Good Morning Heartache (18 page)

“Boston,” he said, returning
his gaze to the television.

It wasn’t closer. “What?
Why?” She wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t care. She loved him. He couldn’t
just leave her.

“If we’re going to make it
big, we gotta go to the city.” The annoying music for the cartoon came back on,
and any of his attention that she’d had was gone.

When the commercials came
back on she asked in a soft tone, “What about us? We’re supposed to get married
after I turn eighteen.”

“Don’t worry about that,
babe,” he rasped into her ear. “A love like ours can’t be broken. I’ll come see
you when I can. I’d take you with me, but…” he hesitated.

“But what?” Riley’s eyes
widened. She’d do anything to keep them together.

“I don’t have the cash to
get a place big enough for the two of us.” He shook his head sadly. “It really
sucks.”

Riley sat up. “I have money.
I can pay for myself,” she said with eagerness.

“Really, babe?” A smile
crossed his face. He looked happy to hear it.

“Absolutely.”

“What about your sister?” he
asked. “You said she’s a real bitch.”

“She can’t do anything. It’s
my money. I’ll take care of it,” she promised.

Jimmy leaned to her and
quickly and lightly pressed his mouth against hers. “I knew I could count on
you. This is why we’re perfect for each other.” He looked down at his watch and
stood up. “I should probably go. Your sister could be home any minute, and I
don’t want to deal with that.”

Jimmy walked around the
couch and out of the room, leaving Riley sitting there warm and glowing.

§

Ryan had no idea what he was
doing. Since the night at the beach house he couldn't get Alexis out of his
head. Every time he was near her, he had the compulsion to touch her. It wasn't
anything that he really thought about. It was like his body knew that she was
nearby, and before he knew it or was able to think about it logically, they were
kissing again or he was running his hand up her shorts.

He didn't mind touching her.
He liked the feel of her silky skin against his. He wanted to bed her again and
run his mouth along her curves. And he had the hard-on to prove it. At the same
time, he didn't want to scare her away. She was pretty explicit about what she
did and did not want. Ryan knew that Alexis didn't want a boyfriend, and despite
that, he was treating her like his girlfriend.

The thing that bothered him
was that he wouldn’t care if she changed her mind. When he woke up alone at the
house at the Cape, he was disappointed to find that she was gone. On one hand,
he wanted another round. On the other, it would have been nice to wake up in
the morning and look at a beautiful woman—especially this one.

When the credits started to
roll, Alexis quickly jumped out of her seat and headed to the exit without him.
He stood up and grabbed his trash, but she was out of the dark theater before
he could catch up with her. Ryan was pretty sure that she was running away from
him.

He knew he should back off.
This couldn't go anywhere after he was done with the wedding gift and he went
back to New York. He wasn't sure he was ready for a relationship, but he damn
sure wasn't ready for a long distance relationship, which carried none of the
benefits of being in a relationship.

As he walked out of the
theater, Ryan noticed that Alexis was talking to a lanky guy with spiky brown
hair and who was dressed in worn jeans and an embarrassingly inappropriate graphic
t-shirt having to do with drunken debauchery. Ryan's chest tightened. He
clenched his jaw and marched over to the couple.

It wasn’t Richard, though
Ryan expected him to pop up again soon. It was probably another one of her
lovers. He was sure that Alexis was seeing other men. She didn't have any
reason to sleep only with him, but the thought made him feel kind of sick and
crazy. He hated the feeling. This guy in particular made him crazy. Maybe it
was his complete lack of effort or his obvious distastefulness. While Ryan’s
face still ached from the day before, he was ready to try to punch this guy
too, even though he didn’t have a reason.

When he moved closer, he saw
that the color in Alexis's face had drained, and she wasn't looking this guy in
the face. From what he knew of Alexis, this was not how she picked up guys or
treated old lovers. Something was wrong.

Jesus, maybe she did have
another stalker. This was ridiculous. Richard was enough stalker for one
person. Where did she find these psychos?

Ryan stopped next to
Alexis's left side. “What's going on here?”

