Remembrance: A Contemporary Erotic Romance (Iris Series Book 4) (13 page)

“Have I told you lately how frigging thrilled I am that you snagged my brother?” Janie asked.

“I think it was the other way around,” she chuckled.  “He just wouldn’t leave me the hell alone.”

“It’s that Callahan tenacity,” Janie laughed.

“Yup.  And he has it in spades.”

“As does his cousin,” Ryann said dryly.

Janie finished her wine.  “Yeah, welcome to the men in my family.”

Tiffany snorted.  “It’s not just the men in your family,” she said, looking at her pointedly.

“Yeah,” Ayanna began.  “So, how are things going with you, Janie girl?”  Yan threw her a cocked eyebrow.

“I believe you were gonna be taking a certain man shopping.  Wasn’t that supposed to happen last weekend?  We didn’t even talk about it when we all went salsa dancing!  How on earth did we forget that?  Luke’s holiday party is in a week.  You get your dress yet?” Emily asked.

All of the girls knew of her feelings for Luke.  They’d pretty much all guessed it over the last few months, and then pried it out of her until she caved.  Ryann, Ayanna, and Emily had all encouraged her in one way or another to take the bull by the horns and told her to flaunt herself in his face.  They all seemed to think he might reciprocate the attraction if he knew she was interested. 

Janie looked at Tiffany who had always been like an older sister to her.  Luke’s twin had suspected Janie’s crush on her brother for years and in recent months, they’d occasionally touched lightly upon the topic.  Janie tended to be a little more closed mouth around her.  She never wanted Tiffany to feel like she had to do or say anything to encourage her if she didn’t think Janie and Luke were a good fit. 

“As a matter of fact, Luke and I went shopping last Saturday before we all went out dancing.  We got a dress, shoes and some jewelry,” Janie said, keeping her voice casual and steady.  After all, there was no sense in acting like a giddy school girl.  Her family and Luke’s family had been the closest of friends for decades.

“Nice!  Break it out, we wanna see the goods,” Ayanna squealed.  “What the hell ya been waitin’ for, girlfriend?”

“Well,” she said hesitantly, “Luke still has it all.  I, uh, mistakenly left it in the trunk of the limo when he dropped me off on Saturday after shopping.  And then we forgot again to take it out of the trunk after he dropped me off after salsa dancing.”

“How do you leave your shopping bags in the limo when that was the whole reason for going out that day?” Ayanna said, then paused.  “Or maybe what I should be asking is what happened in the limo to make you forget about the shopping bags?”  She raised an eyebrow then took another sip of wine.

Janie rolled her eyes at her.  “We were having a conversation and I just completely forgot about them when I got out of the car.”

Tiffany was nodding, probing her with eyes so much like her brother’s.  “Luke forgot, too?  Twice?  That’s interesting.”  

Janie shrugged, looking at the girls with an innocent smile playing on her lips.

“Talk,” Emily demanded.

Ryann just chuckled, looking like she couldn’t wait to hear what Janie had to say.

“Even I want to hear this,” Tiffany laughed.  “He may be my brother but I want to know what you two talked about that led to you both forgetting the purpose of why you were even out.”

“Would you stop reading into everything?” Janie chuckled. 

“You guys were with each other all day.  Shopping
and
dancing.  What’d you talk about all that time while you were shopping?” Tiffany persisted, a cute smile on her face.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Janie laughed.

All of the girls reacted to that innuendo and Tiffany continued with, “Oh, oh!  Now I really want to know.  Come on, start talking!”

Janie shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed but so wanting to talk about this with them.  “I don’t know if I should, Tiff.  He
is
your brother.”

“Holy shit!  What happened?”  Tiffany was nearly bursting at the seams.  Then she interrupted herself and put her hand on Janie’s shoulder giving her a side hug.  “Sweetie, it’s no secret that you two have a special relationship, and that you’ve been arguing for the last couple of months.  It’s not like him to be an ass, but if he was, you can say.”

