Public Relations (24 page)

Peter managed to pull his attention away from the high-end range to cast Carl a bewildered look. “Huh?”

“I think it’s obvious to everyone but you that you’re falling in love with her.” This statement made no more sense than Carl’s last.

“What?” Cotton filled Peter’s brain, creating a barrier of fluffy nothing between him and understanding. He’d be surprised if he could remember how to lift a cup to his lips, much less carry on a conversation.

Carl apparently didn’t care about Peter’s inability to form more than one-word responses to his questions. He rose from his seat to put his folders and laptop into his bag. “You care about her. Just go after her. Make it right.”

“She called me a coward.” That seemed important somehow.

Carl’s brows lifted, forming twin arches over his glasses. He cleared his throat and looked away. “We all have something we’re cowardly about.”

“What if I hurt her?” Peter shuffled to the table and dropped into a chair. Face in his hands, elbows propped, he repeated the question into his hands. “What if I hurt her?”

“Huh.” Carl snorted. “I could have sworn Georgia is the kind of woman who is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Besides, I think you already stomped all over her heart, no matter your good intentions.”

What went unspoken but was perfectly conveyed in Carl’s wry tone was the part about Peter being a jackass for hurting the woman he loved.

Loved?

Holy fuck.

The weight of a responsibility to another human being that he’d avoided all his adult life came crashing through his heart’s carefully erected barriers. Whoever engineered the things needed to be fired and fined for such rickety construction.

Peter dropped his hands and looked up at Carl, who stood grim-faced by the kitchen island. The kitchen seemed big, empty, and silent. Only Georgia’s energy had ever filled it up.

“I don’t think she’s going to forgive me.”

“Maybe not.” Carl gave a little shrug. “But maybe if you talk to Sid, he can give you some insight into how to go about that? No harm in improving your chances, right?”

“How did you get to be so smart about relationships, Carl?” Peter asked.

Carl withdrew the designer pen from his shirt pocket and twiddled it between his fingers, seeming to examine the thing, and by extension himself, for insight. When he met Peter’s gaze, his expression was pained.

“I’m not smart.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “I just know what it’s like to live without someone you want. At least you have a chance to be happy.” He spoke his next words in a whisper. “Take it. Be happy enough for both of us.”

By the time Peter’s addled brain parsed Carl’s directive, he was alone in his kitchen with nothing more than his regrets.

* * * *

At eleven thirty, Georgia finally looked at her cell when it rang for the umpteenth time that morning. A tiny part of her heart expected Peter’s name on the display. Sid’s name and his mustachioed rubber-ducky icon flashed accusingly. Georgia groaned and rolled to her back as she brought the phone to her ear.

“What do you want?” She winced and rubbed her sinuses.

“Georgie?”

“Where did you think you were calling?” she sniped. “Buckingham Palace?”

“Have you been crying?”

“Bugger off.” She hung up.

Expecting the cell to begin ringing again immediately, she stared at it for a moment. When it didn’t burble or chirp, she reactivated the display and looked at her missed calls. Fourteen from Sid. One from Carl. One from an unknown number.

Listless and numb, more than wrung out from her morning long crying jag, she dialed her voice mail. Sid had left twelve increasingly frantic messages and two hang-ups. She deleted each message with a guilty twinge.

One message from Carl simply said, “
Oh man, Georgia. Please forgive him. Don’t hurt him. He needs you.
”

Hurt? Him?

Georgia glared at the phone and deleted the message with a spiteful poke at the screen. She elbowed to a sitting position, drawing the covers with her to stay warm, as the last message played.

“
I stopped by the office. You weren’t there.
” Georgia clutched the phone tighter as Peter’s deeper tones resonated over the little speaker into her ear. “
Call me. We need to talk
.”

She played the message six times before finally saving it and tucking her phone away. He wanted to talk? To her? She looked at the missed call display and took in the time stamp: 9:06 a.m. About five minutes before Sid’s rash of calls began. Had the two men talked? What had Sid told him?

A text popped up from Sid with a little chime.
I’m coming over.

“No. Don’t,” she said as she typed the same words on the little glass keyboard.

Ur not in any condition 2b alone.

“I just want to die,” she admitted aloud and to the altar of the IM gods.

