The Wedding Favor (3 page)

“Well,
do
you like it?” In the courtroom she’d seemed so cold and aloof, nothing like the warm-blooded woman beside him now. Even her blue eyes had heated up, from arctic ice to warm October sky. With her brow knit over them as she considered his question, she looked approachable and vulnerable and, well, pretty too.

“It has its moments,” she said at last. “Probably like being a cop or a firefighter. You know, hours of tedium punctuated by moments of stark terror.” When he chuckled, she said, “Okay, it’s not life or death, but it’s still months of boring paperwork and preparation, and then the trial—which is the terrifying part—is over in a couple of days.”

She paused to hit the wine again, and it must have dawned on her that trials were bound to be a sore subject, because her eyes widened, her swallow turned into a gulp.

Ty could have told her not to worry, because after working hard to get there for the last few hours, he’d finally reached the zone he’d been striving for. He was, quite literally, mind-numbingly drunk. In this state, which he’d frequented many times in the past seven years, he could still carry on a conversation and even remember it in the morning. He could make jokes, wax philosophical, and fuck like a seventeen-year-old after the big game.

But he couldn’t think of Lissa.

It was a programmed response that had probably saved his life, and he’d gotten the ritual down to a science. When his memories overwhelmed him, he’d drink whiskey steadily until his fingers started to tingle. Then, and only then, he’d let himself shut off the part of his mind where she lived and forget her for a while.

He’d reached that place half an hour ago, and while most men would be sliding under their tray table, Ty was in the bubble. For another half hour, he’d be good company. The best. Then he’d go down hard and sleep for eight straight.

He’d dream about Lissa, that was the downside. But when he woke in the daylight, he’d be able to deal with it again.

“So.” Victoria changed the subject in a hurry. “What’s in Paris?”

“An old girlfriend’s getting married.”

“You’re going to an ex’s wedding?”

“Weird, huh? Thing is, about three months in, we both figured out that we like each other a lot, but it wasn’t going past that.” He shrugged. “We did the friends-with-benefits thing for a while. Now we’re just friends.”

V
ictoria couldn’t imagine being friends with her ex. Aside from the fact that he’d crushed her heart like roadkill, Winston wasn’t exactly fun to hang out with. They’d have to do whatever
he
wanted to do, just like always.

“How about you?” Ty asked. “What’s in Paris?”

“Actually, I’m headed to a wedding too, in Amboise, a couple of hours outside the city. My brother. Well, technically my half brother, from my mother’s second marriage.”

“Second out of how many? Wait, let me guess.” He closed one eye, calculating. “Assuming she’s about fifty . . .”

“Fifty-four.”

“Okay, fifty-four, and a looker, I’ll bet.” His smile said he meant it as a compliment, and her cheeks warmed in response. “A lawyer,” he went on, “so she’s financially independent, used to being her own boss. And based on her attitude about college, a control freak too, right?”

“Oh yeah, she’s into control.” She swallowed more wine.

He looked thoughtful. “Yeah, I’m gonna say she’s on number four.”

“Close.” She bobbed her glass in salute, drank again. “Number four just got kicked to the curb. She’s keeping his name, though, so she won’t have to change the firm’s letterhead again.”

“Add practical to her list of virtues.”

Victoria snorted, very unladylike. Her mother would disapprove. Then she shrugged one shoulder. “To be fair, she probably wouldn’t be so hard to live with if my father hadn’t died. He was her first husband. She really loved him.” She looked down into her glass, swirled the last inch of wine. “The rest of her husbands, her boyfriends too . . . well, Dr. Phil would say she’s trying to fill the hole Dad left.”

“How did he die?”

“Cancer. I was only three, but I remember him. Helping me blow out the candles on my birthday cake, stuff like that. And the funeral, I remember that. Mother crying and crying like she’d never get over it.”

The minute the words were out of her mouth she wished them back. Damn it, she kept stepping on land mines. First trials, now tragic death and heartbreak. What next, drunk drivers?

“So, what do you do with your Ph.D.?” she blurted, hoping he was too anesthetized to notice another abrupt topic change.

