Dancing in a Hurricane (44 page)

"No. This…" He thrust against her. "Means I'm horny. This…" He kissed her. "Means there's nothing you can do that I won't forgive you for. No matter what, Bree."

His words struck deep in her soul. She dropped her head forward, hiding the tears that sprang to her eyes.

He crooked a finger under her chin and tipped up her head. "
Cariña
?"

She gulped in air. "I'm so lucky. But I feel lost."

He wrapped his arms around her, slid down on the pillows, and lay with her on top of him. "I'm surprised to hear you say that, Bree."

She sniffled. "Why?"

"I feel the same way. I know this is right. We're good together. But it's stronger than I've felt before. And I don't want to screw it up."

His admitting uncertainty comforted her. If he was being his usual self-assured, determined, one-hundred percent certain macho man, she would have been clueless. "We'll work this out together."

He heaved a sigh. "We will."

She put her hands on his chest and rested her chin on them.

He pulled her hair to one side, ran his fingers through it. "Do you think…?"

"What?"

He shook his head. "Never mind."

"Ask me."

His gaze darted around her face. "You talked about not having much experience with men, but you were engaged."

She closed her eyes and laid her cheek on her hands. "I was."

"And didn't you date him for years? In high school and college?"

"Yep. Four years."

He was quiet for a minute. "You waited until you were committed to each other to have sex. Yet the relationship didn't last. Doesn't that disprove your theory of withholding physical intimacy before a monogamous relationship?"

She sighed. It was time to tell him everything. She sat up and crossed her legs. "It's a long, sad story."

Chapter Thirty-Three

Sixto got up off the bed and poured them each a glass of wine. "We've got all night." Gesturing to the silent television showing the whirling hurricane, he said, "And nowhere to go."

Bree accepted the glass of wine. Sixto piled pillows at the headboard and settled back, stretching his long legs out on the comforter and crossing them at the ankles. "I'm listening."

Sipping her wine, she said, "A therapy session with cocktails. Perfect." She realized she was being snarky, maybe even picking a fight, to get out of telling her story.

Before she could apologize, he put his hand on her knee. "If this isn't the right time, don't feel pressured."

His patience reassured her. "I want to tell you." She sipped wine. "It's just…difficult." She flashed back to her childhood. "Our parents were in their mid forties when they had us. I told you a few things about Cloe, the things she did for attention."

"And revenge."

She nodded and flexed her finger. "Our grandparents died when we were fairly young, we had no other relatives. Cloe felt like an outsider in her own family."

"Mm."

"We both received scholarships to the University of Seattle and Kyle was going there because his great, great grandfather, or something, founded the college."

"Really. Big money?"

"Oh, yeah. His parents weren't too thrilled about me."

"They must not have known you well."

"Not really." She smiled. "And thanks for the compliment."

"Anyway," he prodded.

"Anyway, I mentioned that right after our nineteenth birthday, our parents were killed in a fifteen car pile-up on a bridge in a bad fog."

"Yes,
Cariña
." He reached for her hand and kissed it. "I'm sorry."

"I…" Her voice choked. "I can't tell you how much I loved them and how I miss them every day." She looked at the picture of the four of them that sat on her dresser.

"Will you tell me about them?"

She nodded. "Some other time. I'll pull out my scrapbook and bore you silly for eight hours."

"Looking forward to it."

"After they died, Cloe was great for a few months. She got back into her studies, she wasn't partying as much as she had been. Not as many guys. Then Kyle asked me to marry him."

"How did he do it?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You really want to know?" Most guys hated that kind of mushy talk."

"Sure. I want to hear it all."

"At the top of the Space Needle. After dinner, we walked to the windows at sunset. He got down on one knee and asked."

"You don't sound very
mushy
about it."

"You'd have to understand our relationship to appreciate this, but when I initially answered 'maybe,' he stayed down on one knee and listed all the reasons why we should be together."

"Why did you say maybe?"

She looked at Sixto. "He was a good friend. I loved him, but there was no spark."

He nodded and finished his wine.

"I finally said yes after we drew a crowd. I guess I got swept away in the whole process. The idea of a house and a family of my own." She looked at him. "You know, that's the first time I admitted to myself that I was looking for a replacement for my family."

"Insightful."

She nodded. "I sure am."

He grinned. "But you didn't go through with the wedding. When did you—"

"I did. I went through with the wedding. I stood at the back door of the church, ready to walk down the aisle."

His eyebrow went up. "
He
left
you
?"

"Hard to believe, isn't it?" She rolled her eyes. "I'm such a spectacular catch."

"Actually, it
is
hard to believe, and you
are
a catch. What happened?"

"Pour yourself some wine. You're going to need it," Bree warned.

Sixto stood and went for the bottle.

"Cloe got to him."

He stopped with the wine bottle halfway back to the nightstand. "What? No." He resettled himself on the bed and set down the bottle. "So the prank she pulled and your broken engagement—"

"Aborted wedding, actually."

"The prank and the aborted wedding are related?"

"Yep." She puffed a breath out through pursed lips. "Cloe never really liked Kyle. He was probably the only man she couldn't lure into her bed."

"She tried?"

Bree tipped her head. "Kyle never said anything, but the looks Cloe gave him, I think she tried."

"Shi…sorry. Shoot."

"You can say it. The situation calls for it."

