Not Second Best (3 page)

“Whoa,” Brett said. “Nice. You think you can sleep for a little while now?” He brushed along her shoulder with the tips of his fingers.

“I think so.” She snuggled closer and decided that if she could lie here, listening to his heartbeat, she could sleep for a week.

* * * *

“Where were you all weekend?” Helen stepped out her door, intercepting Tessa before she could reach the safety of her office.

“I didn’t feel good so I just stayed in and didn’t answer the phone.”

“You have a cold? You look a little tired.”

“I don’t know what it was. Why? Was somebody trying to reach me?” Tessa shifted her briefcase to the other hand. Eight years of schooling to read contracts and run background checks. Her legs hurt, and she wanted to go sit behind her desk.

“We just wondered where you got to. You vanished in the middle of the reception. We all thought you’d be there until the wee hours.”

Tessa shrugged. “We’ve had a few of these weddings lately. It’s not like it’s going to be the last one.”

Helen’s expression clouded, reminding Tessa how odd some of the stuff coming out of her mouth was. “Well, we just wondered,” Helen said.

Tessa continued down the hall to her office. Once she’d hung up her jacket, she settled behind her desk and started sifting through her email. She and Brett hadn’t come back to town until late last night. They’d spent the whole time in the room having sex, eating, soaking in the pool, or watching TV. Brett was good in bed. Creative and generous. When he’d dropped her off last night, he’d leaned over to give her a kiss goodbye and she’d blown him off. The moment she’d stepped inside her house, guilt over that had weighed on her. For all his cocky rock star bullshit, he was a pretty nice guy. A very nice guy.

Tessa sucked a deep breath through her nose. She needed to stop thinking about Brett.

“Good morning, Tessa. How was your weekend?” Sandy asked, walking into her office. He sat in the chair on the other side of her desk. That didn’t bode well. For normal business, he emailed her from down the hall. For extraordinary business, he called her to his office. For him to come to her, it must be some sort of disaster.

“Fine, and yours?”

“Quite nice after the reception. We were surprised to see that you left before the end.”

Disaster had a lot of definitions, didn’t it? Tessa glanced at her email. One from her mom, each of her sisters, Jason, Cassie, Marc, Bear, Maureen, the whole cavalry. Great. Sneak out of one wedding reception, and the whole world thought she was having a breakdown. “I just didn’t feel like hanging out all night.”

“You left before dinner.”

She scrolled down. There was even one from Ty. “I guess I wasn’t hungry.” Oh wait, the one from Ty needed her to check somebody out. Ironic since she had told Brett this would happen. He would die laughing when she told him.

Which would involve calling Brett. That had the appeal of digging into a bag of Hershey Kisses, yummy but regrettable.

“It just seemed a little odd. Are you sure everything is alright?”

She gave him a double thumbs-up. “Positive.”

“All right.” He stood up. “Ty brought a woman to the reception, and he thinks he’s madly in love again. Can you take care of it?”

“You Brett.”

“Did you just say you Brett?”

“No, I said you bet.” Tessa clenched her teeth to keep her poker face in place.
You Brett?
What the hell?
“You must have misheard.”

Sandy frowned at her. She had to stop saying odd stuff. It was tipping people off.

As soon as Sandy left, she opened the email from Ty. He had indeed found the love of his life again and Sandy had gently encouraged Ty to send along the woman’s information so she could check her out. The last love of Ty’s life had been wanted by the FBI for memorabilia fraud and money laundering.

If she’d hung around the party long enough, she might have been able to check out his latest find in person.

Before she went hunting for the current Miss Right’s wrongs, she composed a mass email to the cavalry, telling them she’d just been tired Saturday and had gone home early. No big deal, just a rough week at work. Okay? Nothing to see here. These were not the droids they were looking for. Move along, move along. Then she went online looking for pictures of Brian and Suzi.

Suzi’s Facebook page was crowded with congratulations. Some kind soul had posted a link to a photo of the happy couple headed to the airport with Brian’s kids after the reception. They looked blissful. Really, truly content. Suzi loved him so much, Tessa couldn’t find it in her heart to hate her. A few of Brian’s fans didn’t have that compunction. A thread on the band’s forum raged about how stupid, ugly, ungraceful, and untalented she was. And it looked like the same four women.

