way she held herself. As he studied her, he saw that she’d left behind the fresh beauty of her girlhood. She was too thin, drawn around the eyes. Maybe she looked a little used. Not used up. Just no longer new. At the same time, nothing could hide her thoroughbred’s pedigree.
She held out the tray she was carrying. “Look at you,” she said softly. “Mr. Big Shot.” She didn’t speak sarcastically but fondly, more like a proud mother than a faithless former girlfriend.
He felt oddly deflated, and he bristled. “No complaints. I’m right at home in your father’s office.”
“I’ll bet you are.” If anything, her smile grew more generous, which only provoked him.
“You never know when life’s going to throw you a curveball, do you, Sugar Beth?”
“You sure don’t.”
A pang pierced him, along with a flood of emotions he couldn’t quite interpret. He didn’t like the affection in her eyes. He wanted something more dangerous, something more satisfying. A little anguish over what she’d turned her back on, maybe. A few remnants of leftover lust to soothe his ego, although, considering his teenage clumsiness, that wasn’t too likely.
But it had been too late.
She’d laughed.
And they had. Again and again until they’d finally gotten it right. They’d done it in her Camaro. On blankets at the lake. Next to the furnace in Leeann’s parents’ basement. And still it hadn’t been enough. When they got married, they promised, they’d do it at least three times a day.
“Sugar Beth, I’d like to speak with you for a moment.”
He hadn’t heard Colin approach, and he felt an unexpected surge of protectiveness as Sugar Beth’s smile faded. “Sorry, boss. No time for chitchat. I have to serve these horse-doovers before they get soggy.”
“Forget that.”
But she’d already taken off.
The pianist switched to a Faith Hill song. Colin glowered at her retreating back. Ryan took a sip of beer and shook his head. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”
Colin sighed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Colin’s sense of foreboding grew stronger as he watched Sugar Beth move around the room with her tray. Ted Willowby couldn’t keep his eyes off her, and the kid at the bar was making an idiot of himself whenever she stopped for refills. She offered a napkin to the head librarian at the university and fetched a drink for Charise Leary. Then she slipped on her mask of cool indifference and headed right back to serve the Seawillows.
The scotch he’d been drinking sloshed in his stomach. She’d break before she bent an inch. He wanted to drag her from the room and kiss the stubbornness right out of her.
“She still thinks she owns the world,” Ryan said.
Except Sugar Beth wasn’t the toxic teenager they remembered. He thought about saying as much to Ryan, but since he’d only begun to understand that himself, he kept silent.
He heard a soft gasp and turned his head just in time to see Merylinn tip her glass of red wine right down the front of Sugar Beth’s blouse.
Sugar Beth fled to Colin’s bedroom. She wasn’t going to let them make her cry. She’d cried enough self-pitying tears in her life to drown a goat, and all it had gotten her was a big fat nothing. Wine soaked her blouse like blood from a fresh kill. She made herself take a deep breath, but it didn’t help break the traffic jam in her throat. Might as well call a spade a spade. That traffic jam came from shame. There was a big difference between knowing people still hated your guts and seeing it in their faces.
She found tissues in the bathroom to blow her nose. She wasn’t running away. The Seawillows could take all the bites out of her they wanted, but she refused to go anywhere. She was like a kid’s punching toy. Knock her down as many times as you wanted, and she’d still get back up, right?
But she didn’t feel like getting up as she pulled off her blouse and swabbed her chest with Colin’s washcloth. The wine had left a red blotch on her bra, and she couldn’t do much about that. Truth was, she couldn’t do much about anything. As she headed for his bedroom, she felt as fragile as the spun-sugar castle that had once decorated her eighth birthday cake.
Colin walked in.
“Get out,” she said, marching into his closet.
He didn’t mention that this was his room. Instead, he stood just inside the closet door, the same place she’d stood a few hours earlier while he’d been dressing. “I want you to go back to the carriage house right now,” he said with a gentleness that stung more than the hostilities downstairs.
“Do you now?” She flipped through his shirts.
“Enough is enough.”
“But I haven’t bled yet.” She whipped one of his white shirts from the hanger and shoved her arms in the sleeves.
“I don’t want your blood, Sugar Beth.”
“You want every last drop. Now get out of my way.” She started to push past him, but he grabbed her arm, forcing her to look up.
Normally she liked looking at him, but now those arrogant jade eyes had softened with a compassion she hated. “Hands off, bud.”
He eased his grip, but he didn’t release her, and his words fell over her, as cool and light as snowflakes. “Do I have to throw you out?”
She fought the urge to bury her face in his neck. If he wanted to go all sensitive on her, that was his problem because she wasn’t having any of it. “You betcha, suckuh.” She pulled away. “Throw me out because that’s the only way I’m leaving.”
“This isn’t a battle.”
“Tell them. Better yet, tell yourself.” She worked furiously at the buttons.
“I made a mistake,” he said. And then, in that same Father Caring voice, “Go home now. I’m firing you. I’ll be over first thing in the morning to write you a check.”
A big one, she’d bet anything. “You and your pity money can go to hell, Your Grace. The guest of honor doesn’t leave in the middle of her party.”
“I planned this party before I hired you.”
“But you hadn’t planned the entertainment. You waited till I came along for that.”
He didn’t deny it. Whenever she’d asked who he’d invited, he’d danced around the truth. “Let me.” He pushed her hands away from the buttons. “You’re making a muddle of it.”
“I can do it myself.”
“Right. Just like you do everything.” She tried to back away, but he held her fast. His hands began moving along the row of buttons, unfastening the ones she’d gotten wrong, refastening. “You don’t need anybody, do you?” he said. “Because you’re the biggest badass in town.”
“Believe it.”
“Armed and dangerous. Letting everybody know how tough you are.”
“A hell of a lot tougher than a weasel like you,” she countered.
“Undoubtedly.”
“You’re such a wuss.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I like to think I have a certain female sensibility.”
“I’ll bet you wear lace panties.”
“I doubt they’d fit.”
He reached her breasts, and the backs of his fingers brushed the curve of flesh, sending little feathers of sensation skittering across her skin. The feeling scared her more than the idea of going back downstairs. He exuded exactly the kind of male power that had brought her down in the past.
But not this time. No matter what.
She pulled away and began knotting the shirttails at her waist. “I sure haven’t seen any women around here. How long since you’ve had a date? With a female, that is.”
