“Nothing’s wrong. They just get in the way when I’m doing yoga sometimes.”
“You couldn’t just get contacts like normal people?”
I glared at him, and I really hoped he was receiving the full measure of my glare because I couldn’t see this reaction very well. “I can’t stick things in my eyes. It creeps me out.”
“Oh, but it’s okay to have laser surgery?” He was laughing at me. He was always laughing at me.
“Stop asking about my eye surgery,” I snapped. “This is not why I was looking for you!”
“Oh.”
How could one little word sound so smug and self satisfied? I ground my teeth.
“Then, what do you need from me?” He took a sip of his drink. I couldn’t see his expression or his drink but I knew he did. The very way he sat there, all blurry, made me want to throttle him.
“I don’t need you,” I ground out.
“Well, then. I guess I’ll just go.” He got up and actually started to leave. The jerk.
I grabbed his arm. He stilled. So did I. I don’t think I’d ever voluntarily touched him. Goodness. Those were biceps under his sweater. I cleared my throat. “Wait. I need your help.”
“Ah ha! So then, you do need me. I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say those words.”
The jackass. The jackass. But I couldn’t tell him that to his face. I had to be polite. As polite as I could be. “I’ve helped you before. You owe me.”
“Oh, you have, have you?”
“Yes. When you called me to come out to The Hamptons, remember?”
“If I recall, you backstabbed me. I asked you to help a friend who was pregnant and needed a safe place to go. No, excuse me—I asked you to help my terrified, newly discovered sister, and you went behind my back and told the father whom she was running away from where she was.” I could imagine him glaring at me, although all I saw was his dark features and the cocky swagger to the tilt of his head. He was right. When he needed my help with his newfound half sister in crisis, I did betray him, and ordinarily I wouldn’t have done what I did. But I knew the dad, and he would never have hurt her.
“Dammit, Jack. That was the right thing to do. And you know it. She was scared. And he was in love with her. They were both in love.”
“Regardless, you promised me and you lied.”
“And everything turned out great! They’re married now. We just went to the christening of their baby. Your long lost half sister has been embraced by the family. Can’t you give me some credit for that?”
He sniffed and didn’t respond.
“Well, anyway, it’s a similar problem. And I need similar help.”
“Oh, you need someone to betray you?”
“No, I have a woman in crisis, like you did. She needs a place to go where she’s safe. I want to take her to my mom and dad’s house in the Adirondacks, where she’ll be taken care of, but I can’t see well enough to drive. I need a ride.”
“Ask me why I should care?” He took a drink of his rum, scotch, or whiskey probably, knowing him, but all I could tell was that it was brown. Then he set it down again precisely on the bar.
“You dick.” I reached out and took the glass away from him, settling it on the other side of me. “She just had a baby, and her husband beat her up.
He swiped my fresh bottle of water and took a sip. “Another hot scandal. We certainly do a lot of them. Do you try to save all of them, too?”
“If I can, I do.”
“Would you save me if I were in a scandal and needed your help, or is it just other people like my sister who you save, or my half sister, too, actually . . . or my stepsister . . . Hey, do you have a fetish for saving all my sisters or what?”
“They’re my friends.”
“My sister and stepsister are your friends but Maya wasn’t. You’d never met her.” I wanted to see his face. I felt like there was something growing under the words, an energy rising, and I couldn’t figure it out. It made me feel hot under my jacket.
“Well, I was friends with Matthew, or did you forget that he was your friend, too? He was heartbroken over losing her, and she was running away because she was afraid of the family. Of us. I couldn’t let her do that, not the way April ran away and hid from Beau. The safe place she needed was with the father, not hiding. I had to fix it; don’t you see?”
“Sure. They’re your friends. You care about them.” There was a pause in his words. I blinked my eyes and squinted to try and make out his face. “Am I your friend?”
The words hung on the air.
My throat suddenly dried. We’d said we were friends, but was he? We always fought. Didn’t we? I shook my head.
“No? We’re not friends?”
For some reason his deep tone was like an arrow through me. “I didn’t mean that. I mean. Yes. I guess we are friends. If by association.”
“Ah. By association. A very deep connection.”
“Is it a connection deep enough to give me, an abused woman, and her baby a ride to the mountains? I know you don’t have a gig right now. You’re between photography jobs. You work on your own time. Do you have a deadline or something?”
“Not right now . . .”
“So, can you drive us up there? It is a long drive, but my parents can put us up. We can drive back the next day, or we can just go up and back . . . but I won’t be able to take a shift driving.”
“Because of your eye surgery.”
“Because of my eye surgery. But I’ll pay for the whole trip. Gas, food, whatever expenses.”
He chuckled. “I don’t want your money, Mona. You know I have enough money, and you’re just a yoga teacher.”
“Hey! Don’t insult my job.”
“I’m not insulting it. It’s just I have more money than you and you know it. I’ll pay for the trip.”
“So you’ll do it!” Relief flooded through me. I was trying to act cool, but the poor woman was in my apartment crying. If anyone needed refuge at my mom’s, it was this woman and her baby.
He held up a hand. No. A finger. “Uh, uh. Not for free.”
“But you just said you wouldn’t take any money for it.” This man was truly exasperating.
“I don’t want money.” His voice was low. A shiver went down my spine. At first I thought it was a bad shiver, like a warning, but then it settled somewhere low in my belly and turned over, lazily and pleasantly. He leaned in. “I want a favor.” His breath tickled my ear, and that tingly feeling in my belly turned into desire.
Shit.
“What kind of favor?” I didn’t like how shaky my voice was.
“Hmm . . .” His hum made goosebumps rise on my neck. “I don’t know yet, but since you betrayed me when I asked for my favor, I think it should be a big one. Something you wouldn’t do otherwise.”
That tingly feeling shot up through me, licks of desire that took my breath away. Yes.
No. “How do I know I can trust you not to take advantage of me?”
“Ahh,” he said, and I met his eyes. Everything else was blurry but his eyes. Warm like cognac and smiling into mine. He brushed my hair back from my face and settled it over my shoulder. “You don’t know. You have to take a chance. Am I your friend or not? Your friend wouldn’t push you farther than you’re willing to go.”