Crazy Love (9 page)

“Business partner? In which company?” The Beaumonts were major shareholders in companies all over the southeast United States when my father was my age. Unfortunately, it was common knowledge that my father had no head for business and never grew the family fortune like his father before him. Thankfully, he hadn’t lost his shirt; he’d just let the dynasty become a bit dusty and stagnant.

“He served on several of the board of directors. He and your Daddy were fraternity brothers. He sold his shares and moved west years ago.”

I swirled the ice in my glass thoughtfully. “He looks familiar.”

“He comes back to Savannah from time to time.” Her eyes flitted back in Mr. Wakefield’s direction, and something about her expression made me feel like a Peeping Tom. This time, I opted not to look over my shoulder.

So it wasn’t much of a leap to say I was distracted by my family’s bizarre behavior and a little under the influence when Randall and I were putting on our exhibition.

“Are you drunk?” Randall demanded once the others were gone and we were headed into the locker room. He frowned at me disapprovingly and folded his monstrous arms across his chest. I knew I’d better explain myself, or he’d promptly kick my ass as only a best friend can.

“I had a couple of sours at lunch,” I blurted.

“At
lunch
? Okay, Trip Junior. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“It’s not like that, Randall.” My overall exasperation at being judged had reached an all-time high.

“Oh yeah? What
is
it like, exactly? Dropping out of school…couch surfing at your mom’s…drinking hard liquor
during the day
! They teach you that shit at Harvard, Sam?” Randall’s brown cheeks had a red under glow to them. His fury was obvious, and I had no plausible explanation for my out of character lackadaisical behavior. I felt my shoulders sag, and I stopped mid-act while unlacing my shoe.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” I confessed, staring at the cracked cement floor.

“Well that much is painfully obvious. You need to get a grip, Beaumont.” Randall pontificated. When I didn’t argue or even respond, his tone and volume softened. “Maybe you should apply to a law school closer to home…”

“No. I’m done. I don’t have the stomach for that kind of life.” Randall and I had already discussed school until I was blue in the face. When I set out for Harvard, I’d intended to honor Daddy’s wishes and specialize in corporate law. Even though he paid little attention to me in my youth, when I shone on the debate team and later graduated valedictorian, he started bragging about me to his cronies. He claimed I was “a shark” and often compared me to his father. It sounds pathetic now, but back then I took great pride in the comparison to the original Reginald Beaumont, who’d been single handedly responsible for doubling the family’s net worth. So I’d had designs on working for the family corporation, but I soon found I had no appetite for screwing people over. I discovered that studying economic torts made me loathe my legacy. Regardless of my family name, I had no desire to follow in the footsteps of slave owners who’d once cornered the market on cotton. The more law school I experienced, the more obvious it was that Harvard and I were through. With all my apprehension and uncertainty about where I was headed, that was one fact I was certain about.

Seeming to comprehend just how lost I was, Randall appeared momentarily sympathetic, but that expression disappeared just as quickly. “Well then, what’s next? Are you gonna just sit around and sip high balls all day on your yacht with your brother?”

“Trip quit drinking.” The words tumbled out of my mouth, and I was shocked at how defensive I sounded. It seemed I was still capable of sticking up for Trip, and that surprised the shit out of me. I knew Randall was onto something, though, and it stung.

“Good for him. So are you auditioning for the vacant role of town drunk?” His fierce eyes dared me to argue, but we both knew he wasn’t wrong. I had been acting pretty foolish, and the whole booze thing was a slippery slope. Time to nip it in the bud, hard and fast

“Alright, alright. Enough. Message received, asshole.” I glowered at him, and he seemed satisfied – at least temporarily – with my response.

“So what the hell have you been doing with your time? ‘Cause I
know
you ain’t been working out.” He took a seat next to me on the bench. He was a couple of inches shorter than I, but damn! That dude is
big
! And even now that I was a grown man, his attitude made him seem large than life.

“Not a lot. I met a girl…but she’s into Trip.”

“Jesus. Not again. Can’t he find his own dates?” His snarky backdoor reference to Violet made me laugh.

“Nice. No, this time I’m the one who’s late to the party. Her name’s Annabelle. She really hot, but she’s a royal pain in the ass. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t think much of me, anyway.” I stood and kicked off my shoes.

“I like her already.” He flashed a pearly smile and motioned for me to continue.

“She told me I’m a dumbass for quitting school. And apparently I’m also a tool for not singing ‘Kumbaya’ at Al-Anon meetings with Trip.” I shed my sweat-drenched shirt and headed for the showers.

“So she’s hot
and
insightful. Next time you see this Annabelle, give her my number!” he called after me. I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t contain an amused grin. God, I’d missed that son of a bitch. One goal was clear in my mind: I was going to knock
him
square on
his
ass. And soon.

I bounced my knee up and down nervously as I waited for the light to turn green. I would be at Trip’s house in less than five minutes, and I was operating on only four hours of sleep. My therapist used to tell me that sleep disorders were common in people with a history like mine and had prescribed me several different pills to turn my brain off at night. Last night I’d had a particularly disturbing dream, so I’d been up reading since 3:45.

It was one of those gauzy dreams that felt as if you were viewing everything through a lens smeared with Vaseline, like in the old movies. Things aren’t clear or chronological, just a bunch of disjointed images and sensations. I recall that I was in a warm bubble bath and that I wasn’t alone. I could feel a rock hard man behind me, his torso against my back, his erection pressed deliciously against my backside. Large masculine hands stroked every inch of my slick skin. Wildly aroused, I turned over in the tub to face my dream guy, and my head nearly exploded when I realized it was Sam Fucking Beaumont.

I awoke with a gasp, confused and sexually frustrated. The ache between my legs was ferocious. Apparently my subconscious is a filthy little slut.