T
y noticed, but he rolled with it, untroubled by where the conversation had been and unconcerned with where it was going.

The truth was, in the slightly detached manner of the comfortably intoxicated, he was enjoying himself. Now that Victoria had come out of her cold hard shell, he kind of liked her. She had layers. He liked layers. He liked it when things weren’t what they appeared to be on the surface. Must be the philosopher in him.

And honestly, with her hair around her shoulders and that curve-hugging outfit in place of her lawyer suit, she looked good. He didn’t usually go for the pale, porcelain-skin type. Too fragile-looking. And he liked more meat on his women. Still, he was a sucker for blue eyes, and he had to admit that what meat she had was in all the right places.

Effortlessly, he shifted into flirting mode.

“Mostly I dazzle the ladies with Descartes.” He wiggled his brows. “Empiricism’s always a turn-on. And rationalism? Another aphrodisiac.”

V
ictoria widened her eyes, playing along. “Philosophy’s sexy? Who knew?”

His smile was smug. “Make fun if you want to. But I did my dissertation on the perception of sexual experience under those two competing doctrines, and trust me, a
lot
of women thought that was sexy.”

Sure enough, she felt a frisson herself. She doused it with the last of her wine.

Propping her elbow on the armrest, she set her chin on her fist, scrunched her forehead into a pitying moue. “Please don’t tell me that’s your pick-up line. It’s pathetic.”

“But effective. Check it out.” He closed his eyes, made a show of slipping into character.

When he opened them again, Victoria nearly gasped. Ty the joker had vanished.

In his place was this loose-limbed, sloe-eyed cowboy straight off the range. Lanky and sexy and in no hurry at all, everything about him said baby-I’ve-got-all-night-and-I’m-gonna-spend-it-fucking-you-right.

Taking his time, he dragged his gaze down her body, languid, smoldering, raising her temperature by ten degrees, then slowly dragged it up again, lingering on her breasts, her throat, her mouth, until he locked eyes with her. Then he smiled, a slow, bone melter of a smile.

Her heart thumped so loudly he should be able to hear it.

“Honey”—he spread his drawl like butter—“I got a favor to ask you.” Reaching across the space between them, he drew one finger down her arm, tucked it into the crook of her elbow. The slight pressure on her pulse set it racing.

“I’m doing some research for my dissertation.” He nodded slowly, encouragingly. “Yeah, that’s right, sweetheart, it’s college stuff.”

She would have chuckled but her throat had closed tight. Flecks of orange glimmered in his tiger eyes. How had she missed those before?

His teeth caught his bottom lip, tugged lightly until it popped free. “I’m studying the perception of sexual experience under the competing doctrines of rationalism and empiricism.” Drawing his finger up her arm again, he cuffed her wrist gently. “That’s all right, sugar, you don’t need to know what all those big words mean.” His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “It’s the sex I need your help with. Hours and hours. Hot and sweaty—”

She burst out in a shaky laugh. “Okay, I get it. Philosophy’s sexy.”

He sat back with an I-told-you-so smirk. “So, you want to know the upshot of all my research?”

Did she? “Uh-huh.”

His lips curved in a wicked smile, and his eyes twinkled; she’d swear they did.

“I concluded that I’m definitely an empiricist—I absolutely believe that to truly understand what sex’ll be like with another person, I can’t just think about it like a rationalist would.”

He paused a beat.

“I have to experience it.”

Chapter Three

V
ictoria had never had sex on an airplane, but she had a feeling she was about to.

She checked her watch. Midnight. In under four hours, Tyrell Brown had readjusted her attitude from please-don’t-kill-me to please-undress-me.

He was a dangerous man, all right. But not in the way she’d first thought. If he killed her, it would be by arousing her to death.

Taking her cosmetic bag from her carry-on, she smiled at him. “Excuse me a minute?”

He rose politely, waited in the aisle while she slid out of her seat. Walking away, she peeked over her shoulder, appreciating the way he folded his frame into his seat. God, he was built. Strong shoulders, flat stomach, narrow hips—all of it said riding and roping and stringing barbwire, all the things cowboys did in the movies.

