Twice Smitten (A Modern Fairy Tale) (16 page)

His voice was barely above a whisper now. “What are you scared of?”

A knock sounded at her door, preventing an answer, if she had one. Kristin rolled in a tray of pastries. There didn’t need to be any Sweet Tooth boxes for Abigail to spot the signature desserts. Thankfully, there was no Late Night. They didn’t need any more added temptation, but Drew was already in motion. His angry strides ate up the distance across the office, but at the door he nodded to both women and left the office.

Kristin faced her, a brow raised in question. “Is there anything else I can get you?”

“I’m fine.” She grabbed up two eclairs.

Her assistant left too, and Abigail continued to chew. The sweet pastry tasted like sawdust in her mouth. Drew walking out of the office felt like a prelude. She had never been on the opposite side of the leaving, and her heart clenched.

“That scares me,” she said, and then shoved another pastry in her mouth.

*****

Long ago, Emma had made a pact with her neighbor’s sons to mow her lawn every Saturday. She’d then ply them with as much sugar as their stomachs could stand. The boys usually mowed the lawn twice a week now. The yard was neat and trim. Oaks guarded the back fence and threw a shadow over the lawn.

The patio covered about a fourth of the yard. The chairs had long since lost their original luster, but were no less comfortable. The glass table served its purpose, holding the lemonade and whatever snack Emma threw together. Not Abigail’s home, yet, it felt like one.

“Three days to the party.” Emma sounded downright smug. She’d long since ditched the ponytail. Leaning back, her wavy hair fell over the back of the chair. Abigail revised her earlier assessment. Her friend didn’t look smug but content.

The relaxed state was enough to make Abigail’s eyes turn green. “I’m so screwed,” she said.

Sasha crossed her legs. The long skirt billowed, catching the light breeze. “I thought Drew took care of that last night.”

“Really?” Abigail gaped at her friend.

Emma snorted. “It had to be done. You look so…ravished this morning. According to Tobias.”

“Speaking of which…” Abigail poured more lemonade into her glass. The beverage so needed vodka. “Proposing a new rule.”

Sasha groaned. “Veto.”

“Hey, I haven’t even said it yet,” Abigail said.

“You stated your intent this morning.” Sasha shook her head. “Veto.”

“Rule?” Emma asked.

Sasha playfully kicked at the edge of her skirt. “She wants to limit what you share with your significant other.”

Emma shook her head now too. “Meaning she wants people to not speculate on what’s going on with Drew and her.”

Abigail wished fervently for vodka now. “I have no nefarious reasons for wanting this to go to a vote.”

“Veto.” Emma grinned. “Now, why are you screwed in a proverbial manner?”

“She’s falling for him,” Sasha announced without preamble.

“Am not.”
Are too
and that little voice worried Abigail.

Her friends only stared with disbelieving expressions, and then Sasha smiled, full of cunning and mischief. “You have no feelings whatsoever for Drew?”

“What happened was a fluke, not an accumulation of something more. Now I’ve had time to think about what happened.” She managed to tell the lie with a straight face. “Matter of fact, this morning we had a little argument he walked away from. What might have started is over.”

“Right?” Sasha asked.

“Exactly.” Abigail watched her friend.

“Ok.” Sasha picked up her cellphone from the table.

Abigail froze. “Who are you calling?”

“Drew,” Sasha said with a breathy little sigh. “If you don’t mind.”

Her friend threw down the gauntlet. Abigail knew the ploy and it was immature to even play the game. But she still hadn’t grown a pair when it came to claiming Drew as completely off limits.

The women didn’t need to say the words. If a friend showed an ounce of interest in a man, he became off limits. In a way, Abigail had broken the rule when she stepped in between whatever might have happened between Sasha and Drew at the wedding reception. But, maybe, there was an unspoken understanding Drew and Abigail had something going on. Something that started the day they met in the book store. Admitting to yourself and to your friends wasn’t needed. Knowing each other for ten years took care of words.

This was a test, and Abigail was stubborn enough to let it run its course. “Not a bit.” A sickening sensation rolled into her belly.

“His number?”

Abigail’s hand tightened on the glass as she recited Drew’s phone number from memory. “This is stupid.”

