I Waxed My Legs for This? (9 page)

HE WANTED HER.

Not loved her.

Moments ago she’d been terrified of hearing him say he loved her, but now the tiny section of Carrie’s heart that had always held out some hope wilted. She should say no. He still loved Sandy. He was just turning to her on the rebound.

She shouldn’t take the chance of losing a friend over a physical urge.

Her head knew that, but her body wasn’t paying any attention and neither was that broken piece of her heart. If she couldn’t have his love, maybe she could settle for his body?

He liked her, maybe even loved her like a friend. And he wanted her. Maybe it could be enough? Maybe she should take a chance.

“Yes or no, Carrie.”

Yes or no?

Carrie didn’t know which way to answer until she heard herself say, “Yes.”

She loved him. She said the words to herself, unwilling to burden Jack with them.

He wanted her.
It might be enough
. She repeated the phrases over and over in her mind.

Jack groaned and scooped her up in his arms.

“I can walk,” she said, forcing a laugh.

Jack looked into her eyes with such a hunger that Carrie shuddered. “I don’t want to take a chance of your getting away. I need you tonight, Carrie.”

Tonight
.

Ever the lawyer, Jack had qualified his actions, making his intent clear.

She could still say no, Carrie thought as Jack laid her almost reverently in the center of the bed.

She wanted him, too.

She tried to speak and tell him so, but couldn’t seem to get any words out.

Her best friend.

She faced the truth once and for all. She couldn’t say no.

Jack had been her best friend for years and now he was going to be more than a friend. She remembered his qualification—
for tonight
.

It was enough.

It had to be.

She woke the next morning to find Jack wheeling a food cart toward her.

“You have permission to get up and use the facilities,” he said with a smile. “But that’s it. We’re going to see if two people really can spend a day in bed. I’ve never quite managed it, have you?”

Carrie rubbed her sleepy eyes.

Jack was standing there, smiling and joking even. Who was this man?

And where had he hidden the real Jack Templeton?

“Let me just...” She blushed and settled for, “I’ll be right back.”

Carrie wrapped the sheet around herself, dashed to the bathroom and shut the door. She leaned against it for a moment, trying to collect her scattered thoughts. What had she done and what did Jack’s reaction mean?

She stared at the woman in the mirror and didn’t recognize her.

“Carrie, are you going to stay in there all day?” Jack called.

Oh, if only she could.

Quickly she took care of her morning needs and hurried out the door. “Jack, we have to talk.”

He just shook his head and pulled her back into bed.

“Not this morning we don’t. I said we were going to see if we could spend an entire day in bed. There was no mention of talk, at least not the serious sort. We’ll save that sort of talk until tomorrow.”

“If we can’t talk, what do you plan on doing all day?” she asked.

He winked at her.

“Really? All day?” she asked with a laugh.

“Oh, we may need a break from time to time, but yes. If last night was any indication, I think we can do it all day and all night.”

“Jack, really, we have to talk.”

“Later,” he whispered. “I’m so hungry.”

Deciding she’d earned her reprieve, Carrie asked, “What did you order for breakfast?”

“You.” He began unwrapping the sheet like a little boy unwrapping a Christmas present.

“Jack, we can’t...I mean, we haven’t eaten breakfast even. It will get cold.”

“I just ordered bagels and fruit. Waiting won’t spoil it, but waiting might kill me. I need you.”

There were only three words in the English language that could have lessened Carrie’s resistance any quicker.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“That’s all I want to hear today.
Yes, Jack
.
Oh, yes
will do as well.” He chuckled and ran his fingers down her back.

“All I’m supposed to say is
yes
?” she asked. “You think that might really happen?”

“A man can hope.”

“You don’t need to look so smug,” Carrie said between a huge bite of her hamburger later that afternoon.

“Smug isn’t the word I’d use,” Jack said, grinning as he watched her inhale the sandwich.

A birdlike appetite had never been one of Carrie’s vices.

Jack was finding himself extremely thankful of the fact that her appetites so aptly matched his own.

He’d made some headway at tearing down the walls of her doubt.

Soon she’d admit that they were meant for each other.

