Clifftop Fantasies [BDSM Menage Fantasies] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (9 page)

“I don’t know.” Allie stared at her hands, which were crumbling the tissues into small, ragged pieces on the table. “I don’t want to make it without him. He’s my best friend.”

“If he’s your friend, then he should be acting like one!” Jane seemed to be working herself up into an indignant rant. “A friend would understand why you did the pictures. You needed the money, right? You had the opportunity to support yourself through college, and you took it. There’s no shame in that. If he’s so narrow-minded that he can’t accept your past, then he doesn’t deserve you. That’s all there is to it.”

Allie made an attempt to smile at her. “I suppose you’re right,” she said, but it sounded weak even to her.

“Of course I’m right!” Jane slapped the table. “Now what do you say we go find a bar and let some strange men buy us drinks? That’ll show you
and
Brad that you’re a beautiful, independent woman who doesn’t need him. Come on!”

Allie stared at her.
Go to a bar? Now?
With her face all blotchy and red from crying? Flirt with strange men while her boyfriend was considering leaving her?

“No,” she said finally, shaking her head. “I’ll go make dinner. They’re going to be hungry when they get back. And poor Charlie is in no shape to go out tonight.” She dragged herself to her feet and headed into the kitchen, shaking her head at herself.
Poor Charlie
. He may have a bloody nose, but he was also the only one benefitting from tonight’s fiasco. If Brad left her she wouldn’t have many other choices than to let Charlie rerelease the pictures, much as she hated the thought. It might get her through the next couple of years.

She doggedly pulled out food and started cooking. At least it’s something to do until Brad comes back, she thought. Then they could talk about this whole thing. She knew she could get him to understand if they just sat down and talked about it calmly. It would have been much better for him not to know, but now that he did she just had to deal with it.

But later, when she heard the front door close, it was Karl who came into the kitchen to find her. She heard footsteps going up the stairs and knew that must be Brad, not wanting to talk to her yet.

She looked at Karl apprehensively. Part of her wanted desperately to ask him for a hug. She had a feeling that his arms around her would give her a sense of safety and protection.

Karl sat down at the small kitchen table, seeming to wait for her to start the conversation. Allie felt suddenly shy. The fact that he had probably seen her pictures suddenly seemed less important.

“What happened?” she asked, trying to sound casual as she stirred the pot of spaghetti noodles on the stove. Pasta had seemed homey and comforting, and she thought that everyone in the house would probably prefer comfort food tonight.

“He’s pretty upset, but I think he’ll get over it,” Karl said.

“Think he’ll come down for dinner?” She opened the oven door to check on the frozen rolls she’d put in.

Karl sniffed appreciatively at the yeasty scent. “If he has any sense.”

Allie reached for plates, but Karl took them from her and went to go set the table. She followed him with silverware and napkins, and they worked in silence until everything was set. Allie made a salad and began setting out food while Karl poured drinks.

“Are you going to let her stay here?” he asked as she was draining the spaghetti noodles.

“Who—oh, you mean Jane? I suppose so. She’s not—” Allie caught herself. She’d been about to say “doing any harm,” when she remembered what had caused the whole blowup.

Karl was looking at her, an amused smile on his face. “Were you really just going to say that? Where were you an hour or so ago?” He pointed to the bloody handkerchief in the sink.

Allie felt confused. “That wasn’t her fault,” she said. “It just slipped out.”

Karl nodded sarcastically. “Right. You go on believing that. Just do yourself a favor and try not to tell her any more secrets.”

She stared at him. “But I didn’t tell her—”

Karl put the water glasses on a tray and headed for the dining room. “I’ll tell everybody dinner’s ready,” he called over his shoulder. “You finish dishing it up.”

Chapter 8

Brad didn’t come down, so Allie went upstairs to find him while the others settled down to their meal. He wasn’t in their bedroom, but she was fairly sure he hadn’t left again, so she looked into all of the rooms until she found him.

He was in the starry-nights room, lying on the dark-blue bedspread, staring up at the constellations she’d spent a week putting on the ceiling, a black velvet pillow clutched tightly over his chest. Allie went in cautiously and sat on the side of the bed, glancing up. She’d worked so carefully on that ceiling, checking a guide to the stars after each placement, trying to make sure each one was situated exactly in its correct place. Allie waited, but there was no reaction from Brad to her presence.

“Hi,” she said finally. “Did Karl tell you that dinner was ready?”

“Yes,” he muttered, turning his head toward the wall like a petulant toddler. “I’m not hungry.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He did meet her eyes then. His did not look friendly. “What is there to talk about?”

“Well, maybe we could start by discussing rationally what happened and why. Or are you not even interested in hearing my side of it?” She could hear her voice getting a defensive and angry tone and concentrated on staying calm. There was no point in both of them being unreasonable.

“Your side of it? Do you want to tell me all your little stripper stories?” The pillow began to twitch, and she saw that he was kneading it, his knuckles white. Allie spared a quick, concerned thought that he might rip the thing open but decided if he needed something to take out his anger on, at least it had been fairly inexpensive.

“I was never a stripper,” she said, a little more sharply than she’d intended. “I did a few nude photographs. That was all. I was a broke college kid, desperate for money. When I went to my father, he told me he could help me get some modeling jobs. He wouldn’t give me money because he said it would make me weak and dependent and I needed to learn to stand on my own two feet. He introduced me to Charlie, who convinced me that the nudes were the best way to make money. I assumed he’d sell them once, they’d be in some magazine or other, and that would be the end of it. It didn’t occur to me that the fucking things would haunt me for the rest of my life.”

“Did you have sex with him?” The pillow twitched faster.