“Isn’t it?” Sasha paused and waited. When all she did was sit there mute, Sasha punched the send button.

Emma shifted in her seat to face Abigail. “Why do you guys do this?”

“What?” The word clawed out through her teeth as Sasha said, “hi” in a voice reserved strictly for baiting men into her honey. Abigail had yet to meet a man who didn’t get stuck in it once Sasha’s sultry tone had been whispered in their ear.

“Bait each other,” Emma said.

Abigail kept Sasha in her peripheral and answered the question, “Not too long ago you pointed out we are the same coin, opposite sides.”

Emma sighed heavily. “Just admit you have feelings for Drew,” she said to Abigail and glanced at Sasha. “Quit it.”

“I’m not sure if you know,” Sasha purred into the phone, “but my friend, Emma, is having an engagement party on Saturday.”

Whatever Drew said made Sasha laugh in a throaty, no mistaking the lure, type of laugh.

“What is it you’re scared of?” Emma’s question echoed Drew’s.

Fear squeezed her heart in a vise-like hold. What was wrong with speaking the words? Not uttering them didn’t make the admission any less true, and it didn’t make her feel any less scared of what was happening.

“If I end up loving him, really truly, deeply, he won’t feel the same way. He’ll be the one to do the walking away.”

Emma reached out and took Abigail’s hand. She squeezed it back when Sasha laughed again and hung up the phone.

“So?” Abigail asked.

Sasha put the phone back on the table. “He’ll pick you up around 5:30. Drinks first.”

Abigail blinked. “What?”

“Drew’s quite astute.” Sasha wore a self-satisfied smile as she spoke. “He must have also known we’re, sometimes, quite immature.”

Nerves settled in Abigail’s stomach and planted roots. “We need to grow up.”

“We do,” Emma agreed, and let go of Abigail’s hand.

They all went quiet. Sasha’s brows raised and she gave a small shrug. “We probably won’t.”

Abigail laughed first, and then all of the women joined in. Thankfully, it staved off the nerves. She was going on a date with Drew. Oh, she was so screwed.

Chapter Twelve

The knock at the door came fifteen minutes earlier than Abigail expected. Newspapers were still strewn across the living room floor of the two-bedroom apartment. A coffee cup from that morning sat on the dining table in the kitchen. She cringed at all the discarded choices of dresses on both Victorian-styled couches.

She belted the robe to hide her half-naked state and answered the door. Drew held a bottle of wine in one hand and a bouquet of lilies in the other. He’d probably left the suit jacket in the car. The crisp black pants and dress shirt more than passed muster for the occasion.

“I would have expected you dressed and pacing in the living room.” He stepped inside.

Abigail watched Drew take in the apartment. The mishmash of furniture would let him know no interior decorator shaped and molded the setting. Everything but the couches had been cast-offs from her friends or things they said felt like Abigail. The Tiffany lamp on the end table, from Sasha. The glass coffee table, from Emma. Her mother had bought the couches and donated something after each divorce. The jade being Buddha one of those donations. Abigail had the couches reupholstered every few years, but they were as sturdy as they’d been when first made. In their business, image was everything. What did Abigail’s apartment say about her in its current state?

Ugh.

“I expected you to get here at 5:31. Just because.” Abigail picked up discarded dresses along the way.

He glanced down at her feet. “Shoes?”

“Easiest decision.” With a free hand she pointed to the kitchen. “Vase in cabinet above the stove. Wine glasses in the one next to the ’fridge.”

He sighed. “Open the robe.”

If her hands hadn’t been full she would have closed the top. “What?”

“It’s going to be the death of me if I can’t have my hunch confirmed.”

Her cheeks flushed with heat. “Garter, stockings, bra and underwear.”

“And shoes. Don’t forget the shoes.” He made of sound of longing. “Get out of my sight.”

Abigail smiled as she went to deposit the clothes in her room. Once there, she had the same problem. What the hell should she wear? Something simple and black would do for the event, but this would be a date. A first date with a man who still left her all hot. And intrigued. At least she no longer felt stupid for wanting to impress him. She kicked at the dresses on the floor with a frustrated sigh.

“This might help,” he said at the door.

