Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three (56 page)

It almost hurt to look at these photographs. She wondered fleetingly if anyone else realized that they were of her. That they were a product of their time together—a haunting visualization of her memories: the dazzling love, the hedonistic intensity, the blind, willful faith, followed by the inevitable disappointments, the bruising, aching loneliness that haunted her for years.

Samantha held up her glass of champagne. It was immediately refilled. She sat stoically, struggling not to react as the women at the luncheon fawned over the photographs, praising the artistry and speculating on the identity of the muse.

Hannah stood, resplendent and lovely as she smiled broadly at the group of women. “The talent displayed before you really doesn’t need a lengthy introduction,” she began, a look of genuine pleasure and delight shimmering in her eyes. “This man is easily one of the world’s most gifted photographers alive today, and he’s got the Pulitzer to prove it,” she added with a light little laugh. “I had the pleasure of making his acquaintance when he was a rising star many moons ago, and now he has been kind enough to donate a few of his works to our charity auction this year. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Wesley Elliott.” Her aunt turned expectantly toward the entrance to the terrace.

Christ, no
… Hannah never mentioned Wes was coming to today’s fete. She hadn’t seen him since Austin, the bittersweet night he’d confessed his truths.

Wes came out onto the terrace wearing fine wool slacks and an optic white shirt that made him look tanner and his hair even tawnier than usual. His leonine eyes swept over the group with that
you-know-you-want-to
grin he’d mastered so long ago, charisma rolling off of him like an aura. Samantha could hear women snapping open their fans, the whispered “
oh mys
” followed by a few hasty sips of crisp cold drinks, gazes riveted to the striking and famous man before them.

Sam stayed very still in her seat until his eyes found hers after a slow sweep, clashing across the terrace. He angled toward her like a magnet, even as Hannah crossed to him, giving him a quick hug.

“Mr. Elliott has taken some time out of his calendar to answer any questions you may have about the photographs or his work. Please feel free to chat him up, and remember, ladies: Opening reserve is set at five hundred thousand dollars, so be sure to encourage all your friends to bring their checkbooks to the gala on Saturday evening,” Hannah reminded them with a wink and a smile before leading Wes to a group of women eager to make his acquaintance.

Had Hannah told her about Wes putting photos in the auction?
Samantha vaguely recalled discussing details about the gala over the past few weeks, but she’d been so focused on her own worries and tribulations, she must have missed the part about Wes donating half a million dollars in photography toward the cause.

Sam listened to the trill of excited chatter as Wes traversed the terrace in a slow revolution, smiling, meeting, and greeting like a pro. Hannah remained at his side, working him like a handler so he was never stuck in once place too long. It was kind of her, considering how many of the women there would have loved to monopolize his time.

She drank down another glass of Champagne, her eyes returning to the pictures he’d taken of her when they were young and in love. The shock had worn off by now, giving way to a slow, incendiary resentment at his betrayal of some of their most intimate moments. Those were pictures of
her
, even if no one else knew it. They were pictures of
their
love, even if what they had burned to the ground years ago. They were
hers
and
his.
These pictures belonged to no one else. It felt like auctioning off secrets—
their
secrets,
their
intimacy.

Samantha stood, meeting Wes’s gaze across the terrace. He must have seen the heat in her eyes, the burning fury just beneath the calm façade. She excused herself from her table as he and Hannah made the loop toward her, feeling too vulnerable and exposed to talk to him, too angry and hurt to trust herself in polite company. She limped as quickly as she could across the terrace, eager to find a little privacy in the cool recesses of the penthouse, wondering if she could get away with leaving altogether.

Get a grip of yourself
, she thought furiously.
We’ve been over for so long, why should it matter?
And there was the matter of Jack now… But God, why did it still hurt so much? It wasn’t just animosity and bitterness. It was the sting of scraping an unhealed wound.

Alejandro moved to follow but she held up her hand and shook her head. “I’m just going to use the ladies room,” she lied, heading down the hallway toward her bedroom.

A hand wrapped around her arm before she even made it halfway.

