Sugar and Spice (9 page)

Allie pulled her close and slowly rocked her. The movement reminded Ginny of their mother and the thought brought forth another rush of tears. For several minutes, Allie said nothing beyond “hush” and “it’s all right” and “don’t cry so”.

Ginny struggled to pull herself together. She wasn’t this type of woman. She never cried. The thought of being so weak jarred her from her miserable state and she drew away from her sister.

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“I’m sorry,” she whispered, turning around to grab a tissue from the box Allie kept on an end table.

Allie smiled at her, though worry lined every part of the gesture. “I haven’t seen you cry since grade school,” she admitted. “I’m scared as shit right now. What happened, Ginny?”

Ginny tried to set her sister’s mind at ease. “I’m fine. I shouldn’t have carried on like that. I just—” Ginny sucked in a breath to hold back the sobs that threatened to come again. “I just made a huge mistake and I don’t think there’s any way to fix it.”

“What mistake?” Allie asked.

“I had sex with R-Ryan last night,” Ginny confessed, the words sticking in her throat as she spoke them.

“Ryan who?”

Ginny laughed at the unexpected question. Of course her sister wouldn’t know who she was talking about—neither of them ever referred to Travers by his first name. Her sister’s utterly perplexed face somehow managed to lighten Ginny’s heavy heart.

“Travers,” she explained.

Allie’s jaw dropped and Ginny watched her sister struggle to form her next question—hell, her next word. “You? Travers? You?
Sex
? Oh my God!”

Ginny was a tad offended by Allie’s total disbelief. “Well, I don’t think it’s that unfathomable.”

“Ginny. Are you jerking my chain? What’s the date?”

“Why?”

“It’s gotta be April Fool’s Day. You and Travers got together and decided to fuck with my head. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Allie,” Ginny said calmly. “I slept with Travers last night. We had sex—all night.”

“Oh my God,” her sister repeated and this time, Ginny realized the sentiment was correct.

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“Yeah,” she added. “Oh my God.”

“How did this happen?” Allie asked.

“Oh you know, the usual way. What do you mean how did it happen?” Ginny felt her ragged nerves stretched even further under the pressure of her sister’s utter astonishment.

“Ginny,” her sister began impatiently. “You and Travers have been best friends since God was a baby. You’ve been drunk together, you’ve had sleepovers at each other’s houses, you’ve gone on extended business trips and never,
never
have you stepped over the line of friendship. What happened last night?”

“It was my birthday,” Ginny replied. Allie shook her head and raised her hands as if to say “so what?”

“Well, Liam said he had to work through the weekend, so we had to postpone our romantic getaway.”

“Liam’s a weenie,” Allie interjected and Ginny smiled. Ryan had said basically the same thing and he’d been right.

“I agree.”

“You do? Since when?” Allie asked.

“Since last night when I witnessed him wrapped around some slut at the Way Down Under Club.”

Allie’s face flushed with anger. “That motherfucker.”

“Amen, but that’s not really the point here, is it?”

Allie looked at her thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe that
is
the point. Travers invites you to the club, you see your boyfriend doing the nasty with some whore, so you hop into bed with someone convenient. If I know Travers, he was as pissed off as you at the sight of Liam and he tried to comfort you, right?”

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“Sort of,” Ginny said. She didn’t like thinking of Ryan as a convenience or a consolation prize. What they’d done together far surpassed mere consoling or a rebound response on her part.

“I’m not really surprised you ended up in bed with Travers,” Allie added so confidently Ginny wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Really? Why not?”

“Because he’s a little crazy when it comes you. Always has been.”

Ginny shook her head, unsure she’d heard her sister correctly. “Wait a minute.

What do you mean ‘crazy’?”

“It’s always the same thing whenever you’re around him. He has one eye on whatever is happening in the room and one eye on you.”

“Allie, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Could her sister’s words be true?

Had Ryan been protecting her all these years? Was his response last night not one of desire, but instead of comfort? The thought of Ryan sleeping with her merely out of pity made her stomach lurch with nausea.

