Chapter 18
Four months later
“Are you sure you’re alright, Drew?”
Drew stared up at the ceiling in his condo as he held the phone to his ear. “I’m fine, Harold. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
“Evidently. I hear you’re not the womanizer you used to be. Not that I’m complaining. I see that as a good thing. What happened?”
Drew released another deep breath. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time to hear it. Claire has a class tonight.”
He rubbed his hand down his face. He did need to talk to someone, and for years it had always been Harold, Lester, or his dad. “Do you recall that time around the holiday last year when I picked up a woman’s scent in my truck?”
“Yes, I remember. You never mentioned what happened with that. Was it a lot-lizard like I thought?”
“No. It was a runaway. A twenty-one-year-old runaway.”
“Who was a twenty-one-year-old woman running away from?” Harold asked. “An abusive boyfriend or husband?”
“She was running away from her father.”
Harold didn’t say anything for a minute and then asked, “Her father? How about starting from the beginning?”
Drew rolled his eyes. “I did start from the beginning. It started when I found her in my rig.”
“Then how about telling me why she was running away from her father?”
It took Drew a full thirty minutes to tell Harold everything…except the personal parts, but he was certain his cousin figured things out on his own.
“I should have known you weren’t at that lodge alone.”
“It wasn’t planned.”
“Regardless. Sounds to me like Eden Tyson got under your skin.”
Drew frowned. “No woman can get under my skin. It’s too thick for that to happen.”
“If she didn’t get under your skin, she came damn close to it. You were involved with her for seven months, without sleeping with other women. That’s not normal for you.”
“You’re right. It’s not. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
” He honestly thought ending things with Eden would restore his sense of self, but here it was four months later, and his obsession with her hadn’t gone away.
That meant for eleven months she’d been the only woman he had shared a bed with. That was stone crazy.
“I think I know, Drew, but you’re not going to like my answer,” Harold said.
Drew lifted a brow. “What is it?”
“You’ve fallen in love.”
Drew rolled his eyes. Harold was right. He didn’t like his answer. “That’s utter nonsense. I’m above falling in love. Remember, I’m a man who loves women too much. I would never be happy with just one.”
“If that’s so, then why aren’t you happy now?”
“Who said I wasn’t happy?”
“Are you? If sleeping with different women makes you happy, then why aren’t you out there doing it? What’s stopping you?”
**
“Renard!” Eden exclaimed happily. She had just finished a photo shoot, and when she looked up, she saw the man she had considered a friend since childhood.
He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “I happened to be in New York for a job interview and heard from Mark where you were. I guess you know you’re the talk of the Circle.”
The Circle was the name of the group that her parents, as well as Sophie’s, Mark’s, Renard’s, and two other couples, belonged to.
The members, who had been good friends for years, ran in the same circles, thinking it was perfectly fine to plan their kids’ marriages to each other.
Eden was to marry Mark, and Sophie was to marry Renard.
“So, have you done it?” she asked him. The last time Eden had spoken to Sophie, Renard was to announce to his parents that he was gay, and there was no way he could marry Sophie.
Renard, whom Eden had thought was very handsome, flashed a dimpled smile. “Yes, I did. This past weekend. The folks disowned me, so now I’m the talk of the Circle as well.”
“Welcome to the outcast club,” Eden said, smiling sadly. “Hopefully, one day our parents will accept that we are adults and can live our lives as we choose. Maybe then, they’ll regret their actions.”
“I don’t think mine will ever regret anything,” Renard said, “But I’ll be fine.
I got access to the trust fund my grandparents left me, and I’ve accepted a job with a law firm in Manhattan.
However, I won’t start work until the first of the year.
In the meantime, I plan to travel for a while. Where are you headed next?”
“Back to Paris. I have a couple of photo shoots there. I had looked forward to spending the holidays in the States, but now I think I’ll stay in Paris.”
She thought about the reason she’d changed her mind.
Not that she thought her and Drew’s paths would cross in New York, but she preferred not being in the same country as him.
