Some Like It Perfect (A Temporary Engagement) (17 page)

Delia stopped and blinked. Diane looked at Gus and smiled pleasantly, a little Stepfordy.

Jack’s eyebrows raised imperceptibly and Delia finally chuckled. “Yeah. That’s going to shock quite a few people.”

Gus said, “Jack, we’re late.”

He pulled away from Diane and Gus’s shoulders relaxed imperceptibly. She said soft enough that only Delia could hear, “You’re wrong. Not any woman can make any man forget his name.”

Well. . . Delia wouldn’t argue with her. But she would bet that woman could make any man forget his name at least once.

When Jack came up to them, Gus maneuvered him between her and Delia, never looking back at Diane.

They rode the elevator up in silence, Delia glancing between Jack and Gus until she finally said, “I’m guessing here, but, what a bitch?”

Gus blinked, coming out of her trance.

Jack said, “Diane Evans. She’s an old family friend.”

Delia said, “I don’t think so,” and Gus said, “No, she isn’t,” at the same time.

Gus said, “Don’t ever call her friend, Jack. Ever.”

He nodded and said softly, “I know what she is, Gus. I misspoke. She is an old acquaintance.”

Delia raised her eyebrows, wondering just what this woman had done to Gus but Gus lifted her chin and said, “All you need to know, Delia, is that she is a liar.”

“Okay. But I really know three things. She’s a liar, she’s a bitch, and we hate her.”

Gus’s eyes stopped glowing. “She is, she is, and we do.” She smiled. “And now she thinks Jack is engaged.”

Delia put her hand to her chest and blinked wildly, “It was so sudden.”

Jack’s lips tipped up but he said, “That won’t stop Diane. Especially when she asks Mother why she hasn’t heard the happy news before this.”

“Maybe we should invite Delia to Sunday dinner.”

He said, “Gus, I can handle Diane Evans without resorting to a fake fiance.”

Gus folded her arms, facing him squarely. “Could she make you forget your name?”

“Of course not.”

“Even now that she has Mother doing her dirty work?”

“Even now. Even with Mother championing her cause. I will not ever marry Diane Evans, I could not ever forget anything around her. Not my name, not my sister.”

Gus nodded, relief crossing her face, and she said, “Because you want Delia.”

Delia froze. Jack didn’t say anything.

Gus said, “Delia doesn’t know how to fight dirty. She’s going to be on Diane’s radar now.”

He turned to look at Delia and folded his arms as well. “We’ll keep her safe, between the two of us.”

Delia waved her hands. “Hello, I’m standing right here.”

The elevator stopped at Gus’s floor and the doors slid open. Gus hopped out and said, “Remember, sushi for lunch.”

Delia grimaced. “Sushi? I did not agree to that.”

“Yes, you did. While you were making Jack forget his name. While he was making you forget yours.”

“Not what happened.”

“Then why are we going to sushi for lunch?”

Delia looked at Jack. “Do you remember agreeing to sushi?”

He shook his head and the elevator doors closed on Gus’s wide grin.

Unsubtle was the word Jack would use to describe his sister.

Delia said, “I hate sushi. I really don’t remember anyone saying anything about sushi.”

Jack turned to her and smiled. “We can’t win this. Either we agreed to it and we really can’t remember, or sushi was never mentioned and we still can’t remember.”

She muttered, “I didn’t forget my name.”

Jack didn’t say anything because he had. Gus could have told him she was marrying Nate the motorcycle-riding delinquent and he’d have no idea.

He said, “I thought you weren’t going to interfere, that you were going to let Gus figure out who she is and what she wants on her own?”

“I wasn’t interfering. I was pointing out something that she hadn’t yet realized.” Delia jabbed a finger in his direction. “She doesn’t know, Jack, what is even possible. Why haven’t you ever told her that she could have the world? Someone told
you
.
You
got the memo.”

He tried not to laugh at her outrage. He tried not to worry that he had failed Gus somehow.

