Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (90 page)

Bella laughed. “You are so good. You’ve really got the gift, haven’t you?”

“I have?” Not quite the reaction he’d expected, because there was a cynical gleam in her eye.

“In fact, you’ve got more than that. You weren’t standing behind the door when anything was handed out, that’s obvious. Good thing you brought him over tonight, honey,” Bella told Faith. “Because this one…” She shook her head. “I could have given you a run for your money, back in the day. But Faith? No. She’s not up to your weight.”

“Mom.” Faith’s color was even higher now. “Please. We talked about this.”

“Men like you…” Bella sighed. “You’re like that chocolate cheesecake going around and around in the display case at the diner. It looks so good, you just can’t help yourself. It tastes just that good, too. You’re taking that first bite, and you’re thinking, oh, yeah, this is delicious, and I’m not sorry. And then it’s gone, and, yep, you’re just that sorry.”

“Uh…” Will sat, at a loss for once.

“Thanks for the tip, Mom,” Faith said. “Please stop.”

“Hope I’m—” Will began, then broke off. “Hope I’m a bit more than that,” he managed. “More than…ah….chocolate cheesecake.”

“You’re thinking I’m racist,” Bella said calmly. “But I’m not. Chocolate cheesecake’s delicious. So is regular old white cheesecake. So is…lemon cheesecake. But it’s all the same in the end. A real nice moment on the lips, and a lifetime of regret on the hips.”

“All right,” Faith said. “We get it.” The color was all the way there now. Will didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman blush as much as she did, and he was embarrassed himself, and a little offended, and turned on as hell by her all the same. But however embarrassed he was, she was more so.

“So I’m not specially bad for her because I’m Maori,” he said. “Just because I’m…”

“Yeah. Because you’re that,” Bella said. “Too good-looking. Too used to getting it easy. And, honey,” she told her daughter, “if you have to take a number, take a pass. I’m just telling you for your own good,” she said as Faith uttered a choked little sound of protest. “We can all see it. Not like he’s hiding it. I’m just putting it out there.”

It was out there, all right. It was right out there. And whatever his chances had been, they were that much less now.

***

“I’m sorry,” Faith said when they were in her truck again, driving back to her place. Their place. “I didn’t know that would happen. But she’s protective.”

“I managed to suss that out, yeh. Reeled me in, didn’t she. And then she got me straight through the gills.” He didn’t think he’d ever been so thoroughly dismissed.

“Sorry about that,” she said again.

“No worries.” He did his best to pretend that he hadn’t cared. “She can think what she likes, though I hope I’m not as bad as all that.”

“I can tell you’re offended. And I’m sure you’re thinking, what right does she have to say anything? When she talks about the skin trade, and what she used to do, and all that. But it’s because she’s a mom. A
great
mom
.
She’s trying to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes she did, just like she always has. She taught me that, and everything else, too. How to stand up for myself, and how to stand on my own two feet, not to depend on anybody else. That you can’t count on anyone but yourself, and how not to get sucked into thinking you can.”

“Well, that’s a bit harsh. I’d like to think you can count on some people.”

“Well, her,” Faith amended. “I can count on her. Because she’s still a mom. She wants me to be independent, but she has me manage her apartment complex, when she could get somebody with real handyman skills to do it, and then she pretends I’m doing her a favor. She does it because that’s what she can do for me. She couldn’t send me to college, but she’s helping me pay off the loans all the same. She does what she can do. Everything she can do. And she’s taught me how to do the rest for myself, so I can survive.”

It sounded like such a lonely life. Such a hard life. The two of them against the world? “I wouldn’t have said that she wasn’t a good mum,” he said cautiously, because she sounded a bit defensive, and why was that?

“She was,” Faith said again. “She went to every parent-teacher conference, even if she’d just gotten home from doing two shows a night. On her feet for hours every night in spike heels, with that smile plastered on her face. Once she got the showgirl job, that is, because before that, yeah, she was an exotic dancer, and she wouldn’t be ashamed to tell you so. So if she seems a little jaded about men, a little cynical? She’s got reasons. But she’d trade shifts so she could go to Back-to-School night, even when the other parents didn’t talk to her. That’s the kind of person she is. She’s always held her head high.”