Tessa picked up the phone and dialed the moderator. “Hi Jack. It’s Tessa.”

“Morning, Tessa. How come you skipped out of the reception early?”

Had every single person at the wedding kept tabs on her? You’d think they might have been watching Brian and Suzi. “I was tired. Have you checked the forum lately?”

“Not yet this morning. What are they doing now?”

“Suzi-bashing.”

“Oh. Them again. I told them I was going to ban their ISPs if they kept it up.”

“You need a letter?”

“Are you representing Suzi now?” Jack snickered.

“She’s married to Brian. I represent her by default.” Tessa picked up her letter opener and contemplated stabbing herself in the face with it. If the Suzi bashers really loved Brian the way they claimed they did, they’d be thrilled for him. She started hunting for the BroRide website.

“I’ll keep that in mind, but all I have to do is snip their thread and ban the ISPs. They’re just going to move to another forum, though. You’re fighting a battle you can’t win. Trolls are trolls.”

The official BroRide website had pages of pictures. The unofficial ones had more. “Well, if you can get it off the website, it’ll have to be enough. We don’t need to lend them any credence,” Tessa said.

“Done and done. So you have a cold or something?”

“No, just a long week last week. Thanks, Jack. Bye.” She hung up the phone before she had to explain to him, too. Might be easier to tell the truth.
Gee everyone, with all the weddings going around, I just wanted to go out and screw somebody blind. Who better than Brett Cherney?
That would go over well. Brett was not a good relationship prospect and not the kind of person she should have in her life. Cute, sweet, and fun in bed were all good, but he wanted something. He had to. Everybody in this business used everybody else. Brett might be a unicorn, but he couldn’t be that different. Tessa wasn’t that lucky.

Taking a deep breath, she tore herself away from the BroRide sites and started looking into Ty’s most recent paramour. Leticia Blue popped up immediately on MySpace with a couple of weedy-sounding originals and professionally shot publicity pictures showing her curled around her acoustic guitar and perched on a stool. How darling. Little Miss Right wanted to be a singer. She hadn’t managed to get into the Disney machine so she thought she’d hook a little nepotism from Touchstone. Great. Ty needed to start Googling his own girls instead of making her do it. She’d gone to law school for Christ’s sake. Passed the bar. And they had her doing searches on bimbos.

Tessa snatched up the phone again and hit the button for Ty’s house. It rang four times before the machine picked it up. “Ty, your latest sweetie is trying to work you for a music career. Do me a favor and try to eliminate the real bad bets before I have to do it for you. I’m fucking sick of being your watchdog.” She slammed down the phone and bit her tongue.

That had been a bad move. A really bad move. Ty shouldn’t pay for her mood. She called his cell.

“Hello?” Ty muttered.

“Hi, it’s Tessa. Did I wake you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. Look, I’m having kind of a bad day, and I left a message on your voice mail that I’m regretting. Can you just not listen to it?”

“My voice mail? What?” Ty sounded like he didn’t have his eyes open and wouldn’t for at least three cups of coffee.

“Your voice mail.”

“Yeah.”

“I left a message on it.”

“I’ll check it later.”

“No, I don’t want you to check it at all.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like the message I left.” Tessa clenched her teeth. At least she hadn’t left the message on Jason’s voice mail. He’d be listening to it over and over and fuming.

“Oh. Fine, I won’t. Did you call about anything else?”

“Well…” The news had to be delivered. “I checked out your new girlfriend. She doesn’t look like she’s on the level.”

“I know. I broke up with her last night. I caught her sucking face with Jerry Eland.”

“Jerry Eland?” Tessa tried to picture Jerry but instead ended up seeing Jabba the Hutt. One of the best producers in the business but not at all attractive. Of course the little gold digger would go after that fish. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, whatever. Is that it?”

“That’s it.” Tessa clicked back to the official BroRide Web site.

“Great. Talk to you later.” He hung up the phone.

