The Wedding Favor (27 page)

“You won’t make any money, most actors don’t. But you’ll work, I’m sure of that, and working steadily counts for success in that field.”

“So . . . you’re okay with this?”

“I most certainly am
not
okay with it.” Now she withdrew her hand, reverted to form. “But what more can I do? For ten years I’ve tried to steer you away from penury and into a financially secure profession.” She spread her hands. “Yet here you are, auditioning for a play. Obviously, you won’t give up until you follow this . . . this
dream
of yours to whatever impoverished end it might lead.” She folded her hands. “No, Victoria, I am most definitely not okay with it. But as your mother, I have no choice but to support you.”

Vicky lifted her jaw off the table. “You’ll support me?”

“I just said I would. Why are you so stunned?”

No good could come from answering that question. Instead, Vicky simply said, “Thank you.” Her smile was tentative, but hope spread tender shoots through her heart. “I’ll try to make you proud.”

Adrianna arched one speaking brow. “I’m sure you’ll do your best.”

T
he phone was ringing when Ty stepped up on his porch. Dropping his saddlebags, he rushed inside, checked the caller ID.

Not Vicky.

Good, he never wanted to talk to her again anyway.

He picked up the phone. “MaryAnn Raines,” he drawled with genuine pleasure. “How the hell are you?”

“Pregnant.”

“Don’t look at me.”

She laughed. “How’s it going, Ty?”

“Fair to middling.” He took the phone out on the porch, propped a shoulder against the post. “I hear you’re in New York City now. Never thought you’d leave UT.”

“NYU offered me a full professorship. I couldn’t turn it down.”

They talked for a while about their time at UT, where she was his favorite philosophy professor and he was her favorite student. Then she said, “You still luring girls into bed with that rationalism/empiricism line?”

“If it works, don’t fix it. You still hopelessly devoted to your husband?”

“I’m afraid so. We’ve been trying to get pregnant forever. Wasn’t until we gave up and looked into adoption that I finally got knocked up . . . with twins, no less.”

“They’re lucky kids. You’ll be a great Mom.” He batted down a stirring of jealousy. Not for MaryAnn, they’d only ever been friends, but for her happy marriage and growing family. If Lissa had lived and he’d had his way, they’d have five kids by now.

“I hope so,” she said, “but forty-five’s a little old to be getting started. Especially with twins. The doctor wants me to start my maternity leave early, so I won’t be teaching this fall.”

“Probably a good idea. First things first.” A fly buzzed him and he swatted it, started thinking about a hot shower and a cold beer.

Then she said, “That’s why I’m calling. I’d like you to fill in for me.”

He blinked, too startled to respond.

“I know it’s short notice,” she went on. “You’ll have to start in three weeks. But it’s only two courses, both of them right in your wheelhouse.”

“I haven’t taught a class since grad school.” He’d enjoyed it, though. All those fresh faces staring up at him like he knew what he was talking about.

“You’re a natural. The students loved you. The faculty too. Heck, Ty, you’ll have these New Yorkers eating out of your hand. And you’ll like living in the city.”

That made him laugh. “What in the world would make you say that?”

She was quiet for a moment, and he had a creeping sense that she was more perceptive than he’d given her credit for.

“You’re brilliant, Ty,” she said at last. “You write beautifully, persuasively. You enjoy the stimulation of other intellectuals.” He made a derisive noise, but she persevered.

“I know you love your ranch, that it’s part of you and always will be. And maybe if things had turned out differently, your life there would be full enough. But as it is, you’re bigger than the box you’ve built for yourself.”

“MaryAnn.” He put just enough frost in his voice to show that the ice was thin. “I appreciate you thinking of me, but I’m happy right here in my little box.”

She didn’t apologize, that wasn’t her style. “It’s one semester, Ty. Granted, it’s fifty-fifty that I won’t come back. But all you’d be committing to right now is the fall.”

He started to tell her thanks, but no thanks, when a red Mustang appeared in the distance.

God
damn
it! He’d broken things off with Molly before he left for the hills, but the woman wouldn’t take no for an answer!

