No Perfect Princess (5 page)

“Of course I will.”

“I’ll try my best to come see you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean it! Julian isn’t far. Besides, I’ve never been there. I hear the pie is killer.”

I felt a little better. At least my best defense mechanism still worked. Making light out of a crappy situation, especially with the genius stroke of changing the subject to pie. No man could resist that one. He was putty in my—

Shit.

I dissolved to goo as his smile turned into an expression I’d never seen from him before. While his lips were still upturned, they’d gone…soft. Protective? Yeah, okay…that was it. His soft kiss on the top of my head was proof. He’d done it a thousand times before, a sweet and tender gesture that made me think of a father’s affection for his daughter, not that I knew anything about that firsthand. But, like always, I smiled, too. It made me feel…cherished, I guessed. But not better about him going.

On that note, I pulled back.

But not far.

Michael slipped his arms tighter around me. And became oddly quiet.

I tilted my head back to look up at him. His brilliant hazel stare was already waiting, alive with an unmistakable message. He was struggling with all this as much as I was.

“I’m going to do this.”

The words were so soft, I almost wondered if he said them. Then I realized they might have been more for himself than me.

Then I realized it didn’t really matter.

As he bent close enough to kiss me.

Then even closer.

My eyes slid closed. My senses opened up. I vowed to savor everything I could about this, remembering every nuance and scent and flavor and feel of this man…

The solid strength of his arms, wrapped around me so perfectly.

His smell, like he’d taken a bath in fresh mountain air then flown over the ocean.

The scrape of his stubble on my face, rough with the urgency of his need, his possession.

This…was the kiss of a man. Not a groping poser, not a desperate boy—and yet because of that, I knew it would be over all too soon. For once, I wanted hours of making out. I wanted his hands all over me, his beard burn across my face, his imprint on every corner of my mind…not his lingering heat, as he pulled away much,
much
too soon.

I stood, unwilling to open my eyes, still only aware of his harsh breaths matched in cadence to mine. Just when I thought my heart was slowing, he gripped the back of my head, slammed my face into his chest, and groaned into my hair.

“Why,” I finally rasped, “does it always end?”

“Huh?”

“You heard me.”

I spat it, hoping he’d be enraged enough to kiss me again. Instead, he pulled back with that same playful grin tugging at his sinful lips.

Oh, yeah? Well, two can play that game, buddy.

“Nothing,” I quipped. “Never mind. I was just thinking out loud, wondering when my damn bro—
bestie
—and her boy-toy will be done in there. I’ve been standing out here forever.”

I jumped my gaze toward the gates of the house, determined not to give him the remotest chance of wondering about my half-slip—or reading anything else in me right now. Maybe it
was
a good thing, him leaving for a while. Like Claire, Michael was getting too damn good at excavating little factoids out of me. Well, he could give up
that
quest right now.

“Why do you always do that?”

Give it
up,
Captain America.

“Do what?”

“Pull back like that…when you think you’ve said too much.”

“The hell I do.”

“You totally do.”

“Don’t you have a trip to take? Up your big damn mountain?” I gave him a teasing shove toward his truck.

“Margaux?”

“Hmmm?”

“You won’t always be able to run, you know.”

“Maybe not. But for now, it’s all I’ve got.”

“That’s not true. You have me.”

“For the five remaining minutes before you leave?” I jammed both hands into the pockets of my puffer vest and kicked at the ground, able to effectively cloak my smirk when he pushed out a heavy breath.
Good
. I’d tapped into his guilt at last—deflecting his attention in all the right ways.

“It’s not permanent, dammit.”

“I know.”

“I’ll be back in a few weeks.”

“I know.”

And we’ll continue this conversation then.”

“We’ll see.”

Angry exhale, the sequel. “I need to head out. I want to get there before sundown.”

My victory ended all too quickly. The reality that he really
wouldn’t
be here, even for a few weeks…well, it sucked. Big, hard ones. And not in the good way.

“Text me that you get there?”

“I will.”

