Читать книгу Real Men Will - Victoria Dahl - Страница 9

BY THE NEXT DAY, BETH WAS thoroughly pissed at herself. One minute with him, one glimpse, one touch, and she couldn’t get the man out of her mind. And the worst part was, it was becoming more and more obvious to her that he’d been desperate to get her out of there. First, he’d edged her farther down the hall, then he’d jumped at the chance to say goodbye as quickly as possible.

He was in a relationship. Which was fine. But what if he was married? What if he’d been married then?

Her heart thumped so hard at the thought that she had to press her palm to her chest. That would explain everything, wouldn’t it?

She tried to put it from her mind as she walked into the shop and waved to Cairo. She tried not to think about it as she unboxed the newest toys and put them on display. But as she unboxed the high-tech vibrator and showed Cairo how it plugged into an MP3 player to thump in time to one’s favorite music, Beth couldn’t stop the thoughts swarming through her head.

“Cairo?”

Cairo was busy scrolling through songs on her phone, trying to find something with just the right beat. “Yeah?”

“I was at Donovan Brothers last night and—”

“Oh!” Cairo looked up with a big smile on her face. “I forgot to ask how your date went.”

“My date?”

“With Davis!”

“Oh. Great!” Beth nodded with too much enthusiasm. “Yeah, it was wonderful!”

Cairo’s brown eyes lit up. “Wonderful? Oh, yeah? Do I detect a little dirty morning-after tone to those words?”

“You do not. But Davis was really nice.”

“And hot, right?” Cairo pressed, smiling as if Beth was hiding something. “How’d you like that dragon tattoo on his stomach?”

Beth raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t see his stomach, Cairo.”

The girl laughed, her glossy black bob swinging forward to frame her pretty face. “I know. I already talked to him this morning.”

“He called you?”

“No, I saw him at yoga. Which is how I know about the dragon tattoo, and why I fixed you two up in the first place. If I didn’t have two men already, I’d hit that so hard he’d never recover.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “It was a nice date. Though I’m not sure about a man who’d tell you whether he spent the night or not.”

“He didn’t say anything about that, but I figured a guy wouldn’t need to show up for an 8:00 a.m. yoga class if he’d spent the night in your bed. Good sex is way more relaxing.”

Well, that would be an interesting test of Beth’s abilities. Let Davis spend the night, then see if he went to yoga the next day.

“By the way…” Cairo said with a familiar twinkle in her eye. “You really, really want to see that tattoo. It’s done by the best artist in Colorado. And it follows the muscles in his abdomen all the way past his waistband. His very low waistband. I’m pretty sure he waxes. Everything.”

Beth must have winced.

“What?” Cairo said. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been with a man who’s waxed?”

She tried to keep her face neutral. She really, really did. But she obviously couldn’t hide her horror.

“Oh, Beth!” Cairo gushed. “I swear, it’s the best. All that smooth flesh. Nothing between your mouth and his skin…. And with a guy like Davis, you want to get as close as possible, don’t you?”

“I…I…” She couldn’t imagine the process. Did he have to put his feet in stirrups for the waxer? “I’m sure it’s lovely.”

“Well, maybe you’ll find out for yourself.”

“So…” Beth tried to set the image away and couldn’t. “Harrison and Rex are waxed?” She’d met both of Cairo’s boyfriends on many occasions.

“Oh, Harrison has always kept it nice and smooth. Rex wasn’t interested, but he got jealous of all the attention I was giving Harrison, so, yeah…” Cairo’s smile seemed to stretch all the way from one ear to the other. “Now they’re both clean as a whistle.”

Oh, God. She shouldn’t have asked. She was going to faint from all the blushing she would do the next time Harrison or Rex came into the store. But that wasn’t the correct reaction for a sophisticated professional in this business, so Beth tried her best not to cover her face in embarrassment. “You’re a lucky woman,” she said instead. “And if I had a dollar for every time I said those words to you…”

“We’ll talk about it later, if you keep seeing Davis.” She hit Play on the phone and they both looked down at the pulsing head of the vibrator. LED lights blinked and twinkled. Cairo bumped her shoulder into Beth’s. “Are you going to keep seeing Davis?”