“Anderson’s even joked about it a few times. Says Travers never sees any other woman when you’re in the room. Says his friend’s ‘knight in shining armor’ attitude only shines for you.”

“Anderson said that?” Ginny asked. Suddenly Allie’s words took on a different meaning. Could it be possible that Ryan had been interested in her all of these years?

“Yep, Anderson and I have had several conversations about you and Travers. I have a feeling he won’t be so surprised when he hears the two of you finally did the dirty between the sheets.”

Ginny had to laugh at Allie’s use of Anderson’s expression. The man had never used the word “sex” in his life. He only ever said people did the “dirty”. The childish expression drove Taylor nuts, which—Ginny was certain—was why Anderson continued to use it.

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“Yeah, well, Travers and I really had no business doing the ‘dirty’
or
having sex.”

“Was it that bad?” Allie asked.

“Holy hell, no! It was great, amazing, fucking out of this world.”

Allie looked confused. “Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is Ry— I mean
Travers
and I are friends. Sex screws up friendships.

Everybody knows that.”

Allie shrugged, unconcerned. “So you hit the sheets and had hot sex together one night. So what? Good for you and good for Travers. There’s no hard and fast rule that says you can’t be friends anymore. What did Travers say this morning?”

Ginny turned her head toward the window, unsure how to answer.

“Aw shit,” her sister murmured. “You didn’t stick around, did you?”

Refusing to meet what she was sure was a condescending look from her baby sister, Ginny watched as the sun rose more fully in the sky, wondering if Ryan was awake yet.

“There didn’t seem to be much point in sticking around. It’s not like Ryan— I mean
Travers
said anything about us having a future or anything. Last night was just a bit of experimenting between friends.”

“What kind of experimenting?” Allie asked and Ginny realized her sister had just remembered the part about the sex club.

“The kind you’re too young to hear about,” she replied in her haughtiest older sibling tone.

“Bullshit,” Allie answered. “You can go ahead and climb down off that high horse, sister dear, because you and I both know my ‘experience’ in that arena far surpasses yours.”

Ginny bit her lip but refused to admit her sister’s words were true. Allie had been a free spirit from the crib and Ginny didn’t even want to begin to ponder some of the “experiences” her sister had enjoyed.

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“Fine, let’s just say we were in a sex club and leave it at that. I think I’ll just let your twisted mind fill in the blanks.”

“Sis, you
do not
want me to fill in the blanks,” Allie teased.

“Actually, I think I do.” Ginny tried to ignore the heat she felt creeping up her face and the wide-eyed expression her sister gave her.

“Holy hell, what
did
you two do?”

“That’s not really important, is it?” Ginny asked.

“No, what’s important is the fact that you ran like a big fat chicken.”

“I didn’t run,” Ginny protested. “I merely got out of bed, got dressed and grabbed a cab. Is it my fault he didn’t wake up?” She silently thanked God that Ryan had taken out the butt plug and untied the rope binding her before they fell asleep. She’d been in such a hurry to flee this morning, she wasn’t sure she would have taken the time. She could just imagine her sister’s face if she’d showed up here walking funny and with a mile and a half of hemp twisted under her shirt.

Allie rolled her eyes. “What a lame excuse! I’ll bet you were quiet as a mouse the whole time you were making your escape. Why the hell did you run?”

Ginny took a deep breath and considered the question. Truth be told, the same one had been haunting her since she’d asked the doorman to call the taxi for her. “I just didn’t want to have to endure his ‘morning after’ routine.”

Allie narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Travers and I have been friends for a very long time. I think I’ve heard every ridiculous excuse he’s ever made to escape after a roll in the hay with some woman. I didn’t want to be yet another victim of his fuck-and-run routine. I didn’t want to be left lying in that bed, naked and alone.”

“So you made sure
he
was naked and alone,” Allie said.

“You think I was wrong?”

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“I think you owed it to your best friend to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Regardless of his past relationships, you
are
different and I think you should have stayed. My sister, the one I’ve spent my entire life emulating, would have stuck around.”

