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“Need some painkillers?” Frankie’s voice.
He opened his eyes, gave himself a moment to set his face, then looked over his shoulder to where she was standing, framed in the open doorway.
“You look like you have a headache,” she said.
“I don’t.”
“Do you want a cup of coffee instead of the whiskey?”
“No.”
“Tea?”
“Whiskey’s fine.”
With the shrug of one shoulder—which almost dislodged that damn robe again—she came over to sit opposite him, her back to the block of flats.
He topped up his barely touched whiskey to give himself something to do as Frankie raised her mug and inhaled the steam wafting up from it.
“I’m a philistine, I know,” she said, “but that year in the States got me hooked on crappy coffee. Donot tell any of my Australian friends—they’ll disown me if they discover I drink instant coffee instead of going to a café every morning for a cappuccino-piccolo latte-macchiato-whatever.”
“I don’t know any of your Australian friends.” Stating the fucking obvious as he tried to not anticipate another slinky fall of that robe.
She took a dainty sip of her coffee before answering. “We can rectify that, if you like. Sydney’s buzzing with summer parties, there are two and a half weeks until Christmas, and on Christmas day if you’re not doing anything there’s a thing on Bondi Beach for all the orphans, so—”
“I’m not an orphan.” Boorish.
“‘Orphans’ is more of a state of mind for this gig. What it really means is—is loners, I guess,” she said.
“I’m not a loner.” No, I’m a block of fucking wood.
“I mean people who are in Sydney with no one to spend Christmas with.”
Silence.
And then she cocked her head to one side, examining him. “Not a loner?”
“No.” Granite. Not wood, granite.
“’Cause you always seemed to like to be alone. Even when you were with the others you were...well, alone.”
How to explain that it wasn’t that he liked to be alone, he just was alone.
Impossible.
Because then he’d have to talk about the grief. He’d have to admit that he’d lost more than a sister when Cassandra died twelve years ago—he’d lost part of himself. And he didn’t want anyone else to know that, because they’d want him to find it again, and it was too late to look for it because that wasn’t him anymore.
Yep, impossible.
And so he raised his glass to take a sip of whiskey and said nothing.
“Or maybe it was that you just did your own thing,” she mused. “You never let yourself be pressured into any of Matt’s crazier schemes, at least not until n—” She stopped abruptly, but Teague finished the sentence in his head: not until now.
Slowly, deliberately, he put his glass on the table. “Am I—are we—in one of Matt’s schemes?” he asked. “Is that why I’m here?”
She put down her mug, licked her bottom lip. “You know why you’re here, Teague. At least, you know part of it.”
He reached into his shirt pocket for the small velvet he’d shoved in there before disembarking from the plane. The bag he’d scrupulously not looked into the whole damn flight. He held it out to her.
She watched him, not her hands, as she took the bag and unzipped it. It wasn’t until her eyes dropped that he let himself look down to see what was so important it had to come with him rather than be sent via a courier.
A ring.
His vision narrowed to the glitter of the platinum band in the sunlight, the cool glow of the emerald center stone, the intense sparkle of surrounding diamonds. But the telling thing was that she’d slipped it onto the third finger of her left hand.
“It’s prettier than I remembered,” she said.
White-hot rage coursed through him at those words. Prettier than she remembered? How the fuck could she not remember it exactly? God, what had Matt done to him? Why lay the burden of this history on him now, when it was too damn late? He didn’t want it. Didn’t want to know. But it was there. No going back.
Matt had once proposed to Frankie.
Matt had once been in love with Frankie.
Matt had waited until he and Teague were alone and pressed for time before co-opting Teague into returning the ring to Frankie—which had to mean Romy knew nothing about it.
Teague picked up his glass again, raised it to his mouth and knocked back a gulp of whiskey as the enormity of what it meant almost overwhelmed him. The enormity of what he’d lost.
Romy, he’d lost Romy. No, worse than that—he’d given her away. He’d pleaded Matt’s case for him when Romy had been prepared to move on from Matt, because Matt had never loved anyone except her and Matt was torturing himself over her. A once-in-a-lifetime love shouldn’t be denied—that was how Teague had consoled himself. And now...