“We’ll see.” She stared at the dancing lights and tried not to picture Davis without body hair.

“You’re off at seven, right?” Cairo asked. “If you want to leave now, I’ll cover for you. Maybe you should give him a call.” Cairo was Beth’s best employee, always friendly, cheerful and just as busy as Beth. In fact, Beth had just made her assistant manager. “I’m good, but thanks.”

“So, what were you going to say about Donovan Brothers?”

“What?” Beth asked a little too loudly.

“The brewery. You said you were there last night.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Um, my friend wanted to know if Jamie Donovan is married. You’ve mentioned him before, right?”

“Oh, God, he’s definitely not married.”

“Okay. Good. I’ll pass that on to—”

“But he was in here last week with his girlfriend, so he’s not available, as far as I know. Maybe they date around, though.”

Beth was nodding before the words really hit her. “What?” she said breathily.

“I know, I know. No gossiping about the customers. Sorry. I’ll get back to work.”

Cairo left the unboxed model out as a sample, then headed back to the cash register to finish cleaning the glass. Beth just stood there for a moment, as a pulse in her head started to beat hard. He’d come here? With his girlfriend?

No, that couldn’t be right, could it? He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t bring his girlfriend to Beth’s workplace, knowing that they sold sex toys and lingerie and cute, sexy gifts. That would be too cruel.

Cairo must be wrong.

Beth nodded, trying to convince herself, but she didn’t feel even a hint of reassurance. Because…why wouldn’t he come here?

This was the twenty-first century. Beth was a modern woman with obviously modern beliefs. They’d hooked up one time, no emotions involved. No strings attached. Certainly, plenty of Cairo’s ex-boyfriends came into the shop, with friendly hugs all around. Maybe it hadn’t even occurred to Jamie that Beth would be hurt if he came by with another girl.

They’d specifically agreed that their night together would mean nothing. Just because Beth wasn’t so good at holding up her end of the bargain didn’t mean that Jamie had any problem with his end.

She pressed her hands tight together and told herself that she wasn’t hurt. Still…thank God she hadn’t been here. There would’ve been no denying the pain of watching him wander through her store with another woman, holding her hand, picking out items to use together later in the bedroom.

Beth drew a sharp breath at the thought of it. Had it not even occurred to him? In the brief hours she’d spent with him, he’d seemed considerate and kind. Or hell, maybe he was just more sexually evolved than she was.

But last night, he’d looked downright sneaky. It didn’t make any sense.

She retreated to her office and shut the door. And suddenly she was pissed. She’d felt guilty as hell being at his brewery with another man. And he’d dared to bring someone here? What kind of an asshole was he? And when exactly had he acquired this girlfriend? All the sneaking around that had seemed so exciting at the expo suddenly took on a new, sinister light.

“That bastard,” she growled.

She should drop it. Leave it alone. Now, six months later, it hardly mattered anymore, but Beth found herself overwhelmed with the urge to confront him. She turned on her phone, but that was hopeless. She’d deleted his number from her phone two weeks after she’d met him. She’d had to delete him from her life because the memory of that encounter had become its own aphrodisiac, and she’d known she would get to this point sometime. She’d known the temptation would rise up and swallow her.

“Damn it,” she muttered.

Maybe it would be easier for her to contact him through the brewery anyway. Less privacy, less intimacy. And no memory of the night her phone had rung and he’d said two simple words. “Room 421.”

The hair on her arms prickled as electricity zinged through her body.

Beth cleared her throat and shook her head. She shouldn’t call him. She knew that.

