10. The Twilight Zone
Chapter 10
The Twilight Zone
Horrified. That was the only word that could describe the emotion stepping to the fore in Reece’s bruised brain. Disbelief was tapping on its shoulder.
This can’t be happening!
What kind of man would let himself get so drunk he couldn’t remember proposing, much less exchanging vows? Especially one who prided himself on being a cool customer when everyone else was falling apart.
How the fuck did I get here, and why did I drag Neve along for the ride?
Maybe this was one big joke. But how and why would he have let himself get talked into something so outrageous?
Control was Reece’s middle name. He owned it. At all times. Whether it was a dire situation on the side of a mountain or his own fucking life. Not only had he yielded every scrap of self-command—and in rather spectacular fashion—but he hadn’t protected Neve from his boneheadedness.
And how the hell had he come to the conclusion that dropping eighty grand on rings was a stellar idea? Had someone held a gun to his head? It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it. He’d have to move money around, but the extravagance was as out of character as Scrooge McDuck throwing open his vaults and letting the masses help themselves to his piles of gold.
He had married a childhood friend—Reece, not Scrooge. Okay, possibly married. Nevertheless, he had gone through a ceremony with a woman who, until recently, hadn’t been a blip on his mostly malfunctioning romance radar. Why Neve? Why now?
At least they had the “getting to know you” part out of the way. But was it possible to leap from best friend to spouse? Maybe. Lots of people married their best friends. But what about the leap to lover?
In what fucking universe did I think this was a good idea?
God, he needed to have his head examined—after it stopped throbbing. The damn thing thumped with the questions spinning inside it like wooden blocks in a dryer. He had to talk to his brothers; he needed answers. Had to find out how this had all gone down. More importantly, he needed to not panic. He wasn’t a panicker. Was that even a word?
Neve watched him with wary, expectant eyes. How did she know about Chelsea anyway?
“Uh, what was the question?” Yeah, he was stalling. Buying time with crappy currency. Trying to pick his words carefully so he didn’t come off like a total douchebag while his brain was being manned by a skeleton crew.
His partner in crime puffed out a breath that ruffled a lock of hair on her forehead. “Chelsea. You used her name while you were … bear-hugging me in bed.” She jabbed a thumb toward the other bedroom.
Reece rocked backward on his bare feet. Shit! He cringed at the murky memory of humping Neve’s hip with his morning wood.
“I did ?” his mouth spewed before he could stop it. Why the fuck hadn’t he deflected by saying he didn’t know any Chelseas? It wasn’t as if he was calling up memories on the daily about his ex-bed partner-slash-ex-boss anymore. Well, none that were pleasant anyway.
“Aha! So she does exist.” Neve crossed her arms over her chest in a triumphant motion .
She had him on the hot seat, and he didn’t like having his ass roasted. Then again, this whole situation was one epic cluster-fuck that was going to take some major hoop-jumping to unravel—if it even could be unraveled. Just how solid was that license? It looked pretty damn authentic, right down to Reverend Elvin’s signature.
Wait. Nothing could be this screwed up. It had to be a joke. And if it wasn’t? Vegas did quickie weddings; therefore, they had to do quickie annulments. He and Neve couldn’t be the first couple to find themselves in this pickle jar. Forming a legal union required two consenting adults, and neither of them appeared to be consenting right now . Not in the harsh light of day anyway—if it was in fact day. He was swimming in a soup of disorientation.
“Are you going to answer or evade?” Neve challenged.
Here goes nothing.
“First of all, she did exist. Past, not present.” Neve’s mouth dropped open. “No, she’s not dead. We’re just … done.”
“I didn’t even know you dated .”
“I don’t think ‘dating’ is the right term.” More like fucking, but he’d leave it for Neve to connect the dots of the sleazy truth. Shoving his hair back from his face, he let out an extended exhale. “How about if we get our real clothes on and sit down? Then I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about Chelsea.”
Neve rolled her pretty blue eyes. He might not remember much about the night before, but one thing did stand out: She had been drop-dead gorgeous … and she still looked damn fine. Even after a night of drinking and possible debauchery, with her hair sticking up on one side, leftover makeup on her face, and a robe that hung like a curtain on her frame, she was really pretty. Achingly pretty. Prettier than he’d ever seen her look before. Images of her in front of the fireplace and the murkier ones of her on the street in front of the chapel, in the jewelry store, and inside a casino streaked through his mind. Bits and pieces of what came later, in the suite with his brothers and their girls, were like curls of smoke he couldn’t hold in his hand, but they left a fuzzy warm feeling inside him.
What had they done on those sheets? Shit, wouldn’t he remember if he’d rolled around on them with her—sans clothes? If he’d run his fingers and tongue over her? And why couldn’t he stop imagining touching and tasting her ?
Neve returned to her room, shutting the adjoining door after herself, and thank God. Reece needed Neve-less space to get his thoughts in order. He pulled a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from his overnight bag and slid them on. In the bathroom, he looked himself over in the mirror, threw some water on his face, and smoothed his hair.
“Isn’t going to get any better than this right now, dude.”