Alexis looked up at him, her
eyes pleading for help. She gulped hard and then wrapped her arms around Ryan's
waist gripping him tightly. He looked over at spiky hair and watched his face
twist as Ryan wrapped his arm around Alexis's shoulder.

“Nothing. Ryan, this is
Frank. We used to date.”

Ryan knew about Frank. He
knew that he was likely the biggest jerk on the planet. Willing to play along
with Alexis's game, Ryan held out his hand to shake Frank's. “Oh yeah. I think
that she's mentioned you. High school, right?”

“College,” Frank corrected
him with a look of disgust on his face.

Alexis rose on her toes and
kissed Ryan's neck. A shot of need ran to the tip of his penis. He leaned down
and gave her a quick kiss on the mouth. He could play the game, but someone was
going to pay for it later. He hated to think that it would be him—alone in the
shower—but he doubted she’d be grateful enough to give him the pleasure. Of
course, after Saturday night, he had no idea what to expect from her.

“Didn't you move away
somewhere, Frank?” Ryan asked.

Frank stood a little taller,
but he still didn't reach Ryan's eye level. He could tell the guy was
distressed by Ryan’s presence and obviously annoyed.

“Italy, but I was
transferred back here last winter.”

Alexis ran her hand across
Ryan's stomach, gently, like she cared. She didn't say anything, and he knew
that she was uncomfortable because the nails of her other hand were digging
into his back, almost painfully.

“Do you do Mixed Martial
Arts?” Ryan asked. This guy didn’t look like a physical threat, but neither had
Richard. Alexis shot him a look and shook her head almost imperceptibly.

Frank fumbled with his
popcorn. “Ahh…no.”

Ryan smiled at him. “That’s
fantastic news. What about…”

Alexis stopped him, going as
far as to place her body in front of his a little bit. “Well, it was nice to
see you, Frank, but we need to get home and let the dog out. Maybe we'll see
you around.”

Frank grabbed Alexis’s arm,
and she stiffened against Ryan’s body before Frank pulled her close and
whispered something in her ear. She shot her other hand out behind her and
grabbed Ryan’s hand, squeezing it tightly. He was ready to take care of this
guy as soon as she let him know he could. Alexis whispered something back and
then pulled her arm out of Frank’s grasp.

“Email me so that I can send
you an invitation,” she finished and then wrapped her arms around Ryan again.

Frank pushed past them down
the hallway of theater entrances and said something that sounded like “yeah,
whatever.”

Ryan and Alexis began
walking casually out to the lobby, still wrapped in each other’s arms.

“You did good, thank you,”
she said.

“Sure thing.” He kissed the
top of her hair and inhaled her mint shampoo.

Ryan turned just in time to
see Frank, glaring back at him. Ryan gave him a smile and waved. “What did he
say to you?”

“He called you an asshole
and offered me a ride on his ‘Good Ship Lollipop.’”

Ryan clenched his teeth at
the comment. “He doesn’t do any form of organized fighting, right?” He didn’t
have a problem dragging Frank out of the theater by the collar of his shirt. Despite
his failure to best Richard, Ryan was a pretty good fighter. Not fitting in
during high school will do that.

“No more fighting for you.”
She ran a finger along his bruised chin line and up to his lip. “I took care of
it. I told him that your ship was significantly longer and had better on-board
entertainment. I also may have mentioned that I was committed to sailing your
friendly seas.”

“Really?” he paused. “I’m a
little nervous to ask, but what did you invite him to? ‘Cause while I am all
for a threesome, I don’t think I like that particular male-to-female ratio.”

Alexis smiled and hesitated
and stood straighter to look at him. She took a quick shallow breath in through
her teeth, making a hissing sound. With the exhalation she said apprehensively,
“Our wedding.”

Ryan chuckled, “So you do
lie.”

“Only to him.” Alexis
nuzzled back up against his side. “Lie for a lie.”

Ryan glanced back over his
shoulder one more time, but Frank was gone. He liked to think that she was
doing it because she wanted to, but Alexis probably didn't know that she didn’t
have an audience to perform for.

