Think Before You Speak (4 page)

This was so not a comfortable place for my
thoughts to head this early in the morning. Or afternoon.

Nick’s warm body pressed in behind as he
wrapped his arms around and enveloped me with his musky scent.
“Mornin’ luv.”

From what I felt, it wouldn’t take much to
get him going again. Who was I kidding? With that Aussie accent, it
wouldn’t take much to get
me
going again. I greeted him with
a kiss of
eau d’ coffee
breath and a hint of an Oreo
chaser.

“Sorry again about the whole bed situation,”
I said, tearing myself away and pouring him a cup.

“No worries,” Nick said. “I ‘ave been in
worse.”

“A lot happened while you were gone.”

“So I see,” he said as he strolled about the
room in all his glory.

Don’t you just love the European mindset
sometimes? They’re so uninhibited and unashamed of the naked body,
while this here red-blooded American girl wore a robe. He walked
around admiring my new furnishings, offering me a daylight view of
all God had blessed him with – every tanned, toned, and tight inch.
Every last one.

‘Scuse me while I mop up the drool from my
new kitchen floor.

Nick continued, “This must ‘a kept you busy
while I was gone.”

“Actually this was my mom’s doing,” I
responded. “And her interior designer. If Reginald von Braun hadn’t
kept Mom in check, you’d be looking at a whole lot of lace and a
heaping bunch of florals instead of stripes and leather.”

“Then what kept you from calling me,
luv?”

“Say what?” was all I could think to say to
the sudden whiplash in the conversation.

He faced me with a furrow dipping beneath the
mussed hair. “I was overseas for almost two months. No message
whatsoever from my girl.”

Okay, there was no
friend
attached to
the
girl
. I could handle that. “Goes both ways, Nick. If
you’d wanted to converse, all you had to do was pick up your own
phone.”

And they say girls are needy. Sheesh.

“The shoot schedules and locations were in
constant flux,” Nick said. “I could never properly calculate the
time difference to call.”

“You coulda let your fingers do the talking,”
I returned.

All that got me was a puzzled look.

I tapped my fingers in the air. “You
know…text?”

Or take a remedial math class, but this I
kept to myself. No need to be rude and disrespectful – at least not
out loud, ‘specially after all of the stunning things he’d done to
me last night.

He caught me in his arms and pressed me up
against the new kitchen cabinets. The pout disappeared and a sexy
smile replaced it. “Let’s celebrate my homecoming then.”

“Didn’t we do that last night?” My voice
shivered as he nipped my ear and worked down my jaw.

“I ‘ave got a brief shoot down in San Antonio
early next week. How ‘bout we drive down Sunday and spend a little
one-on-one together.”

I could tell he was ready for a little
one-on-one right now. “I’ve got work on Wednesday night next
week.”

“Piece ‘a cake. The shoot is scheduled Monday
and Tuesday nights. After I’m done, we zip up the motorway in time
for your work. All’s good then?”

Wait a minute? A road trip? With Nick?
Weren’t we just arguing? Weren’t we just thinking about no
friend
with the
girl
?

Oh, yeah. That was me.

My knees were knocking from the intimacy a
trip together implied. Or maybe it was because of overworked
muscles from the night before. Perhaps more from what his roaming
hands were doing to my body as Nick stripped me of the robe and his
mouth explored mine. A combination of those three explanations?

Let’s go with that. San Antonio, here we
c-c-c-ome.

It bothered me how well Nick could manipulate
me – and yeah, that way too. He’d discovered my weakness. How to
get almost anything he wanted from me. With awesome sex he could
steer me easier than a rider with a bit in a filly’s maw.

So with that mental image, I had even more to
chew on during the four hour drive south.

A road trip. Together. Just Nick and me. That
bespoke an intimacy I hadn’t experienced since the epic blowup with
Big Z. This train was barreling down the tracks toward the ravine
so fast, I’d have to jump off soon before becoming a wreck on a
wreck.

But as a captive audience, I’d have to try
and make the best of the next few days. In order to do that, I’d
have to make it through this car ride first.