But maybe she could find out the truth another way. Between Facebook and Twitter and everything else on the web, people’s private lives were no longer private.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told herself. If he was some sort of creepy two-timing cheat, that wasn’t Beth’s fault. But she gave in to the weakness and searched his name on Google anyway. Thousands of hits appeared, all of them seemingly about beer and awards and the brewery. Looking for something more personal, she clicked on a link to Twitter. The account said Jamie Donovan of Donovan Brothers Brewery, but the picture was wrong.

Frowning, she clicked on the photo to enlarge it. The guy definitely wasn’t Jamie. As a matter of fact, he looked a lot like the blond man she’d seen tending bar at the brewery the night before. “What the hell?”

Thoroughly confused, Beth clicked back to Google and hit the Images tab. The first picture was the young blond guy again. She clicked back to the results page. Most of the pictures were of the blond guy. The only ones she saw with Jamie were group shots. Clicking on the largest of the group shots, she looked at the caption. Wallace Hood, Eric Donovan, Tessa Donovan, Jamie Donovan, Chester Smith.

This didn’t make any sense. She clicked through to the next page of images, but they were mostly Donovan Brothers logos and pictures of mugs of beer.

Then she noticed there were two video hits and clicked on that tab, light-headed with anticipation.

The first video linked to a local news channel. Beth pulled it up and waited, holding her breath.

The news theme song played, and then the camera focused in on a tight shot of a perfectly coiffed blonde reporter smiling widely. “Today we’ve got big news from an iconic local establishment! I’m coming to you live from Donovan Brothers Brewery in Boulder, Colorado, and I’ve been joined by one of the actual Donovan brothers.” The camera pulled slowly back, revealing first an arm, then a shoulder, then the man with the dark blond hair whom she’d seen in the bar. Beth frowned.

The reporter beamed up at him. “This is Jamie Donovan, one of the famous brothers.” He winked at the reporter while Beth’s mind reeled.

Jamie Donovan. Jamie. But not the man she’d slept with.

This made no sense. The man and the reporter were still talking, their words jangling around in her head like broken glass scraping against her skull. Jamie. But not Jamie. She stared at the name that hovered beneath the man as he spoke: Jamie Donovan of Donovan Brothers Brewery.

Her hand shook as she reached for the mouse and clicked the pause icon.

A weight grew in her throat. Not tears or illness or emotion. It felt as if her actual flesh was swelling up and pressing her throat into a smaller and smaller space. She tried to swallow and couldn’t.

The man worked for Donovan Brothers. He’d been at the brewery. He was in the pictures. But he wasn’t Jamie.

Beth clicked frantically back through the pages until she pulled up that group picture again. She opened another window and tried querying every name, but she didn’t get any good image results. Just picture after picture of the Donovan Brothers’ green logo and photos of the awards and labels of the various beers they sold.

Who was he? Was he Wallace or Chester or Eric?

Beth stood up so quickly that she banged her thigh hard into the desk, but the pain barely registered. She stumbled out from behind her desk and into the cheerful brightness of the shop.

“Cairo?”

Cairo popped up from behind the cash register. “Yes?”

“What does Jamie Donovan look like?”

Cairo shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s cute. Pretty preppy-looking. Straitlaced, but he’s got a sweet smile.”

“Dark hair?” Beth made herself ask, even though her throat tried to close over the words.

“No, not dark. Sort of gold. Not super blond. Why?”

“Just… We…” All that blood pounding in her brain was doing her no good at all. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t even feel. Her body had gone numb. “No reason,” she managed.

“Are you okay, Beth?” Cairo started to reach for her, but Beth backed away.

“I’m fine. I just…I’m not feeling well. Are you still willing to cover for me for an hour? I think I’d better head home.”

“Of course, but…”

Beth rushed back into her office to grab her purse and her phone. She shut down her computer and cleared the history, not quite sure why—all she knew was that she felt ashamed. Ashamed because she’d been tricked. Made a fool of. And, my God, that was an awful, familiar feeling she hadn’t had to deal with in years.