He got to his truck and unlocked the door. But he’d only hitched one boot up to the step before I sprinted over, grabbed both sides of his face, and kissed him soundly again.

No help. This still sucked, worse than I thought it would—especially right after the man called me out on my shit. Again.

“Be safe, Michael.”

He smiled that unique little smile again. What the hell
was
that new look all about? I felt like asking him to freeze it so I could yank out my phone and snap a pic in order to indulge some more conjecturing.

Instead, I watched him climb up, slam the door then drive away—

Taking a small but unmistakable piece of my heart with him.

I stared until he made the turn, leaving me to follow the paths of oak leaves and pine needles as they swirled across the road in the light afternoon wind. I almost begged them to take me with them. Maybe then I could focus on something other than the weirdness of standing alone in the middle of silence too huge to bear, a lump in my throat and my heart in my hand. I wasn’t used to either feeling—and I sure as
hell
wasn’t going to ask them to stick around for dinner.

Michael

“D
ammit.”

Spewing it for the fortieth time felt no better than the first. My go-tos for times like this, a bottle of full-sugar Coke and the best classic rock station on the radio, didn’t help my mood for shit, either.

Could’ve had something to do with the nonstop make-out session my cock was having with my jeans.

Fuck.

I had to go and think of making out again.

More specifically, making out with Margaux Asher. The taste of her lips, like strawberry candy. The smell of her hair, exotic and expensive. The feel of her skin, sleeker than satin sheets…

Damn. Satin sheets.
Oh, yeah
. The ones on the bed beneath us in my fantasies. A big one, for all kinds of fun games…

Come and get me, Mr. Pearson.

You’re tempting the dragon, Miss Asher.

Dragon? What dragon? You’re all the way over there.

Because if I come all the way over
there,
you won’t be a safe woman.

Pfft. You expect me to believe that, when—ahhh!

You believe me now?

You ripped off my panties!

And you loved it.

I waited for her breathless
yes—
but her lips released a blare, instead. A car horn. Then another.

I blinked.

Shit
. Where had that stop sign come from? And why was I asking the question as I noticed the sign—in my rearview?

“Head outta your ass, fuck munch!”

I let the eloquent one speed by in his souped-up Camaro. Douche had probably blown through that intersection yesterday but that didn’t negate his accuracy now.
Near
accuracy. My head hadn’t been in my
ass
, per se—though he had the neighborhood right.

I pulled over—safely this time—and hauled in a couple of deep breaths, crossing arms over the steering wheel. After a second, I peered over them. Another lazy day in Ramona. The town was was a slice of Mayberry-meets-modern, vintage and antique stores vying with trendy taco joints and name-brand fast food. In the distance, were the mountains I’d be driving into, taking me home.

Taking you
to
home…or
away from
Margaux
?

And there went another five minutes I wasn’t able to get through without a thought of her.

So yeah, maybe I’d “exaggerated” Mom’s need for me, stretching a week into a month—not that Andrea had been listening when I approached her about taking the time. The woman uttered ten sentences to me during the three minutes she’d tolerated me in her office, granting the request with barely a snort. I wasn’t about to pull a fucking John Mayer and write a song about it, but the behavior was
not
the norm for the woman who’d turned micromanagement into an art form.

Until ten months ago. Almost to the day that our biggest client, Stone Global, nearly went the way of Rome, Enron, and the Harlem Shake for grand declines. It had started with Trey Stone’s dazzling backslide into debauchery. Two days after that, the family estate burned to the ground. A week later, Josiah Stone was six feet under. A month after that, Killian Stone was officially missing.

All of the Stones’ drama should’ve added another gleam to Andrea’s eyes. She needed PR crises like a leopard needed meat. Instead, she’d returned from Chicago as if she’d gone vegan. The glitch worsened when everyone wondered why Margaux hadn’t returned with her.

Everyone except the person who’d noticed the anomaly first.

Me.