His final words to her had hurt, but they’d been what she needed to hear.
She refused to hope for something that would never be, and that was what she had been doing.
Drew had told her point-blank that he would not change, and she would never be enough.
“When are you leaving for Paris?” Renard broke into her thoughts to ask.
“I’m leaving in the morning.”
“Mind if I tag along?” Renard asked, grinning.
Eden’s smile widened. “Of course not. I would love the company.”
Renard returned her smile. “Then you shall have it.”
**
A week later, after his conversation with Harold, Drew sat on his patio drinking a beer.
Whatever damage Elijah Tyson had tried to inflict on his company had come to a screeching halt thanks to Valerie and Ivory Axlewood.
In fact, the Steele Trucking Company had acquired three new distribution centers.
A part of him wished he could have been a fly on the wall when Axlewood had met with Eden’s father.
His thoughts shifted to Harold and what he had said during their last conversation. “If sleeping with different women makes you happy, then why aren’t you out there doing it? What’s stopping you?”
His cousin’s question was still ringing in his ears, and Drew still didn’t have an answer.
More than once over the last few days, he had even gone through his little black book to make a few calls, but he had hung up the phone before anyone answered.
The bottom line was that after making love with Eden, he didn’t want to be with anyone else.
Why did he feel that way? He refused to accept Harold’s explanation that he’d fallen in love. That was utter nonsense.
Then he frowned. Why did he think that way when his father had loved his mother deeply? And he knew that Harold and Lester loved their wives. Why did he assume he was different?
“Because I am,” he said aloud as if trying to make the point to himself. But then, hadn’t his dad warned him that one day he would meet someone special, and she would become his entire life, like Walleen had become his? For better or for worse? Of course, at the time, Drew hadn’t believed it.
Yet, he had to admit there was not a day that passed that he still didn’t go to bed thinking about Eden, reliving memories of the time he had spent with her at Mountain-Scape Lake Lodge and in New York.
Their time together had been special. He would even go so far as to say he enjoyed the time she had been in his truck riding down the interstate with him.
Whether she had been asleep or awake, talking or quiet, he had appreciated her presence. Somehow, her scent had been comforting.
He got up to get rid of his beer bottle, and as he passed through his living room on his way to the kitchen, he saw the magazines scattered on his counter.
They all featured Eden on the cover or had articles inside written about her.
Although he hadn’t seen her in four months, and they had ended their weekly Sunday night chats, she still managed to invade his thoughts.
Even when he was at work. He would stop in the middle of reviewing an important file to lean back in the chair and recall a special moment they had spent together at the lodge.
Like the times they’d gone riding around the mountains on mountain bikes.
Or their long walks. Or when they would curl up in bed to watch movies, alternating between chick-flicks for her and thrillers for him.
Then there were the days he’d spent with her in New York, attending plays, concerts, museums, and just walking around Times Square, holding hands.
They had gotten along so well, and when he’d made plans for them, she’d been easy to please.
He would have to say those days at the lodge had been the best time of his life.
So had the time he’d spent with her in New York.
He hadn’t been around a woman for so long since Valerie.
But his time with Eden had been different in ways he still didn’t fully understand.
During the seven months they were together in New York, she always wore the necklace he had given her.
He’d even noticed her wearing it during a couple of television interviews.
When one reporter asked her about it, she said it had been a gift from a very special person.
Was she still wearing the necklace, or had she stopped, as a way to forget about him?
On his way back to the patio, he paused and picked up a couple of the magazines.
Settling in the patio chair, he studied the cover of Vogue for the umpteenth time.
His gaze scanned every inch of her features but zeroed in on that smile.
He had one up on any man who looked at the magazine and got turned on by that smile.
He had gotten to see that smile personally several times.
And she hadn’t been coaxed by a photographer to produce it.
An even brighter smile had been reserved just for him after making love.
While staring at the cover, he could imagine having a little girl with the same eye color as Eden’s–a beautiful green. She would be the mother, and he would be the father, and─