She was shocked. “Of course not! He didn’t even touch me, not even to show me how he wanted the poses done.”

Brad snorted. “I’ll bet.”

She glared at him, her resolve to stay calm fading. “You can think whatever you want,” she said coldly, “but since it was before I met you, it really isn’t any of your business.”

He rolled over onto his elbow, throwing the pillow across the room. It barely missed a Van Gogh print on the wall. “But now it
is
my business. Charlie’s here to get you to sign off your rights to reuse the pictures. That means that my girlfriend is going to be naked in a book. A
book
, Allie. Something everyone and anyone will be able to see.”

Allie’s eyes went wide. “A book?” she repeated. “Who told you that? Nobody said anything to me about a book.”

Brad groaned in exasperation and flopped back onto the bed. “Karl told me,” he said.

“But anyway,” Allie continued after a second or two, “I’m
not
giving him permission to reuse them. I just want them to go away. I wish the whole thing had never happened. I should have just worked at McDonald’s.”

“Well, it’s too late for that now,” Brad said accusingly.

“That’s fine for you to say. Your parents put you through school. My mom could barely afford to feed us when I was home. And I’ve told you what my father said when I went to him. The main thing,” she forced herself back onto topic, “is what are we going to do now? The past is over, but we have a business to think about.”

He groaned theatrically. “You and this house. That’s all you think about. You don’t care what I think or what would be best for us. It’s all about the house, isn’t it? I’m surprised you didn’t jump at his offer, just for the chance to make some more money to dump into this place.”

Indignant tears stung Allie’s eyes. “Are you saying you don’t care if we lose the business?”

He rubbed his temples. “I’m saying that I don’t think it’s worth putting out naked pictures of my girlfriend to do it.”

“I didn’t say it was!” She jumped to her feet. “This conversation is going nowhere. Obviously you need more time to calm down.”

“That’s right, go talk to your cowboy. I’m sure he’ll tell you whatever you want to hear. He’d probably hang the pictures up in the front hallway if we’d let him. Especially the ones of you.”

She stopped, one hand on the door, giving him a warning look. “What does
that
mean?”

“It means that I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” Brad’s voice sounded cold and tired. “And the way you look at him. Don’t bother trying to tell me there isn’t an attraction there.”

Allie started to deny it but stopped. “It doesn’t matter if there is, Brad. I’m with you. I’m not going to do anything with him, even if we are attracted to each other.”

He snorted a little. “Maybe you should.”

She shook her head in confusion. “Why would you say that?”

“He might be better for you than me. You certainly have at least one thing in common—you would both do just about anything to keep this place going.”

“And you wouldn’t?”

He sighed. “No. I think this place is bound to fail and it’s going to take us down with it. Sooner or later you’re going to have to face that fact, Allie, and give up this unrealistic dream.”

She stared at him for a second, the blood draining from her face, then turned and left without another word. She went slowly down the stairs, looking around at the beautiful railings, the wallpaper she and Karl had hung together, the pictures they had chosen. They had worked very hard to make this place perfect, and she remembered with a pang Brad’s halfhearted acknowledgements of the results. He was probably right, she thought. It was going to fail, and there was nothing she could do about it. She took her place at the table with the others, mutely shaking her head when Jane asked if Brad was coming down, and ate in silence.

Allie lay awake for a long time that night, waiting for the door to open and Brad to slip in and come to bed. She went over and over in her head whether she should pretend to be asleep or jump up and confront him, demanding that they get everything out in the open and decide what to do. If they wanted to stay together, they needed to agree on where they were going and what their goals were. She didn’t know if Brad wanted to stay with her, though. He wasn’t interested in the B and B, apparently, and that was all she’d been living for ever since the house had been given to her. A few times she thought she heard footsteps but, after scooting frantically down in the bed in case she wanted to fake sleep at the last minute, decided she must have been mistaken.

When she woke up in the morning, there was a pile of tissues around her on the bed from where she’d gotten depressed at three o’clock and had a good cry. Still no Brad—or maybe he’d snuck in while she’d slept and then gotten up early. She jumped up and ran to the starry-nights room. The bed was made, and there was no sign of Brad anywhere.

She went downstairs to see if he’d left a note, but she knew there wouldn’t be anything. She had cleared the table after dinner but left the dishes piled in the sink, unable to face them. Now they were gone, washed and put away, and there was a pot of coffee made with her mug sitting in front of it. Brad? she wondered but shook her head. More likely Jane, feeling compassion for the haggard, worried way she’d looked at dinner.

As if on cue, Jane came into the kitchen behind her. She put an arm around Allie’s shoulder and pulled her close. Allie allowed it, feeling as if she couldn’t afford to alienate anyone else in her life at the moment.

“You okay, sweetie?” Jane said softly.

Allie nodded miserably, resolutely stopping the sniffle that wanted to escape. “Thanks for doing the dishes,” she said, stepping forward to take another mug out of the cupboard.

“Oh, you’re welcome, honey.” Jane accepted the coffee, without cream or sugar, of course. Allie got out the leftover muffins and everything in the bread box and put it all on the kitchen table with juice and butter.

As Allie toasted herself a bagel, she noticed glumly that Jane had pulled a low-fat yogurt out of the fridge for herself. But it didn’t matter, she thought. Jane, even though she was probably fifteen years older than Allie, still posed nude and needed to keep her figure. Allie most likely wasn’t going to have a man to stay thin for after last night.

“So what happens now?” Jane asked as Allie defiantly spread cream cheese and jelly on her bagel, daring it to put another pound or two on her hips.

“About what?” Allie asked, trying for nonchalance. She took a bite, savoring the creamy decadence.