He caught her looking, flashed a smile that jacked her pulse up another twenty beats a minute. Jesus.

The tiny restroom made primping a challenge; nerves made it practically impossible. Fumble-fingered, she dropped her toothbrush in the sink, had to throw it away and pop an Altoid instead.

She noted the flush in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes. It stood to reason. She hadn’t been so attracted to a man since, well, ever. And she’d never gotten so turned on with so little physical stimulation. Winston could’ve worked on her for an hour and not gotten her as wet as Ty’s gentle touch on her wrist.

Ty wanted her too, she was sure of it. Nobody could flirt like that unless he meant it. It was powerful stuff. If he’d hit her with it in a bar, she’d be back at his place by now.

On an airplane, they’d have to make do. She couldn’t quite picture how it would work, but Ty seemed creative, she’d trust him to figure it out.

In a distant part of her brain, a warning bell clanged.
Victoria Westin, you’re about to violate every canon of ethics sacred to your profession.

It was true. If she did this, had sex with her adversary, she’d be honor-bound to withdraw from the case. Another firm would have to handle the appeal. Her mother would be furious.

Yessss!
Vicky fist-pumped in the mirror. She could hardly wait to tell her mother that she’d joined the mile-high club with Tyrell somewhere over Jersey. With any luck, she’d be fired.

Yessss!
Another fist pump. She could go back to college. Join a small-town theater troupe. She grinned into the mirror. Maybe it wasn’t too late to get out from under her mother.

And she’d start by getting under Tyrell Brown.

With a second Altoid sizzling her tongue and fresh gloss on her lips, she fluffed her hair one last time and stepped out into the cabin.

The lights had dimmed. Almost everyone was engrossed in a movie or settled down to sleep. She made her way down the aisle.

Ty’s seat was reclined, the leg rest extended. You had to love first class. Maybe he’d pull her down on top of him, wrestle her clothes off . . .

Okay, she’d never had sex on an airplane, but it certainly required more discretion than that. More likely, he’d turn her on her side, then snuggle up behind her . . .

Stomach fizzing like champagne, she paused beside his seat, waited for him to welcome her in.

He didn’t budge.

She leaned over, squinting in the dim light. His eyes were closed. Well, that explained it, he hadn’t seen her. Then his lips parted slightly . . .

. . . and released a snore.

She snapped upright. He was out cold!

Feeling eyes on her, she glanced over her shoulder. A middle-aged man watched her with a sympathetic smile. He couldn’t know she’d been counting on getting laid, but she flushed anyway.

Covering embarrassment with a shrug, as if merely inconvenienced instead of rejected and humiliated, she pretended to care about disturbing Ty while she climbed over him—landing an accidental kick on his shin, oops—and plopped into her seat.

Madder at herself than at him, she dug through her carry-on for her eyeshade and shawl, then jammed her finger into the recline button.

Her mother was right. She couldn’t trust her own judgment. She couldn’t read men at all. Tyrell Brown wasn’t interested in her. At best, she’d been a diversion on a long and boring flight. At worst, he’d led her on so she’d feel exactly how she felt now. Stupid.

Flicking open her shawl—no way she’d touch those germy airplane blankets—she pulled it up to her chin. Behind her eyeshade, she was in the dark. The champagne bubbles were long gone. Her old friend anxiety was back, a clenched fist in her stomach. Well, she’d slept with it for years. She shouldn’t have expected tonight to be any different.

T
y came to slowly, slitting one scratchy eyelid at a time.

Shit. He hadn’t been on a bender in more than a year. He’d forgotten how bad the day after sucked.

And he couldn’t even crawl bare-assed to the kitchen and put on some coffee. Because he wasn’t at home, he was . . . where was he?

On an airplane. Right. An airplane. Heading to France.

Carefully, he swiveled his head. The bitch on wheels. Christ, he’d been so fucked up he’d almost had sex with her. Would have, if he hadn’t passed out. What was he thinking?