“No, no.  It’s nothing like that.  It’s just,” she began, then she sighed out a long and deep groan.  Dropping her head in her hands, she said, “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.  He’s looking for a boyfriend for me,” she whined.

The room filled with laughter, gasps, screams of disbelief, then settled with a round of ‘what?’s’ when Janie finally responded.

“He was yelling at me about my choice in men as usual when we went out to lunch after shopping.  So I told him he could find me a guy at the holiday party,” Janie was saying while the girls hurried her along with their hands, already knowing this part.  “And he was saying he hadn’t liked Fernandez because he thought he was a player, and then Luke said
he
wasn’t a player even though I pointed out to him he’s always pictured with women all over the place.  But he said he
wasn’t
a player because he respected and loved women, that he wasn’t a liar and a cheat and that he was a one woman man.”

“And?” Ayanna asked, all of the girls now leaning forward.

Janie sighed.  She was beginning to sound like Tiffany, the nervous babbler.  “He has Vanessa as his one woman.”

“He said that?” Tiffany asked, surprised.

“No, not really.  He was about to explain his relationship with her but I couldn’t stomach what he was going to say, so I changed the subject.”  God, this was so depressing.

“She’s inconsequential,” Tiffany said, waving her hand.  “They’re not even dating anymore.  Keep going.”

“They’re not?” Janie asked in shock.

“I don’t think so.  But keep going.”

Janie filed that nugget of information away.  “I told him if he was so concerned about my choices in men, he could find me a man just like
him
so he wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore.”

There was silence, their mouths all open.

“And what did brother dear say to that?” Tiffany asked on tenterhooks.

“He said he wasn’t about to ask men if they were good in the sack.”

“Ha!” Tiffany laughed.  All of the girls chuckled.  “Keep going.  You had to have said something after that.”

Janie got a twinkle in her eye.  “I joked with him and said that if
he
wasn’t going to date me then he would have to find someone who was like him, and who was good in bed.  And then I proceeded to tell him the qualities I wanted in a lover.  Then he cursed at me in Spanish, pulled me from the restaurant, and read me the riot act for talking to a man that way.”

All the women started cracking up, Tiffany the hardest.

“I need you to teach me some curses in Spanish, Tiff.  Listening to the disembodied recordings on Google when I look them up isn’t the same.  And I never know what the hell he’s saying to me because he talks too fast when he’s pissed.”

“Janie, you’re good.  Has Ayanna been tutoring you in how to play a man again?” Ryann asked after she finished laughing.  “I can’t believe we didn’t hear any of this when we all went out dancing!”

“Wait, we’re just gettin’ to the best part,” Emily interrupted, wiping the mirth from her eyes.  She turned to Janie.  “So this is when you ended up in the limo?  And this presumably was the rest of the conversation that led to you both forgetting the bags?”

Ayanna was yelling from the sofa.  “Keep going!  We want the rest.”  Then she turned to Emily and muttered, “I’m so gonna jump your cousin when I get home.  This story is hotter than the last smutty book I read.”  Ayanna started fanning herself.

Emily rolled her eyes and pushed her down on the sofa, then she went back to Janie.  “So?”

“Oh, geez,” Tiffany cringed.  “Am I g
oing to need to leave the room here?”

“Maybe,” Janie said sheepishly.

The room erupted into ‘woo hoos’, then Tiffany just smiled and shook her head.  “Alright, go ahead.  I can take it.”

“Wait,” Ryann interrupted.  “What exactly were the qualities you listed for a lover that made him go ballistic in the first place?”

Janie took a deep breath and ticked off on her fingers, “Someone who knows his way around a woman’s body, fulfills my fantasies, who can make me scream and make my toes curl.” She gave a cute shrug at the end of the list.

The girls were seriously enjoying this and all of them started talking at once wanting to know about the entire conversation in the limo.  She didn’t disappoint, and gave them a shorter version of Luke explaining how he ‘made a woman scream’, and then informing them of the series of texts afterwards with their bantering, not to mention the picture that had been posted of them on the newsfeed.  Of course all of them grabbed their phones to search for it.  By the time Janie was finished, their faces were all flushed.