Peter looks like shit.

“Really?” Somehow the thought made her feel better.

Yeah. Really
, Sid texted back.

She flopped backward onto the bed and didn’t answer. Sid should understand by her radio silence she was taking the day off. Maybe she’d lie here for a while before she had some ice cream delivered, along with a bag of cookies the size of her head. Then she’d watch
Sex and the City
reruns or old movies until her eyes bled, if she wasn’t blind from all the stupid crying.

Who was she? A pubescent teen in love with Prince William? Look how his life had turned out. The fairy-tale everything. Maybe she should’ve gone to some tony British university. Met one of his aristocratic pals and found her storybook too. Unlike most people, for her that ending had once upon a time been a distinct possibility.

A cascade of unlikely and irrational life scenarios crashed through her unstable mental barriers, and the tears began again. More angry than sad, she swiped at her face. God, she’d really bollixed up her life, hadn’t she? Made a real hash out of things. Leave it to her, when faced with a decision, to always choose the wrong thing. She and Peter could’ve been so good together…

“Sure. Until he found out about you writing that column. What then?” She laughed darkly and stopped crying on a little hiccup. “You’d be in an even bigger mess. Thank your stars he’s off your scent and out of your life.”

She sat up and adjusted her nightgown so it no longer twisted around her middle. She dialed the concierge and ordered the junk-food equivalent of heroin. That accomplished, she paced. Maybe she should quit the paper? Take a long holiday in Majorca? Or even go back to university to study something more lucrative and less apt to get her into trouble? Finance? Or maybe her master’s in business? She’d enjoyed putting those reports together for Peter, not that she’d ever see the results. The bell rang, and she shrugged on a robe over her nightgown.

“Just a sec,” she called, hurrying toward the door as she pawed in her wallet for the concierge’s tip.

Maybe some good brain rot would be on the telly. Something that would put her racing thoughts on ice for the afternoon. Tip clutched in her fist, she opened the door to greet…Peter? Holding her bag of ice cream and sweets, the cookies sticking out of the top?

“Sid said you’d be here. House-sitting for Gigi.” She blinked at him, and he gestured toward her with the bag. “May I come in?”

She stepped back, her hand automatically going to her hair. Catching a glimpse of her reddened nose and puffy eyes in the hall mirror, she wanted to melt into the carpet out of sheer mortification.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” she finally managed when he faced her. Voice hoarse, sinuses full of cotton, she sounded as bad as she looked.

“Ice cream?” The paper sack rustled as he peered inside. “Probably it’s melting.”

He trailed her to the kitchen. She waved vaguely at the freezer and looked anywhere but at him. “Um…”

“I assume you were headed for a sugar bender?” he asked.

She shrugged.

He lifted another, smaller bag, from his coat pocket. It crinkled as he withdrew a bottle of dark gold liquid. “I prefer good brandy myself.”

Gaze flicking from his face to the liquor bottle and back, she wondered at the man and the moment. She cleared her throat so she could tell him to leave.

“I’ll share mine, if you’ll share yours,” he said before she managed to speak.

“What are you doing here?” She met his eyes in time to see him flinch.

He set down both bags. Hands shoved in his coat pockets, he leaned against the counter. “I came to say I’m sorry…and to talk, if you’re okay with the idea.”

Had he just said he was sorry? His rounded shoulders and shifting gaze said he expected to be shouted at and summarily thrown out. Which she absolutely should do. Would do. If only her heart weren’t so damned interested in what he had to say.

“What are you sorry for?” Her hands found her robe pockets as she mirrored his stance against the island counter. “You don’t owe me anything.”

His eyes widened. They stared at one another, he in stunned silence, she in false bravado. He’d changed his clothes. Obviously he wasn’t going to the office today. What had he been doing for the past two hours? Chasing her all over Manhattan and the Bronx, for one, unless he’d spoken with Sid on the phone. But no, Sid had said he looked like shit. Strange, he looked fine to her. Maybe men fell apart more subtly than women?

“I—” His frustrated sigh drew her attention back to his face, and his gaze shifted away. “There’s a difference between owing someone a commitment and owing them common human decency.”

