Damage Control (3 page)

Get a grip
, she warned herself. This was no time to crawl back into bed with the guy, as appealing as the idea might be. “Do you want something to drink? I don't have any coffee, but I have soda or orange juice. Or there's always water.”

His shoulders tensed. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Don't brush this off, Andrea.”

She dropped her gaze to the tile floor. The fact that he was still calling her by her first name instead of using Ray—her last name—like he usually did spoke volumes. Things had changed, and she had a sinking suspicion it wouldn't be easy to go back to where they'd been. Maybe they'd never get back there at all. “I can't talk about it right now.”

“We have to. It's important.” Suddenly he was right in front of her. The tentative brush of his fingers sent a spark down her arm. She stepped away and immediately regretted it. After just one night with him, it shouldn't be possible for her to crave his touch as much as she did.

“I know. We'll talk. I promise. Just not now. I have about a half-hour before I have to leave to meet my sisters downtown. Bridesmaid dress shopping today with Bridezilla, remember?”

Brian cupped her chin in his hand and lifted her face up. The raw emotion in his eyes, hurt and need mixed with a good dose of confusion, made her breath catch in her throat. Everything she felt was mirrored in those eyes. He opened his mouth, closed it again and shook his head just before he dropped his hand. “Don't push me away.”

“I'm not.”
Liar.

His gaze darkened, and she caught something she rarely saw there. Anger. Plenty of frustration. “Yeah, you are. Call me later? We'll get takeout and hash this whole thing out.”

“I can't tonight. I'm busy all weekend.” The lie rolled too easily off her tongue. What was she doing? Brian was the one person she could tell anything to. At least he had been. Now she didn't know anymore. She just needed a little distance, a little time to think. A few days without contact and they could slide back into their regular routine—and pretend none of this had ever happened.

She pressed a hand to her abdomen. As if she could ever forget. “I have to get into the shower. I'll see you at work on Monday morning, okay?”

Brian stood in silence for what felt like forever before he stepped back. Those blue eyes darkened even more, reminding her of a storm at sea. “Fine. Whatever.” With another shake of his head, he turned and stalked out of the room.

Andrea didn't move when, two minutes later, he came out of the bedroom fully dressed. She didn't say a word as he stormed out of the apartment, not even sparing her a glance before he slammed the door so hard the pictures on the entryway walls rattled. Once he was gone, she rubbed her hand over the back of her neck and sucked in a couple of deep breaths, trying to quell the nausea rolling in her stomach. Brian didn't get pissed often, but she understood him so well. The man knew how to hold a grudge, and she'd just blown him off. It would take him days to cool down enough to even speak to her now. She really should have tried talking to him to see if they could sort things out.

Who was she kidding? She never should have slept with him in the first place. There would be nothing to sort out if she hadn't made that single, huge mistake. Since she spent most of her time either at the office or working on various projects she'd brought home, she didn't have a lot of friends. The few she had were as near and dear to her as family. To lose one of them—especially her closest one—was tearing her apart inside.

She slid a glance toward the microwave clock and let out a soft curse. As much as she'd love to sit around wallowing in her sudden misery all day, she hadn't been lying when she'd told Brian she had plans. She and her sister Claire had a meeting downtown with their younger sister Lena, a.k.a. Bridezilla, in less than an hour. She had to shower and make herself look at least presentable first, or Lena would never forgive her.

All she needed today, on top of everything else, was Bridezilla having another one of her fits.

Chapter Two

Family loyalty was a very ugly thing. Especially when one was hung over, running on very little sleep and zero breakfast. Andrea leaned her head back against the wall and parted her lips in a silent groan. This day promised to be one of the longest in her life.

The dress shop smelled of dust and a cloying rose perfume. The place was tiny, bursting at the seams with rack after rack of wedding and special occasion dresses in all colors and sizes. Classical music played softly from hidden speakers, and Andrea was thankful it wasn't country music blaring through the room like the shop they'd visited a few weeks earlier.

