“I want you to be happy, sis. Not just safe and protected, but happy, too. And maybe he’s not so bad. Go talk to him, all right? Let him apologize for calling you out on your issues. Because that’s what you’re really pissed about, right?”
She looked uncertainly around the crowded barroom and tried to hang on to her anger.
“I can handle twice this many people. Get out.”
She wanted to see Luke. She really did. During the past few days she’d gotten the feeling that holding her family together was no longer enough to make her happy. That maybe it was time to learn to trust. And if even Jamie thought she was being stubborn…
“Well, fine. If it’ll make you happy.” She pushed the tray at him, whipped off her apron and started to race away. Then she raced back to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”
But as she got into her car, she still wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing. She’d broken up with him in a rage of fury and hurt. How the hell was she supposed to approach him now? Should she just knock on his door and ask if they could talk? Maybe she should bring flowers. But that might remind him of the flowers he’d brought her. She’d rather bring him a gift that reminded him of something good. Something that would make him smile.
“Bingo,” she breathed, finally feeling more hope than heartache.
SHE WALKED INTO the White Orchid with a big smile, but that smile faltered when she found herself confronted with a group of ten or fifteen people gathered in chairs around a podium in the middle of the store. “Um,” she managed.
A woman in the last row turned around. “The class hasn’t started yet.” She patted the wooden folding chair next
to her. “You can sit next to me.”
“Oh, I’m not here for a class, just, er…” Tessa gestured vaguely to the other side of the store and made her escape.
A class at White Orchid? She was a little afraid to find out what that was about, so Tessa hurried to the back corner of the store and grabbed the item she’d come for. Thankfully, a girl was waiting behind the cash register. “Oooh, how cute! Are you staying for the class?”
“Oh, I don’t think… Um, what exactly—?”
“She’s starting!” the girl said in a furious whisper, pointing toward the podium.
Tessa handed over her credit card and kept a close eye on the class.
“I’m Beth, the manager of the White Orchid, and I want to thank you all for coming out to our class on the art of fellatio.”
Tessa swallowed too hard and had to cough to clear her throat, though she coughed as quietly as any human being had ever coughed. If there was one thing she didn’t want at this moment, it was that classroom’s eyes on her.
“This is Cairo,” Beth went on. “She’s going to help with some of the demonstrations.”
It was the gorgeous dark-haired woman from Tessa’s last visit. She bounced and waved to the class, but one hand held a green dildo that bobbed wildly when she gestured. The class tittered with nervous exhilaration.
“Let’s start with a definition—” Beth continued.
Tessa grabbed her bag and tiptoed toward the door with her purchase, not breathing again until she’d made it outside. She’d tried not to listen in, feeling horribly self-conscious that she was eavesdropping on these people, but the phrase “and this can include the scrotum” followed her out the door.
She only made it four feet into the parking lot before she burst into hysterical laughter. And for the hundredth time that week she thought, I have to tell Luke about this. Only this time, she actually could.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LUKE STARED OVER the edge of the crystal tumbler, wondering vaguely if he was drunk yet. He didn’t feel drunk. And he’d only downed two fingers of Scotch, but surely he must be drunk. Instead of watching the view of the half-naked blonde writhing in front of him, he kept looking at the glass in his hand.
The crystal had been a wedding present from someone in Eve’s family. She’d left him the tumblers when she’d moved out, probably figuring he’d need something to drink hard liquor from every night. He’d put them to good use for a few weeks, but his binge had been cut short by the knife he’d taken to the gut. They didn’t allow liquor in the hospital, and even he hadn’t been stupid enough to mix it with his painkillers when he’d returned home.
But tonight, he was fully invested in revisiting his previous taste for a good single-malt whiskey.
He hadn’t lied to Tessa. Not really. Yes, he’d purposefully left out a crucial bit of information about Simone, but that was only because it didn’t matter. How could Tessa not see that? The fact that he felt guilty about it only made him more resentful.
A glance back at the television told him he hadn’t missed much during his daydreaming. The naked girl was still writhing. He still couldn’t care less. Clearly, somebody even more pitiful than him had invented soft-core porn.
He wanted to reach for the remote, but the bottle was closer, so he reached for that instead. But as his fingers curled around the cold glass, someone knocked on the door. Luke’s eyes slid to the screen. The blonde was finally done with her slightly offscreen gyrations. The movie cut to a kitchen scene that seemed unrelated to the previous story, if it could be called that. The guy’s body was suspiciously buff for an average plumber.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Luke muttered. Couldn’t they come up with any new plotlines for these movies?