She started hearing the words in her head that she’d absorbed over years of studying sexuality and women’s history. Someone else can’t bring you shame. Shame means you did something wrong. You did nothing wrong. But how else was she supposed to feel after being tricked and lied to?

Tears sprang to her eyes, but she growled her frustration as she blinked them back.

She wasn’t seventeen this time. She didn’t have to simply sit quietly and take it. This time, she’d confront it head-on, and give the shame to the one who deserved it.

When she stalked out of the office, Cairo was helping a customer, dusting a sample of honey body powder on the woman’s arm, but she looked up with concern in her eyes as Beth passed. Beth watched the customer bring her arm up and tentatively touch her tongue to her wrist. The sight would have made Beth smile on any other day, but today she simply watched in blank confusion.

Her body was still numb, her head still beating like a pulse. It occurred to her that she probably shouldn’t drive, but she pushed through the doors and headed straight to her new cherry-red Nissan 370Z. The engine roared to life with the barest turn of the key. She’d purchased it for herself five months before, because she’d wanted it, and she was trying to train herself to take what she wanted. Though right now all she wanted to do was kill someone. Someone whose name she didn’t even know.

The shock of it hit her again, and she gasped in a breath to try to stop the dizziness. She was in a car on a public street. She couldn’t indulge the black spots dancing at the edge of her vision. She took another breath, and another. And even though her whole skull still thumped with every beat of her pulse, her vision cleared, and the closer she got to the brewery, the calmer she felt. Not less furious, but more. Angry in a focused way.

When she pulled into the brewery lot, she shut off the engine, got out of the car and quietly shut the door.

Her heels ground sand against asphalt as she walked. She watched her own hand curl around the door handle as she opened it, as if her fingers had nothing to do with her.

She stepped into a cheerful scene. Fiddle music fell from speakers. Laughter erupted from a table nearby. Beth walked through the laughter as if she were in one of those dreams where nothing made any sense, but she just kept moving.

The man behind the bar turned around, and she felt her heart brace itself, but he was no one she knew. A stranger. Though they were all strangers, really.

She waited until he looked at her. “Is Jamie Donovan here?” Her skin burned with regret as she spoke the name.

The man—a boy, really—leaned forward. “I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that.”

The music had seemed quiet when she’d walked in, but now it swelled in her ears, along with the noise of the early Friday crowd. “Jamie Donovan?” she said more loudly. “Is he available?”

“He’s not working the bar tonight. Is there something I can help you with?” He said it as if the request was a common one. As if women walked in here all the time looking for a man named Jamie who’d lied his way into sex. A scalding wash of shame crashed through her. She’d been laughed at before, and she couldn’t do it again. She couldn’t. So she nodded and started to back away.

A door opened to her left, and she jumped in horror, thinking it could be him. But it was just a customer coming out of the bathroom.

When Beth realized that she’d felt genuine fear, she smashed it down and turned it into anger, like pressure turning coal into diamonds.

She stood straight and met the gaze of the bartender again. “I need to see him. It’s personal.”

The boy’s eyebrows rose, but after a wary moment, he shrugged. “I’ll see if he’s in the back. What’s your name?”

“My name is Beth Cantrell. Tell him that and see if he’ll come out.” She put a hand on the bar, not to steady herself but to give her fingers something to squeeze, because the anger was eating her up.

And then she waited to find out exactly who she’d had sex with six months before.

ERIC PICKED UP A HALF-FULL bottle of pilsner and squeezed the neck tight in his hand. He wouldn’t throw it against the wall. He wouldn’t. But this damn bottling machine was supposed to have been fixed last week, and now it was doing an even worse job, jostling the bottles so much that half the beer foamed out before it reached the capping station.

“Shut it down!” he yelled at Wallace.

Wallace scowled and shut down the line, and when the roar of machinery died down, Wallace’s stream of creatively foul curses pealed through the cement-walled room.

Wallace didn’t care about bottling or distribution or profit margins. His only concern was the beer, and a lot of it was slowly crawling its way toward the drain in the floor.