He nodded. "Anyway…"

"Okay. Where was I? So when Kyle and I got engaged, Cloe tried to talk me out of it. 'He's not right for you.' 'He's taking advantage of your grief.' 'He's rich, but you're way out of his league and he knows it.' Constantly trying to change my mind."

Sixto nodded.

"It got so bad, that I asked her not to be in the wedding party."

"Hm."

"Then, the night before the wedding…" Bree usually felt like crying at this point, but tonight, it didn't hurt so badly. She touched her hair. "Cloe and I had the same hair back then. Most people couldn't tell us apart."

He jerked as if gut punched. "Oh, shit! She slept with him!"

Bree shook her head. "Worse."

He sat forward. "What could be worse?"

"She broke up with him. As me. At midnight before the wedding."

"No fucking way!"

"Yes. And if I used the F word, I'd say it now, too."

"What was she thinking?"

"Afterward, she told me she was only saving me from him, but I don't believe it because of the wedding day." She held out her empty glass and he poured it half full. "We were having a morning wedding, ten o'clock, some crazy tradition in Kyle's family. My girlfriend looked in the church, came back to the dressing room, and said the pews on Kyle's side were empty, he hadn't arrived yet, and his best man wasn't there. This was at 9:45."

"He called everyone on his side, didn't he?"

"Yup. And Cloe was nowhere to be found. I called Kyle, but his phone was busy. We waited until 10:30 when one of my girlfriends got in touch with the best man. Kyle called him at midnight and told him Bree called off the wedding. They called everyone on their list that night and told them not to bother coming to the church. The wedding was cancelled."

"And everyone from your side was there?"

"Everyone. Friends and co-workers, distant relatives. Unbelievable."

"You were in shock?"

"I thought I was having a stroke. Seriously. My head kept spinning, my fingers were numb…" She flexed her hand, recalling the out-of-body experience. "I ripped off my veil, ran out the front door of the church, and got in the limo, gave him Kyle's address. He answered the door and started laughing. 'What are you doing in that? Did you change your mind again?'

"I was speechless. I yelled at him, 'I'm not the one who didn't show up at the church'."

"He still didn't know it was Cloe?"

"No. He said, 'Why would I show up at the church. You told me last night it was over. A mistake. You were moving to Egypt to get away from me.' I told him—I swore to him—I wasn't at his house the night before. He collapsed into a chair and said, 'Cloe'."

"Bitch."

"Now you can see why I couldn't forgive her." She took a drink. "My girlfriends showed up in their bridesmaid dresses, and I think I passed out, because the next thing I remember is waking up on Kyle's couch, his parents, best man, and my girlfriends standing over me. They were talking about what a horrible prank Cloe played. I sat up and asked for water and Kyle turned away from me. I thought it odd.

"I apologized to everyone for Cloe. I joked to Kyle that we could take a quick flight to Vegas and get married on our way to Hawaii for our honeymoon. He looked at me as if I'd grown horns. He said he couldn't marry me. He didn't want to marry into that kind of family."

"Asshole."

"He was. But I didn't know it then. I got down on my knees." She felt moisture in her eyes, her voice came out choked. "On my knees in my wedding dress I begged him, in front of his parents, his best friend, and my best friends. I begged him to give me another chance. We could keep Cloe out of our lives, we never had to see her again." A tear slid down her cheek and she wiped it away.

Sixto took her hand and kissed the spot where the tear sat. "What did he say?"

"He looked at his mother."

"What?" He froze.

"He looked at his mother, letting her make the decision. She shook her head, 'no,' and he looked back at me and said, 'sorry'."

With one tight fist, Sixto snapped the stem of his wineglass in two.

"Oh my gosh, you're bleeding." She looked into his eyes, seeing violence like she'd never seen in him before. "It's okay, Sixto. It's all in the past." She got up and took the pieces from his hand, pulled a wad of tissue from the box, and pressed it into his gashed fingers. "Go into the bathroom and wash it out."

She went to the kitchen, put the wine glass in the trash, and grabbed a plastic stemmed glass. In her bedroom, she heard water running in the sink. She walked in.

He held his cut fingers under hot water and stared into the mirror.

Hugging him from the side, she said, "Let me put a bandage on that."

"I would have killed him." His voice sounded thick with a Cuban accent.

Wow, this must be the Category 5 shit storm Sixto Sr. was talking about. "Well then, lucky for me you weren't there." She turned off the water and dried his hand. "Otherwise, you'd be in jail instead of in my room."

With his uninjured hand, he pulled her tightly to him. "Cloe was right. Kyle wasn't good enough for you."

Her mouth dropped open. No one, not one person, ever sided with Cloe. "Are you drunk?" She pushed out of his hold and reached for a bandage.

"Think about it. Why wouldn't he have still married you if he loved you?"

She stopped, stared into the box of bandages. "You don't think I went over that a million times?" She plucked out a bandage and turned to him. "I'd begged him to reconsider. I told him I'd cut my hair, dye it red, so he'd never mistake us again."

Applying the bandage, she shrugged it off. "He didn't love me. Within a year he was married to someone else."

"He was looking for a family, just like you. You're lucky to be rid of him."

She shook her head and led him back into the bedroom. He sat in her big chair and pulled her into his lap. The television showed the hurricane making landfall.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" she asked. "Something light?"

He shook his head. "Sorry. I'm back in control." He snuggled her into him. "Finish your story."

"That's it. I was left standing at the church, Kyle moved on and Cloe moved out here."