Sure, sound asleep, with her pink eyeshade and her blond hair all mussed up, she looked sweet and vulnerable. But now that he was sober, he remembered why he hated her.

The trial. Two days of hell. Stark terror, she’d called it.
Well honey
, he thought,
you have no idea.

Partly because he wanted to, partly because he had to, he summoned it up, made himself remember every minute of those two awful days.

The first had centered on the wrongful death claim—hospital bills, and actuarial projections used to calculate how much Lissa’s life would have been worth in dollars and cents if she’d been allowed to live it. Eighty years, she should have had. She’d gotten twenty-three.

Then the second day—yesterday—they’d fought about pain and suffering. The defense’s theory was that Lissa’s estate wasn’t entitled to damages for her pain and suffering because she’d never regained consciousness after Jason Taylor plowed into her favorite mare, killing it and pinning Lissa, who was riding the mare, to the trunk of an oak tree with his Hummer.

Lissa was knocked out by the impact, then slipped into a coma at the hospital. Though she lingered for five long days, neither her doctors nor any of the staff ever saw her wake up.

But Ty did. He was at her bedside around the clock, and when she’d opened her eyes in the dead of the fourth night, he’d been looking right at her. His heart had jumped straight up into his mouth.

“Ty,” she’d said, and he could still hear her thready voice. “Honey, you’ve got to stop this.”

“Stop what?” he’d asked, disoriented.

“This.” She slid her eyes to the right where a ventilator wheezed, pumping breath through the trach in her throat and into her damaged lungs, and to the left where an IV rack held seven bags of liquids, all running into the lines in her arms.

“I can’t stop it, Lissa. They’re keeping you alive while you get better. While you heal.”

“I’m not healing, baby. I’m hurting.” Her words puffed out on gusts of breath, timed to the ventilator’s rhythm. “You’ve got to let me go. Let me go now, you hear?”

“Lissa, baby, I can’t.” Tears rolled off his cheeks. “I can’t go on without you, sweetheart. You need to stay with me.” He clutched her hand. “Just try to get well, now. Just a little bit better, so I can take you home to the ranch. I’ll wait on you hand and foot, honey. You’ll see. You’ll be strong again before you know it.”

A smile ghosted across her face. “I love you, Ty. I’ll always love you. Remember that when you feel lonely.” Her eyes closed again.

“Honey? Lissa baby?” He squeezed her hand, got no response. She’d slipped back under. And left him alone.

His chest opened up, a hole that gaped from front to back, and a frigid wind blew through it. It sucked his breath out, and his heart, and left him empty. And oh so lonesome and cold.

Twelve hours later, he signed the consent to discontinue life support. He pulled the plug on his wife, the love of his life.

He’d managed to tell his story to the jury without breaking into a million pieces. But when Victoria Westin, on cross-examination, had asked him if it was possible that he’d simply
dreamed
that conversation, or perhaps
hallucinated
it—which would be completely understandable given the stress he was under, his fatigue, his grief—he’d fallen apart.

Just like that, after seven years, he’d crumbled.

Oh, the jury didn’t see it, he held it inside. But he’d be putting himself back together for a long time to come. And he had Victoria fucking Westin to thank for that.

Unsnapping his seat belt, Ty shot his seat up and lunged out of it, a reckless move that made his head spin, but he was too mad to care. Momentum propelled him down the aisle to the restroom. He slapped the door open and kicked it shut behind him.

Christ, it was too much to ask of him. To have to sit next to her until they landed in Paris.

He plowed his fingers through his hair, breathed in, breathed out. Faced the mirror, the circles under his eyes. The agony in them.

“Fuck,” he hissed. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

Turning away, he unzipped his jeans, braced his hands on the wall, and pissed whiskey for a minute straight.

L
oretta was waiting when he came out. “I was about to come in there after you,” she said, not unkindly.

He looked down at her out of red-rimmed eyes, and the hurt there spoke louder than words. It hit her where she lived, that pain in his eyes.