“Going somewhere?” Wes said into her ear, his voice warm and more sensual than it had a right to be.

Sam jerked her arm from his grasp, glaring at him. “Yeah. I’m going away from you.”

He smirked at that, like the notion was laughable. “You still mad at me for last time, or are we onto something new yet, Sammy?” he asked, his voice teasing. “Because it seems like no matter what I do, you’ve got a burr under your saddle.”

“You’ve got a big set of brass balls to come back into my life,” she hissed, careful to keep her voice low as caterers passed by carrying trays of dessert. Alejandro stepped into the hallway, but she lifted her hand, warding him back.

Wes’s eyes narrowed. “I told you I was back and I meant it. Not my fault I had to do something a little flamboyant to get your attention. All I ever asked of you was to hear me out.”

“Flamboyant?” she parroted incredulously. “How
dare
you? You pushed your way in right when I didn’t want you, and you started digging up more shit than any one person can handle. Then you have the goddamn nerve to sell photographs of me that—that—” she found herself at a loss for words suddenly, the emotion roiling up too much for her to articulate.

“Use your words,” he cajoled.

“Fuck. You. How about those words?” Sam snapped back.

Wes gripped her elbow and steered her toward her bedroom.

“What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, trying to yank away from him.

“The things we have to say to each other are meant to be said privately,” he informed her. “I won’t have our past be fodder for Houston society for the next year, so quit hollerin’ at me until you can do it behind closed doors.”

Wes found the suite of rooms she stayed in like a heat-seeking missile, opening her door and steering them both inside before locking it shut.

“You were saying?” he asked, crossing his arms as he leaned against the door.

“Why the
hell
are you doing this to me?” Sam all but shouted, unable to contain her pent-up emotions. “And how could you sell those pictures of me? Those are
private!”

“No one but us knows that,” he replied calmly. “Besides, I had to find a way to get your attention after you kicked me to the curb a few weeks ago.”

“Well, you got it,” Sam crossed the room before she turning to face him again. She needed the distance. “You’re a selfish motherfucker, you know that? You
left
me. Do I really need to remind you of that, Wes? Then you force your way back into my life at the worst possible time and start dredging up my most painful memories, and for what?
Attention?
Are you serious with this shit?”

“As a heart attack,” he replied, unwilling to back down. “When are you going to stop hating me long enough to see that everything I do these days is because of you—
for you
—and because I love you more than I care about anything or anyone—especially myself.” He ran a hand through his hair, gripping the back of his neck in frustration as he heaved a sigh. “Sam, I haven’t worked in months. I’m up all night calling from here to Timbuktu trying to figure out what the hell went wrong for your family that night, and I’m so goddamn hung up on you, I can’t even
think
about other women, much less bother with them.”

“
Then why are my naked pictures sitting outside for everyone to see?!”
she shouted, losing her temper. Wes was the only person in the world who could get her riled up this way. Before she knew it, she picked up a book off the nightstand and threw it at him.

He dodged the throw narrowly. “What the hell—?” Wes ducked as another book went sailing past his head to thud hard into the wall.
“Will you quit it?!”
he shouted back, striding toward her and grabbing her by the arms before she could throw anything else at him. “Yeah, I picked those photos especially because I knew they’d get your goat, Sammy—but ultimately, I didn’t do it to hurt you,” he told her, shaking her a little, rattling her cage like she had his. “Christ, I’ll take them back if you want. Give Hannah something else of mine to sell. She can auction off the Pulitzer for all I care.”

Wes pulled her into his strong body, his familiar, spicy scent assailing her, taking her back to a time when she would have folded herself into his embrace willingly, intoxicated by her own need for this man.

But this was masochism.