Opening the door into the
damp night air, Ryan commented aloud, “I'm glad you didn't marry him.” He could
feel Alexis stiffen against him, but she relaxed when he added, “He doesn't
come close to deserving a woman like you. Where do you find these guys?”

Alexis shrugged, “I’m as
careful as I can be, but it doesn’t mean my judgment is always great.”

On the ride home, Ryan
managed to keep his hands to himself, but it was a struggle to keep his hand
off her thigh while she sat looking out the passenger side door.

After they got back to
Alexis's house, Ryan left almost immediately. As much as he would have liked to
have stayed and seen the other rooms of her house, particularly her bedroom, he
knew that he had to back off a little bit. At least until she was a little less
defensive and a little less scared that at any moment he was going to drop to a
knee and declare his undying love for her. While he wasn’t going to do that, he
realized that he certainly felt more than lust for her. A guy doesn’t go
toe-to-toe with a girl’s ex-lovers if he’s just screwing her when it’s
convenient.

Alexis was right: friends or
lovers. And he liked her too much to just be her lover.

Luckily, work on the house
would continue in the morning, so he had a good reason to stay away from her
for a while. It would give him a cooling off period so he could figure out...

He wasn’t even sure what he
had to figure out.

He knew he liked her more
than he should, as a person as well as a lover. He was afraid that if he wasn't
more careful he could very easily fall in love with her.

Chapter
13

Riley paced her bedroom. She
had just gotten off the phone with Jimmy, and it was really happening. They
were going away together. Alexis didn't want her around; that wasn’t hard to
see, so she figured that she would easily be convinced that this was best for
everyone involved.

It was a little before noon,
and Alexis would be in her work room, doing whatever it was she did down there
in that boring pit of nothingness. Riley didn't see why she bothered trying to
work. They had more money than God. School. Work. They weren't for people like
them. They were for the people who needed money.

Sick of hanging out in her
room, Riley went downstairs. She looked around and saw her clothes lying around
the great room. Riley figured that if she was going to even get a word in with
her sister, she better not give her anything to complain about. Besides that,
leaving her shit around the house was a good way to annoy Alexis, but not a
good way to get her in an amicable mood. She began picking up the various
pieces of clothing.

Riley hadn’t meant to make a
mess. It’s just what happened with her. The first time she realized that she
was a slob was when she was sent away to school. Before that, things always
made it back to their homes. She didn’t know how, but she didn’t take the time
to think about it either. But within two hours of living in the dorm, it was
obvious. She had changed her clothes and gone to the orientation meeting. When
she returned she had a livid roommate, unpacked boxes, and clothes all over the
floor.

From that point on, she used
the bulk of her allowance to pay her roommate to keep things tidy. Riley didn’t
see the purpose in learning the skills to do it on her own because once she benefitted
from her trust she wouldn’t clean anything ever again.

Riley guessed that she
should wash her wardrobe before leaving for Boston. Since she didn't know where
they were going, she also didn't know the next time a private washer would be
available. Of course, a lot of that depended on Alexis.

It didn't matter. Either way
she was getting out of the house and out of that school. If she set foot in
another one of those classrooms, she would start throwing chairs. When she ran
out of chairs, she would move on to desks. God help them if they didn’t kick
her out by the time she ran out of desks.

Arms full of jeans and
shirts, she trotted up the stairs to the laundry room. She threw the clothes
into the barrel of the front-loading washer, added detergent to the
compartment, and ran everything on cold. To hell with sorting, there wasn’t
really a point. If anything was ruined, she’d just buy new stuff. Though the
clothes were fairly new, she wouldn’t mind a whole new wardrobe.

Riley moved back to the
staircase and saw Alexis ascending the stairs toward her. Riley painted on a
big smile when Alexis looked up at her, and she could see her sister's face
drop in disappointment and concern. Not concern for Riley, but concern that she
would have to talk to her, which was why Riley was sure that Alexis was going
to love her plan.