Today, Lena had told them at the start of the morning, they would have to help her settle on the “right” dress for her attendants to wear walking down the aisle. Carson, Vermont was a small city surrounded by even smaller towns. In the past two months, the three Ray sisters had exhausted the area dress shops looking for what Lena described as the perfect dress. The shop she'd dragged them to today was the last one left.

Andrea and Claire had found a couple of chairs tucked into a quiet corner of the shop, planted their butts there, and hadn't moved in at least twenty minutes while Lena swept the racks, seeming to pick out dresses at random. One of these times, she might actually choose a decent one, but the odds were just as great that the wedding party would be marching down the aisle in glorified circus tents. Lena's taste seemed to have evaporated, along with her common sense, when Jerry had slipped the ring on her finger.

Andrea shot a glance at Claire, who was picking at the hem of her skirt. She nudged her older sister's arm. “Why are we doing this again?” she asked in a whisper.

“Because Lena is our sister and we owe it to her. Besides, she would do the same thing for us.” Claire's robotic explanation was almost verbatim what their mother had been pounding into their heads for the three months since Lena had gotten engaged and subsequently lost every shred of her sanity. Andrea had heard of the Bridezilla phenomenon, but had never seen it in action until now. Before, she'd laughed it off, thinking the brides must have been spoiled twits in the first place. Now she could just sit by and wonder what the aliens had done with her baby sister, and who was this possessed woman they'd left in her place?

“Yeah, I've heard that about a thousand times, too. It doesn't really help when we're being blasted out for not knowing the difference between tulle and chiffon. So what's the
real
reason?”

Claire giggled. “The guilt trips we'll get if we don't help Lena.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.” Their mother's specialty. She'd practically raised her four children on a diet of them, and somehow she'd managed to use one to rope Andrea into taking over planning the wedding.

Andrea shook her head. As if she knew any more about planning a wedding than her mother did. At least their mother had had one before. Andrea had probably only been to two in her entire life. But she was the most organized, or so her mother had said, and she'd be the perfect person to take care of all the minute details.

Too bad Lena didn't agree. Lena's new favorite pastime seemed to be picking arguments.

“How is the menu planning coming, by the way?” Claire asked, referring to the task Andrea had been trying to deal with for the past two weeks.

“It would be better, if the bride from hell would nail down a caterer. We met with three last week, and she tore apart every item they served her. The chicken was dry, the beef too rare, and the fish, of all things, had the nerve to taste like fish. Jerry said he's never coming to a catering appointment again, and he couldn't care less if we served bread and water at the ceremony.”

Claire's eyebrows shot up. She burst out laughing. “Lena's lucky he loves her. A weaker man would have hightailed it out of town a long time ago.”

“Yeah. I tried telling her that. She accused me of attempting to break up her engagement. Then she asked me if I was sleeping with Jerry. We really should get him to take her to the doctor. There has to be a medication for this. I don't think any of us are going to be alive by the time the wedding comes around.”

Just then Lena marched around the dress racks, brightly-colored dresses piled high in her arms. She stomped her foot on the ground and fixed Claire and Andrea with a glare. “There you two are. I've been looking all over for you.”

Andrea bit back a laugh. “The store is twenty by twenty. You couldn't have been looking that hard.”

Lena ignored her mumbled comment. “You promised you would help me pick out the dresses you have to wear down the aisle, and I find you
hiding
behind the racks. Do you really care so little about helping your sister plan the perfect wedding she's been dreaming about for all her life?”

“Now she's referring to herself in the third person? What are we, four?” Andrea whispered to Claire. Part of her knew it wasn't right to give Lena a hard time, but the woman had been so over the top for three months it was starting to drive the whole family nuts. Reasoning with her had only pissed her off, so they had to resort to jokes to hang onto their sanity.