I tried to read a novel, hoping to fall back to sleep, but it was a steamy romance, and my mind kept wandering back to the dream. Sam’s reticent eyes were the one image that was not at all fuzzy. Preoccupied, I tossed my e-reader aside and stared at the ceiling, barely visible by the light of the nearly full moon. I wondered what my therapist would say about all of this and came to the conclusion it was time to find a new one here in Savannah. Hypnotherapy had made a huge difference for me in the past, but I’d slacked off and hadn’t been to any sort of counseling since moving to Georgia. I’d managed to wean myself off of the anxiety meds, and for the most part, I found my ability to survive on four to five hours of sleep helpful as a student. I knew the antidepressants were a must. I was a lifer on those, no doubt about it. But some nights I just craved sleep, and that night was one of them. So once the sun rose, I’d layered on too much concealer to cover the dark circles under my eyes. By the time I arrived at Trip’s, I’d had way too much coffee and entirely too much salacious advice from Jayse.

My nerves were a live wire when I parked my freshly cleaned car in front of his place. I forced myself to stop and take three deep breaths. Casual and simple. That’s what I needed. No drama. If I was going to get through the day, I needed to stop obsessing about the way Trip looked at his ex-wife
and
the way Sam looked at me. As I climbed out of the car and made my way up the walk, I caught myself wringing my hands and I forced them to my sides. I was just about to tap on the front door, when I realized that the loud music I heard was leaking from the studio at the back of the house.

Three times I knocked on the studio door, each time louder than the last. Finally I pushed my way in, and wandered through the maze of canvases to his workroom, which was obviously the source of the eclectic music. Trip had turned the canvas around since I’d last seen it, and I presumed the change had to do with the time of day and the way the light entered his makeshift studio.

His back was to me, and he balanced a painter’s palette in his left hand. He held multiple brushes in his right hand, using a tiny one to tweak “the avenue of oaks” painting, which to my amateur eyes had no need for alteration. He stood shirtless, his broad shoulders tapering perfectly to his narrow hips. My eyebrows twitched as I admired how his jeans hung dangerously low on his hips. I drew nearer, and the light changed enough that I noticed a large faded scar that spanned from his right shoulder, down to his elbow, and over to his mid back. I sucked in my breath, but the loud music masked my presence from him. At some point in his life, he’d been badly burned, and against all reason, I had the overwhelming urge to reach out and touch his damaged flesh. I saw that his opposite arm and shoulder blade displayed large, vibrant tattoos, and I wondered if their presence was a result of Trip’s artistic compulsion for symmetry.

Feeling voyeuristic, my guilty conscience compelled me to make my presence known. I inched closer to him and gently placed my hand on his scarred shoulder. He flinched, dropping his palette and brushes and instinctively shielded his face with wide, terrified eyes. He nearly missed knocking the easel over, as he came to a stop against the wall five feet away from me. The panic-stricken expression he wore reminded me of my little sister Becca’s face when we used to hide in the closet during her father’s drunken rampages.

“Hey…it’s just me.” I managed a soft, gentle tone, though I’d nearly shrieked. Trip peeked at me over his tattooed shoulder, and his mask of calm returned in the blink of an eye. Relief softened him, and the corner of his mouth curled upward. If he was self-conscious about his reaction or his damaged exposed skin, he hid it with the skill of 007.

I watched as his entire body relaxed. He straightened to his full height and squinting as if he’d just noticed how loud the music was, he leaned over swatting at the volume of the blaring sound system. He succeeded in turning it way down and graced me with his crooked grin, as if nothing bizarre had just happened. “Sigur Ros. Music to dream by.”

“Never heard of them.” I replied, shaking my head with a frown. His ability to shift gears so quickly disturbed me. As I opened my mouth to ask about his dramatic reaction, his eyes implored me to leave it alone. I shut my mouth and nodded. He broke into a wide, boyish smile.

My traitorous eyes took in the impeccable front half of his exposed body. Not a single burn, scar, or blemish marred his chiseled arms, chest, or abs. And I was looking…really hard. Thankfully, he knelt to pick up his palette and brushes and wiped off his hands while I ogled him, so I didn’t humiliate myself.

To my disappointment, he snagged a black shirt off a nearby chair and tossed it over his head.

“Ready?” Though his smile was still in place, his face seemed blotchy and his eyes appeared puffy. I could tell something was up with him, something beyond my surprise arrival.

“Yes. Trip…are you Ok?”

“Yeah,” He spoke the word, but the way he looked away toward the carpet told a different story.

“Bullshit,” I contradicted him, placing my hand delicately on his arm.

His face fell into an uneasy grimace, and he placed his hand on top of mine. “It’s been a rough day. I ran into someone from my past.”

“Violet?” The question was out before I’d formed it. His surprise gave way to a look of understanding.

“No. Much, much worse. Let’s just say it’s been a long time since I’ve had to call my sponsor before five o’clock.” He raked a hand through his tousled hair and chuckled without a hint of mirth. He seemed to pause when he looked at the expression on my face, and he brushed a loose tendril of my hair off of my cheek. He was standing dangerously close to me, and we silently studied each other’s eyes. For a second, I thought he might kiss me and realized I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted. Something about the darkness in him seemed like more than I could handle. When he didn’t, relief hit me like an avalanche. I struggled to make sense of what my instincts were trying to tell me. I decided to stop psychoanalyzing, to take the path my gut told me to and keep my hands to myself – for now. Unsure of what else to do, I patted him on the cheek with a rueful grin.

“Let’s go get that dress. Then you can take me to dinner. But I’m picking the place this time. And believe it or not, I can be an excellent listener when I set my mind to it.”