The Year of Luminous Love (29 page)

She stopped his words with her fingertips. “I’ve practiced this speech in my head for weeks. Please hear me out.” She took a deep breath to calm her jitters, then began pulling out the words from the depths of her soul. “I know you don’t love me, Jon, but that’s okay. I have enough love inside me for both of us. I know you’ll be gone when I get home, so there aren’t any strings or conditions on tonight. I … I just want to stay.
Tonight. In your bed. With you.” She fell silent, afraid to look him in the eye.

He reached out, lifted her chin. “Look at me.”

She did so slowly, feeling tears swimming in her eyes.
Don’t cry
, she commanded herself.
Do. Not. Cry
. His face was tanned with crinkles at the corners of his eyes, his sensuous mouth serious.

“Have you ever—”

“No.”

“I shouldn’t be the one. Not the first—”

Not only the first, but the only
, her heart cried. She said, “I want you to be the one. Don’t you see? I love you. I trust you.” Jon blew out a breath and stood, still holding her hand in silence. He smoothed her silky hair.

Whatever courage she’d had fled. What had she been
thinking
? That he would magically want her just because she wanted him? That he’d take all the facts about her relapse into consideration and feel obligated? Humiliation seeped through her. Haltingly she said, “Look, I understand. I should … should never have asked.” Bravely, she looked up at him. His expression was pensive, his thoughts unreadable.

After a long minute, he asked, “Are you sure about this?”

Her heart sped up. Her nerves steadied. No need to mince words now. “I’m sure. But please, not out of pity,” she whispered. “And if you … don’t want to … if you want to send me back in a cab, it’s all right. We’ll chalk it up to the champagne and birthday euphoria.”

Without a word, he bent, scooped her into his arms, and lifted her as if she weighed nothing.

She clung to him, nestling her face into the crook of his neck, hoping his shirt would soak up the wetness on her
cheeks. She loved him so much. As he carried her behind the curtain and gently laid her on the bed, she whispered, “She’s very lucky.”

“Who’s lucky?” he asked.

“The girl you’ll one day truly love,” she said.

Something was going on, and Eden was determined to get to the bottom of it if it took all night. Ciana lay on the sofa, her arm across her eyes, jumping every time she heard a horn honk on the street below or a noise in the hallway outside their room. She was strung as tight as a hunter’s bow. Eden’s stomach growled. “I’m hungry. Time for antipasto.”

“I’m not hungry. Go get yourself something.”

“I don’t want to go by myself.”

“So order room service.”

Eden said, “Look, I’ve been hammered with some bad news. I could use some support here.”

Ciana raised her arm just high enough to see Eden sitting on the floor hugging her knees. She recalled her promise to not let Eden be alone. However, at the moment her own emotional ocean was swallowing her alive. Seeing Jon, watching him walk out the door with Arie, felt like a knife in her gut. She was nauseated with jealousy. She lowered her arm, covered her eyes. “Tony’s dead. You’re free of him. I don’t see the problem.”

She heard Eden stand up, felt a small sofa pillow slap her in the head.

“Well, aren’t you just the friend of the year!”

Ciana righted herself, angry, but also stricken by her own insensitivity.
Unforgivable
. “All right, we’ll eat antipasto,” she said, as if that would make up for her hateful remark.

Eden glared. “Not here. I want to go out. I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin.”

“What if Arie comes back?”

“We’ll leave her a note.”

Irritated at Eden and anxious to see Arie come in, Ciana agreed.

Eden, looking relieved, said, “I’ll be back in a flash. First, I want to speak to the concierge.”

Ciana waved her off, lay back down, and gave in to her feelings of self-pity. She had not expected Jon’s physical presence to hold such power over her. Arie loved Jon and Arie was her best friend. Always. Ever since fifth grade they’d been inseparable. Yet today, from the moment Jon had walked out the door, Ciana had been gripped by unrelenting, gut-gnawing jealousy. Now she was sick with it.

Her grandmother had once warned Ciana about jealousy, the green-eyed monster—a vicious emotion that only corrodes from the inside out. But even knowing that, even applying the Beauchamp rule that such an emotion must be controlled, Ciana was facing a monster that threatened to consume her. And she also wondered if she was partly to blame for Jon’s visit. Hadn’t she asked him to be nice to Arie? He’d said he had come to see Ciana too. Had he meant it? She wanted to believe him but knew she shouldn’t. It only made the monster inside her bigger.

The door flew open and Eden entered, looking all mysterious
and self-satisfied. “Grab your purse and come down to the lobby. I have a surprise.”

“What?”

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you, would it?” Eden was determined to get inside Ciana’s head and pull out her secrets. The girl was in pain, and it had everything to do with Jon Mercer. Ciana had helped her escape Tony; now it was her turn to help Ciana.

“A scooter! Seriously, Eden?”

“Seriously,” Eden told Ciana, pointing to the bright red scooter parked in front of the bell captain’s station. “I’ve been wanting to try one for ages, but we can’t do that with three of us. Tonight, we can.”

“We have a rental car,” Ciana countered.

Eden handed Ciana a helmet and mounted the scooter. “Too much traffic. This will be more fun.”

“Says who? Do you even know how to drive the thing?”

“Garret lets me drive his all the time. So, yes, I know how. Now get on or I’ll start yelling.”

Ciana scowled but jammed on the helmet and took the narrow seat behind Eden. In truth, she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts, so a traffic accident seemed preferable.

“Hold on,” Eden said.