So what could we talk about? Did we even have
anything in common? Okay, his car might work. The sweet Jaguar
F-Type R Coupe cut down the interstate as smooth as an all-star
running back through a defensive line, with enough horsepower to
challenge my Vette in a street race. For a second anyway. The only
thing that would possibly make it better was if the Jag was a
convertible – and black.

I wasn’t about to concede my good ol’
American-born hot rod to some foreign-made piece of luxury without
more information. Even if it was a gorgeous model that made me want
to take it for a spin on my own. It didn’t hurt either that it was
a pearlescent charcoal gray. It’d go great as an accessory to the
new paint on my apartment walls.

“So,” I asked, “what’re the specs on this
Jag?”

“Specs?” Nick questioned.

“Like the horsepower.”

“Um…not sure.”

“Torque?” I pressed.

“What’s that?”

Yeah, this was going well. “I’m assuming it’s
a V-8?”

“Like the vegetable juice?”

The scenery of brown scrub fields and grazing
cattle flashed by almost as fast as my life. How could a guy own a
car worth nearly a hundred grand and know nothing about it? Every
man I’d ever known could rattle off the specs of their vehicle down
to the brand of spark plugs in the coil. Hell, even I could tell
you that much. Guys weren’t the only sex to have a thing for their
vehicles. Most of ‘em got a hard on just thinking about them.

This was going to be the longest trip of my
life. “So what
can
you tell me about this car?” I tried
again.

“Well…it’s got leather seats,” Nick
offered.

“I see.”

“And they’re heated.”

“Okay.” Heated seats aren’t really necessary
in Texas – especially in August. But I was willing to give him that
one since most high-end cars have heat at the seat as a standard
line item these days.

The continued car interrogation took up all
of about two minutes. God help me. How had I gotten myself wrangled
into a road trip with Nick? What were we possibly going to talk
about for the next three hours and fifty-eight minutes? It came to
me about then like a ten-pound sack of stupid dropped on my
head.

Nick and I had never really talked until now.
Most of our conversation up to that point had been more along the
line of
hey, Vicki
or
hey, Nick
and
oh yeah, just
like that
instead of chatter about banal and mundane things.
He’d never even told me exactly where in Europe he’d disappeared to
for the last couple of months. That’s a lot of geography to
encompass in one statement.

For the next couple of hours I finally got
Nick talking after asking about his modeling gigs. My mistake. By
the time we checked into our hotel along the San Antonio River
Walk, I knew more about the vapid and shallow world of fashion than
I’d ever conceived possible. Mom would’ve loved hanging out with
Nick – well, except the part about my uncontrollable urges when he
came around.

Don’t get me wrong. We all know by now I like
wearing
fashionable clothes, shoes, and the assorted
accessories. The weekly shopping excursions with Mom and her
monthly credit card bill proved it. I just don’t give a flying flip
about what
this
designer said about
that
designer or
the horrors experienced working with certain Hollywood celebrity
types. But apparently that information is well-known among the
fashion elite – and Nick told me every tiny tidbit of associated
gossip in agonizing detail.

I swear, Nick would fit in better at the
Celebration Victory Church ladies Thursday luncheons than I ever
did. They’d gawk and fawn over him like preening peacocks.

However, when we arrived in our room and the
door clicked shut, he proceeded to spend the next couple of hours
showing me any number of reasons why neither of us fit in with that
crowd.

In delectably delicious detail.

***

By dinnertime, this filly had worked up an
appetite that needed more than hay and oats to satisfy. While I
showered and worked to make myself presentable, Nick stepped
downstairs to the weight room to get in an hour of iron pumping.
Don’t know why he felt the need for exercise after all we’d gotten.
The life of a male model I suppose.

When he returned to the room, he leapt into
the shower before tossing on some clothes and sliding a bit of
product into his hair. After five minutes prep work, he still had
to wait on me to dig heels out of my suitcase.

So not fair.

