Читать книгу You Had Me At Goodbye - Jane Blackwood - Страница 7

Kat looked glumly out the living room window at the painfully blue Atlantic as she listened with not a small amount of resentment to Larry move about the kitchen on one of the rare occasions when he was actually preparing something to eat. Her vacation, she thought morosely, was not turning out at all the way she’d thought it would. She was about to turn back to the kitchen when she saw him. Brian. Walking along the boardwalk, dragging an overnight bag, his blond crew-cut hair glistening in the sun.

“Oh, God. Oh, God.”

She couldn’t keep her eyes off him; she couldn’t move. She could only stare as he got closer and closer, her mouth gaping open.

“Katherine, what’s wrong?”

She needed a paper bag to breathe into. She needed a semiautomatic rifle to shoot him with. “Brian,” she managed to say.

“You don’t seem very happy to see him,” he said, clearly making a vast understatement. He craned his neck to look out the window at the approaching man.

“He broke my heart,” she whispered.

And then for a reason she wouldn’t understand until much later, Larry grabbed her and kissed her. Man, did he kiss her. It was like something out of a movie, Rhett ravaging Scarlett after he carried her up the stairs. It left her breathless and weak-kneed and happened so quickly she hardly had time to enjoy herself before it was over. Without her knowing it, he’d managed to unbutton her blouse slightly so she looked like a Victoria’s Secret model, albeit a small-breasted one. He quickly untucked his shirt and mussed up his hair, then hers, and when the inevitable knock came on the door, he held her against him and counted to five. Slowly. Nothing had ever been as sexy to her as the sound of his voice, low and hot, near her ear, counting. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

“Now, let’s answer the door, shall we?”

“What the hell are you doing?” she said, finally finding her sanity.

He shrugged and smiled and moved slowly to the door and opened it.

There he was, the man she had thought she was going to marry, the future father of her children, the man whose gnarled, veiny hand she’d thought she’d be holding when they were eighty. The man who’d gotten engaged to another woman while sleeping with her.

“Hi, Brian,” she said, and she was amazed how it came out all breathy.

“Kat.” Brian stood uncertainly in the doorway looking handsome and wonderful and hateful and weak, and Kat wondered what the hell was stopping her from launching herself at him and choking the living daylights out of him. Oh, it was Larry, holding her arm firmly but gently. Possessively.

“Who’s he?” Brian asked, jerking his head at Larry.

“Lawrence Kendall,” Larry supplied, and damn if he didn’t even nod at Brian like the perfect English gentleman.

Kat felt a warm hand on her shoulder, a small caress on her clavicle, and she had to suppress a shiver. Now she got it. Duh!

“He’s my roommate,” she said and leaned back into Larry.

“Roommate’s a bit tame, isn’t it, love?”

Kat felt like kissing Larry right then and there because she would have given every nickel she had left to capture the look on Brian’s face for perpetuity. She leaned back a bit more and smiled up at Larry, a thank you in her eyes that to Brian, very probably looked like something else entirely.

Brian pressed his lips together, his eyes darting from one to the other. “I’d like to speak to you in private,” he said.

Lawrence felt Kat stiffen against him, and he tightened his embrace almost imperceptibly. “We’ve nothing to say,” she said.

“I’ve left her,” her boyfriend said, panic growing in his eyes, the desperation of a man who’s broken up with the other woman only to find his first love doesn’t want him back.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Brian. You made your choice perfectly clear two weeks ago.”

Again, Brian looked up at Lawrence before talking to Kat. “I made a mistake, Kat. Please. Can’t we talk in private?”

Lawrence saw the slight movement of her head, felt her entire body begin to shake, just the slightest trembling. “Brian? May I call you that?” Oh, Lawrence knew he could turn on the blue blood when he wanted to. “Katherine and I were…busy. I wonder if you could come back later.”

“You have nothing to do with this,” Brian said, and Lawrence saw with a certain sense of delight that the other man’s fists were clenched.

Apparently, Katherine saw those fists, too, because to Lawrence’s great disappointment, she stepped out of his arms. “Brian, come back at four. I’m not prepared to talk to you right now. You should have called.”

“I didn’t know the number,” he said, and the look of desperation was back. “Please, Kat.”

“Come back later, Brian,” she said with a bit of steel Lawrence had never heard in her voice before.

“I am coming back,” he said, then looked down at his bag. “Is it okay if I keep this here?”

“You’re kidding, right? You thought you were going to stay here?”

“Well…”

“No. Later, Brian.”

He nodded and walked down the porch steps, dragging his black overnight bag behind him.

Lawrence watched Katherine close the door, then press her head against it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She was shaking, her body wracked with it, the grief, the stress…the laughter. She was laughing.

“Oh, God, did you see his face? Did you? Larry, you are a genius.” She walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek. “A genius.”

“Does this mean I get the house for the summer?” he asked.

“It means I’ll let you stay a few more days. Just until we get rid of him.”

Lawrence tilted his head to make certain he saw her expression clearly. “Are you sure you want to get rid of him?”

