Blame It on Your Heart (15 page)

"Don't tell me you've suddenly changed your mind?"

"No, I haven't." She shook her head. But maybe she had... No. She couldn't let the events of the last few nights cloud her decision. She and Damon hadn't talked at all about where their relationship might be going.

In fact, other than discussing details of the party, they hadn't talked much, period.

It was foolish, she knew, to continue to sleep with Damon with no hope for any sort of future. Not when it was stirring up all those old feelings, bringing it all back to the surface until she was afraid she was as deeply in love with him as she'd ever been.

No, it's infatuation. Or lust. Or the sex hormones trying to trick your brain into thinking you're bonded to him,
a tiny voice of reason scolded her.

She knew she could rationalize it all she wanted, but that didn't change the fact that Damon had been clear on what he wanted from her. And it wasn't to try to recapture what they'd had when they were—how did he put it—just a couple of stupid kids?

And it didn't change the fact that when this burned out—either because she asked for too much or Damon decided it was time to move on—Ellie would be no more capable of enduring life in the same small town with him than she'd been thirteen years ago.

So of course she couldn't stay.

"I have to get going," Ellie said, exhaustion settling over her, the last few days of little sleep catching up with her in one sudden wave. "But we need to talk. There's clearly more going on here than just the changes I'm making—"

"You two know where Brady is?"

Ellie snapped her head around, her body suddenly tingling with awareness at that familiar low voice. He stood in the doorway, looking all rough and sexy in a gray T-shirt and faded jeans. She stole a glance at Molly to see if her sister had picked up on the fact that her pulse was racing madly and her skin was flushed with heat.

Fortunately Molly seemed oblivious.

She turned back to Damon. If he was feeling any of the pulse elevating, stomach quivering excitement at the sight of her, it didn't show it on his face. She felt a flicker of unease at the flat, neutral stare that gave no clue what was going on in his heart or his mind.

Don't be silly
. This was his MO in public, to betray no feeling whatsoever, to give no clue that he had spent the better part of the last three nights in a naked, sweaty tangle in her narrow twin bed.

Still, it was more evidence of what she already knew. That for all that she was getting carried away on a wave of unresolved emotions toward him, Damon was able to turn it on and off like a light switch. He wasn't going to let himself get carried away again.

The reality was so depressing it took her a moment to realize he'd asked a question until Molly answered. "I have no idea, I just got here."

"Ellie?" Damon asked. "Do you know?"

"What?"

"Brady," Damon said, starting to sound irritated. "The truck is here with all the supplies for the brick pizza oven we're building outside."

"I think he went out for a smoke," Ellie replied.

"He better be on the other side of the dumpster," Molly muttered, stalking toward the back door. "Otherwise he'll stink up the entire kitchen."

Ellie turned back to Damon and gave him a little smile. To her consternation, he didn't drop the guarded look, even though there was no one around.

Her smile went stiff. "I was just on my way out to the Lazy Creek," she said awkwardly.

He gave her a curt nod. "Let me know if I need to follow up."

She resisted the urged to fidget, wondering how she could feel so uncomfortable around someone who, less than twelve hours ago had had his head between her legs. She reached for something witty or flirty or both to say. "So, uh, see you later?" was all she could manage. The closest she could come to asking him if he planned to come to her bedroom tonight.

"Sure," he said with a shrug, then turned and started out the back door.

###

Don't tell me you've changed your mind?

No, I haven't.

The exchange between Ellie and Molly echoed through his head as he humped the wheel barrow full of bricks to the area of the outdoor dining patio where they'd decided to build the oven.

She still planned to leave. Maybe not right away, maybe not for months, but Ellie still planned to haul ass out of town as soon as possible.

And you've known that from the beginning, you moron, so there's no reason you should be walking around feeling like you've been sucker punched.

But telling himself that didn't make the knot in his stomach any looser, and it didn't take away the ache that had seized up his chest the moment he heard her confirm what he already knew.

He could sneak through her window for the next hundred nights, fuck her every way to Sunday, make her come until she was limp as a rag doll, and she was still going to leave.

"It's Ellie, isn't it?" Brady said as he spread the plans for the oven on a wide wooden table a few feet away.