Ginny quickly swiped away a wayward tear. “I couldn’t,” she answered, her voice breaking on the words.

“Why not?” Allie asked, grasping Ginny’s hand tightly between her own.

“Because I couldn’t have taken it if he’d walked out. Dammit, Allie! I
love
Ryan.”

“Of course you do. He’s your best—”

“No,” Ginny interrupted. “I’m
in
love with him. I think I always have been.”

Allie’s face gentled into compassion incarnate. “Oh Gin. That’s exactly why you should have stayed.”

*

Ginny tried to concentrate on Anderson and Taylor’s story about their weekend, giving them a fake laugh every few minutes so they’d think she was listening, but she repeatedly felt her eyes roaming toward the front door. How would Ryan— Crap!

Travers
—she really needed to remember to call him Travers—react when he got to work?

She was convinced now that Allie had been right and she’d been wrong to sneak out the way she had. She should have stayed, let the scene play out. If she had, she wouldn’t be facing this awkward situation now—in front of two unsuspecting friends.

Somehow the idea of playing the tongue-tied, “so what do we do now” game with Travers had seemed too hard to face at the time. Shit, she’d give anything to go back in time and get this first conversation over with…in privacy.

He’d given her a hell of a birthday, but she wondered if—for him—that’s all it was.

Travers was a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy. She’d wanted to experience a night in a sex club and he’d given her that experience and then some. Never once during the 72

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night had he mentioned what would happen the next day and, as Ginny relived the night over and over in her mind during the weekend, she’d convinced herself that could only mean that there wasn’t going to
be
a next day. Travers didn’t know her feelings had changed and, even if it killed her to keep the secret, she sure wasn’t going to drop a bombshell like love down in the middle of their friendship. The foundation of their whole relationship, after Friday night’s affair, was bound to be shaky enough as it was.

Despite Allie’s insistence that she face her fears, she’d hidden out at her sister’s townhouse all weekend, claiming she’d needed time to think and clear her thoughts.

She’d actually thought perhaps the distance would shake loose her notion of being in love with Ryan.

Fat chance.

When she’d returned to her own home late last night and checked her answering machine, she’d been shocked to find Travers had left fifteen messages, each one a bit more tense and angry than the last. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised by the number. He’d called Allie’s place twice, but when her sister’s caller ID flashed Travers’

name, Ginny had forbidden her to answer. To make matters worse, she’d left her cell phone in his car the night he’d driven her to the club.

“So that’s when security showed up,” Anderson said and Ginny offered a faint laugh although she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

The ringing of the bell over the front door alerted her to Travers’ arrival. Anderson looked at the clock on the wall with astonishment.

“What the hell? Travers, I think this is the first day you’ve ever shown up early to work since we opened the firm. What’s the occasion?”

Travers ignored Anderson and looked straight at her. She sensed him holding back his anger, the look in his eyes unreadable, and her stomach fluttered in fear. Maybe with her thoughtless, selfish retreat, she had killed the friendship.

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Taylor leaned back in the chair across from her desk. “Jesus, Anderson. I think we stepped into a black hole or something. Travers is early, Brooks is in a skirt. Do you think hell froze over while we were out of town?”

Travers seemed to process the comment that she was wearing a skirt, while Taylor kept speaking. “You’re just in time to hear about our weekend.”

Travers nodded, his eyes still glued to her face. “Great,” he said stiffly. “Did you have a nice weekend, Brooks?”

She swallowed heavily and tried to put on a happy face. The last thing she wanted right now was a bunch of questions from Anderson and Taylor if they became suspicious. “It was fine. I decided to hang out at my sister’s for the weekend since Liam couldn’t make it for our trip out of town.”

“I tried to call,” he stated, his voice rife with annoyance.

“I left my cell phone in your car Friday night.”

“I noticed.” He pulled it out of his pocket and placed it none too gently on her desk.

“Hey, that’s right. How was your trip to the sex club, Brooks?” Anderson asked.