Tessa studied the home page picture. Brett really was a good-looking boy. No wonder all the little girls were going bananas for him. Full, dark blond hair. Shocking blue eyes. Normally that color didn’t photograph, but whoever had taken this pic was a pro. Fine full lips. He was thin, but with a good build. She tried to remember how tall he was, but couldn’t. Most of the twenty-four hours she’d spent with him had been horizontal.

She clicked into his bio. Twenty-three years old. Just a baby. Born on November twenty-fourth, so he was a Sagittarius. They were fun in a smack-’em-when-they-say-something-stupid way. Matched well with her sign of Leo. All the Sags she’d dated had been fun.

And why did that matter? She wasn’t dating him. She wasn’t even sleeping with him anymore. They’d had a fling.

Less. A lost weekend, and only half of one at that. If she were sitting across the desk from herself, she’d be telling herself to get away from him as fast as possible. His band’s first album had a couple of hits, getting them a second album, which would need even more hits to get them a third. So they needed a great producer. Like Jerry Eland. Or Jason. No way was party boy Brett Cherney interested in her. He just wanted to hook into the Touchstone machine like Ty’s little chippie had.

If he wanted to do that, why hadn’t he called? He knew where she worked.

Oh, God!

Tessa stood up and walked out of her office. She was losing her mind. Over the last couple of years, she’d watched most of her friends get married and start families and, now, as the last woman standing, she was grasping at straws.

“Look, I know she works here. Just call her and ask if she’ll see me.”

The straw she had most recently grasped was leaning on Jody’s reception desk, holding out the desk phone. Jody watched him as if he was trying to get her to grab a poisonous snake.

“Brett!” Tessa snapped. She quashed the bubble of excitement that rose at the sight of him.

Brett and Jody both jumped, but Brett managed to make it look like he meant to leap off the desk. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you.”

“What are you doing here?” Tessa clenched her teeth. Jody watched with interest. Everything said here would be on the grapevine ten seconds after they left.

“I wanted to talk to you?” Brett repeated, questioning this time.

Tessa pursed her lips. She needed a good cover, but her brain went on a field trip to yesterday, and all she could think about was touching and licking and moaning. Quick! There had to be something. Something yesterday... Something...kissing. “About Jerry Eland. Certainly. Come back to my office.” She beckoned him with a sharp motion.

He tossed Jody a smile as he passed her desk.

“Don’t touch me,” Tessa hissed as they walked down the hall.

“I wasn’t going to.” He leaned closer and whispered, “Until we got into your office.”

She jabbed him with her elbow, but he’d danced back a step before she connected. When they passed Helen’s office, she looked up. Tessa was going to have to come up with a good story. Inside her office, she got the door closed before he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. Tessa shoved him back before he could deepen the kiss. “What are you doing?”

“I came to see you.”

“Why?”

Brett rocked back on the heels of his sneakers. “I missed you.”

“You dropped me off last night. That was supposed to be the end of it.” She put her hands on her hips. God, if only that one simple kiss hadn’t made her so hot. She wanted to be down on the floor with him, trying out a couple of positions they’d missed yesterday.

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“Don’t strain yourself.”

Brett’s eyes narrowed and so did his lush mouth. “What’s got you so fucking uptight?”

“I work here.”

“And you’re embarrassed to be seen with me?”

“Isn’t that why you took me all the way out to BFE Saturday?”

“No. I took you all the way out to BFE because it’s my favorite place in the world.” He folded his arms. His white, long-sleeved shirt showed off his muscles beautifully.

Her heart pounded like a big bass drum about to break its skin. “Brett—” She stopped because there was no follow up to that. “Okay, what happened between us, it was fun. But that was it. Fun. And now it’s over. Poof.” She made a gesture to go along with
poof,
but he didn’t seem impressed.

“Why?”

“What do you mean,
why
? Isn’t it obvious?”

“No.”

Tessa folded her arms. “What do you want?”

“You? When you’re not being so bitchy.” He smirked, and even that was sexy.

The intercom beeped. “Wait a minute.” She hurried to the desk and bent across to press the button. “Yes?”

“Can you come to my office?” Sandy said. Using the intercom now? Crap, crap, crap. This thing wasn’t even a thing, and it was already out of control.

Brett stepped behind her, put his hands on her hips and tugged her against him. His hard length pressed into her rear.