When I See You (30 page)

"I like it," she says.

I detect her indifference. It affects me as if the temperature in the room has dropped twenty degrees. The kitchen grows quiet. She works in silence. I assume that's what she needs. It's a lot for her to take in.

I move my head side-to-side in quiet exasperation over Ethan and what he did.

"What is it?" Jordan asks softly.

"I told him to tell you of the plans. In Malibu. We had a few heated arguments about it. He was so stubborn. I feel guilty for not talking him out of the idea of taking the loan out against your mother's jewels. That's on me. I should have talked him out of it. I didn't. I'm sorry."

"That's on
him,
" she says evenly.

"I know you're pissed. Just see the whole place first."

"Let's eat." She touches my hand again and places it on a different plate, a bigger one. "Chicken Caesar salad. Easy. No mess. No fuss. Goes with the wine."

"Great," I say. Now, I wallow in frustration. If I could just see her, maybe, I could better explain all of this. Maybe.

She slides in next to me. Our elbows briefly touch. She moves her chair farther away. "The wine's good," she says.

That's all she says for the next ten minutes.

My spirits wane further. I listen for her, willing her to say something,
anything
. My normal ability to cope with silence leaves me. I finish off the salad and start in on the wine again, finishing it in a long single swallow. It feels like the walls are closing in on me. The blackness shimmers.

The only sound in the room comes from the scraping of her chair against the hard wood. She clears the plates without a word. In the next few minutes, I hear only the sound of running water. She's doing the dishes and not talking. It's so unlike her. This much I do know about her.

"Say something," I finally say.

"
You
say something. God. You and your silences. You can live with them forever. I really hate that."

"You do?" I say in surprise. "It's the training. We always had to be silent on patrol. For hours at a time."

"Well, we're not on patrol,
now.
"

"Do you want to see the rest of the house, or not?"

"I don't know," she says. "What if I
love
it?"

Her question catches me off guard. Is the wine wreaking havoc on my system? Have all those dry months in Afghanistan caught up to me, finally? Besides being impotent, I'm a lightweight when it comes to alcohol on top of everything else?

"Do we have more wine?" I ask.

"We do, if we open another bottle," she says with petulance.

"Open it." I shrug. "And, so what, if you love it?"

"If I love it, how will we sell it?"

"Maybe, we won't. Maybe, we'll discover oil before you leave and we'll all have enough money to do whatever we want."

"You're very optimistic," she says, touching my hand as she pours more wine into my glass. "I like that about you. You're so," she pauses and giggles a little bit. "You're so God-damn
hopeful
."

"I'm glad I entertain you," I say with irritation.
Where is she going with all of this?

"And you look like Henry Cavill. Not bad. Not a bad imitation of Henry's sidekick at all."

"Do you want to see the house, or not?" I ask.

"I do. Show it to me. I want to see what an Oscar winner's jewels can buy these days."

Oh shit. She's pissed.

≈ ≈

"The colors are amazing. The dark wood. I love that."

"He said you would."

"I don't want to talk about him. Okay?"

"Okay."

I swallow hard. Ethan has always served as a barrier between us. Now, she's asked me not to mention his name. Exactly how am I going to do that and still resist her? If only I could see her, then, I could better gauge what she's really thinking.

We move slowly from room to room. The Braille markings help me keep on track. She remains silent and stays a few steps behind me, but still holds on to my hand. Every once in a while she seems to sway. I can't tell if it's the effects of the wine or how she's feeling about everything else. I long to ask her what's she's thinking, but I remain ever silent, beholden, in this strange way, to this thing between us. I'm too afraid to upset the equilibrium that seems to run through both of us right now.

I touch the markings on the door and open it and allow her to step inside first.

"This could be Max's room." I force myself to smile, still trying to sense where she is in relation to the doorway. I recall the blue walls and the boyish elements we added to this room. "Tate built the ship bed."

She lets go of my hand. I feel a little lost without her touch. I shake my head side-to-side, disconcerted.
Get it together, Wainwright.

"It perfect," she says quietly.

This isn't going as well as I had thought it would. Somehow, I thought the house would win her over, but then, the images of her home in Malibu flash. The ocean view. The way you can hear the waves from every room, late at night. The Old Hollywood style of that house. Nothing compares to that place, not even this one.

And, I know this.

The darkness swelters around me, closing in even more. I'm sure Jordan must feel like that in this house. Ethan's betrayal emanates from her like an all encompassing heat. Even I, can see it,
sense it
, anyway. I grimace at my naiveté and at Ethan for assuming that she could so easily give up her Malibu life for this place. As hard as we tried to emulate what Ethan said she would like, it dawns on me that he never shared with either of us, Tate or me, what the Malibu house was like.
Her life.
He never told us what we were trying to replicate. It's so like Ethan. He was never one for details.

"Your room," I say with awkwardness, then flush, remembering the gold and crème colors of the room. The king size bed. The dark wood. The amazing view of the valley and the hills beyond through the floor-to-ceiling windows that cover one entire wall.

"It's got a Scarlet O'Hara feel," she says with diffidence. "Canopy bed. I always wanted one of those." She takes an unsteady breath.

I hear the clink of her wine glass. She must be pouring more wine. A minute later, she nudges my hand with the bottle.