He kicked his saddlebags across the porch. Maybe he did need a bigger fucking box.

“I
took a wrong turn,” said Vicky. “A wrong turn in life. That’s why nothing ever worked for me. I was on the wrong road, heading someplace I didn’t want to go. Then this . . . this
bomb
dropped in the middle of the road and suddenly I had to choose a new road. I had to take a chance. And look how it turned out.”

Madeline leveled a look. “If you utter the words ‘leap and the net will appear,’ I’m leaving.”

Vicky laughed. “I know I sound like a pop psychologist. But seriously, it’s the most amazing thing.”

Her eyes followed the teens skateboarding around the fountain in Washington Square Park, but she wasn’t actually seeing them, or any of the other people enjoying the last warm and sunny afternoon before the Labor Day weekend proclaimed the unofficial end of summer. In her mind she was back at the audition.

“I totally rocked it, Mad. The rest of the troupe
applauded
!” Her smile was brighter than the sun. “Can you believe it? I’m
in
! In the play. In the troupe. Rehearsing on a real live stage. I mean, the theater’s super-tiny, basically just an unused storage room in an old warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen. It couldn’t be more off-off-Broadway. But still!”

“I’m really happy for you.” Maddie’s smile was sincere. Then she shrugged one shoulder. “I miss you, though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving all the free coffee.” She waggled her cup. “But I wish you had time for martinis.”

Vicky touched her friend’s arm. “I miss you too. It’s just that we’re rehearsing every night. Then we usually hang out with some actor friends at this dive in the Village—”

She caught herself in midsentence. Maddie’s smile had collapsed. Damn it, she’d wanted to wait until she was more comfortable in her new life before cross-pollinating it with the old one, but her own insecurities paled in the face of her best friend’s hurt feelings.

“Why don’t you meet up with us tonight?” she added casually. “I’ll text you when we’re heading over.”

Maddie brightened. “Okay. Any cuties I should know about?”

“The playwright—Adam—he’s got great eyes and a killer smile.”

“Mmm, sounds interesting. Do you have dibs?”

Vicky shook her head. “Still off men.”

“You mean you’re still stuck on Brown.”

She could deny it, but why bother? Maddie knew her too well. And anyway, as an actor she should face her emotions honestly so she could learn to channel them into her work.

“You’re right. I fell in love with Ty, and it’s going to be a long time before I stop comparing every man I meet to him.”

Maddie’s eyes went wide. “Whoa. I thought it was just great sex.”

“No, it was all of him. He made me homicidal, but he also made me laugh. A lot. He stuck up for me with my mother, which almost made me cry. And God, Maddie, he beat up Winston! He’d probably say he did it because Winston’s an asshole, but Ty doesn’t go around beating up every asshole he meets. He did it for me. That alone would make me love him.”

She’d rendered Maddie speechless. But it felt good to say it out loud. Now maybe she could move on.

“None of that matters,” she went on, speaking as much to herself as to Maddie. “Ty’s in Texas, I’m in New York. We might as well be in different solar systems. And even if our paths ever cross again, which I suppose might happen given his connection to Isabelle, he’ll never forget what I put him through on the stand. And I’ll never forgive him for almost cheating on Molly with me. Cheating on both of us, really. It’s Winston all over again.”

Checking her watch, she stood up and tossed her cup in the trash. “I’ve got to go. Josie has a friend in the registrar’s office at NYU who can finagle me into Spike Lee’s seminar if I register today.”

“Oo-kay,” Maddie said.

She looked so befuddled that Vicky leaned over and kissed her cheek. “See you tonight,” she said, and walked away smiling, well aware that she’d left her friend wondering, again, who’d kidnapped her uptight, emotionally repressed BFF and left this much better adjusted, if annoyingly optimistic, clone in her place.

Chapter Twenty-five

N
ew York City was okay, Ty decided, once you got used to the smell.

He’d take pungent manure over exhaust fumes any day, but still, by the middle of September he was ready to admit that apartment living had definite advantages over his ranch, like freeing up all the time he usually spent patching roofs and fixing porch steps and changing leaky faucets.