Her spine lengthened as if someone had drawn her upward by a string. He was here to soothe his conscience? She opened her mouth to tell him where to shove his apology, but he cut her off.

“No. Wait.” Palms up, he pleaded, “Just hear me out. Please?”

Eyes narrowed, she crossed her arms. “All right.”

“Thank you.” He looked away again, his expression pained. “I feel things…with you I… And I’ve never…” He glanced at her and shook his head. “Shit. I suck at this.”

He was saying he liked her?
Really
liked her? One corner of her mouth lifted along with her mood. “Well, I knew you couldn’t actually be good at everything.”

He gave her a double take, noted her humor, and appeared to melt. His shoulders lowered. The lines in his brow softened. Even his mouth appeared fuller. He shifted his gaze, apparently wary though no longer expecting to be chucked out.

“Maybe this would be easier with brandy and ice cream?” she offered, unable to take his little-boy-lost expression without offering him a reprieve.

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, jamming his hands deeper into his pockets. “That’d be nice.”

As she took spoons and the scoop from the drawer, she motioned toward the hall with a tilt of her head. “You can hang your coat in the closet or toss it over the hall chair.”

He left, and she heard the closet door open and shut. Fingers shaking, she heaped half of the pint into his bowl and half into her own, then poured a measure of brandy over each before adding more to some snifters.
Soused
would be a good word for what she aimed to be by the time this conversation was over. Yes. Good and hammered.

When she turned with the ice cream, drinks, and bottle on a tray, she discovered Peter leaning against the door frame, watching her. His gray, waffle-weave henley and jeans did nothing to hide his muscled physique. Memories of his arms wrapped around her drew phantom fingers down her spine. She shivered and met his eyes.

Peter’s expression wavered before it darkened. He pushed away from the door frame and stalked casually toward her, meeting her partway across the kitchen. The room wasn’t small. Yet, with him in it, there didn’t seem to be anywhere to move.

“Can I take that for you?” Her fingers tingled as his brushed hers. He took the tray and lifted it a little, gesturing. “Where to?”

She’d intended on the bedroom. Realization struck. She was wearing a nightgown and a robe. A blush stole from her neckline up to her face, heating her skin as she looked down at her clothes, or rather lack of them. “I’m not really…”

“Bedroom it is,” he said, apparently interpreting, and left the room.

She hurried after him, stumbling to a halt when he paused in her bedroom doorway. In her mind’s eye, she saw the tableau before him. Disheveled covers, tissues everywhere, pillows on the floor, clothes scattered from dressing and undressing this morning.

“I, uh…” She hooked a thumb toward the living room. “We can go into the—”

“No.” He strode into her bedroom with purpose. “I like it.” Tray placed on the bed, he faced her, both hands up, fingers splayed. “And I promise, no funny business.”

They settled, cross-legged, on the bed. She by the pillows and he halfway up from the bottom, with the tray between them. He palmed the snifter, swirling the liquid, as he regarded her. She lifted her bowl and made a study of spooning up the perfect bite. Brandy and cherry-laced vanilla sweetness hit her tongue, and she closed her eyes. The flavors washed away some of her tension. When she opened her eyes, Peter sipped at his brandy. He swallowed, the motion making a living sculpture of his throat.

“I want to see where this goes with us,” he said to his drink. “I don’t want to be a coward anymore. Not with you.”

Her gaze flew to his face, and he met her eyes. “Where what goes with us?”

“A relationship.” He took a deeper sip of the brandy and looked away.

“A…a relationship?” she asked when she could breathe. “Like dating?”

He wanted to be seen? In public? With her? Oh hell’s bells. They’d have to keep it hush-hush. Nobody could know. The second the papers got a whiff, she was done for. There were so many complications, and so many reasons why she shouldn’t. Why they shouldn’t. Warm fingers brushed hers, taking away the glass she hadn’t realized she’d been clutching hard enough to break.

“Exactly like dating, Georgia,” he said steadily.

Horrified and happy weren’t emotions that played well together. At present the two dueled like Inigo Montoya and the Six-fingered Man in the pit of her stomach. If they did this, she’d have to tell him about Gigi. It was only fair he know. Especially since he’d find out eventually when they were photographed together and the machine of the press got to work on her background.