Claire pressed her fingers to her lips as if she was trying to hide a smile. “We weren't hiding. Honest, sweetie. We just don't want to get in your way.”

“Right.” Lena gave them a look that let them know exactly what she thought of their evasive tactics. “And Andrea, take off the sunglasses. I don't care how hung over you are—and don't tell me you aren't because I
know.
It's just plain rude. Plus, you can't see the dress colors properly like that. Your opinion will be
jaded.
”

Did it really matter that she couldn't see the dress colors? From the way the shopping had been going so far, no matter what Lena picked they were going to look like they belonged either in a three-ring circus or on a Southern plantation. In the 1800s. Andrea rolled her eyes before she took off the offending shades and slipped them into her purse. She almost groaned when the light pouring in from the huge plate-glass windows hit her eyes full-force. This was going to be the most miserable day of her life.

Lena was lucky she was family. Andrea wouldn't waste an entire Saturday dealing with this kind of attitude from anyone else. Not even Brian.

Brian.
She let out a little sigh at the thought of the man who used to be her best friend. Now she didn't know what to call him. Her heart ached at what had been left unsaid between them, and anxiety kicked up inside her at the idea of the discussion she'd told him they would have. If either of them thought they could slip right back into friendship after what they'd done, they had another think coming. It wouldn't be that simple.

Already she missed him, but she couldn't face him every day, couldn't confess any more dreams and secrets after she'd all but begged him to stay at her place. He'd wanted to leave. Had nearly bolted out the door. Instead of letting him go, she'd embarrassed herself by draping all over him and unbuttoning his shirt. Had she forced him into something he hadn't wanted?

The thought made her sick. This was all her fault. She was the one who'd lost her inhibitions. Though he hadn't been very inhibited last night. He'd been incredible. Better than she'd known sex could be. Damn it, she wanted more. A lot more. Months and months of it.

And there was her problem. She couldn't want him for good. A steady relationship didn't fit into her life plan. At least not yet. She had no intention of getting married for at least five years, probably closer to ten. At twenty-eight, she still had plenty of time before she needed to think about settling down. The infamous ticking biological clock wasn't something she'd ever really worried about. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to have kids in the first place.

Claire cleared her throat, dragging Andrea out of her uncomfortable thoughts. “What's going on? Something is bugging you. It isn't like you to drink. I think the last time you had a hangover was in high school, after Tony Callahan's party. Remember, the one when his parents were out of town?”

Andrea groaned with the memory. That night, after spending hours worshipping the porcelain god, she'd sworn to herself she'd never get drunk again. Until last night, she'd stuck by that promise. But work had been miserable this past week and Brian had been trying to help her relax by offering to take her out to dinner. She should have said no to the first bottle of wine, let alone the second, but she'd been so wrapped up in the conversation that she hadn't realized how hard the alcohol had hit her until they were in the cab back to her apartment. “Don't remind me.”

“So what happened?”

Lena stomped her foot on the ground again, this time hard enough to shake the trinkets lining the shelves above the windows. She dropped the dresses onto a nearby chair. “Excuse me. This day is not about Andrea and her lapse in judgment. It's all. About. Me. You know, the
bride?
Since you both say I have terrible taste in dresses, I won't even ask you anymore to pretend you like what I've chosen. You two look at these and decide which ones you can live with. I'm going in search of some more. Be ready to start trying things on, though. I need to see what they look like on an actual person before I make any firm decisions.”

Mini-tirade finished for the moment, she swept her hair over her shoulder, spun on her heel and marched away.

Once she was out of earshot, Claire turned an expectant gaze on Andrea. “So? Tell me. What made you decide to go out and get drunk last night? I mean, you at least should have waited until this morning when an inebriated state would have come in handy.”

Andrea laughed, then regretted it when her head started to pound again. If she sat still and kept her eyes closed, she didn't feel too bad. “I don't know what happened. Brian took me out for dinner last night. He says I've been working too hard again and needed to take a break.”