Much of that newfound time he devoted to his thirty-six students, along with the handful of philosophy majors he’d been assigned to academically advise. They trickled into his office between his morning and afternoon classes, eager to discuss everything from esoteric questions of metaphysics and epistemology to how they could earn a few points of extra credit. He never turned them away, but even adding in the time he spent making notes for his lectures, it wasn’t exactly heavy lifting.

So if he felt a little stressed, it was his own fault for not showing up until two days before classes began and staying out too late every night since then. Well, the staying out too late wasn’t entirely his fault. A handful of grad students—okay,
female
grad students—had made it their mission to take the new cowboy in town everywhere worth going, which meant clubs, bars, and even a strip joint.

Still, as busy as he kept himself, he hadn’t stopped thinking about Vicky. Just the opposite. Being in the same city, he found himself looking for her everywhere he went, doing a double take whenever a slender blonde with a sweep of straight hair and a great ass sidled by.

The problem, he decided, was that he wouldn’t rest until she heard him out on the Molly thing. She owed him that much, damn it. But since directory assistance insisted she didn’t have a landline, he’d have to call Isabelle to get her new cell number.

And it would be ugly.

He’d never returned Isabelle’s calls, and the last message she’d left warned him in pointed terms never to contact her again because he was an insensitive horse’s rear and she was disowning him forever.

He didn’t believe that for a minute, but she’d make him suffer for ignoring her calls. Even worse, when he admitted that he’d been in New York for two weeks, she’d peel a strip off him and pour acid on it. And then she’d really let him have it.

He sucked it up and dialed anyway.

She made him sweat through eight rings before she answered. “Well. If it isn’t Tyrell Brown,” she said in bitter tones.

“Now, honey,” he went straight for the charm, “I know you’re mad at me and I don’t blame you. I’m a shit heel for sure. But sugar, you have to understand. My feelings were hurt.”

She took the bait. “
Your
feelings? How in the world did
your
feelings get hurt?”

Stacking his heels on his desk, he laid out all of his grievances against Vicky. When he finished, Isabelle was silent.

Then, “You know, Ty, I’m starting to think Vicky’s right about you. You’re an idiot.”

His heels hit the floor. “What do you mean? She’s the one who took off without letting me explain!”

She sighed as if he was hopeless. “Did you forget about Winston? Did you forget how he cheated on her?”

As a matter of fact, he hadn’t thought about Winston in months. A seed of doubt imbedded itself in the hard earth of his self-righteousness.

“Did it ever occur to you,” she went on, “that Vicky might see you cheating on Molly and decide you’re no better than he is?”

“I just told you, I wasn’t cheating on Molly.” His protest lost some of its force.

“That’s debatable. And you’re missing the point, which is that you looked completely untrustworthy. Honestly, Ty, I couldn’t even defend you this time. If I was Vicky, I would’ve flushed my phone down the toilet too.”

So that’s what happened to it.

“I used to think you were sensitive. Kind. Empathetic.” She’d hit her stride now. “I’m so disappointed in you. And all this time you’ve been feeling sorry for yourself. It’s inexcusable. I don’t know what I ever saw in you.”

“Whoa, there, honey. Don’t write me off so quick.” He got up, began pacing his office. “Now that you’ve pointed it out to me, I can see how it might’ve poked a sore spot with Vicky.”

How had he missed it before? He’d been so caught up in his own disappointment that he’d quit thinking about how she might have felt. He really
was
an idiot.

“It so happens, honey, that I was calling you up to get her number.”

“Why? So you can torture her some more?”

“Isabelle. Sugar.” He worked his drawl. “You don’t really think I’m a bad person, now do you?”

She let him squirm. Then, grudgingly, “I guess not. But Vicky doesn’t want you to have her number. That’s why she changed it.”

He couldn’t reach through the phone and shake it out of her, so he snapped a pencil in half instead. “Help me out here, honey. At least tell me she’s doing all right, and that she’s got a job.” Then he could track her down at her office.

“She’s working at Starbucks.”

“Which one?”

She huffed. “What difference does it make? They’re all two thousand miles from Texas.”

Oh man, was she gonna be pissed.