“But it’s Vegas.”

“Doesn’t mean people don’t still look down on women who take their clothes off for money. And she wasn’t a hooker, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She was driving a bit faster now, speeding down Tropicana Boulevard, her hands clenching on the wheel. “In fact, that’s the one time I got in trouble in school. Fourth grade. A boy said my mother was a hooker. He didn’t even know quite what it meant, I’m sure. He’d heard it from his parents. I didn’t know, either. But I knew it was bad.”

“What did you do?”

She laughed, but it wasn’t her usual Faith-laugh. It was short. Dry. “I punched him. Gave him a bloody nose. Then I kicked him in the balls. Man, I’ll tell you, he went down like a
rock.
My mom had to come get me at school, because I got suspended. I’m a dangerous enemy, just so you know.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But I suspect your mum is, too. What did she say?”

“She told me not to fight her battles. I asked her what a hooker was, and she said, ‘That’s a woman who has to have sex for money.’ You notice that?
Has to.
She said, and I still remember this, ‘So you know? No, I’m not a hooker. But I’m not going to look down on women who do what they have to do to take care of themselves, or to take care of their kids. We’re all just doing what we have to do to get by.’”

He didn’t know quite what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

“She was a good mom,” she repeated after a minute. “She had fun, sure she did. You just heard her tell you so, because she’s honest. But she told me I was smart, and that being smart mattered. She made sure I wouldn’t have to use my body to survive. She pushed me in school. She was proud of me.”

“I can see that.”

“And you know, men want women to be sexy. Then they look down on them for being sexy. Like if they’re sexy, that’s all they are. My mom’s more than that.” She shook her head, pulled onto Torrey Pines at the light, and slowed to twenty-five. “I’m not making sense, I suppose.”

“No. You are. So where was your dad?”

“Married.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.” She sighed, pulled into the little parking lot of the apartment complex, and turned the engine off, but kept sitting there, so he did too. “She didn’t know, of course. Because men are good at lying. Some men, anyway,” she went on hastily, as if that would be a shock to him. “She didn’t tell him about me, because she didn’t want to wreck his wife’s marriage. She told me the truth, though, when I was old enough to hear it. She didn’t sugarcoat it, because life’s hard, and facing the truth is the only way through. My mom’s a decent lady, although I don’t expect you to see that.”

“I see it. And my dad buggered off himself, didn’t he,” he found himself admitting. “Worse than that, I guess you’d say. After five kids, when I was eighteen. So I know about strong mums who do what they have to do. And I know about looking after your mum, too. About wanting to protect her. Don’t worry about me. She was keeping you safe. That’s a mum’s job, keeping her kids safe.”

She was still sitting there in the dark, and she didn’t look like she was moving. Normally, that would have been his signal that a woman wanted him to kiss her. Normally.

“You know,” she said, looking at him at last, “you’re just way too confusing.”

That startled a laugh out of him. “Me? How?”

“Would you just be one way? Let me make up my mind? At first I think you’re a player, and my mom’s completely right. And then you’re so
sweet.
Stop that. It’s messing me up.”

He wanted to kiss her. He’d never wanted to do anything more. If he was sweet…she was that, too, and so much else besides. Sweet, and warm, and curvy, and so bloody sexy. Her embarrassment, and her passion, defending her mother. The way she’d blushed, the way he’d seen her breath coming a bit faster, there at dinner, when he’d looked at her. He’d known that if he’d put his palm on her chest, just above that wide vee of neckline, he’d have felt her heart galloping, and the need to do it had pulled at him. Was still pulling at him. 

So, yes, he wanted to kiss her. But he didn’t. “Your mum’s right,” he said instead, and felt the wrench of it, the twist in his gut. “I’m a player. I’m chocolate cheesecake. And I’m leaving in less than three weeks.”

“Yes. You are.”

He looked at her there in the dark. She wasn’t looking at him, was staring out through the windshield, her hands still on the wheel despite the fact that they weren’t going anywhere at all, and her expression was so…so troubled. So sad, and it was making him sad, too.

“I’m never noble,” he said, “and I wouldn’t have said I had a clue how to be. I’m doing my best, though. I’m leaving, and I don’t stick anyway. So I’m going to get out of this truck, and I’m not even going to kiss you goodnight, because I like you too much. And I don’t want to muck that up.”