I’d never forget that instant as long as I lived. The weird confusion of watching Andrea walk in alone. The weirder experience of gaping at the empty space behind her, normally occupied by Margaux, and feeling like I’d eaten my Brussel sprouts but didn’t get dessert. Weirdest of all? Locking myself into my office, punching her number on my phone, and texting her for a reason other than work.

:: Where are you? Is all okay? ::

I’d parked at my desk like a pathetic ball sack, waiting for her to text back. Then grinned like a bigger sack when she did, ensuring she was “just sorting some things through”. I’d kept my response to some brief encouragement despite the burn to ask more, strangely glad when her “sorting” included fully stepping away from the company—for good. Conceding my jones for the boss’s daughter had been one thing. Hiding it from everyone, especially Claire, Chad, and Talia, was a different shit pile altogether. Once upon a time, Margaux had been our little private joke, the easy-bitch oven we could blame for all our stresses. All her
sms
—narcissism, materialism, sarcasm, shoe porn-ism—made us feel better about ourselves, and therefore able to accomplish the near-impossible feats of public image repair tasked to us by Andrea. When hating on Andrea felt too dangerous—translation, all the time—it had always been easier to hate on daughter dearest, instead.

Especially for Margaux herself.

Once that revelation zapped me, it was impossible to look at Margaux the same way again. It was like gazing at a painting, only to have someone shine a black light in and expose a wholly different image. And the new picture in front of me? Fucking fascinating. And—
screw me a hundred ways to insanity
—sexy as hell.

Work had gotten
a lot
more interesting.

The woman’s humor, once grating, was now my gateway into her quicksilver mind. Her vanity? Blatant bid for common ground with her mother. Her sulks were just as difficult to witness as the nosedives into insecurity that they really were. And her constant anger? Easiest one of all. All too early in life, I’d learned all about anger’s bitch of a mother. Fear.

But as the schooling behind the new law degree on my wall attested, lots of answers sometimes only led to lots more questions.

What was Margaux Asher afraid of? And what had happened in Chicago to intensify it? And what would she be like if that terror was gone?

Now that she’d stepped out from Andrea’s shadow, it was time for her to find out—to pull a phoenix and fly free from the ashes of her past. I’d been psyched for the transformation to begin.

As if connected to my thoughts, the late afternoon sun fired the landscape around me in dark gold and yellow. Good thing Mother Nature was jiving with the message, because Margaux sure as hell hadn’t.
Phoenix from the flames? Not exactly.
While she’d grown wings in some important ways, she insisted on folding them back in so many others—to the point nobody could even peek beneath.

Not true. She’d let me peek. A little.

And goddamn, I liked what I’d seen.

And tasted.

And felt.

I restarted the truck with a vicious grunt. Like
that
was going to banish the new highway my thoughts sped along…and the unnerving revelation they led to.

That I’d let her get a peek at me, too.

Maybe more than a peek.

I gunned the engine. Not a lot. Enough to move the truck just over the speed limit as I passed Dudley’s, normally my must-stop for a bear claw and the strongest coffee outside my kitchen. Not today. Not with a hard-on that would’ve had the hostesses gawking—then dialing Mom the second I left.

I went for creative visualization, instead. Pretended the tension in my balls surged down my leg and into the gas pedal. The Denali roared, appreciating the extra juice as I hooked a right to start the climb up the mountain. Couldn’t say the same for my testicles—or the goddamn missile they were connected to, seemingly wired to only one guidance system on the planet.

The only signal they didn’t dare respond to.

Connected to the one woman on the planet I couldn’t keep desiring like this.

So tragic, so poetic. Doesn’t stop the fact that you’re from a much different world than her, asswipe—as in, a different
galaxy
. Now get your ass up this mountain and out of your goddamn funk.

“I’m not in a funk.”

Which was why I growled aloud at the fucking voices in my head. And was on my way to voluntarily sleep in my old bed, on the Spiderman sheets Mom kept out of nostalgia, for weeks instead of days. And had taken a four-week-long checkout from my job, my condo, my friends, and the sun on Mission Bay in favor of sketchy internet, sketchier plumbing, and a likely snow dusting or two.