Her nostrils flared suddenly, and he thought she would cry. “Yes. I want to get rid of him.” She looked up at him and for a second, he couldn’t breathe from the pain he saw in her eyes. “But Brian is…” She let out a tired sigh. “I thought he was my forever. And when I saw him, I wanted to just hate him.”

“You still love him?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t want to. But you saw how I fell apart when I saw him. I want to believe him. I’m an idiot because the only thing stopping me from letting him in the house is you.”

She suddenly got a fierce expression on her face. “You have to help me. Don’t let me be alone with him. Don’t let me cave in.”

Lawrence suddenly wasn’t so sure of his role. When Brian had come to the door, he’d acted without much thought when he kissed her. He just knew, for whatever reason, he could not let that man hurt Katherine. But she was tough; she could resist on her own. She didn’t need him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to get involved, pretend to be her lover, hold her firm body against his. Lawrence wanted to laugh. If he had a devil on one side and God on the other, they’d both be saying to do it…but for far different reasons.

“I’ll do it,” he said, “but you have to tell me exactly what’s going on between you two.”

Katherine looked slightly ill but walked into the living room and sat down heavily on a love seat, her fingertips digging into the soft armrests. Lawrence took a chair opposite her and waited.

“You know I owned a housecleaning business. One of my biggest clients was a realtor who sold houses in this exclusive development in Keene. We’d clean the houses to get them ready to show, and she’d pass out our card. We got a lot of business like that, and she got immaculate houses to sell.

“There was this one house. It was spectacular. I loved it, and I made sure I was the one who got to clean it ’cause I was dying to see the inside. After I was done, the realtor came in to check everything, and we got to talking about how she thought she had a buyer for the house already. She was all excited. Some young couple with lots of money wanted this particular neighborhood and loved the house. She mentioned their names.”

Kat closed her eyes against the memory because the pain of that moment still had the ability to devastate her. Brian was buying the house with another woman. At first, she hadn’t believed it because Brian didn’t have all that much money. He was a CPA, but she made more money than he did and that wasn’t saying much.

“I said I knew a Brian Rindell from high school and wondered if it was the same person. It was.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. We were engaged, and he was out house hunting with another woman. And the worst thing was I’m the one who told him about the house. I loved it and talked about it like some far-off dream. Maybe someday we’ll own a house like that. I actually said that to him.”

Larry looked at her grimly. “That’s just about the lowest thing I’ve ever heard of a man doing to a woman. And you say you’re going to have a tough time resisting him?”

Kat let out a humorless laugh. “You have to know him. I’m sure he feels sick about what he did. Brian’s not an evil person, just weak.”

“What?” he said in pure disbelief.

“Okay. He’s evil. And I’m cursed because even though I know he’s a big time jerk and the worst kind of liar, when I saw him…” She let her voice trail off. “I didn’t hate him. I wanted to. I know I should. But I didn’t. That’s what I need you for.” She grinned, and he smiled back.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll help you get rid of him in grand fashion if you help me.”

Kat lowered her eyebrows. “Help you what?”

“Nothing nefarious if that’s what you’re frowning about. I’m having a bit of trouble with my writing, and well, I could use your assistance.”

Unless he was doing research on how to screw up your life completely, Kat didn’t think she’d be much help to him. “What’s the trouble?”

Larry took a deep breath and looked more uncertain than she’d ever seen him. “My agent believes I need to write a book that is more appealing to…” He stopped as if searching for the right word. “Well, appealing to people like you.”

“Me? You’re going to write a romance?” She laughed aloud.

He gave her a quick smile. “What I mean is that I have to write a book that appeals to the lower classes.” He stopped and looked at her, gauging her reaction to his inadvertent and horrible insult. Kat knew he hadn’t meant to sound like an ass, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t one.

“The lower classes,” she repeated slowly.

“Well, that’s not precisely the way I should have phrased it, but yes. Something that will appeal to the masses.”

“I see. Something simple. Without all those big words and metaphors.”

“Precisely,” he said a bit uncertainly.

“For people like me.”

“I’ve insulted you.”

“Garsh, no. I’m just happy to have a smart, classy guy like you talking to one of the lower classes,” she said in her best redneck accent.

Larry laughed. “You know I meant nothing by that.” He smiled and looked so damned cute and sorry that Kat couldn’t help but try to forgive him. This was a dangerous man. She should be heading out the door or kicking him out, but instead she was standing, smiling at him and thinking he was cute. Must be the accent, those dimples, those deep brown eyes that just sucked you in and made you want to forget he was a bit of a snob. Maybe it was that kiss.

“I need your help, and you need mine,” he said.

Kat wrinkled her nose. “True. But what about the house? Who gets it?”

“I think for the time being, we agree to be roommates.”

“And here I thought we were so much more,” she said, bringing back his theatrics in front of Brian.

“I thought I was brilliant.”

“You were,” Kat said laughing. “But I don’t know if that kiss was really necessary.”

“I had to make you look like you’d just been up to no good,” he explained, and Kat wasn’t sure she liked that gleam in his eye—especially coming from someone who’d so casually asked her if she’d wanted a summer fling.