He did it, too. He got out of the truck with her, walked her to her door in silence, and watched her put the key into the lock.

“Goodnight, Faith,” he told her.

She looked up at him, unsmiling, her eyes steady on him. “Goodnight, Will.”

She shut the door behind her, and he was alone.

And why was it, he wondered as he walked down the hall to his empty apartment, that doing the right thing had to feel so wrong?

True Confessions

Cold Days, Hot Nights at the Roundup

Faith sat at her little dining-room table, typed the headline, then stared at it for a minute, her fingers hovering over the keys.
The weather outside might be frightful,
she wrote. Well, it had rained that one day.
But the entertainment at the Roundup is always smoking-hot.

She inserted an image of Sheila, one of the casino’s dancers, riding the mechanical bull in a pair of chaps, a G-string, and nothing else, with Robert, the principal boy dancer, up behind her, looking like he was ready to take over.

What was she thinking? She’d get fired. Too many sexy pictures, too much looking at a half-naked Will. Too much
fantasizing
about a half-naked Will. She substituted the PG version, the one where Sheila was wearing a sparkly vest.

As a valued VIP, you and your guest will have a front-row seat on opening night of our brand-new show,
Lassoed
. Afterwards, you’re invited to an exclusive backstage meet-and-greet with our talented dancers.

And you’re not invited to feel up Sheila,
she didn’t write. Last time, the dancers had complained.

“Tell them not to hug me!” Sheila had said, storming into the Marketing Department during what had become the most interesting meeting Faith had ever attended. “I don’t get paid enough for that, and the next nasty old guy that tries it? He gets a knee.”

Faith sighed, now, and looked out the window at a slightly unkempt palm. She needed to do some pruning. She should clean the gutters, too.

Inspiration really wasn’t coming today, if cleaning the gutters sounded better than writing the February copy for the Winners’ Circle. She stared at the palm a minute longer without really seeing it, then opened a new document. Maybe just for five minutes. Just to clear her head.

The problem was, it wasn’t Sheila and Robert taking up all her available brain-space, or the dirty-old-man members of the high rollers’ club, either. It was Gretchen and Will, from the day before.

Not really, though. It was Hope and Hemi.

Hope in a pale-pink bra and a filmy white shirt that was falling open, because Hemi’s hands were unbuttoning it from behind, his mouth just grazing her neck, his jaw dark with the barest hint of stubble. Faith had had to set up a box for Gretchen in order for Will to reach her, had had to keep adjusting angles so Calvin could get the shot, with Charlotte in there redoing Gretchen’s makeup, spraying Will down again while Faith crawled on the floor.

But it didn’t matter that she knew what was really happening behind the scenes. The images were still there, exactly as if they were real. The two of them kneeling, Hemi’s arm, bare now, around Hope, his hand on the zipper of her unbuttoned jeans, his other hand pulling her blond hair back, his mouth near her ear.

Faith’s fingers were moving despite herself, despite every better intention.

Hope pushed the button for the seventy-third floor. The sleek elevator doors whispered shut, and as she ascended, impossibly quickly, she ran a hand nervously over the waistband of her severe black skirt, made sure her white blouse was still neatly tucked in, and wished the ride would take a little longer. She needed to breathe, to get this right, because too much was at stake.

She still couldn’t believe her luck. After all the resumes she’d sent out, every one of which had been met with a deafening silence, she’d thought she’d be stuck working for Vincent forever. Submitting to his tirades, having him tell her how stupid she was, how clumsy she’d been, every time he made a mistake. Because it couldn’t be his fault, and there she was, available to take the blame, because she had nowhere else to go, and she needed the job too much to quit.

Everybody wanted somebody with a college degree, that was the problem. There was no place on their forms to explain that when other young women had been going to parties and studying for finals, Hope had been raising her sister. That college had been a luxury she couldn’t afford, an indulgence she’d only been able to dream of. She would work harder than anybody they could hire. She learned fast, and she never made the same mistake twice. But they wouldn’t even give her the chance. They just saw her associates degree—earned at night, one painfully-scratched-together semester’s worth of tuition at a time—and threw her application away. What did a person have to do?