"What's Ellie?" Damon replied, as he walked over to refer to the drawings.

"She's the one who gave you the hickey."

"How do you figure?" Damon said, glad his sunglasses shielded his eyes. He'd gotten pretty good at his hard ass, stony stare that revealed nothing, but Brady knew him too well and had known him for too long to fall for it.

Brady shrugged, walked over to the wheel barrow, and took a brick in his gloved hands. "The secret little smiles at nothing, the flush in her cheeks. Just a general 'well fucked' vibe she's giving off."

"You seem to be paying a lot of attention to Ellie's 'vibe.'" Damon said tightly. He grabbed a couple of bricks and started laying out the oven's perimeter.

"It's hard to miss," Brady said. "There's something about a woman who's getting it regular and getting it good..."

Damon clenched his teeth and forced himself to keep quiet. One thing Brady loved more than anything was finding a chink in your armor and twisting the knife it.

"There's something, I don't know, juicy about them, you know what I mean?"

Damon felt a stirring and a thickening between his legs at the memory of burying his mouth between Ellie's legs, tasting her heat and wetness on his tongue as she came.

Juicy didn't even begin to describe it. Damon grunted in reply and gathered more bricks.

"Juicy," Brady repeated, relentless. "Makes it impossible not to imagine what it would be like to have a taste myself."

Damon's hand clenched around a brick and for a split second he imagined bashing in into his friend's face. "Are you trying to get punched?" he said instead.

Brady laughed, undeterred. "What I don't get is, if you're the one putting that well-fucked look on her face, why you're in such a shitty mood."

Because eventually it will all have to end. And as much as I try to convince myself I have no problem with that, there's still a stupid, naive eighteen year old inside of me that wishes—

He cut off the thought before it could form, unable to articulate it, even if it was just in his head.

"It's complicated."

"Look, I get you guys have a past and all that, but I don't see why that has to complicate things," Brady said as he started placing bricks inside the perimeter of what would become the oven's floor.

"Exactly what I tried to tell myself," Damon said. "But thing is, with Ellie, nothing is ever simple." And the only way to keep things from getting more complicated, he acknowledged grimly, was to nip it in the bud before he fell even further under her spell.

###

See you later.

Sure.

Or not, Ellie realized hours later, as she sat in bed, her eyes glued to the same page she'd been staring at for the last two hours. It had been the same tonight as it had for the past three. Anthony was tucked in, sound asleep. Ellie had taken a shower, taking extra care to wash the smells of the restaurant from her body and hair. Shaving her legs, smoothing citrusy smelling lotion over her skin, imagining his big callused hands running over her.

She'd slipped on a silky night shirt, the closest thing she had these days to provocative lingerie, crawled into bed, and waited.

For the sound of his truck parking around the corner, out of sight of her mother and the closest neighbors.

For the sound of his booted feet landing softly on the roof outside her window, followed by the soft rasp of the screen being pulled from its frame.

And waited.

And waited.

Until she finally realized he wasn't coming at all.

Maybe he fell asleep. Maybe he decided to go out with Brady
, she told herself.
It's not like he committed to a date or something with you.

It's not like he's committed to anything with you.

She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden burn of tears.
Idiot. This is so not worth crying about,
she told herself.
Your husband fathering a child with another woman and leaving her the last cent you have? That's worth a good sob session.

Your fuck buddy—and let's not kid ourselves that Damon views himself as anything but—flaking on you? Not work a single sniffle.

She turned the light off and closed her eyes, telling herself to be glad for the chance to catch up on her sleep.

But sleep was impossible, with thoughts of him burning through her brain. Touching her, licking her, fucking her, until her entire body was on fire. Her skin prickled with awareness, hypersensitive. The soft fabric of her nightshirt felt like sandpaper against her tight nipples, her body thrumming with the need for satisfaction that was never going to come.

She kicked off the covers and hugged the pillow to her, as though that pressure could somehow make up for Damon's absence.

What was wrong with her? She'd never had a problem going without sex. Before this, it had been over a year since she and Troy had been together, and never had she felt anything close to this desperation.

Let's not go rewriting history. Remember your junior year when you went to Washington DC for spring break? You were going out of your mind by the fourth night.

