He reaches for his denim shirt, his hands extending over his back. He lifts from over his head before depositing it to the floor, his voice full of grit. He exhales.
“I don’t know how I didn’t do this before… Why I ever waited. This is the best idea I’ve had in a long time.”
Now shirtless, his bare torso on display, I get the chance to marvel at him, at the pure sultry masculinity radiating off his body.
Holy God, he’s built—his abs and arms brick-like beneath bronzed skin decorated with a bevy of tattoos.
The ink is subtle, etched in small swathes of skin all over his body, and my fingers itch to touch them.
To dig my fingertips deep into the curved lines of his muscles. To lose myself in them.
At least, until I see the names carved in black along his ribs. Names that ring a bell they shouldn’t.
I sit up, my fingers tracing the dark strokes even as Andrew hovers over me. I look down.
“What are those?” I ask, scared to stroke there—as if they will smear. “Whose names are those?”
Andrew’s gaze follows mine. He sighs. “They’re my parents’ names.” He pauses a beat, the room filling with his silence. He touches my fingers. “Harrison and Lorelei.”
I swallow. “They had beautiful names.”
He nods, his touch soft as it traces mine. “They did.”
It’s a sobering moment. And my hormones, as raging as they were seconds prior, settle down.
I can see that they settle for Andrew, too. The fire in his blue eyes grows subdued.
He says nothing as I point to the next tattoo on his skin.
He tells me a story of that one. And the next. And then the one after that.
For the next thirty minutes we stay that way. On the mattress. Side by side. Inspecting his tattoos and talking about them.
Like an actual couple.
Andrew tells me the story of his parents. And I tell him the story of mine.
The truth. The one I wouldn’t tell Sabrina.
Right up until the moment that the rest of the guests arrive.
The estate explodes with activity—noises and voices—up and down the hall, and I excuse myself. As if a moment ago, I hadn’t been ready to fade completely into Andrew’s embrace.
A mistake.
One I can’t afford to make now.
Not now. Or ever.
Not with a man who doesn’t plan on even sticking around. Not with a man who sees me as a business transaction.
I concentrate on that fact, as I lift myself off the mattress and readjust my dress. And the distance is just what I need.
Only a half an hour until his sister’s rehearsal dinner and I’ve already got a new plan. Andrew takes off for the shower, and I head into the hallway.
Because I have to find Sabrina.
I have to stop what I’ve started.
I close the door to the bedroom—the one I no longer plan on sharing with Andrew, hurrying fast.
—
ANDREW
I jump out of the shower, hurrying fast.
Five minutes of cold water haven’t done a damn thing to ease the ache on my skin, and if I concentrate hard enough, I can still feel Nancy’s fingertips sliding across my tattoos.
As if she were committing them to memory.
And all I wanted to commit to my memory was this.
The sensation of seeing her, staring at me. Open. And vulnerable.
We are orphans.
The two of us. Adrift in our wanton ambitions.
I’d heard about her father—whisperings of a heart attack nearly a year ago. She hadn’t seemed affected…
She was.
The pain was written in her pinched expression as she traced my tattoos, drawing tiny circles with her pink nails.
She was writing a story—her story, I was sure, on my skin. And I let her.
It was a story similar to mine. One I was determined to let her finish tonight.
Rehearsal dinner be damned.
The line between our business and pleasure was blurring, and for once, I was crazy—or horny—enough to let it smudge.
But when I emerge from the gigantic bathroom, she’s no longer there.
Fuck.
Heading to the closet, I slap on the outfit I picked for tonight, adjusting the sleeves and fastening the cufflinks as fast as I can find them.
Stepping into shoes that have already been shined for me, I step into the hall, feeling every bit of the fraud that I’ve always felt in this house.
The stench of it is already over me.
Even when I stop Sabrina in the hall, who almost rushes by me, her shiny dark caramel hair flying over her shoulders.
She stops the second I put my hand on hers, pulling.
“Whoa, Bri. What’s going on? Is there a fire in the house I’m not aware of?”
She turns, huffing towards me in a blue dress that matches her eyes, her hands on her hips—a tell-tale sign of trouble. I brace myself as her stare burns, thinning into slits.
She approaches my doorway.
“Now that you’ve mentioned it… Yes, yes, there is. Your darling sister has decided to move the rehearsal dinner.”
“I thought you were the darling sister.”
“Ha-ha. Notice how hard I’m not laughing at that. No, the other sister. Your other sister. The other much-less-adorable-and-helluva-lot more-problematic one. The one who’s getting married tomorrow.”
“So, I’m guessing we’re no longer having the rehearsal dinner here in the house?”
“Once again, you are correct. She wants to have it in the city. The city. As in New York.”
My heart squeezes inside my chest. I step closer as if I’m not hearing her right, my ears ringing. “We’re having the rehearsal dinner in Manhattan tonight?”
“Yup,” she answers with flourish. “At a new trendy bar called The FlashTop Room. I’m not amused.”
“And how do we exactly plan on dining there with no plans?”
“You know what Ma used to say. ‘There’s never anything that’s too much or too late for a Fletcher.’ I guess she was right.”
I take another step closer, throat closing. “Speaking of our grandmother…where’s her favorite grandchild? I haven’t seen her yet.”
“Oh, Hannah.” She blows a breath out through tight lips, whistling hard. “Miss Everything-Has-to-be-Perfect’s nowhere to be seen. Which is really strange for her. Since she’s always too overinvolved.”
And she’s