When his Lissa was alive, Ty had been the fun-lovingest, good-timingest boy you could ever meet. The day she died, his light dimmed. And seven years later, he still hadn’t gotten past it. Nobody understood why. Not his folks. Not his friends. But there it was.

She couldn’t fix it, she knew that much. But she could damn well pour coffee on it.

Steering him into the galley, she pointed to a tiny fold-down seat attached to the wall. He opened it and sat down, forearms resting on his knees. Taking the ceramic cup she pushed into his hand, he gave her a weak smile. “I can sure use this.”

She wagged her head. “Boy, you look like five miles of bad road.” She tried to sound gruff but couldn’t pull it off, covered it up by turning her back and digging through a drawer. “From my private stash.” She tossed him a packet of Pop-Tarts. “Cures a hangover every time.”

That pulled a genuine smile out of him. “Why, Loretta Jane Mason, I’ve never known you to tie one on. You got a secret life you’re hiding from me?”

She drew herself up, started to deny it, then flapped a hand. “I wasn’t always sixty, you know. And no,” she cut him off, “no details.”

Leaning one hip against the counter, she folded her arms and eyed him steadily. “Now tell me what’s wrong with your seat.”

His brows came down hard. “Not the seat. The blonde.”

“Seems nice enough to me. A looker too. Figured you’d have her curled up in your lap purring like a kitten by now.”

He made a face. “She’s a lawyer. Taylor’s lawyer.”

Loretta dropped her arms, momentarily at a loss.

“Well,” she said at last, “that’s bad luck.”

Ty snorted. “Bad luck’s breaking your leg on vacation. Or forgetting to buy a Powerball ticket the day your numbers come up. This”—he waved in the direction of his seat—“this is the hand of a vengeful God.”

She couldn’t disagree, though why God would wreak vengeance on a kind, sweet boy like Ty was a mystery to her.

For a long moment she studied him. The whiskers shadowing his jaw, the tousled hair and rumpled shirt. The troubled eyes. She made up her mind.

“You can stay here till it’s time to buckle up.” She opened the drawer again, took out the new issue of
O Magazine
. “Drink all the coffee you want, but do
not
dribble on this. I haven’t read it yet.”

“Thanks, Loretta. I owe you one.”

“I’ll collect. Now stay out of my way while I get breakfast going.”

T
he lights were up when Victoria slipped off her eyeshade. Other passengers stirred, folding their blankets, sipping steaming cups of coffee.

Cracking the window shade on bright sunlight, she squinted down at puffy clouds, snow white against the blue backdrop of the ocean far below. She checked her watch, tried to calculate the time change, then gave it up until after coffee.

Ty was gone, presumably to the restroom. Folding her shawl, stowing her pillow, she fretted over how to greet him when he returned. There was no protocol for this situation. They’d almost had sex, but didn’t, and yet they were waking up together the next morning. That didn’t happen in the real world. If you decided not to have sex, you went home. You didn’t face each other with morning breath.

It would be awkward, for sure. But Ty had been pretty drunk. Maybe he wouldn’t remember how close they’d come to doing it. That he’d basically stood her up.

God, how embarrassing.

She made her way to the restrooms. One was vacant; she assumed Ty was in the other. When she came out, that one was vacant too. She braced herself to face him.

But he wasn’t in his seat. She glanced around the cabin. No sign of him.

She sat down, but couldn’t sit still. Was he hiding from her, as embarrassed as she was? Why?
He’d
rejected
her
. What did he have to be embarrassed about?

Then a new thought occurred. Maybe he was ill. Had they moved him somewhere to nurse him? Was it food poisoning? Alcohol poisoning?

Concern squelched her anger. She waved Loretta down. “Have you seen . . . I mean . . . is he okay?”

“He’s fine.” Loretta’s smile looked tight. “I’ll bring you some coffee,” she said, and turned away.

“L
adies and gentlemen, the captain’s asked me to inform you that we’re beginning our descent into Paris de Gaulle. At this time, I’ll ask you all to return to your seats. The fasten-seat-belt light has been turned on.”

Loretta hung up the handset, turned to Ty. “Time to suck it up.”