Eric cursed. “I’m going to have that mechanic’s head on a platter.”

“Not until I’ve torn it off his neck,” Wallace yelled.

Eric glanced down at the tubing that snaked across the floor. “Goddamn it. You know what needs to be done. There’s no way we’re getting this back on line today. Maybe not even tomorrow.”

Wallace bit back what sounded suspiciously like a sob, but it was hard to read his emotions behind the thick beard that covered his whole lower face. His giant shoulders sunk, bringing his height down from about six-six to six-five. “It’s a damn tragedy,” he wheezed before turning to stomp toward the door that led to the tank room. A moment later he was back, the valve having been locked, and he mournfully unhooked the hose from the bottler and moved it over to the drain. He thumbed the valve and pilsner poured from the tube directly into the screened hole in the floor.

“I’ll kill him,” he muttered.

“We probably shouldn’t.”

“That batch was fucking stellar.”

“And there’s plenty of it left.” Eric put a reassuring hand on Wallace’s shoulder and they shared a moment of silence over the beer as it spiraled down into the sewer system.

Wallace sniffed, but Eric was afraid to look and see if there were tears wetting his beard. “I’ve got to make a phone call about this.”

“Rake him over the fucking coals,” Wallace insisted.

Eric strode through the silence of the tank room and emerged into the chaos of the…well, it was a kitchen now, though it never had been before. In fact, two men were currently wrestling a gigantic pizza oven into place against the far wall.

Months of prep work had led to this very event, and Eric wished he felt more than just happiness for Jamie. He wished he felt excited instead of nervous. But Jamie was grinning as he turned away from the stove and headed toward the doors to the front room, Henry hot on his heels.

“Henry,” Eric called before the boy could disappear. “Are you working cleanup tonight?”

Henry jerked to a stop, his hand already on one of the doors. His freckles stood out against his pale skin, as if Eric had frightened him.

“I am, but…Jamie has me filling in at the bar so he can supervise the installation.”

“Great. But when you’re done I need you in the bottling room. Dump all the beer and put the bottles into recycling, then mop the floor.”

“Got it.”

Henry disappeared and Eric retreated to his office. He wanted to spend time helping Jamie, but he had his own work to do, boring as it was. His muscles tightened to stone as he shut the door and called the mechanic.

He felt a little better after yelling at the guy and demanding that he get his ass to the brewery at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, Saturday or not. Eric hung up with a little less tension in his shoulders. Still, there was no silencing the laughter from the other room. It reminded him of his brother, and how different they were.

Eric tried to make himself smile at the sound of it. He wanted Jamie to be happy. Without a doubt. But Eric couldn’t help the feeling that his own happiness was slipping away. Melodramatic, maybe, but still true.

This place was his whole life. This brewery. This office. This role he had here.

Eric dug his fingers into the back of his neck and took a deep breath. There was no point sitting around brooding. He had work to do.

A minute later, someone knocked on the door. Eric looked up, expecting to see Jamie, but it was Henry. “Hey, did you get to the bottling room yet?”

“No. Um…some woman is pissed at Jamie and he asked me to come get you.”

“If she’s pissed at Jamie, then it’s Jamie’s problem, not mine.”

Henry’s face creased with embarrassment, but he just stood there with his fingers wrapped around the door.

“Fine.” Eric sighed. “I’ll be there in a second.” What the hell was this? A year ago, Eric wouldn’t have been surprised by anything involving Jamie and a woman, but now…Jamie had a girlfriend. A really nice girlfriend. If he was screwing around on her, Eric didn’t want to know. It would put a whole lot of strain into their newly easy relationship.

Still, he felt a little surge of satisfaction. This was like the old days, when Jamie had needed him. In fact, if Jamie’s girlfriend hadn’t been a consideration, Eric would’ve smiled as he stood up and headed for the barroom, off to make sense of Jamie’s screwup again.