“I didn’t know that when I was eighteen.”

“I doubt that.”

“I didn’t know I could have the world until thirty minutes ago when you made my coffee blush.”

She sniffed. “That was for the sixteen bucks. And to show your sister how it’s done with a
mature
man. I gave her a hormonal teenager!”

Her face warmed; her face said that lesson hadn’t gone according to plan.

Jack put his hand on the small of her back as they exited the elevator. “Liar. Such a bad liar. I wouldn’t believe you even if I hadn’t seen what you’d painted on my ceiling.”

“It’s not you. It’s not me. How many times do I have to say that?”

“You can say it as many times as you like. I’m not going to believe it.”

Delia let out her breath in frustration, flinging open the office door. Jack closed it carefully behind them, watching her pull on her booties, watching her think about fleeing up the ladder and away from him.

He followed her onto the painter’s cloth, crowding her but not touching her.

She whirled around, holding a paintbrush between them. “Your desk is over there.”

But she kept telling him with her eyes and her mouth,
I want you. I don’t want to want you.

He wanted her. He wasn’t conflicted about it.

She jabbed him lightly. “I’m not going to clean your paintbrush.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“You know what it means. And I’m not going to do it.”

He bent his head until his lips brushed her ear and whispered, “I know what it means. And you’d do it if I cleaned yours first.”

She sucked in a breath and said huskily, “I wouldn’t clean it with a ten-foot pole.”

“What about a ten-foot tail?”

“Come back when you have one and we’ll talk.”

He sniffed her, right below her ear where it was warm and musky, sweet and spicy, and murmured, “I’m back.”

She dropped the paintbrush, her fingers curled into his side, and she said, “That’s not a tail.”

“Alas, it’s not ten feet, either.”

He slid his hand around her waist, pulling her into him, her body fitting into his. Just right.

She put her other hand on his chest and said, “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

“You want to, you don’t want to. You haven’t decided what you’re
going
to do yet.”

He breathed in her ear, hot and moist. He didn’t say anything more, just let his breath surround her, warm her from the inside out, curl down her neck.

When her belly quivered against his, he said, “And we weren’t talking about sleeping together, were we?”

He put his lips on her cheek, still cool from outside, and trailed his way to her mouth.

She closed her eyes and whispered, “Don’t kiss me, Jack.”

He stopped at the corner of her mouth. “Why?”

“Because one of us has to think about the future.”

“I am. I’m thinking thirty minutes into the future when I have you naked and soaped up in my shower.”

Her eyes blinked open. “Wait. You have a shower in your bathroom? This bathroom that I’m not allowed to use?”

He nodded, sliding his hands up her back, pulling her even closer, and she managed, “Why do you have a shower in your bathroom?”

“Long nights, early mornings. I can’t always get home to clean up before a function.”

“So it’s not for getting naked with stupid women who can’t remember their plan when you smile at them?”

“Not yet.”

She fisted her hands between them. “The future I was talking about was more distant than thirty minutes. Like tomorrow, when I’ll still be painting your ceiling.”

He chuckled. “I’m getting confused.”

“And the next day, and the next, for the next few weeks.”

“Still confused about what you’re talking about.”

She pushed at him. “Lizard brain wants what the lizard brain wants. I can’t help it that lizard brain wants you.”

He sighed, at the unfamiliar phrase, at her hands pushing insistently at him, and she said, “But I know you’d be the worst mistake of my life.”

He pulled away. “Would I?”

He was fairly certain he’d never been anyone’s mistake, let alone the worst. He couldn’t imagine he’d be
Delia’s
worst mistake.

“Worse than your tattoo?”

“Yes.” No hesitation.

He let her go, stepping back.

She watched him a long moment, then nodded and turned away. She scurried up the ladder, crawled onto the scaffolding.

When he couldn’t see any part of her, Jack said, “Delia, my lizard brain wants you, too. And I know you wouldn’t be any kind of mistake.”