Oh, God! God! Now to discover Romy wasn’t Matt’s once-in-a-lifetime love? To learn Matt had loved another woman enough to propose to her?
He shot to his feet, knowing he was about to lose his shit.
“Where are you going?” Frankie asked, startled.
Hell—I’m going to hell. “Thanks for the whiskey.”
She stayed sitting, giving him a quizzical look. “Why are you brooding at me?”
“I’m not brooding.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I don’t brood. Rafael broods.”
“Rafael only ever brooded in Veronica’s direction. You brood all over the place, you always did. It’s just that you’re an iceberg, so it’s hidden beneath the surface. It’s irresistible, you know. Makes women wonder what lies beneath.”
That threw him, so much that it took him a moment to relocate his voice. “I don’t brood,” he said again—it seemed to be the best he could come up with.
She leaned back in her chair. “Okay, you don’t brood, and you’re not irresistible. Happy?”
“Yes. No. I don’t—” He stopped abruptly, telling his feet to move. Frustrating as hell when they wouldn’t.
She sighed gustily. “Taking a wild guess here, but did Matt not explain any of the background to the ring?”
“He doesn’t have to explain it to me, only to—” He cut himself off again, bit his lip to stop her name from coming out of his mouth.
Her eyes narrowed. “Not to you, but to...Romy?” She sighed. “Romy. Of course. I see.”
And because the thought of her “seeing” enraged him when he’d been hiding it for so long, the words “You see what?” snapped out of him like a whip. He was almost vibrating with the need to tell her she was wrong.
“Things you don’t see, Teague. Things you could never see, things you seem to be unready to see even now, things you might never see even if someone waves them in front of your face before beating you over the head with them.” She stood then, too, as though spoiling for a fight. “But you know what? Good for Romy. Lucky Romy, to have two men so devoted to her, so in love with her for so damn long their brains turn to mush!”
“I didn’t say I’m in love with her,” he said, way too loud.
She snorted. “Oh, please, don’t even. That year I spent in DC there were plenty of women who wanted a piece of you, but they all knew they were wasting their time. The only one who didn’t know how you felt about Romy was Romy—and that was willful ignorance, because if she’d let herself see it she’d have had to let you go.”
“She did let me go. She’s married. They’re married! They have Rose now.”
“And Romy made you Rose’s godfather—which means, bozo, she’s not letting you go.” She rubbed the heels of her hands over her forehead and made a sound redolent of both frustration and disgust. “And why should she when you won’t let yourself go?”
“There’s nothing left to let go of.”
“Sure there is. Your propensity to wallow in misery over what you can’t have! How many years have you chalked up pining for her? Eleven? And it was hardly the love story of the century—only two measly months, and nobody ever saw you hold hands, let alone kiss! So perfectly discreet, so completely passionless! Yet you hung in there and let no one take her place with you. And now to find you’re still hanging in there?” She laughed, but there was a jeer in it. “All I can say is you must enjoy being miserable.”
“I don’t enjoy it!”
“No? Then get over it, the way the rest of us do. ’Cause I can tell you, lots of us want people who don’t have the good sense to want us back.”
“If you’re talking about Matt—”
“I’m not talking about Matt. God! I’m not interested in Matt and I never have been—not like that. And he’s never been interested in me that way.”
“How can you say that when he bought you an engagement ring?”
“I can say it because he wasn’t my fiancé—you were.”
CHAPTER TWO (#uf46fd633-6c91-51d3-a409-b018636d5066)
WHAT THE FUCK am I doing? was the thought uppermost in Frankie’s mind as she let those words settle.
Making an idiot of herself over Teague Hamilton seemed the best answer. It’s what she’d done that whole year in DC—lusting, very obviously, for a man who was hung up on someone else.
She thought back over that harried phone call from Matt, the to-and-fro about the ring, about Teague, Matt’s slight hesitation before he’d said that last thing and disconnected: You’re a smart girl, Frankie, figure it out, will you?