The workmen stood in the doorway, holding the doors slightly open as they peered out. Their eyes widened when they saw Eric coming, but he ignored that and tipped his head in the direction of the oven. They shifted toward it as if they were only pretending to go back to work, but Eric held his tongue. He didn’t want to step on Jamie’s toes.

He pushed through the doors. “Jamie,” he said when he spotted his brother standing at the end of the bar with his arms crossed. “What’s the problem?”

And then Jamie shifted to the side, and Eric’s world split apart as if an earthquake had just torn through the ground beneath his feet.

For a long moment, Eric could only look at her. Her. He should have anticipated this, after last night. But his relief had made him stupid. And now here she was, standing next to Jamie.

Reality hit him then, with all the subtlety of a two-by-four across the face. Eric’s eyes shifted to Jamie, who was also staring at him, though his eyebrows were raised in incredulity. “Eric,” he said, and Eric caught the way Beth blinked in shock.

Oh, shit. This was bad. Worse than bad.

Jamie cocked his head. “Eric, this is Beth Cantrell. There seems to be some confusion about something that happened at the business expo earlier this year.”

Something that happened. Okay. Maybe he could still salvage some part of this. If Beth hadn’t said anything to Jamie yet… “Beth—” he started, but she stalked toward him like a vengeful goddess.

“Eric?” she sneered. “Eric?”

His eyes darted to Jamie. “I can explain.”

One of her elegant fingers poked him in the chest. “You can explain? Explain why you told me your name was Jamie?”

“I didn’t actually—”

“Explain that you lied to me?”

“Beth, if you’ll just—”

“Explain,” she yelled, her finger digging a hole in his sternum, “that you let me think you were someone else when you had sex with me?”

“What?” Jamie yelled.

That was it. This was an official disaster. The solemn silence that had fallen over the barroom seemed to confirm the horror of the situation.

“I can explain,” Eric said again, weakly. He thought the low growl was coming from Beth, but he couldn’t be sure, because at that moment Jamie surged forward, grabbed Eric by his shirtfront and twisted.

“Henry!” Jamie shouted, as if Henry wasn’t standing right there, wide-eyed. “Cover the bar. You…” His green eyes burned into Eric. “Into the back. Right. Now.”

Oh, this was a new experience, being the one who’d done something wrong. Something hot and scalding slid into his veins. Shame. Eric didn’t like it one bit.

He pulled away from Jamie’s grasp and kept his eyes on Beth. “Beth, let’s talk about this. Alone.”

She moved toward the doors with a jerky nod, and Eric held his hand up to stop Jamie from following. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“You’ll fucking talk to me now,” Jamie countered.

As Beth pushed through the double doors, Eric spared a look around the room. Every eye was on them, and it was a Friday evening, so there were a lot of eyes. “Let me talk to Beth alone. She doesn’t deserve to be in the middle of us.”

“Seems like she’s already right in the middle of us. Or did I misunderstand something?” But Jamie had fallen back on his heels, and his jaw jumped with frustration instead of aggression, so Eric turned and followed Beth into the back.

She was pacing across the kitchen area, her movement followed by the workmen’s fascinated eyes. She wore the same kind of hip-hugging skirt he’d seen her in last night, but this time her stiletto heels were dark purple instead of black.

Eric swallowed hard. “My office is this way.” He gestured toward the hallway and she glared at his hand as if she wanted to snap it off.

“We might want to stay out here. Whoever you are, you’re less likely to end up dead if there are witnesses.”

One of the men made a noise that was somewhere between a bark and a laugh, but when Eric shot them a glare, both men pressed their mouths into straight lines.

When he didn’t respond, Beth passed by him with a sneer and stalked down the hallway. He gestured toward his office and the chairs in front of his desk, but she didn’t sit down. Instead she paced to one corner and then spun around to glare at him.

“You came back,” he said quietly as he shut the door.

“Yes, I came back. Is that your big concern right now? How about, who the hell are you? How about we start with that?”

