Chapter 3
THREE
Bristol
“Anson?” Marlowe’s voice echoes through the small room. “You need help with the whiskey? Hazel said you might.”
Anson? Oh my god. If Anson saw me like this, he would give me that look he always does when he thinks I’m out of line.
That slight furrow of his brow and the slow, methodical drag of his eyes over my frame like he’s seen a train wreck explode right in front of him, and he’s trying to make sense of it.
A train wreck. This would be one if Marlowe saw me naked from the waist up with my hand down her brother’s pants.
Shit. Fuck. Shit.
The alcohol was making my brain too fuzzy to move fast enough. But it finally clicks into gear. I tear my hand out of Jasper’s pants, and I grab my dress, wresting it back into place over my breasts and resetting the straps on my shoulders.
“Anson’s not in here.”
Jasper jerks back from me, diving deeper into the darkness the shadow of the open door provides. I assume he’s desperate to hide from his sister, and I’m not about to stop him.
“Bristol?” Marlowe sounds confused. “What are you doing in the dark?”
I watch her arm stretch forward and her hand pat along the wall for the switch just long enough for me to do one last check of my dress. Nipples covered. Check. Dress smoothed. Check. I run a hand back through my hair. I’m sure it looks disheveled, but hopefully not as much as I feel.
Having Jasper feel me up in the dark is the most action I’ve gotten in months. There aren’t many opportunities when your boyfriend’s being tried for crimes and held on bond even before I got dumped.
The light still comes faster than I expect, and I dart out from behind the door, trying to shield Jasper’s tall frame.
I’m hoping he took advantage of the few moments of reprieve to tuck his dick back into hiding and buckle his belt.
If not, I’m hoping my skirts shield Marlowe from the worst of our sins.
“I can explain,” I blurt out when I see her eyebrows climb on her forehead. Her passive permission to hook up with Jasper wasn’t going to extend to being a witness to it at the wedding.
“Oh, I don’t think I need an explanation.
” Her initial shock melts to amusement. She presses her fingers to her lips as she studies the man behind me, and then her eyes move to me.
“I mean, I knew this would happen eventually, just maybe, you know, not right now?” One brow cranes higher than the other in the slightest hint of admonishment.
It’s not the reaction I was expecting. I didn’t expect her to be furious with me exactly. But I knew rushing to get laid in a closet at the wedding would give her reason to question my judgment.
Which I understand. Rushing in with Jasper, if I had feelings for him, would be a huge mistake.
But I’m more than ready to explain that I’m a grown woman now, and I know exactly who and what he is.
I just want a convenient, mutually agreed-upon hookup now and then when the battery-operated kind needs a recharge, and that much Jasper is capable of.
And I’m capable of not demanding more than he can give.
Now, whether we needed to rush into it at the wedding, I suppose we could debate that.
But I’ll see where Jasper’s head is at before I say anything else to Marlowe.
I turn to look back at him over my shoulder, wondering if he’s as surprised as I am that Marlowe is taking this so well.
Except it’s not Jasper standing behind me.
It’s Anson.
Anson fucking Briggs is standing there behind me in the fluorescent light with a rumpled dress shirt blessedly covering the front of his pants. I just had my hand down them. Wrapped around his dick. Begging him to suck my nipples until I came.
Hazel’s brother. Ford’s father. The man who was married to my sister before she passed away.
I blanch before I feel my cheeks light up with heat.
It races down my neck and over my chest. My mind fumbles with half-thought-out apologies and excuses, how to explain that I didn’t realize who it was I was feeling up in the dark.
But then I’d have to explain how I’m the kind of mess right now that stumbles into a closet and feels a man up before I bother to verify his identity.
“I thought he—” I start and then stop as his eyes lift from the floor. I wait for them to meet mine. But they look past me. Through me even. Straight to Marlowe.
“Too much good whiskey.” He flashes the smile I’ve seen him use with clients.
“I can see that.” Marlowe chuckles.
Anson and I can’t have too much whiskey.
I help him with Ford. He helps me with odd jobs around Many Moons and at my mom’s house.
He slips me an extra thousand a month for being the “nanny” his teenage son most definitely no longer needs, and I use it to make sure my mom has a caregiver on the days I’m working and can’t check in on her.
He stocks her fridge, and I cook dinner on the nights he doesn’t make it home in time to grab something off the road for Ford.
He eats the leftovers in silence and helps with the dishes.
We’re co-managers of what’s left of our family.
Friends on a good day. Most definitely not anything approaching a situation where too much good whiskey has us losing clothes and boundaries in a closet.
Marlowe must sense the shift in the room the same way I do because she suddenly looks contrite and apologetic for interrupting us.
“I’ll leave you to some privacy. I can get the whiskey. Take your time.” Marlowe grabs a couple of bottles and excuses herself, shutting the door behind her.
I stare at it for a long moment in silence. The bright fluorescent light reveals the stark industrial nature of the hotel storage room for what it is. A wine and spirits cellar. Not the linen closet Jasper had directed me to find him in.
I stare at a massive bottle of whiskey in front of me. Wondering if I could just jump inside and erase the last thirty minutes from my mind. Even as I think it, a flashback comes unbidden.
The heat of his mouth on my breast. The soft ebb and flow of want that echoed down to my clit as he teased me with what he could do. The warmth of him in my palm. How fucking big he was.
I know the size of Anson’s dick now. I’ll never get that out of my head. No whiskey is going to stop that memory from returning. I pinch the bridge of my nose as I shut my eyes, drawing in a deep breath and hoping the courage I need to push through this awkward conversation comes with it.
“I didn’t know it was you. I thought you were—” I start.
“Jasper.” Anson finishes my sentence abruptly. “I caught that.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“You said your best friend’s brother. I realize now you never said a name, but I thought you knew.”
“I’m sorry. I was doing shots with the girls. I was already drunk, and I—You have to know I would never have crossed that line with you—not in a million years.” I wince as I think about what a mess I’ve made of this situation.
“Forget it.” Whatever glimpse of a version of a carefree Anson I’d gotten a few minutes ago is gone now. Replaced by the cool, practiced mask of the all-work-no-play man I’ve known for years. He zips his pants and buckles his belt methodically.
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
“We’re okay?”
“We’re fine. It’s a wedding. There’s alcohol. It was dark.” He quickly outlines a get-out-of-jail-free card for me, but he moves to make a wide berth around me as he heads for the door.
The man can’t get away from me fast enough, and I feel a pang in my chest when he closes it behind him. Whoever we were before leaves the room with him. I know that much, regardless of whatever platitudes he gives to make his escape.
Our relationship might not have been particularly warm before, but it was reliable—comfortable even—and now I’ve taken dynamite to all that bedrock with one little mistake that I have a feeling I’ll regret for a long time to come.