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“I was in the room when your mom set you up,” I say, tilting her chin so I can meet her eyes. “I asked her to set me up, too, because I didn’t want to be alone when you were with someone. It’s been hell tonight, watching you with him again.”
“I’ve been miserable. You’ve been having fun,” she says accusingly, brushing my hand away.
I shake my head. “I’m playing my part. You don’t have your phone on you and I haven’t been able to get you alone anywhere.”
Jessie sighs and slips her arms around my waist, resting her head against my chest. “This sucks.”
“It does.” I hold her close. “I want to be with you tonight, and not just whatever scraps of time we can steal without anyone noticing.” I kiss the top of her head. “I know what we have is temporary, but this is…” What is it? It’s us—me and Jessie—after so many painful years. It feels bigger than anything else I’ve had with another woman, and maybe that’s because I know her so well, or because of who she is to me.
I want to explore whatever this is. There’s no time for anyone else. “This is exclusive. You and me. Okay?”
Jessie’s eyes are wide and she nods, her arms going around my neck. She breathes my name in a tone so soft all I can do is hold her tighter. Then she’s rising up on her toes, but instead of kissing me, she licks my cheek. I missed a bit of icing, apparently, because she moans. “I hate you. That cake was delicious.”
Our two minutes are up. Jessie leaves first. I follow a minute later. Mina’s not lurking outside the door. No idea if she was when Jessie came out, or how much Mina knows. Hopefully, Timothy will make his wife forget anything she’s figured out.
A few people pause to give me shit about the cake, but no one says a word about Jessie. My eyes are immediately drawn to her and I track her movement around the room as she smiles and laughs.
I’m a bit unbalanced. I said more than I meant to and it feels like I’ve edged into deeper water. Everything I said was true though. Until this holiday ends and we go our separate ways, I want to spend every moment I can with her. Making her smile, making her moan my name. Just being in the same room as her and catching one of her flirty little looks has me feeling more alive than I’ve felt in years.
It’s addictive and I want more.
The realization I don’t want this thing with Jessie to end hits me like a bus and for a long moment I stand near the dance floor, blinking. What the hell is wrong with me? It can’t last. For a hundred different reasons fromI can’t lose the FoleystoJessie lives in New York. But also…she knows me. She’s happy with the sex for now, but when that gets old, she’ll drop me.
Amanda taps my arm, startling me. “Timothy put that creep in a cab. And Mom’s pissed at him—she said she’d handle it. In the scary voice.”
I’ve only heard that voice a couple of times and never directed at me. The memory is still enough to make me shudder. Also—and I don’t understand this—Celia has some power. She’s like the fucking Godfather and people who cross her end up changing careers. The only kitchen likely to welcome Colton Craig will be one with a drive-through and his TV career is toast.
“Mom’s already on damage control,” Amanda says. “I don’t think what happened will get out. And”—she smiles—“your date left with Lexi.”
Thank god.
Chapter twenty-two
Jessie
December Twenty-fourth
Itturnsoutthatacting like Nic and I aren’t sleeping together is hard. It’s weird pretending we still hate each other, but he’s adamant my family can’t find out, and I agree. Mostly. He’s the family favorite and I’ll be responsible for his heart—whether it’s involved or not in what we have—and I don’t want that on me.
The problem is, I want to lay my head in his lap while he sits on the couch and smack his ass when I walk by in the kitchen. I want him to kiss me under the mistletoe and for it not to be a big deal for everyone if he does.
To distract myself from wanting things I shouldn’t, I finally opened the email from Elle sitting in my inbox. It’s more information about the commission Gretchen Torres wants to offer me. I need some time to parse through this, not to mention a break from pretending I don’t want to touch up on Nic, so I escape to the attic.
Dozens of my canvases are stacked against the walls, turned away, or covered at my request so I can’t see them, should I come up here. Mom refused to take down the one from the great room—the one Addison snubbed—and the ones in Timothy’s room and my room, but everything else is up here. Boxes full of watercolor paper, towers of watercolor journals…most are little studies of flowers from my mother’s garden. Most embarrassingly, a lot of fan art from the shows and books I had short but deep love affairs with.
Those should’ve been burned.
A large canvas of the tire swing by the lake on a summer’s day has been turned around and I stare at it for a moment, wondering if Mom’s been up here lately and why she looked at that one. My fingers itch to turn it around so I can’t see it, but I don’t.
I find an old but mostly empty sketch pad and a couple of pencils—in case I want to doodle—and sit in the middle of the room on the threadbare rug. Light pours in from a small circular window, the dust motes I stirred up falling back like snow.
Gretchen wants what she’s calling ‘pieces of eroticism,’ like my doodle of the woman’s face as she comes. Something like a hand clenching sheets or lips parted on a head thrown back. Simple and clean. The mood should be light, but not quirky. More a statement than a suggestion. The email goes on, whittling away possibilities in maddeningly vague terms until the little creative spark I felt from ‘pieces of eroticism’ snuffs out.
With a sigh, I drop the sketch pad on the floor next to me.
Gretchen rejected my paintings when she was with Torres and Strauss. She told me, albeit kindly, my art didn’t have the special something she was looking for. That was a decade ago and I haven’t picked up a brush in five years. I doubt Gretchen would find anything compelling about the whimsical but impossible shafts I normally doodle, and quite frankly, that’s all I’m good for these days.
The sound of the ladder being lowered in this quiet space makes me jump. Nic’s head comes into view, the worried look on his face vanishing when his eyes meet mine. He takes another step and pauses.