“Of course,” he said, his face flaming with embarrassment. This was no longer a gorgeous secret they shared. It wasn’t a quiet whisper he could offer into her ear to make her smile. There was no more titillation in this for her; it was all betrayal.

Her eyes looked furious and frightened.

“I’m sorry, Beth,” he said. “I can’t… Listen. When we met, you thought I was my brother because of the name tag on the table. He was supposed to have been working the booth that day.”

“Well, that explains the first fifteen seconds of our relationship,” she snapped.

“I know. I mean, I knew at the time that it wasn’t right. I did try to correct you—”

“You’re kidding, right? Did you try really, really hard, Eric?”

“I—”

“This is…this is horrible. You lied to me just to…”

“No, it wasn’t like that. I swear.” Eric felt sweat prickle along his hairline, and his stomach turned as he registered the hurt on her face. “Beth, I’m so sorry.”

“Why would you do that? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know. At the time…at the time you said you’d heard of my brother, you knew his reputation, and maybe that made it easier.”

“You pretended to be him because you thought that’s who I wanted?” she shouted.

“No. Not that. I knew you wanted me.”

Her gaze had been shifting wildly around his office, but her eyes flew to him at those words. “You should have told me. Right at the start. Or later, when we met for wine. Or—” Her voice stopped as if the words had been cut in half. They’d met for wine the first day of the expo, and he’d touched her in that hidden booth, making her come while the rest of the bar moved around them unaware. The memory seemed to flash over her face and turn into shame.

“Who are you?” she growled, her hands clenching to fists.

“I’m Eric. Donovan,” he clarified stupidly. “I’m Jamie’s brother. I thought it would be easier if…” Hell, what else was there to add? He was the brother of Jamie and Tessa Donovan and he helped run the brewery. There was really nothing more he could think to say. That was all there was. Which was why he’d been able to talk himself into this mess in the first place. Because he hadn’t been willing to risk ruining the brief, wild spark that had arced between him and Beth. He’d needed that moment to be someone he’d never been before.

Beth closed her eyes and shook her head. “You thought it would be easier,” she whispered. “Easier to get me into bed.”

“That’s not what I meant. I swear to God, Beth, that wasn’t it. We were just… It was all just a fantasy, wasn’t it? I didn’t want to make it…”

“Real?” she filled in. And yes, that was what he meant, but it sounded cruel now. It sounded horrible.

Tears flashed to life in her eyes, and Eric reached for her, knowing he shouldn’t. She stepped back and his hand fell, but she watched it as if it were a snake.

“You made me into a fool.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“And now—” She swept an arm in the direction of the barroom. “Now I let everyone know you made a fool out of me. Jesus.”

He shook his head.

“I did,” she insisted. “But that’s okay, because I wanted everyone to know that you were the one who should be ashamed. Not me.” She pressed a finger to her mouth. Her eyes looked far away. “I didn’t want it to be me feeling that.”

“You shouldn’t. I wasn’t trying to trick you. I just didn’t know how to stop and say, ‘Can we start over? My name’s actually Eric.’”

“That’s no excuse.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You should have told me then. Or last night. Or anytime in the past six months.”

He nodded, and Beth met his gaze again, her dark brown eyes deep with sorrow. “You’ve ruined it.”

“I know.” He did. It had been a perfect memory. A perfect moment in his life. Her body and her mouth and her trembling hands. And now it was something sordid.

Beth stood a little straighter and seemed to reset herself. The tears stopped and her chin rose in disdain as she stepped forward and brushed past him. “I just wanted you to know that. That you ruined it. Don’t ever call me. Don’t get in touch. But I guess that was your plan from the start, right?”

She was right, so he didn’t dare touch her arm to stop her. He didn’t even apologize again. He just let her slam his office door and disappear from his life as quickly as she’d reappeared.

Eric collapsed into a chair, let his head fall into his hands and called himself every name in the book. And yet there was still that small, stony part of him that didn’t regret what he’d done. Not at all. It was that same part that had always been selfish, but lately it seemed to be growing.