After brushing the bad taste of champagne and God-knew-what-else from his teeth and tongue, he plucked two cold waters from the honor bar in his room and rapped on Neve’s adjoining door. She immediately yanked it open, and despite their blackout of a night, she looked fresh and smelled even better in a pink T-shirt that said, “I’m the Cat’s Meow,” and jeans that fit her like a glove. She was barefoot, and her hair was brushed off her shoulders in golden waves that made him wonder how soft the strands would feel slipping through his fingers.
He jerked the cap off one of the bottles and thrust it in her general direction. “Hydrate.”
She accepted it, waved him in, and walked toward the now-tidied bed, where she carefully packed those lacy gloves into her travel bag that sat on top of the spread. Tiny white stones sparkled on the back pockets of her jeans, drawing his eye to her luscious round ass.
It’s not luscious, you asshat. Who even says “luscious”?
She plopped on the edge of the mattress, mercifully hiding said ass from his pervy gaze.
Stop. It. Now.
He joined her, leaving plenty of space between them. Before he could launch into his hastily rehearsed speech about Chelsea, Neve turned misty eyes on him. Distress shone in them and nearly gutted him.
“What am I going to tell Leo? He’s been so nice, and then I go and do this.” She waved her free hand between them as if he were a stink she wanted to get rid of.
“It’s probably not real, Neve,” he soothed.
“Even if it’s a big ha-ha, we went along with something I don’t understand!”
He realized in that moment that he was less upset about finding himself married to Neve than he was about screwing up her life and her relationship with Cantrell, despite his dislike for the guy .
“One thing at a time.” His voice broke, and he cleared his throat. “We need to solve last night first. There might not be anything to tell him.” His lame attempt to reassure her failed miserably because her face only drooped more. “Look, I know Cantrell won’t be happy we spent the night together—”
“Naked!”
“He doesn’t have to know that part.” Especially since I don’t remember it.
“Would you stop being so practical … and noble?” she sniffled.
“Let me finish. Like I said, I’ll talk to him man-to-man and explain it was all a mistake and that nothing happened. Hopefully, that’ll be enough to convince him you didn’t cheat on him.”
Pursing her lips, she gave him a sidelong glance. “Is it possible to cheat on someone you haven’t slept with?”
His heart bumped against his chest wall for some unknown reason. “Are you saying you haven’t slept with Cantrell?”
“We never … got around to it.”
He cocked his eyebrow. “No? How does that work? I thought you two were an item.”
She barked a laugh. “Obviously, it doesn’t work very well. We never got the chance. He’s busy, I’m busy.”
Now his bumping heart sank. “So what you’re saying is that, given the chance, you would have slept with him.”
“I don’t know. I mean, what does that tell you about someone if you can’t carve out time to have sex?”
“Uh …”
“Exactly.” A lung-deflating sigh left her body. “I’m not sure the sparks have enough combustion.”
Giddiness swelled inside him—and immediately died when she added, “You heard my confession. Now it’s your turn to tell me about Chelsea, who’s not dead but does exist in your life.” She tipped back the bottle and took a long drink.
“She exists, but she’s not in my life.” He met Neve’s piercing gaze and steeled himself. “She was my incident commander.” When Neve’s eyebrows crinkled in that way that told him she was puzzled, he continued. “In theory, she was my boss. We had a … a …”
“You slept together. ”
“Thanks for not mincing words.” Though his sarcasm came out with a bite, Neve didn’t flinch.
“What’s the point in mincing? You have something going on with this woman, and—”
“Had. I had something going on with her. For the record, it wasn’t much of something, and it only lasted a few months.”
“When did it end?”
“Early summer.”
Recognition sparkled in Neve’s slate blues. “That was right around the time you took a break from search and rescue. Were the two tied together?”
“Yep.” They were tied so tight I couldn’t work the knot free.
Neve made a “gimme” motion with her hands. “Can you give me a little more here? I don’t need the dirty details, but I’d appreciate you filling in some of the bigger gaps. Why did you break up?”
“Apart from it being a really bad idea to get involved personally with my incident commander, I had no idea I was her backdoor man.”
“And that bothered you.” A statement, not a question, and it twanged that taut bowstring of guilt inside him.
“You’ve known me your whole life. You think I would intentionally get involved with a married woman?” God, they might be close friends, but it was downright weird talking about this with Neve.
“So you were involved?”
She wasn’t going to let him skate away, was she? Time to deflect. “Anytime a man and woman sleep together, they’re involved. It might be purely physical. It might last an hour or a day or a lifetime, but they are involved for whatever amount of time they share that … that connection.” How could they not be tangled up, both in an emotional sense and a very real sense? “I know this is a shocker,” he drawled, “but I prefer my relationships straightforward. Backdoor isn’t for me.”
“Do you even know what backdoor means? And I’m not talking about sneaking in and out of someone’s house.” Her denim blues twinkled with a challenge, and his pulse gathered speed.
“Of course I know what it is,” he scoffed. “The question is how do you know? ”
“Are you serious right now? I’m not fifteen, in case you haven’t noticed.” She grumbled something that sounded a lot like, “You’ve never noticed.”
