An Unexpected Attraction (Love Unexpected Book 3) (13 page)

Was Nick even listening to himself?

“You’re out of your mind.” He was going to forget this ridiculous conversation.

“Come on, man.”

“You come on!” Jay ran shaky fingers through his hair. He was getting worked up, but he couldn’t help himself. “I’m not your errand boy. We’re friends, but I’m not comfortable keeping tabs on Brenda.” Even if he didn’t have feelings for her, spying on her—or whatever Nick wanted him to do—felt like a betrayal. Despite their frayed relationship, she was his friend, too.

“Great. You’re the one person I thought I could trust with this.” Nick crossed his arms and stared out the side window.

“I’m not going to tell her what you told me, if that’s what you think.”

“Fine. Forget I asked. It was stupid.”

“We agree on something,” Jay muttered. He heaved a heavy sigh.

They both fell quiet for a while. Jay pressed heavier on the accelerator. The sooner he dropped Nick at the hotel, the better, and they were almost there.

“Look, I was desperate when I asked you for that favor,” Nick said, an edge to his voice, “but you’re being a real prick right now. Don’t tell me you didn’t see the way she was touching me all night and laughing at my jokes. A good friend would help me out. A real friend.”

“Or maybe you misread the signals,” Jay said.

“You would say that,” Nick mumbled.

Jay tossed a sidelong glance in his friend’s direction. A definite sourness filled his tone. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You think you’re the only one who women find attractive? The Italian Stallion, screwing everything that moves. You couldn’t have Brenda, though, could you?”

Jay didn’t like the direction the conversation had veered off in. “That would suggest that I wanted her.” He pulled into the parking lot of the hotel and cruised to a stop outside the sliding glass doors.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t. Or that you still don’t. It’s so goddamn obvious a blind man could see it.”

“What is so obvious?” Jay demanded. He slammed the truck in park and twisted to face Nick.

“You. You’re obvious. The way you look at her. The way you drool. The way you undress her with your eyes. You were pissed tonight because she paid me more attention than you. You couldn’t stand it. You couldn’t be happy for me.”

“Your feelings for Brenda are clouding your judgment,” Jay said quietly, between tight lips.

“I’m thinking quite clearly,” Nick snapped. “You, on the other—it’s not enough that you had Jenna, a woman who adored you. Or that Sophie finds you attractive. Or that every time we walk into a goddamn restaurant, the waitresses want to sit in your lap. You have to have the only woman that I’ve ever loved. Well, you can’t have her, Jay. She’s mine.”

“Is she? Does Brenda know that?” Jay asked mockingly.

“Oh, she knows that very well. And she liked it.”

What did that mean?

Suddenly, something Nick said earlier came back to Jay. At the time, it had sounded odd, but he hadn’t paid close enough attention to break down why it didn’t make sense at the time. Now the words came back in full force.

I won’t be happy until I can have her again.

Again?

Jay stopped breathing, and one look at Nick’s smug face told him everything he needed to know. But he still asked. “What did she like?”

“Let’s just say she likes a man who can satisfy her. All. Night. Long.”

“Are you telling me that you and Brenda…?” He couldn’t bring himself to complete the thought, much less finish the sentence. The passage to his windpipe had narrowed.

“Fucked,” Nick supplied.

Jay winced at the crude descriptor and the sheer pleasure Nick seemed to take in telling him. “How long has—has this been going on?” The headache attacked. It wasn’t just his head that hurt, his entire being did.

“It happened a long time ago, but after tonight, I think there could very well be a repeat. Don’t feel too bad. You can’t win them all.”

Jay fastened his hands on the steering wheel so he wouldn’t put them around Nick’s neck. He stared out the windshield. One of the bellhops was helping a couple load their bags onto a luggage carrier. Simple, orderly actions, while complete chaos expanded inside his head.

Brenda had slept with Nick.
His
Brenda had slept with
Nick
.

“Get out of my car.”

“Don’t be mad at her. She knows what she likes, that’s all.”

“Get out. Of my car.”

