seem to matter. It didn’t matter that he’d been with scores of women. It didn’t matter that they claimed he’d treated them poorly.  It didn’t matter that her brothers objected to her seeing him. It didn’t matter that spending time with him might ruin her reputation in Philadelphia.

Seeing Alex again, talking with him, dancing together—it had all served to remind her of how important he’d been to her once upon a time. And despite his reputation, he felt no less important to her now. If she’d doubted the strength of her childhood crush, meeting him again on Saturday night had confirmed it. Her feelings for Alex were still alive, and no matter how much he had changed, a part of her would always belong to him
.

T
hat was why—with her heart racing, but her head held high—she went to her closet to choose an outfit to wear to lunch. She cared for him. She wanted him. And until he gave her a reason not to, she resolved to trust him.

Ninety minutes later, she sat in the front parlor at Westerly, ostensibly reading her Kindle, but anxiously flicking her eyes to the window every few minutes to see if a hired car was making its way down the driveway.

“Why, Jessie,” said Olivia Winslow in her crisp British accent, wandering into the parlor and smiling at her only daughter. “I thought you’d gone into town.”

“No,
Mother. I’m… just reading. Though I may head in for lunch in a bit.”