He pretended not to hear. He probably wasn’t supposed to hear anyway, so he was showing her a courtesy. Right? As for him not paying attention, that might have been true when she was a sassy preteen who loved to race him down the mountain on her snowboard, but he sure as hell was noticing her now . The lush landscape of her body with curves a man could sink his fingers into. That rosebud mouth that stirred up all kinds of inappropriate thoughts when it formed a perfect little O of surprise. Those wide eyes that shifted from faded-blue-jean-blue to the gray of a summer thundercloud, depending on her mood. The fact that he observed these tiny details about her was alarming, and those details were all rushing at him at once.
And damn if grown-up Neve wasn’t even sassier—and way sexier.
Not so long ago, he’d believed she was into his brother Charlie. In fact, Reece had been convinced—like the rest of the town—that they were friends with benefits, and that put Neve so far off-limits she might as well have been in Australia’s Outback. Charlie had always insisted they weren’t, but Reece had never bought it because they were too affectionate for a platonic thing. But maybe, just maybe, Charlie had been telling the truth all along. If that turned out to be true, a fissure was forming in one of Reece’s most robust defensive walls. And that was mighty inconvenient.
Neve canted her head. “From the look on your face, I can only assume I’ve blown your mind. Now that we both understand the nuances in the term ‘backdoor,’ let’s move on. How did you not know Chelsea was married?”
“She lied. By omission, but still a big fat fucking lie.” Anger began to build inside him. “She didn’t wear a ring, and she never mentioned any relationships or a significant other. Nothing in her apartment led me to believe a guy lived there. No men’s clothing, no razors, no aftershave. And there were no pictures of them anywhere. I was blindsided.”
“How did you find out?”
He gave her the “light” version of getting caught in the act by Chelsea’s husband. No need to relive every last embarrassing detail.
“Ouch! So that’s when you broke up?”
He nodded .
“Would you have stuck around if she had left her husband?”
He shook his head. “Absolutely not. How could I trust someone who does something like that? And—this is a really crappy thing to say—I never saw us in a committed relationship. This was supposed to be an uncomplicated … thing, and a husband is a huge-ass complication.”
“Do you miss her?”
“No.” He hesitated before confessing the next bit, but he reminded himself this was Neve. He could trust her. “I miss the job. But I can’t go back there as long as she’s there.”
“Why not? Never mind. I can see how that would be massively awkward, but God, Reece, you’ve worked so long and so hard for this. And you’re damn good at it.” His chest swelled a little. “Seems to me that she should be one to go.”
“She’s good at what she does too. It’s not fair to expect her to quit.”
“So how does the husband figure into this? Is she staying with him? Does she want to get back together with you?”
He stared at the ceiling and heaved out a breath. “I don’t think she knows what she wants.” He leveled his gaze on Neve. “But it doesn’t matter because I don’t want her.” The words punched out of him with a force he didn’t recognize. “Besides, I’m married now.” Holding up his left hand, he pointed at the ring on his finger.
“Is that why you married me? Assuming that piece of paper is valid.”
He dropped his hand and poked a thumb square in the middle of his chest. “You’re putting this on me ?”
“Well, yes. You’re the one always telling everyone what to do.”
“Ha! That’s a laugh, Bossy Britches. This is at least half your fault.”
She lifted her pert nose an inch or two. “Oh? How do you figure?”
Being as wrung out as he was left him without a solid grasp on his mouth. “The way you looked in that dress … and the hair … and the way you smelled.” Her mouth dropped open, which was his cue to shut up before he completely tripped over his tongue.
“You actually notice those things?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I’m a guy.”
“A very—”
A knock on the door made them both jump in place .
“Good morning, lovebirds,” came Joy’s voice. “Breakfast is here. Well, more like brunch since it’s nearly noon. If you can peel yourselves off each other long enough, come get the eats while they’re hot.”
Reece hopped up and headed for the closed door, his gaze finding Neve’s at the same time hers fastened on his. “Can you eat right now?” he hissed.
“No, but we should have some thing.”
“I need coffee. I’m not talking anymore until I have at least one cup,” he insisted. “No eggs, though.”
Neve stuck out her tongue. “I’m in total agreement with you there. Greasy eggs after a night of drinking? Blech!”
“We’ll be right there,” he called through the door.
“Don’t take too long.” Joy’s teasing voice faded as she moved away from the door.
Neve stood, and her face twisted with a cringe. “Do I look okay?”
“Yeah, you look great.”
“The hair’s not too wild? I tried to put it up in a ponytail, but my head hurt too much.”
Two strides, and he faced her. He smoothed a few silky strands away from her face, though they didn’t need it. “Perfect. Ready to face the music and find out what happened last night?”
“Sounds like a search and rescue mission.”
“It kinda is. And we’re a team.” He cocked his eyebrow in question.
She nodded her agreement. Then, with a sigh, she straightened her spine as though shoving a steel rod into it. “Let’s do this, Mr. Hunnicutt.”
He held on to the urge to add, “Roger that, Mrs. Hunnicutt.”