Looking back, Ellie had always chalked that up to being seventeen, saturated with hormones, and lucky enough to have a boyfriend who made it his mission to make sure she came at least once every time they had sex.

Then she'd gone through the long—and entirely bearable—dry spell between Damon and Troy. And while sex with Troy was satisfying—even fun—especially at the beginning, she'd never had this kind of unrelenting, insatiable need to have him naked and inside her every chance she got.

She thought it was part of growing up, being part of an adult relationship where life was about more than your boyfriend in your social life.

But really, it was about Damon. It had always been about Damon and his inexplicable hold on her. A hold that was, she realized with a sinking stomach, as strong as it had ever been.

Chapter 9

"We've got the liquor order arriving Tuesday so we have plenty of time to do inventory before the party Saturday," Ellie said, ticking down her list as she spoke into the phone. "The specialty linens will be sent out to the Lazy Creek Thursday so the housekeeping staff can make up all the guestrooms."

"I still can't believe we had to special order sheets just for the weekend," Damon grumbled on the other line. "I love my sister-in-law, but some of her friends sound like assholes."

"They're Deck's friends too. Sometimes I think people like this ask for something just to see what they can get away with. One woman I knew used to demand a full caviar service be waiting for her in every hotel room she stayed in. And she was allergic to fish."

Damon's only reply was a grunt, which Ellie took as her cue to get back to business.

"Next we have the flowers and the fish, both of which will be flown in on Friday. The tablecloths and extra furniture we need will come from Billings Thursday afternoon. And I've coordinated rides from the airport for anyone who needs them. So for now I think our biggest worry is making sure no one leaks it to Deck that Dylan will be here too. You're picking him up right?" In a stroke of luck, Dylan, the youngest Decker brother and a Sergeant in the Army Rangers, was back from his latest tour in Afghanistan and able to get leave to visit home.

"Yeah. He gets into Billings in about an hour. Anything else?" he asked.

Why did you suddenly close yourself off again? Why are you doing all of our meetings over the phone.

Why haven't you snuck into my bedroom for the last four nights? Why did you suddenly lose interest, just when I was starting to have hope...
?

Questions she would never utter. Questions she had no business asking, not when he'd been so clear about what their relationship—if you could even call it that—was and was not.

"That about covers it," she said, trying to keep her voice chipper. "I'm going to draft an itinerary that will be handed out to each guest. I'll email Jane and Jenna a copy and bring you one when it's ready."

"Email's fine for me too," he said.

She tried to ignore the stabbing sensation in her chest at the proof that he had no interest in seeing her.

He hung up, and she tried to ignore the pit in her stomach as she made a few notes to the timeline she'd worked up for the party. No good could come from stewing over him, she knew. She set herself to work on the welcome letter and itinerary for the party coming up in six days. Absorbed in her work, she didn't realize how much time had passed until there was a knock on the office door.

"Hey," Ellie said, a little cautious as Molly poked her head in. Despite several attempts to talk to her sister about their squabble, Molly had brushed her off, apologizing for flying off the handle and pretending that it was no big deal.

Ellie wasn't buying it, sensing a tension in her sister toward her that went deeper than Molly was willing to admit.

Ellie looked at the clock on her computer screen, eyes widening when she realized it was almost time for dinner service. "Sorry, I didn't realize it was so late. I need to set up Janelle's tables—"

"I already did it," Molly said and waved her off.

"Wait, what are you even doing here?" Ellie asked as she stood from the desk chair and moved around the desk. "I thought you and Josh were supposed to go for a hike or something?"

"Oh, we were," Molly said, "but he ended up getting tied up at work," she continued. She was trying to sound like she wasn't upset, but Ellie didn't miss the little quiver in her sister's voice.

"On a Sunday?"

"He has a client in Bozeman he needed to visit personally," Molly said defensively.

"What client needs a personal visit on a Sunday?" Ellie pressed.

"An important one," Molly snapped. "I know insurance sales sounds super boring after being married to a wizard of Wall Street, but Josh takes his job seriously."

"I never implied he doesn't. I'm just wondering if all of these sudden trips out of town aren't raising some red flags."

Molly's cheeks reddened as her eyes narrowed. "What kind of red flags?"