She took the glass he offered and considered the clothes covering every inch of the bed, and some parts of the floor. “You’re not supposed to see my room like this.”

He tilted his head back a little. “We’ve entered the you’re-only-supposed-to-see-perfection phase of our relationship?”

Relationship. The word brought on another wave of nerves. They wouldn’t be a fling. They’d attempt to be a unit. She placed a hand above the belt to her stomach. “But of course. I should at least make an effort to be a woman of complete mystery.”

Drew sipped from his glass, his gaze taking in all the clothes on the floor and bed. Without hesitation he picked up a red, low cut and short dress on top of the mountain of black dresses on the duvet and tossed it over one shoulder.

“Figures,” she muttered.

Drew plucked her glass out of her hand, moved to the mahogany dresser with the large vanity and put down their wine closest to the mirror. Keeping the dress in one hand, he changed directions and came toward her.

“The simple fact is most men like to see women in clothes he can imagine taking off her. T-shirt, sweats. Subtle but sexy,” he said.

She stood there, ready for the obvious seduction. Well, maybe not obvious but it was there in the way he stalked to her, the look in his eyes. From the moment she opened the door, he could probably guess the color of her underwear.

He circled around her, stopping at her back. With a gentle nudge, he led her toward the mirror. Abigail didn’t protest when he loosened the robe’s belt. With a deft tug he slid it down her shoulders, leaving her partially bare. She lifted her brows in surprise when he placed the dress over her.

“The heart-shaped neckline will let me see the swell of your breasts.” He held her gaze in the mirror. “It’s sleeveless so I can run a finger down your arms to make you shiver. You know, when I can’t stand not touching you for a moment longer.”

“And the short length,” Abigail added, breathless.

“You have beautiful legs.” He grinned. “And since we’ll probably be sitting next to each other, I can play with your garter.”

A corner of her mouth lifted. “I would expect nothing less.”

He placed the dress on the other side of their wine glasses. “What exactly do you expect of me, Abby?”

The tone was light, but his irises had darkened. He wanted a serious answer. “I used to know,” she said.

He ran his hands up and down her shoulders. With him pressed against her backside there was no way to feel comforted by the light touches. “And you don’t now?”

She shook her head. He placed a kiss on her shoulder blade. “What do you want to know?”

She trembled from the gentle contact of his lips meeting her skin and of the memory of what he could do with that mouth.

She swallowed back the moan. “Why aren’t you scared?”

For a moment his hands stilled on her elbows, and then they changed directions. His hands glided down to the snaps on the garters, unlatching them. His palms weren’t rough, but warm, so very warm against her skin. He hooked his thumbs on the sides of her underwear, black lace this time. He turned his face into her hair, but Abigail had caught the weariness in the expression. If felt as though her heart missed a beat.

“When I was sixteen, I got a girl pregnant. Well, I thought I did.” A deprecating note filled his tone. “I was reckless and irresponsible, letting my dick think for me. Not a first for a young man. Damn sure not the last.”

He kept his face in her hair, but the next deep breath ruffled her hair. “She’d decided to abort the pregnancy. She was right to not have faith in me being a good man, much less a father. Turns out she wasn’t pregnant, just late.”

She lifted her hand to his face. “I’m not saying it wasn’t dumb to have sex without a condom. I’m saying you were young.” She paused and thought back to every family occasion. How he was treated, talked to. Abigail hadn’t been any different. Shame trickled down her throat and she tried to swallow. “Is that why you’re the black sheep?”

“Partly.” Leaning his head into her palm, he placed a kiss in the heart of her hand. “Greg and I were the same age. He hit all the milestones before I did, and my cousin was always the golden boy. My mistakes were never easily forgiven or shrugged away as boys just being boys, because look at Greg. Same family. Same upbringing.”

She frowned. “But you kept living up to your reputation.”

“I’m bent that way,” he said without an ounce of his usual humor.

“You’re not that boy anymore.”

“I know.” He met her gaze then in the mirror. “I chose to be a better man. I chose not to spend the rest of my life trying to outdo him.”

What he didn’t say filled the air in a thick and cloying scent. Drew was scared. Probably sick from the thought that even with Abigail he’d still be in his cousin’s shadow. Second place, second choice. She placed her hands over his, where they rested along her hips.