Fixer: A Bad Boy Romance (30 page)

For a moment, the wonderfully exhilarating, tantalizing idea of a one night stand with Carter James flicked through my mind. Even if he did turn out to be a criminal who had escaped from jail, something about the way he carried himself still assured me that he'd be a lot of fun in bed. He would make me forget all about Barry, most definitely...

...and then, I went on, I'd just be obsessing over a new man. Another man to break my heart and leave me worse off than before.

"Nothing comes to mind as of yet," I answered Portia. "But then again, it's only been a day, so maybe something will end up coming up tomorrow."

"That's right. Tomorrow's a whole new day, filled with possibilities," she declared, holding up her wine glass as if making a toast. I giggled, and Portia flashed me a quick little smile, her dark eyes briefly crinkling.

After taking a sip, she lowered the glass and looked around the wine bar. "Now, which of these gentlemen should you try and impress by attempting to fit a cue ball into your mouth?" she asked, making me nearly spit out my own mouthful of wine with laughter.

Chapter Seven

*

"Besides, I could have told you even earlier that it would have been a bad idea," Portia insisted to me, swaying a little on her chair. She leaned in towards me a little too far, and I surreptitiously put an arm against her shoulder to keep her from tipping all the way off of the chair and ending up sprawled on the floor of Vini.

"What would have been a bad idea?" I asked.

"Marrying Barry, that's what!" Portia hiccuped. Somehow, she even made that bodily gesture appear soft and feminine. How the hell did she do it? When I hiccuped, it sounded like a drunken sailor letting out air.

"Why do you say that?"

Portia held up her hands. "Becca," she said, spreading out one palm. "Barry Bulger," she went on, opening the other hand. She brought the two hands together in a soft clap. "Becca Bulger. Can you possibly think of a worse name?"

I giggled like a little kid with a secret. "Okay, yeah, that would have been pretty bad."

"Exactly!" Portia reached forward and picked up her wineglass, and then frowned down at it as she noted that it no longer contained any more wine. "Hey, what happened to all of my wine?"

I poked her in her trim, flat little stomach. "You put it all in there for safekeeping!"

"I did, did I? Drat." Portia frowned down at herself, as if trying to work out how to get at the wine she'd already consumed, and I giggled again. This was one place, at least, where I excelled over my best friend; I had never met more of a lightweight when it came to alcohol. Portia's classy, confident demeanor totally fell away whenever she had more than a glass or two of wine or other booze in her system.

"Maybe we should think about getting you home," I suggested, debating whether I should keep her out. She was at the stage of drunkenness when she was the most fun, for sure, but I also knew that I'd have to get up tomorrow and go open up the art gallery. That would be much harder to do if I also needed to nurse a hangover at the same time.

Portia, however, violently shook her head, sending her hair whipping around her. "Nuh uh. I'm out to cheer you up, and I swear that, as Portia Skye, your best friend, I'm going to do it!"

"You've already done plenty," I tried to assure her, but she was already casting her eyes around the wine bar, looking at the other patrons.

"Ooh, look at that guy," she whispered to me, her voice still loud enough to probably carry halfway across the bar. She pointed, in a manner that I found far, far too obvious, at a heavyset man in a suit sitting at the end of the bar, drinking alone. "He looks cute!"

I frowned at her. "Weren't you just telling me earlier that I shouldn't be thinking about dating anyone yet?"

"Dating, sure," she nodded. "But that doesn't say anything against one night stands! And honey, Becks, that's what you need. To find a man and just rip off his clothes and bite him and make him drive you crazy!"

I winced as her voice grew louder with each word. The people sitting around us definitely heard at least the last half of Portia's declaration.

"I'm not exactly the rip-off-people's-clothes type," I protested. "And Portia, I think that right now, my biggest responsibility is getting you safely into a cab so that you can go home."