“I’m sorry we kept it a secret from you,” Nick said, not sounding sorry at all. “Brenda thought it best not to tell anyone, and I wanted to respect her wishes.”

Jay turned to Nick, whose phony concern and insensitive remarks might result in bodily harm. “Get out. Of my fucking. Car.”

Nick sneered at him. “I guess you’re the one who misread the signals.” With that parting shot, he climbed out and slammed the door.

Jay peeled out of the parking lot, his blood pumping fire through his veins. He ran a hand down his face, unable to fully comprehend what he’d just learned. She let Nick kiss, suck, and lick her, but she wouldn’t let him touch her. His fist pounded the dashboard.

This bullshit couldn’t be true. He wouldn’t believe a word until he talked to her.

Jay pressed harder on the gas, tearing up the highway toward Brenda’s apartment.

Chapter
Thirteen

Brenda’s apartment and the one above it were dark. When Jay pulled in the driveway behind her car, the exterior lights came on and flooded the area.

He hopped out of the SUV and marched to the front door, rang the doorbell and waited. There was no movement inside the house, so he rang again, holding his thumb against the button for a long time. If she was asleep, goddammit, she better wake up.

A light came on somewhere inside. Within a few moments, the curtain over the window in the door was dragged aside and Brenda peered out at him. Her face asked the question,
What are you doing here?

He braced his hands on the doorjambs on either side. “Open the door.”

She opened it slowly, as if she wanted to keep him from entering. “I don’t know why you’re here at this hour, but it’s late. I was already in bed.” She pulled a lightweight robe tighter around her body. It was short, landing right above her knees. The impression of her full breasts was clear and obvious. He could even see her nipples. Nipples Nick had allegedly sucked.

He pushed past her and she closed the door, but they remained at the front of the house, the light from down the hall providing faint illumination.

His gaze drifted down to her breasts again. The little discs of her nipples protruded more prominently than before. Did she feel the tension between them, too? His groin ached and his fingers tingled with the need to touch her. He almost forgot the reason he’d driven over here in the middle of the night.

“Stop it,” she whispered.

He lifted his eyes to hers. “You don’t like it when I look at you?” he asked in a raw tone.

“It’s inappropriate when you look at me like that.”

“Is it inappropriate when Nick looks at you like that? Or do you like it when he does?”

She frowned, thrown because he’d mentioned Nick. “Why would you ask me—”

“Did you sleep with Nick?”

Her eyes widened with guilt. “What?’

“Did you sleep with Nick a long time ago?”

“How did you…how did you find out?”

“I give you credit for not bothering to lie.” Jay took a few steps away from her and ran his fingers through his hair. “You won’t even let me touch you. I hug you and you pull away like I have the plague. But you
slept
with Nick?”

“It just happened,” she said in a small voice.

He rotated to face her again. “It just happened? When did this just happen?”

She licked her lips. “Didn’t Nick tell you?”

“Oh yes, he told me. He took great pleasure in telling me, but he didn’t say when.” His neck drew taut under the strain of the unpalatable conversation.

“When doesn’t matter.”

His hands turned into frustrated fists at his sides. “It matters to
me
.”

She stared down at the wooden floor. He heard the difficulty she had breathing. “The night you and Jenna got married.”

The words cut through him. “
In Naples
?” He had no right to be upset, yet he felt she’d somehow betrayed him. He hadn’t touched Jenna until they were on their honeymoon in Paris.

Brenda lifted her head. “You chose to get married there—
in Naples
,” she said in a low, accusatory voice.

A tight pain seized his belly. Jenna had chosen the location, but true enough he’d gone along with the decision even though he hadn’t really wanted to. Just like he’d asked her to marry him, when deep down he hadn’t wanted to. A mistake he’d made in his early twenties in an effort to “do the right thing.” And why not, when the woman he really wanted had told him to forget they’d even touched. As if that was possible.

The trip to Naples should have been under different circumstances. He should have been showing Brenda the city, allowing her to experience his culture, introducing
her
to family as his bride.

“You spent the night with him?” Envy seeped into his blood.

This time there was defiance in her eyes instead of self-ridicule. “Yes.”