T
y had visited Vicky’s Starbucks half a dozen times, but always in the afternoon. Isabelle said she worked the early shift, so the next morning after his nine o’clock class, he screwed up his courage and headed over there.

Pausing outside, he pretended to fiddle with his phone while he peered through the window. Two slender girls moved around behind the counter, using the post-rush-hour lull to restock the shelves. His eyes skipped over the one with pink and black hair and settled on the blonde.

She had her back to him so he couldn’t see her face, but her sheet of silky hair and sweet ass looked familiar. His heart thunk-thunked against his rib cage.

Arranging his lips into a lazy half smile, he pushed through the door and sauntered toward the counter. The pink-haired girl caught him in her headlights. But he was all about the blonde.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. A bead of sweat inched down his spine. He wet his lips. Why hadn’t he thought beforehand about what he’d say?

Then she stretched her arm up to take something off a high shelf, and her shirt rode up, separating from her hip-hugging jeans. Naturally, his eyes riveted on the swath of creamy skin . . . and then his heart sank like a stone.

Unlike Vicky, whose satiny skin he was intimately familiar with, this girl—whoever she was—had a big old tramp stamp poking out of her pants.

Looking closer, he noticed other differences too. This girl wore a dozen silver bangles on each arm, and four-inch silver hoops poked out through her hair, where Vicky was strictly the gold-watch-and-diamond-studs type.

And Vicky—his demure Vicky—wouldn’t be caught dead in skin-tight jeans that barely covered her crack and left nothing, absolutely nothing, to the imagination.

His shoulders wanted to slump with disappointment.

Coffee sounded awful now, but what else did he have to do? For once, he couldn’t face the line of students who’d be waiting outside his door. He didn’t want to go back to his apartment, either; it suddenly seemed empty and cold. And the streets, so vibrant and busy, were even less appealing.

For lack of any better idea, he kept walking toward the grinning goth girl.

“Y
eehaw,” Josie whispered over her shoulder. “Look who just rode in off the range and straight into my heart.”

Vicky winced. She made a point of avoiding all things cowboy—easier said than done when every good-looking Texan who happened to pass through New York found his way into her Starbucks—but with just one “yeehaw,” visions of sun-streaked hair and warm honey eyes waltzed through her head, stabbed her in the heart, and just generally pissed her off.

Shouldering a twenty-pound bag of beans, she turned around to glare at whichever wayward Texan had wandered into her path today . . .

And holy shit! Her lungs seized.

Tyrell Brown swaggered toward her, tall and lanky, with trouble and heartbreak written all over him, from his alligator boots to his slim-fitting jeans to his familiar pearl-snapped, midnight blue shirt.

His stride hitched as their eyes met, barely noticeable to someone who didn’t know his prowling pace like she did. Otherwise, he showed no sign of surprise.

She broke out in a sweat.

Josie hogged the counter. “Hey, cowboy.” She was practically preening.

“Hey, goth girl,” he drawled. “Nice smile.”

Leave it to Ty to zero in on the genuine Josie. She lapped it up like cream, and that was even before he aimed his own luscious-lipped smile back at her. It put a breathy catch in her voice. “Nice smile yourself, cowboy. Nice everything.”

Then she dropped into a spot-on imitation of a B-movie saloon girl. “Haven’t seen you around these parts before.” She drawled it out, batting her lashes.

He played along. “I’m new in town, honey. But you’ll be seeing a lot of me from here on out.”

She pressed her arms together, a subtle move that drew his eyes to her breasts. “Gonna clean up the town for us, Marshal? Wave your big gun around?”

That did it. Vicky dropped the beans, elbowed her aside.

“What can I get you?” she asked, as if he was any other customer. But he wasn’t any other customer. He was the man who’d loved her and left her, who’d touched her heart and then smashed it like a china cup on a cold stone floor.

After six weeks of meditation, she’d finally convinced herself that she’d forgiven him. But it turned out that was easier to do from two thousand miles away. From across the counter, it was a different story. Now she couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge him by anything more than the hot flush rising up her neck, heading for her hairline.