Since it was obvious Teague remained hung up on Romy—and damn if she didn’t find that infuriatingly stubborn loyalty as attractive as everything else about him—Frankie wasn’t sure what there was to figure out. Did she want to waste any more time? Because even a normal ménage à trois was overrated, if you asked her; one where the third participant was purely a fantasy in the thick head of one of the active players had to be straight out masochism.
If only he didn’t look so delicious, standing there all frosty-fronted and buttoned-up.
If only she wasn’t so sure she could defrost and unbutton him if he gave her a chance!
If only he’d give her even half a chance...
He sat again, reached for the whiskey, poured out another nip and wrapped his fingers around the glass without lifting it. She marveled at that magical something he had that could make anything near him transform into something whole and lovely—even that crappy chipped glass.
Oh, God, she had to have him. Had to try one last time. Maybe if she tamped down the femme fatale, parceled out the offer of sex in digestible chunks, she might not scare him off this time.
He raised the glass to his mouth at last and took a sip.
“Better?” she asked, taking her seat again.
All he did was look at her.
“Not better,” she said. “Want me to explain?”
He flicked a vague hand on the tabletop as though he’d reached the end of his stamina, which she interpreted as an invitation to proceed.
“Remember Kyle?” she asked, starting easy.
“Big, muscles, tats. Badass.”
“More asshole than badass,” she said, and sucked in a quick breath. “Well, a year after I came home, he turned up in Sydney, engaged to an Aussie. He clearly has a thing for the accent—not that I’m throwing stones, seeing I’m partial to American ones.” She paused to give him a chance to register that he, himself, had an American accent. But...nope. Blank.
“A-a-anyway,” she went on, “Laura—the fiancée—understandably wanted to get married here in Sydney, where her family is, and because Kyle really is an asshole, he decided it’d be fun to invite me to the wedding. I was on the verge of sending back a thanks-but-I’m-pairing-my-odd-socks-that-day reply—” she had to pause there, because she needed a moment to rein in the fury that Kyle would dare expect her to turn up, after what he’d done to her “—until a week before the wedding, when he came to King’s Castle, the club where I work, with an entourage of drunks, presumably an early bucks night. At that point, I figured I’d go to his goddamn wedding and take the hottest date I could get.”
“And you chose Matt.”
“Well, not exact—”
“Because Kyle was always jealous of him,” Teague interrupted, pouring himself more whiskey. “I remember Matt and Romy talking about it.”
“As I was about to say, not exactly.”
He frowned at her. “But they told me—”
“Yes, they flew in for the wedding, but Kyle wasn’t jealous of Matt!” Frankie said, watching to see if he noticed the slight emphasis—but he obviously still didn’t have a clue, so she swallowed a sigh and continued. “And I wasn’t intending Matt to be my date. It’s just that I mentioned the wedding in passing on the phone, and he wanted the job because, well, why not? Which tends to be the way Matt and I operate. Why not?” She laughed, because looking back, it was insane. “By the time he and Romy landed, he’d upped the drama quotient and decided we needed to be fake-engaged. Romy, however, insisted Kyle wouldn’t buy a relationship between me and Matt because we had too much of a brother-sister vibe. Go figure, huh?” Pause. “Brother-sister? Because we’re so much alike? And people who are too much alike...?” Pause. Surely he knew what she was saying? Surely he could work out she was alluding to him and Romy? Mr. and Ms. Perfect—a doomed combination, ’cause everyone knew opposites attracted. Bu-u-ut, nope. Not even a blink. “So I guess I’ll cut to the chase. Fact is, Romy said if we wanted to mess with Kyle’s head, you’d make a better fiancé.” Another pause, to see if that sank in.
But all she got was a confused question. “Why would that mess with his head?”
“Huh?”
“I’ve never spoken to him.”
DearGod, men could be obtuse! “No, you’ve never spoken to him, but he saw you at Flick’s. He saw you...and me...? Watched me serve you...?”
He was shaking his head, still not getting it. Seriously, did lawyers not need to be smart?
“What possible reason could you give for you living here and me in the States?” he asked, missing every damn point.