“What word would you use?” She slurped her strawberry shake.

“Well, let’s see. I’m sitting here with my lady eating lunch at a romantic resort. When we’re done, I plan to see if I can make love to her again...”

“You can’t...I mean, it’s physically impossible for a man your age to keep up this pace.”

“My age?” he asked.

Nodding, she shoved a fry into her mouth.

It shouldn’t have looked sensuous—it was a French fry after all—but Jack knew that
physically impossible
wasn’t a phrase his body would acknowledge. In fact it seemed bound and determined to prove that with Carrie there were no limits.

“My age?” he asked again.

“Well, Jack, let’s face it you’re not getting any younger. I read somewhere that men reached their physical peak somewhere in their late teens or early twenties. So, you’re well past that. And—given the fact that you lead a rather sedentary, lawyerish sort of life—I’m afraid you might permanently damage something if you try again.”

“I would not.” He was torn between indignation and delight.

This was
his
Carrie.

Here was the person who had always kept him on his toes, challenged him and thwarted him in turn.

He’d never met any woman like her.

He had to be the dumbest guy on earth not to have noticed what he had before this trip.

Well, he might be dumb, but he wasn’t dumb enough to let her slip through his fingers now that he’d noticed her as his perfect match.

“Are you finished with your lunch?” he asked, smiling.

It was the smile that made Carrie nervous.

When Jack smiled like that she was reminded that he was a lawyer, a modern day hunter going after his quarry.

This time his quarry wasn’t a witness on the stand or some obscure phrase in a contract.  No this time he was after her.

“No, I don’t believe I am finished with my lunch yet,” she said.

“Uh, uh, uh. I thought we agreed that
yes
was the word you were using today, not
no
.”

“But I’m not through,” she said, hoping to keep her hamburger, fries and shake between them.

“Let me rephrase the question. Carrie, do you truly believe I’m past my sexual prime?”

She giggled and said, “
Yes
.”

At his look of outrage, she said, “You told me that was the only answer I was allowed to give. Other than oh, yes.”

She nodded. “And you know, they say women hit their peak in their mid-thirties,” she hedged, popping another fry into her mouth, even though she’d suddenly lost the taste for them. “That means I’m on the upswing, while you’re definitely on the downward end of things.”

“Well, the studies were right about women, but I think, if they’d tested men who were sharing a bed with the delectable Carrington Rose, they might have gotten different results, no matter what the age of their test subjects.”

He lunged across the bed and pushed her food to the floor even as he pinned her to the mattress. “Let’s just see if you can remember what word you’re supposed to be using as I try to prove to you that men of my considerable age have as much staying power as boys in their teens.”

“Yes,” she murmured a half hour later.

“Your Honor, I rest my case,” Jack said, a hint of laughter mingling with desire.

Happy.

No, that seemed to mild a word.

Ecstatic. Joyful. Gleeful even.

None of them quite fit.

Carrie couldn’t come up with a word that seemed adequate to describe the emotion that was filling her to the bursting point

She checked in the mirror. Her hair was tamed, at least momentarily, and her heart was in her eyes.

Anyone who saw her today wouldn’t be able to help but know the truth of things. Carrington Rose Delany loved Jackson Eric Templeton.

Of course, she wasn’t going to tell him.

Not, just yet. She wasn’t completely sure he had healed. Sandy had been a part of his life for years. Though, she’d been in his life even longer.  Still, until Carrie was convinced that he was over Sandy, she’d take her time. They had all the time in the world.

Even thoughts of Sandy couldn’t dim her mood. Not after the way she and Jack had spent the past twenty-four hours.

She opened the bathroom door. “Jack?”

The room was empty. Maybe he’d gone down to the restaurant to get them a table. They’d decided today that they would leave the room, for a while at least.

Carrie smiled as she grabbed her key card.

Yes, just for a little while.

They’d eat, maybe take a walk on the beach and then come back to their room, and she’d let Jack work his delicious magic on her again.

She quickly pressed the elevator button. She was anxious to find Jack, to eat, to take that walk and then get back to the room.

Oh, how she wanted to go back to their room.

She practically bolted off the elevator, so great was her need to see Jack. Walking through the lobby she stopped short.