Allowing herself to feel anything for a man like Wes was like standing at the edge of paradise, experiencing just enough of the pleasure to know you could never get enough of it. Being with him, Samantha was aware he could so easily push her past her limits, overwhelm her into almost anything, and she’d let him, because with him, she so desperately
wanted
to be overwhelmed and overcome. Wes was the kind of man who got under your skin and charmed you out of your good sense. His raffishness and inherent rebelliousness had always been the source of his incredible allure, and for a girl who’d played by so many rules—who’d met every expectation—Wes was the embodiment of a walk on the wild side. He didn’t play by rules. He lived fast and loose. Traveled through the world lightly. But in the end, those were exactly the reasons he hadn’t stayed. And even though her romance with him had been fleeting in her lifetime of experiences, merely the memories of her long-ago feelings for this man resonated with powerful intensity, so powerful at times, she’d have given nearly anything to get him back—risked anything.

But she couldn’t make him stay. Not then. Not now.

Sam recognized in that moment that Wes, for all his earnestness, was having a brief liaison with the notion of permanence. He could vow to her up and down that he’d changed. He could swear to her that he’d never walk away from them again. But change was the human condition, and as much as she knew he believed she was it for him, there was a difference between emotional yearning and the kind of fortitude required to make the long haul.

It was a realization Jack was coming to as well.

God, Jack
… had she kissed him just this morning?

“When are you going to forgive me?” he asked, voice low as he pulled her closer.

“I forgive you,” she gritted out. “Now get out.”

“Liar.” Wes pushed a tendril of hair behind her ear. He looked at her like he could see into her heart. “You wouldn’t be so spitting angry with me if you didn’t still care, darlin.’”

She hated the unerring accuracy of that statement.

“Come on. Admit it,” he cajoled. “I only picked those photos because I wanted to see if they’d get a rise out of you. If you didn’t care, then I’d know for sure we were over and done with. But either way, I needed to know.” He ran his calloused fingertips down her hot cheek.

“Just because I’m angry that you shared intimate photos of me does not mean that I’m the girl in those photos anymore, Wes,” she countered. Samantha slid her hands up his chest, feeling the solid, reassuring thud of his heart, the hard planes and musculature that her fingertips recognized from a different lifetime. She pushed him back, slowly, purposefully. The silence between them crackled with electricity as he looked down at her and saw the truth in her eyes.

“Sam—don’t—”

She took a deep breath and said the words: “I’m not in love with you anymore, Wes. I haven’t been in a long time.”

Wes’s expression hovered between shock and utter pain. It was the look of a man who’d been shot when he least expected it, right through the heart. She would know. She’d watched men fall to their knees, holding a hand to the wound like they didn’t understand how it could have happened or what they could do about it. Wes had the look of a dead man who hadn’t fully realized or accepted that the jig was up. He stood very still, staring down at her with those intense golden eyes. Then he surprised her by stepping away, moving toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. He gazed out at the skyline in front of him for long, silent moments.

“You remember the last time we stood here together?” he asked, his voice so low she almost didn’t hear him.

Of course she did. They’d been so young, so unencumbered back then, just at the cusp of their adult lives, each barely in their twenties—back when their love was real, but tender. Too tender to survive what was coming. Back when they were too naive to differentiate hope from intention.

“Has it occurred to you that you’re the one here who’s trapped in the past?” he asked her, turning to face her.

Sam slanted him a look. “This from the guy who’s still wearing my dog tags?”

Wes unbuttoned his shirt, the striking, albeit angry lines of his face illuminated by the sunlight gilding the room. She saw the edge of his tattoo as he yanked off the necklace, holding the metal tags out to her.

“I don’t wear these because I’m stuck on some loop, dreaming about a nineteen-year-old girl who used to love me, Sammy. I walked away from that fantasy a long time ago, and I knew what the hell I was doing when I did it.” Wes shook his head. “No, I wear these because you inspired me. You always pushed me to do all the things I didn’t even realize I was capable of. You made me want to be a better man—a braver man—because
you
were brave.” He gripped the chain, the light glinting off the tags dangling in front her. “You didn’t have to love me, Sam. You didn’t even have to be near me. Just having these, just wearing these made me feel close to you. Because I knew you were out there. I knew you existed. I knew you were cutting through the world, changing it, flowing over obstacles, making things happen.”