Ellie immediately regretted her words. "Nothing, never mind. Forget I said anything," Ellie said and started to brush past her through the door.

Molly stepped directly in front of her. Since they were almost exactly the same height Ellie couldn't avoid her sister's accusing gaze.

"You think Josh's cheating on me?"

Ellie shook her head, hands out to her sides in a gesture of helplessness. "Not necessarily. But I remember with Troy, there were signs that I didn't even recognize until it was way too late—"

"Just because you managed to hook up with a cheating criminal doesn't mean everyone is bad, El."

Ellie stepped back, recoiling at the vitriol in her sister's voice. "Wow, that was a little rough."

Molly's face softened, the look in her eyes immediately contrite. "You're right. That was a low blow," she said and bent her head, cradling it in her hands. "I'm sorry. I don't know what's gotten into me lately. It's like I have this feeling that at any minute the rug's going to be yanked out from under me, like life is going to go totally haywire. Do you know what I mean?"

Ellie gave a little laugh. "Are you kidding? I wish I'd had some kind of premonition before it happened to me. Maybe I would have been a little better prepared. But you know what, even if that happens, I know you can get through it. If I can, anyone can."

Molly gave a watery sniff as Ellie pulled her in for a quick hug. "What am I even saying?" she said, shaking her head as she pulled away. "Nothing's going to happen. Everything's great, and it will be even better when Josh and I are finally married. Right?"

"Sure," Ellie tried to infuse some conviction in her reply as she followed Molly out through the kitchen and into the dining room.

At four thirty it was well before the Sunday dinner rush, so she was surprised to hear her mother's voice mingling with two others she didn't immediately recognize.

The man, medium height and stocky, and the woman, athletically built, her curly brown hair swinging in a ponytail, stood with their backs to her. Then the man said something that made both Ellie's mother and the other woman laugh, and immediately Ellie felt a jolt of recognition.

"Laura!" Ellie squealed and bounded over to the other woman, the joy at seeing her best friend from high school making a small dent in the gray fog that had seemed to enshroud her for the past few days.

Laura wheeled around and squealed back, arms wide open as she flung herself at Ellie.

After a round of, "It's so great to see you" and "you look so great," Ellie stood back and stared at the friend who, along with Damon, had been her closest companion from the day she walked into Big Timber Elementary as a fifth grader until the day she left for New York.

She stood back, studying the changes twelve years had brought to her friend. A few lines, tired shadows under her eyes—no doubt the result of being mom to both a three year old and a nearly one year old. "I can't believe it's been five years," Ellie said, shaking her head.

"Too long," Laura said and pulled her in for another hug.

While she'd kept in touch with Laura over the years through email and the occasional phone call, and now through Facebook, the last time she'd seen Laura was at her wedding to Mark Demaris, Deck's best friend.

"Why is it when women get together they start making sounds only dogs can hear?" Mark said good naturedly as he bent and gave Ellie a kiss on the cheek. Mark's face creased in a familiar smile. He was four years older than Laura and her, so they hadn't crossed paths much in high school. But he and Laura had crossed paths when they both ended up in Denver after college.

"I didn't think you were getting here till later in the week," Ellie said.

"Mark managed to finagle a few extra days off work, so we decided to come for the week."

"Where are the kids?" Ellie asked, realizing the baby and the toddler were nowhere in sight.

"At my folks’ house," Mark said with a sigh of relief. "We dropped them off as soon as we got into town."

"Seriously, after ten hours in the car, we barely slowed down to throw them out the door," Laura added. "And since my mother-in-law doesn't really care about seeing us anyway, that leaves us free to do whatever we want," she said, linking her arm through her husband’s as she suggestively wriggled her brow.

"So I guess that means we're going to your mom's so you can take a nap and watch
Real Housewives
?" Mark laughed.

Laura gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. "Shut up. You make me sound so boring."

She turned back to Ellie. "Okay, so I am going to go have a nap—"

Mark snorted and rolled his eyes.

"But after that we're going to head over to the Last Chance," she said, referring to a local dive about fifteen minutes out of town. "You should both come," she said to Ellie and Molly.

Ellie shook her head. As excited as she was to catch up with her friend, she didn't think she had the energy to paste a smile on her face and pretend she was having a good time. "I don't think so—"