“Okay, seriously?” Tiffany began.   

Ayanna interrupted.  “Wait, I wanna know if you ever had yourself an enjoyable ten minutes!”

Janie laughed while all of them looked at her.  “Twice,” she said.

More hollers and laughs erupted into the room.

“And one more after salsa dancing,” Janie mumbled with a sheepish grin.

They were all cracking up and Janie almost didn’t hear her phone text go off.  As she reached for the phone, Tiffany continued her thought from before.

“I know you and Luke have always been close, but this?  Something is definitely changing with you two.  Even two months ago he wouldn’t have said those things to you.”  She actually started clapping her hands in excitement.  “We should be cautiously optimistic about this.”

Ryann was also bouncing up and down on the sofa.  When she calmed down, she said, “I don’t know how cautious she needs to be, Tiff.  I mean look at all of the signs!” She began listing them.  “When we all went out to dinner at the
Tavern
this summer he acted all jealous when she talked about her sex life.  Then he didn’t want her dating Danny,” Ryann began, referring to Detective Fernandez.  “Then, there was the fire and how crazy worried he was when he found out Janie was in the ER, the way he acted at the art show when Janie showed up with Danny, plus they were fighting at our place on Labor Day –” She was ticking them all off on her fingers.

“You heard that?” Janie asked, embarrassed. 

“You weren’t exactly quiet, hon,” Ryann pointed out.  “We could all hear you arguing in the back hall.”

Janie dropped her head into her hand and the girls laughed.  Janie picked up her head to explain.  “He was butting his nose in about Danny, telling me I needed to watch myself with him.”

“Uh, huh.  All while Danny and Vanessa were sitting in the living room wondering where you two had gone,” Ryann continued with glee.  “And, I might add, he didn’t bring Vanessa to Thanksgiving dinner last week, so obviously Tiff is right.  She’s a non-issue.”

“He’s always dated redheads,” Tiffany blurted out, the realization hitting her that Janie had red hair.  “Wouldn’t it be awesome if something happened with you two?” she gushed.  “Okay, I need to calm down.  Let’s approach this logically.  I can’t believe I’m saying this because I know he’s my brother, but you have to keep playing him, Janie.  You have to make him see you as a woman, not his ‘baby girl’ anymore.
”

“He just needs to be pushed a little,” Ryann threw in.

Janie was biting her lip, caught between excitement, hope and anxiety if this worked out.  She put her hands to her flushed cheeks and said, “I know.  I’m working on it.  I just don’t know, even if he did see me differently, if he would ever have the guts to –”

“Yes he will.  I know my brother.  Tenacity doesn’t just run in your family, you know.”  Tiffany beamed at the possibilities.  Janie took a huge breath and looked at the women.

“Shit.  I need more wine,” Janie said while getting up and grabbing her phone to see who had texted her.  She stopped walking.  The text was from Luke.

LD: 
Do u have a catering gig tonight or r u at home?

The girls weren’t paying attention to her anymore, all talking at once behind her.  She whipped around to look at them.

“Um,” she began.

“What?” Emily asked.

“The text.  It’s from Luke.”

They all started talking and squealing at once.  Janie waved her hand to shut them up.

“He wants to know if I’m home.”

“Yes, you’re home!  Text him back!” Tiffany screamed.  “But tell him you have company,” she gurgled with glee.

They all clapped and laughed.

“Shit,” Janie muttered, her face all red, the adrenaline pumping.  Were these the feelings she missed out on in high school and college?  She texted back.

JC: 
I’m home, but I have company.

Janie chuckled.  This was fun.

“Did he text back yet?” Tiffany asked.

“No.  Give him a sec, would ya?”

Tiffany looked like she was going to burst.  Janie’s phone went off and all of the girls watched in anticipation.  Janie read the text out loud, trying not to laugh while doing so.