Disconcertingly, he didn’t acknowledge her either, which pissed her off more than if he had. As usual, he knew just how to get under her skin.

“Give me one of those mocha lattes, honey. Nonfat, double shot, no whip. Gotta watch my figure.”

Josie pushed in again. “How about
we
watch your figure instead?” She twirled one finger, the universal sign for show-me-what-you-got.

Vicky knew all too well what he had. Clamping her jaw, she shut her mind to cobblestone abs and went to work on his latte while they kept up their insipid banter.

She drowned out most of it by humming Coldplay loudly in her head, but when he dropped his change in the bulging tip jar, she heard him say, “Couple of pretty girls like you two must do all right,” and his drawl scraped across her nerves like ragged fingernails. She smacked his drink down on the counter hard enough that it squirted through the little hole in the lid.

Josie jumped in to dab it with a napkin. “Sorry about that.” She threw Vicky a WTF look, then eye-fucked Ty as she slid the drink across the counter, leaving her hand around it until his fingers brushed hers.

Vicky hung on to her temper by a thread. The torture was almost over . . . he had his coffee . . . any minute now he’d turn and walk out the door . . .

And then he did the unthinkable. From a stack on the counter, he picked up a flyer advertising the play.

Panicked, Vicky grabbed for it, but he turned aside casually, moving it out of her reach without seeming to notice her.

Shooting her another WTF look, Josie piped up. “That’s our play. It opens tonight at the Shoebox Theater. And,”—she reached into her back pocket, whipped out a ticket—“it’s your lucky day, because this is the very last ticket.”

“Sold out, is it?” He smiled all over Josie again. “Must be getting good buzz.”

“Well, some. And also, they don’t call it the Shoebox for nothing.”

He laughed, and Vicky gripped the counter’s edge. God, she loved his laugh. She loved it so much she wanted to stuff it back down his throat, choke him with it, and then toss him on a boxcar bound for Texas.

With his eyes on Josie, he tipped his head toward Vicky. “Your friend in the play too?”

Josie nodded. “I’m the star, but she’s got a juicy part. It’s her first role, and she totally kills it.” She waggled the ticket. “You really want to come. Then you can say you knew us when.”

“Sugar, when you put it like that, how can I resist?”

Vicky followed his hand as he reached out and took the ticket. The gleam in his eye made her fists clench helplessly.

With a last lingering smile for Josie, he slid it into his pocket and ambled out of the shop.

Josie clutched her chest. “Oh. My. God. He’s coming to the opening!”

Vicky grabbed a rag, started wiping the counter. “So what?”

Josie stared. “
So what?
Did you
see
him?”

“I saw his hokey cowboy shirt.”

“Are you kidding? He totally rocked that look! He’s one-hundred-percent-authentic grade-A-prime cowboy steak. And I want a bite.”

Vicky breathed in to a four count, out to a four count, taking note of the fact that she hadn’t needed her yoga breathing technique in, oh, almost six weeks. Since shortly after the last time she laid eyes on Tyrell Brown.

“You know who he looks like?” Josie went starry-eyed. “The Sundance Kid. From that old movie with Robert Redford. He’s got that same windblown look, like he hasn’t combed his hair since he rode into town. And he’s got Sundance’s smile too. Slow and wicked, like he’s thinking about all the ways he could make you come.”

Vicky rubbed at a stain that would never come out.

Josie sighed. “I wonder what brought him to New York City? And how long he’s staying.”

So do I
, Vicky snarled to herself,
and I’m damn sure going to find out
.

I
f looks could kill, he’d be a dead man.

Ty let the door fall shut behind him before he busted out in a belly laugh. Damn, she looked cute as hell with steam coming out of her ears. Good thing they’d been in a coffee shop instead of a roadhouse. With access to glass bottles, he was pretty sure she would’ve smashed a long neck and raked the jagged end across his throat.

Sucking down some mocha latte, he marveled that only minutes ago he’d thought he was off coffee for life. Now he couldn’t imagine anything more delicious. His whole outlook had changed. The sun shone brighter; people looked friendlier. His muscles felt loose and limber, like he’d just done a good hour of yoga.