Delia did not go to lunch. Jack couldn’t make her, Gus hadn’t been able to coax her down.

And while he might have frightened her off, he thought it really was she just hated sushi. He didn’t believe, even in his heart of hearts, that Delia
could
be frightened off.

Gus said, “Who hates sushi? You don’t have to get the raw stuff.”

She ordered her own raw stuff and Jack said, “Next time, think of that before you blackmail us into believing we agreed to something we didn’t.”

Gus smiled at him, and it made him think more went on in those few minutes he and Delia had been in their own little world than just sushi.

Jack wouldn’t ask.

Gus said, “I can’t believe you couldn’t talk her into it.”

“I can’t talk her into a number of things.” And yes, he could hear the frustration in his voice. “She says I’d be the worst mistake of her life.”

Gus said, “And you believe her?”

He’d seen Delia’s face when she’d said it. She believed it.

She was wrong, but that didn’t mean she didn’t believe it.

He nodded and Gus said faithfully, “She’s totally wrong. Out of this world wrong. Couldn’t be more wrong.”

“I get the point, Gus, thank you.”

“No, you don’t, Jack. She threw all caution to the winds once, loved with everything she had, and he hadn’t been worthy. You would be.”

He remembered the look in Delia’s eyes in the coffee shop. The need, the want. How he just knew that them together would be more than, better than, anything he’d had before. It would be a raging fire, burning them up.

He could understand Delia’s reluctance to let that happen to her again. Could understand that it might be as painful as it was wonderful.

He said, “I don’t think it would be a matter of worthy. I think it depends on whether the fire turns the two of you into ash or into steel. And maybe there is just no way of knowing beforehand which way it will go.”

He sipped his bitter tea, thinking Delia wouldn’t have liked that either, and said, “Tomorrow, let’s go Thai. She’ll like that better. And you might want to think about what the fire would turn you and Nate into. You might want to think about if there is any fire.”

He
didn’t want to think about it. He prayed there wasn’t any fire.

Lizard brain wants what lizard brain wants,
and Jack sighed. It wasn’t Gus’s heart that wanted Nate, thank God. It was her lizard brain. Jack could accept that. As long as she didn’t end up pregnant.

Gus slammed her hands onto the table. “She told you, didn’t she?”

Jack debated what to tell Gus while their food was served. On one hand, he could probably trick whatever
it
was out of her by saying Delia had told him. On the other hand, his sister needed someone to believe in. Someone to trust completely.

He said, “Of course not. She hasn’t told me anything. I couldn’t get it out of her if I threatened her with raw fish,” and Gus laughed.

Jack continued. “I begged. I pleaded. She laughed in my face.”

Confidence filled Gus and she bounced in her seat. “She might not know how to fight dirty but she wouldn’t go back on her word.” Gus poured a gallon of sugar into her tea. “She’s tricky, Jack. You’ve got to be careful with your wording around her.”

“I really wish I knew what you were talking about.”

Gus shook her head. “You already don’t like him. But I’ll tell you what I told Delia so she’d promise not to tell you. I’m not pregnant, we don’t do animal sacrifice, and no drugs.”

Jack raised his eyebrows and Gus said, “Hard drugs. Come on, getting baked doesn’t count.”

Jack closed his eyes, sighing and shaking his head. “Well. . .thank you for that. I think.”

Gus nodded magnanimously. “You’re welcome. But I’m still not going to tell you anything about him. I’ve heard enough from Delia and I know you would be even worse.”

“She doesn’t like him?”

“She’s never met him. She doesn’t like what I’ve told her about him.”

Jack ate, kept his mouth full so he wouldn’t point out the obvious. That if Delia didn’t like what Gus had told her about Nate, Gus probably didn’t like it either.

Gus said, “She thinks I should raise my standards.”

“Maybe you should listen to her.”

“But her standards are impossible!
You
don’t even pass muster.”

Jack cocked his head. His sister had a point. “I really wonder what it is she objects to about me.”

“She says you’re sadistic.”