The sun hung on the horizon as we made our
way down the River Walk, casting a golden sheen across the top of
the muddy water. It reminded me briefly about that trip to Venice
Zeke and I had taken years ago. Strolling arm in arm along ancient
pathways. Riding in a gondola beneath the San Marcos Bridge. The
flung cigarette butt that nearly set my Vera Wang strapless dress
on fire. The scent of rotting fish embedded in every pore and fiber
that took at least three washings to get out on our return home.
Ah, the fragrant memories.

We were a little early for our dinner
reservations at the restaurant, but the host seated us within two
minutes of our arrival. After wine orders, I excused myself and
escaped to the bathroom with the excuse I needed to wash my hands.
After that short stroll in the heat and humidity, I practically
needed another shower. The gauzy strapless had wilted and clung to
my curves like melted wax. The one thing I was grateful for? That
Nick hadn’t made reservations for the riverside terrace. I pressed
a moist, cool towel to the back of my neck.

Was this how I was going to spend the next
couple of days? Hiding out in bathrooms? Finding excuses to escape
Nick’s company? He’d mentioned the photo shoots were going to take
place in the evenings. Would he be away all night long or just a
few hours? If he was going to be gone all night, that meant he’d
spend most of the day sleeping in. A few hours of playtime in the
afternoon. An early dinner together. Okay, yeah. I could do this –
couldn’t I?

I gave myself a good stare down in the mirror
for some cowardly lion courage. Then with shoulders thrown back to
accentuate my positives, I tossed open the ladies room door and
strutted down the hall.

Then barreled smack dab into a brick wall
wearing an impeccably tailored gray Armani suit.

“I’m so sorry,” the deep voice rolled over me
as he extended a hand to help me up from the floor. “Are you
alright?”

The hand was baby soft without a callous
along his dark chocolate palm. A hand that hadn’t known hard labor
– at least not for thirty years or more. A hand topped by a wrist
exhibiting a familiar blue-faced TAG Heuer watch. As I stood, I
stared up at a strange yet well-known face, completely incongruous
to his normal appearance and within my present location.

“Reggie?”

“Vicki?”

The shortened name on the interior designer’s
tongue sounded stilted from the usual
mein liebchen
or
Victoria
. The man in the bathroom hall showed no signs of
the guy who sported loud clothes and an even louder mouth at times.
No too-tight cigarette pants. No frilly hot pink flamenco shirt or
psychedelic kaleidoscope jackets. The dark gray Armani suit fit him
like a tailor-made ensemble, topped off with a non-flashy,
conservative white shirt and navy blue tie. The wild fluffed hair
speckled with hints of gray was smoothed back, showing off his
strong forehead.

My usually flaming Reggie looked – manly.
Handsome. Hot in an older stud-muffin kind of way.

I shuddered. “What are you doing here?”

“Well I…uh...,” Reggie stuttered in the deep
voice before throwing open his arms and breaking into his usual
squeal. “Victoria, darling. How pleasant to zee you ‘ere of all
places.”

I allowed him to quash me in his arms and
plant a quick peck on either cheek before he drew back and stared
at me with wide-open eyes brimming with discomfort. And fear. He
knew he’d been had before I even said anything.

“What’s all this?” I asked, pointing out his
clothes.

“Oh,
mein liebchen
, you must know it
is necessary to one’s health to get away once in awhile, no?”

“Get away? Yes. Do a one-eighty to your
appearance and lose the accent before recovering it? Not a chance.”
I crossed my arms. “Sounds to me like Reggie has some ‘splaining to
do.”

“Now, now, now,” he scolded, wagging a finger
in my face. “Vat vould Victoria’s mother say about how she speaks
to her elders?”

“How about we call her right now and find
out?” I said, whipping out my cell phone.

“Wait,” Reggie said as he grasped my
hands.

I arched a brow and tapped my foot in my
standard nervous or ticked-off manner.

He made a decision with a sigh. “Alright
fine.” The accent disappeared again. “If I share, will you promise
to keep what I say between us?”

“You know I will.”

Not like I didn’t already know some of his
real history. There were perks to having once dated a Texas Ranger.
Plus, I’d had my own suspicions from before the time I could say
photograph
.

“It could completely destroy my reputation,
not to mention my career, if this gets out in my normal
circles.”