“How many times?” His voice shook.

“Stop it.”

“How many times?”

She glared at him, like a cat about to attack and scratch his eyes out. “How many times what?” she snapped, even though she had to know exactly what he was asking.

“How many times did you fuck him?” he snarled.

“None of your business.”

“Everything about you is my business,” he raged. Why couldn’t she have denied it? Then he wouldn’t be consumed with envy. Then he wouldn’t have this sick desire to know. “How many?”

“Your need to know is disgusting. It’s beneath you.” Her eyes flashed angrily. “But if you must know, not nearly as many times as you had sex with Jenna. Let’s not forget that only months after you kissed me, you didn’t waste any time getting her pregnant and then getting married.”

“And immediately divorced.”

“Why was that? She adored you.”

“Adored me? A few months after the boys were born, she stopped letting me touch her.”

“What?” Stunned disbelief crossed her face.

He didn’t care anymore. Why keep this a secret?

“She withdrew from me. No affection, no nothing. She wouldn’t even let me kiss her.” The latter part of their marriage, he lived like a monk. He’d been tempted to stray, but the memory of his mother’s soft sobs at night when his father had left her alone to go to his other women kept him in line. He didn’t want to be that kind of man. “She was always too tired after taking care of the boys and the house all day. She said I couldn’t possibly find her sexy or attractive anymore, and when I suggested we hire help, she accused me of thinking her incompetent.”

One day they were sitting in the back of a hired car after dinner with her parents. As usual, they’d smiled and pretended all was well. She’d hung up with the babysitter and was smiling. It was so obvious she couldn’t wait to see their sons, even though they were already fast asleep.

That’s when he admitted the truth of their relationship. She used to be happy like that to see him. He wanted a little bit of that happiness extended in his direction, something to ease the dearth his life had become. Shamefully, he was jealous of his own kids and tired of being on the outside looking in. He’d reached for her hand right then, a last ditch effort to initiate intimacy between them, but she’d pulled back as if he was something disgusting. The hurt and embarrassment had been painful to accept, but even more so when she filed for divorce.

“What about all the other women since her?” Brenda asked.

The parade of women made him feel better, and he enjoyed sex. “And there haven’t been other men in your life? Like the poor fool whose empty shell you left in Chicago?”

“You don’t even know him.”

“Yet I feel sorry for him.”

“I didn’t leave a shell. You make it sound as if—”

“You tear men apart?” he supplied. “You rip out their hearts and souls and their entire insides and then waltz away from the carcass? You did it to me. You did it to Nick, who you know damn well is in love with you, but you don’t care.”

She took a step back, eyes wide. “My god, is that what you think about me? That I’m some kind of monster who destroys men for sport?”

“Then explain your hesitation to sleep with me. Was it because you didn’t want to be accused of fucking your way through all of us? Did you fuck Charlie, too?”

Her lower lip trembled, but her glare could have sliced him in two. “You’re despicable. You know I didn’t.”

“I don’t know anything,” he snarled. “I thought I knew you, but I don’t.”

“Are you listening to yourself? You and I were not a couple. You were already part of a couple, remember? But apparently that little detail doesn’t matter to you. As far as you’re concerned, it would have been fine for me to have sex with you, but sex with Nick somehow makes me a whore.”

“I never called you a whore.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s implied.” She laughed, a high-pitched cackle, nothing like the cute giggles he’d grown accustomed to hearing leave her lips. He seethed in silence and watched as she covered her mouth and finally stopped laughing. “That’s rich,” she said.

“I’m glad you think this is funny. But I don’t see the humor in the situation. You fucked Nick. Meanwhile you treat me like I’m a goddamn leper.”

He ground his molars, angry at himself. Angry at what she had reduced him to—nothing more than a raging, jealous lunatic. A man who could have almost any woman he wanted, except her, the one woman he truly desired. The one who remained just out of reach.

“When I fucked Nick, as you so eloquently put it, you were a married man, so it was really none of your damn business who I was fucking. The only reason you’re upset is because I didn’t fuck you.”