"Want some?"

"Sure," I say. "How much have you had?"

"Enough."

She clinks her glass with mine. I listen as she drinks it down and swallows.

I'm getting uneasy. My palms are sweaty. I hold onto the stem of the wine glass with a firm grip. She grabs my free hand.

"More?" Her voice is silky and seductive.

I close my eyes and shake my head. "No."

I grab her hand and pull her along to the hallway. Being in what was to be her and Ethan's bedroom leaves me unsettled.

"We didn't see the bathroom," she says with genuine protest.

"We'll see it later."

"But I have to
go
." Her whining makes me laugh. It releases the building tension for a second. She puts the wine bottle in my hand. "I'll be right back."

I experience the solitude of the hallway and attempt to relax. The wine has made me unsteady. We shouldn't be doing this. She's upset. I'm uneasy. I touch my watch. ''Three zero five p.m.' goes the audio.

"Tate and Ashleigh will be here in an hour," she says in a husky voice as she returns. "Nice bathroom."

"Yeah. There's only one more thing to show you."

"Okay. Show me. Your place?"

"No."

"Two things, then," she says.

I set down the wine bottle at the end of the hallway and retrieve a key from my pocket. "This part isn't done. He wanted to finish it, but I thought we should wait and see what you wanted."

"We agreed not to mention him," she scolds. "Wait and see what I wanted." She laughs bitterly, and then, sighs. "You wanted to wait and see what I wanted," she murmurs, sounding surprised.

I struggle with the lock and get more frustrated the longer it takes to undo it.

"Let me help you. Please?"

In frustration, I step back and hand her the key with some reluctance. "I can't even open a God-damn door."

"Don't worry about it," she says. Out of nowhere, her hand strokes my cheekbone and then it's gone.

I try to smile in the general direction of her voice, but I'm getting more and more uneasy. I'm not sure how long I'm going to be able to resist her touch, and this strange sense of foreboding overtakes me. This is not going well or the way I planned it.
What I want from her, I cannot have.

"Fine." I strive for nonchalance and swallow hard. "Go in."

She sucks in her breath. How I wish I could see her face as she first glimpses the restaurant. Her place. Because Ethan loved her and thought of just about everything, except for asking her what she truly wanted and spending her inheritance without her permission.

"Out in the middle of nowhere?" she asks.

"It's a twenty minute drive from town." I shrug. "People would come. Believe it or not, we're pretty civilized here," I say wryly. "There's a lot of wealth here. With oil. Dell. Cattle. Austinites like the finer things, just like everyone else. They would come. Here."

"Did he name it?"

"No."

I listen as she steps over the paper still covering the slate floors. I sense her hands as they must trail along the bar's granite countertop. The thought of her fingers turns me on.

"The lighting is great. Eight tables would be perfect, manageable. Wow. Nice bar. The design of the place is stunning. Subtle. Intimate."

My heart rate speeds up. I can sense her as she steps closer to me.

"Why didn't you finish it?" she asks. "You have the money."

"I'm giving you the money back. We're selling it, as is, so we can pay you back," I say.

"You're selling your dream for me?" Jordan asks, incredulous.

"It's not fair to burden you with something you don't want. A life you didn't ask for."

I extend my arm around the room. "In Austin," I say it with the same disdain she used just an hour or so ago.

She ignores what I've said. "The walls should be crème. That will bring out the candlelight at night. You don't want it too dark. People need to see their food, the people they've come with." She starts to laugh. "I'd call it
Laissez Faire
."

"What does that mean?"

"Let be. It's French. It means: let be. Something along those lines, anyway."

Her perfume fades. She's stepped away.

"Who bought the appliances?"

"I did."

"How did you
know
?"

"I told you I researched the places you worked. The places you liked."

"Oh yes, you said that."

The room fills with sound.

"Nice stereo equipment."

"Ambiance," I say, uneasy.
What is she doing?

"Dance floor?" Jordan asks. Her voice is sensuous, mesmerizing. I nod. She takes my hand and places it at her waist. "Dance with me."

"I can't."

"You
can
."

Her arms slink up my shoulders. Her hands clasp around my neck and she draws me closer. I attempt to focus solely on the music. The sound seems to infiltrate us both. Our bodies move of their own volition.

"I'm going to make you see," Jordan sings. "I''m gonna make you give in to me."

"This is a bad idea," I murmur.

"Stop talking," she says with a low laugh.

We sway with the music and the seductive lyrics of the song. I lean in closer and catch her amazing lavender scent. My hands comb through her long hair. I groan and pull her to me. I sense her face is raised to mine and her breath catches at the same time mine does. Her lips explore mine. My body seems to awaken from its long mysterious sexual slumber of the past six months. I kiss her back and our bodies seem to form an alliance. The heat between us rages like the sudden attack of a lightning bolt. It's all powerful and consuming.

I think it's a full five minutes before we come up for air and realize the song has ended.

End it
. An errant voice goes off inside my head, sounding just like Ethan.

I shudder and pull back from her.

"You think too much," she says softly.

"I suppose I do."

"You think he loved me?"

"He loved you very much. I know he did."

"He loved me?"

"He did."

She sighs. "Show me your place," she says.

*≈*≈*

Chapter 18. Give in to me