“To what?”

“To me. If you don’t, you’ll fall off and break your butt.” Eden started the machine and gunned the engine. Eden drove slowly at first, as she hadn’t been entirely truthful about driving Garret’s scooter “all the time,” but it didn’t take long to get the feel of it, and soon she was weaving in and out of traffic and around slow-moving cars at will.

“You’ll kill us!” Ciana called out.

Eden stopped and parked at a trattoria on a narrow cobblestone street miles away.

Ciana followed her inside.

“A bottle of wine. And an antipasto platter,” Eden told the waiter in flawless Italian.

“You speak like a native,” Ciana said grudgingly, dropping into a chair at a table beside a window.

“Yeah, who knew I could pick up languages so easily? Should have taken one in high school instead of faking my way through math.”

As soon as the waiter set the wine bottle on the table, Eden poured Ciana and herself generous glasses. She figured some alcohol would soften Ciana’s stubborn Beauchamp resistance to talk about herself. Realizing it might take a few glasses, she started her story first. “Just for the record, it did hurt when I heard that Tony was dead.”

Ciana hung her head. “Sorry about the cheap shot in the room.”

Eden heaved a sigh. “You know why I’m reluctant to get involved with Garret?”

“Because Tony was a control freak?”

“Because I stopped developing my emotions and dating skills when I was fourteen. Think about it. I’ve never had another boyfriend.”

Ciana emptied her wineglass and Eden quickly poured her another. “Arie and I sure didn’t date much. The few college guys I dated only wanted one thing, which I wouldn’t give them. And poor Arie had her heart broken all through school. So we didn’t have much experience either.”

“Maybe, but you both had variety. I didn’t. Tony consumed
me. And by the time I wanted to move on, he had me all tangled up with him. What if that happens with Garret?”

Ciana drank more wine and thought about it. “Garret’s a different guy. He’s nice. He’s kind. He hovers over you in a good way. He’s nothing like Tony, so don’t use that as an excuse.”

“Scares me, though.” Eden nibbled on a piece of prosciutto and cheese. “I let him see some of my scars from my days of cutting.”

“What did he say?”

Her mind revisited her skinny-dip in the warm spring water with Garret. On land, as they both shivered and dressed, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. It wasn’t just her nakedness he was seeing. It was the scarring on her body, usually covered by clothing. When they were clothed, he gathered her in his arms and held her. He didn’t question her. He seemed to know and understand and accept her as she was, marred skin and all. He’d turned her arm and brought it to his lips, planting soft kisses on every self-inflicted mark. “Said he wished he could kiss them and make them go away.”

“He sounds like a keeper to me.”

Eden snapped back to the present with Ciana’s comment. She topped off Ciana’s wineglass. “Tony did cure me of cutting. Cold comfort.”

Ciana reached for a slice of olive bread. “I’m getting dizzy.”

Eden caught the waiter’s eye and he strolled over, whisked away the antipasto plate, and handed them two menus. They ordered, and once the waiter left, Eden determined that her friend was sufficiently softened. She rested her forearms on the table and leaned forward. “So now you know my fears and secrets. It’s your turn, Ciana. Tell me what’s going on between you and Jon Mercer.”

Ciana stiffened, then turned to stare out the window. “Nothing. Why do you ask?”

Eden gritted her teeth. Ciana wasn’t going to make this easy. “At the suite, when he came in, the tension between you two was thick enough to cut with a knife. I’m not making it up.”

Ciana wanted to tell her, get it out in the open, yet she’d kept it to herself for so long, it was difficult. Where would she start? How would she start? “You’re imagining—”

Eden smacked the table, and Ciana jumped. “Stop denying it! I have eyes to see. So far Arie doesn’t. She’s head over heels for Jon, but her ignorance won’t last forever. Soon she’ll see that you are too. And you are, aren’t you? Tell me the truth.”

Ciana’s heart lurched. Her composure stripped away. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, grinding back tears. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.” Eden reached out and stroked Ciana’s hand. “Maybe I can help.”

Their waiter set their food in front of them, poured more wine into each glass, and slipped away from the table. The distraction gave Ciana time to regroup as she struggled to put her story into words. “Think back to June. To the night you dragged me to that dance saloon in Nashville.”

“Okay,” Eden said, attempting to fix the night in her memory. “I danced and drank too much. You met someone and stayed out all night.” Suddenly Eden straightened. “Oh my God! You met
Jon
that night?”

Ciana nodded. “He was my mystery man. I might have been blitzed at first, but some kind of magic happened between us. We connected in every way. I fell asleep in his arms, woke up
to his smile. Everything else I told you was just the way it happened. I was so rattled after Mom’s text about Grandmother that I bolted without giving him any personal stats. That day we went out to see Arie’s horse, well, you could have blown me over with a sneeze when I saw the man she’d been raving about. It was him. My cowboy.”

“Why didn’t you
say
something?” Eden looked incredulous.

“I couldn’t. She wanted him so much she was loopy. She crushed on him when she was twelve, hanging around on a job site at Pickins’s ranch. Seems as if Jon was visiting his dad that summer from Texas. When she saw him again, all grown up, well, she tumbled hard.”

“And you just stepped aside.” Eden shook her head.

“She’s my friend. She’s struggled all her life with cancer. She was in remission. She was happy. What would you have done?”

“I’d have
said
something to her! She would have understood.”

Ciana pressed her lips together. “But I didn’t. I couldn’t break her heart.”