Portia grinned at me and attempted a salacious wink, which might have looked alright if her mouth wasn't hanging open. "Oh, you want to get me home, do you? We could bring that guy too, and make a real fun night of it."

Shocked, I reached up and clapped a hand over her mouth. Please let the guy have not heard any of this, I prayed. Fortunately, when I sent another surreptitious glance down the length of the bar, he hadn't moved his eyes from the glass sitting on the counter in front of him.

Whew. I turned back to Portia, intending to get her outside so I could hail a cab - and froze.

She wasn't sitting next to me any longer. How had she moved so quickly and so silently?

I spun around, looking around the interior of the wine bar. Maybe she was just refilling her glass- nope. There she was, down at the other end of the bar, leaning on it in attempt to look casual (but probably in truth more because she needed it for balance) and chatting with the heavyset dude sitting down at that end.

I jumped up out of my seat, marveling at her skills despite my growing frustration with her. How in the world did she cross the distance from here to there so quickly? She was like some sort of drunken hookup ninja. I dashed down to try and stop her from totally making a fool of herself.

"Oh, and here's my friend Becca!" Portia exclaimed brightly as I arrived at the other end of the bar. "Becca, this is John! He's an accountant!"

"Great, great," I said distractedly, sending John an "I'm-so-sorry" glance. He just looked morosely back at me, giving off the impression that he wanted nothing more than to return to his previous activity of drinking alone. "Portia, why don't we go down here, now?"

"John is single," Portia declared. "His wife left him, so now he's all alone! Doesn't that sound great?"

I thought that I heard a muffled sob slip out from John's lips. "Yep, yep, let's definitely get you out of here," I murmured to myself. I reached out and snagged Portia's hand, tugging her towards the exit. "That's enough drinking for tonight, I think."

"Call me!" Portia hollered over my shoulder as I towed her out towards the exit from the bar.

Outside, she took a deep breath of the fresh, cooler night air, but then turned and grabbed at me. "Hey, wait a second," she said, looking alarmed.

"What?"

"Did we pay for our drinks? Oh my god, are we skipping out on our bar tab?"

I sighed. "Portia, this place has the cards that you pre-load with money, remember? We don't need to sign anything or cash out when we leave."

"Oh, that's right." Portia nodded, patting me softly on the back as she leaned on me for balance. "You're a good friend, Becks."

"Thanks. Um, are you stroking my hair-"

"You deserve to find someone," Portia went on, still rubbing my back. "And you'll find someone way better than that asshole Barry. I should have known earlier that he was cheating on you the whole time. He even tried to hit on me once, did you know that?"

"Portia, I really don't want to talk about my ex-husband right now-"

"I turned him down, of course." Portia straightened up for a moment so that she could smile down at me, her eyes slightly unfocused. "Sisterhood. We gotta stick together, you know. Against the man. Fuck 'em, right?"

"Uh, word choice-"

"But I should have told you that he hit on me, the scumbag," she snarled. "Then you could have left him at the altar, and you wouldn't be stuck in this whole mess! Think of how much better that would have been! When the priest did the whole, you know, speak now or forever hold your stuff, you could have totally spoken now! Or then, whenever."

"You know, Portia, you're not exactly cheering me up that much, here," I said, groaning as I looked up and down the empty street. Where were the taxis?

Portia nodded. "You're right. I'm not being a good friend. So instead..."

I glanced over at her after a moment of silence. "What?"

"Um, I need to go for a moment," she said faintly, and then turned and sprinted away, into the darkness.

"Portia!" Oh my god, she was going to end up falling and hurting herself! I chased after her, trying my hardest to keep from tripping over my own feet. At least I'd had a chance to swap those damn high heels for something a bit more comfortable!

I skidded to a stop a dozen steps later, at the opening to a little alley next to Vini. From down in the darkness of the alley I could hear the sounds of someone moving around.

"Portia?" I called out, not too enthusiastic about going into a dark alley on my own.

In answer, I heard the sound of someone noisily losing the several glasses of wine that she'd just ingested. "Yep, that's her," I said more quietly to myself, and elected to stand guard out at the entrance of the alley, waiting for her to emerge after she'd finished dumping out all the alcohol she'd only recently finished consuming.

Five minutes later, Portia staggered out of the alley, looking decidedly paler as she wiped off her mouth. "That was... not fun," she informed me, as she accepted my offer of a hand to lean on.

"Let's see about getting you home, bestie," I told her, giving her a little squeeze. She burped (cutely, even now, dammit) and her eyes went briefly cross-eyed, but she kept control of her stomach this time and nodded.

I managed to hail a solitary cab after a couple of minutes, and climbed into the backseat alongside Portia. "Really, things are going to work out for me," I promised her. "Trust me, I'll figure out a way to handle all of this - the divorce, the new job, the money that I still owe Barry, all of it. I've got it under control."

"I know you do," Portia answered. She smiled at me, brushing her hair back behind an ear to reveal that model-beautiful face. Even after throwing up, something that would make most other women look awful, she still seemed ready to go sweep into a ball and be the talk of the cream of the crop, to mingle fluidly among the other high-class elite.

We pulled up at Portia's classy, elegant apartment building (a tower that looked as if it was made almost entirely of glass; I didn't know how Portia afforded to even set foot in the place, but it definitely suited her). I held the cab door open so that Portia could emerge.

"Now, be sure to drink some water," I admonished her as she got out.

Ignoring my well-meaning advice, Portia just paused for a moment to regard me out of her dark eyes. "Remember, look on the upside," she said softly, reaching out and catching my hand. "Barry was in the past. Now, you need to think about your future - and that means moving forward, having fun, getting out there. Fun. Okay, Becks?"

"I'll think about it," I promised.

She gave me one last smile, and then turned and headed into her tall, elegant glass tower as the cabbie pulled away, carrying me back towards my smaller, dingier little single-occupancy apartment.

Chapter Eight

*

Unfortunately, my past came back to haunt me the very next day.

Despite my advice to Portia, I only managed to gulp down a single glass of water before my yawning got the best of me. Wobbling a little, I peeled off most of my clothing, gave a sleepy little wave to Salem as he observed me from the doorway, and then flopped down on top of the bed and tugged the messy sheets up over me.

I next opened my eyes to the blaring of my phone alarm. "I'm up, I'm up," I croaked as I pulled myself out of bed, blinking through crusty eyes at the first rays of the morning sunrise starting to shine in through my apartment window.

I felt like crap, but I at least managed to get up, give a mewling Salem his dose of wet cat food as breakfast, and pull myself together enough to get in the shower and wash away the last remnants of last night. I felt a bit better after I emerged, and poured some coffee from my dusty old Mr. Coffee maker into a thermos to bring along with me to the art gallery. No stopping for a four dollar latte for this gal today! Saving money!

My truck pulled into the little parking lot behind the Halesford Gallery with five minutes to spare, and I congratulated myself by taking a big bite of the pastry that I'd snagged from the bakery counter at the grocery store. (Okay, I was trying to cut back on spending, but the donut only cost me a dollar fifty! That was still better than spending four bucks on coffee, right?) Glancing down guiltily at myself, I balanced my thermos on top of my truck's hood for a moment so I could use a free hand to brush crumbs off of my outfit.

Confident, caffeinated, and ready to take on any little old ladies who wanted to buy an erotic sculpture to decorate their senior community apartments, I headed up to the gallery and unlocked the door. I turned on the lights in the different rooms and then settled in behind the front desk, waiting for customers.

Maybe Carter would stop by again, I considered with a little bloom of hope, despite my agreement with Portia last night that I wasn't yet ready for a real relationship. Even if I might not be ready to do anything beyond return his flirting overtures, he definitely was easy on the eyes, giving me plenty of material for the occasional naughty daydream.