In that one moment, her dreams didn’t just fade away, they died.

Jack was sitting on a couch next to Sandy.

No, not just sitting—hugging.

Clinging to each other. Wrapped in each other’s arms, as if their separation had never happened.

Carrie stood, locked in place, watching her dreams shatter before her eyes.

Jack and Sandy.

Sandy and Jack.

They ended their embrace, but didn’t move apart. His hand rested on her thigh, like it had countless other times.

They were talking.

Jack was smiling.

Carrie backed out of the room.

She had to get away.

Jack had Sandy back. She was his true love.

Carrie had just been a momentary aberration, just as she had feared.

Friendship had mingled with loneliness and for a moment they’d had something more. Now Jack didn’t need her anymore. He had Sandy.

It was a couples’ resort, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered. Sandy had to have come with someone, with a man. But the image of Jack and Sandy hugging overrode that voice.

Whoever Sandy had come with meant as little to her as Carrie had meant to Jack. Sandy and Jack were together again and nothing and no one else mattered to them.

The pressure in Carrie’s chest threatened to cut off her oxygen. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

She had to get away.

Away
.

That’s what she’d do.

It might seem cowardly, but Carrie looked at it as self-preservation.

She had to put some distance between herself and Jack.

She needed some time to put the pieces of her broken heart together.

He’d been nothing but honest with her. 

She just needed some space.

She’d see when there was a flight leaving the island and she’d be on it

She couldn’t stay and witness Jack and Sandy’s reunion. She couldn’t witness the look in his eyes when he had to tell her their short fling was flung.

Over.

Finite.

Just like the dreams that had been revived. They were over as well.

“YOU’RE HOME EARLY,” Eloise said the next day between a mouthful of pins.  “What happened?

“You know, that’s why God created pincushions,” Carrie said, ignoring Eloise’s question.

She tossed her bag on the bench in Encore’s workroom and went to her desk.

She was going to force herself into normality. Going back to work was a start. She looked at her boss. “One of these days you’re going to swallow one of those things, trying to talk around them like that and you’ll kill yourself.”

“What happened?” Eloise asked again.

Carrie should have stayed at home. Eloise was like a pit bull—when she grabbed hold of something, she didn’t let it go.

“Nothing,” she tried. “I just decided the life of decadence wasn’t for me.”

Eloise didn’t look up, she just continued pinning a pale pink dress on the dressmaker’s form. “So, what did Jack do?”

“Nothing.”

That was the truth. He’d done nothing. She was the one who’d gone and fallen in love with her best friend.

Carrie went through the motions of looking at the letters that were waiting for her.

Eloise didn’t look up again, she just continued pinning the dress. “You might as well just tell me and save yourself the inquisition.”

Carrie tossed the letters down and walked toward Eloise. She sank onto the floor next to her boss.

“I slept with him,” she admitted.

Eloise stabbed another pin into the material.

“Ah.” Eloise nodded her head as if that’s exactly what she’d expected to hear.

“That’s all you’re going to say?” Carrie asked. “
Ah
? You browbeat me into telling you—”

“I didn’t browbeat you, I just threatened to.” Eloise looked up and grinned through her mouthful of pins.

“And I tell you what happened. I confess that I’ve slept with my best friend and all I get from you is
Ah’
?”

“What would you prefer?”

Carrie rested her head in her hands. She was so tired and every time she thought she knew what she was doing, doubt whispered in her ear. “You could have said something like,
Carrie, you poor thing
.”

“Was he that bad in bed?” she asked.

Carrie shook her head. “He wasn’t bad...it wasn’t bad. As a matter of fact, I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.”

“Did he snore?” Eloise asked.

Despite herself, Carrie felt herself start to smile. “Nothing I couldn’t cope with.”

“So, the problem was...?” Eloise left the question hanging.

“He’s my best friend, and he’s on the rebound, and...”

“
And
?”

It was time to say her deep, terrible secret out loud. “Sandy.”

“So, she called.”

“Not called. Came to the island. I found them in the lobby together. They were hugging.”

Carrie doubted she’d ever get that image out of her mind. Jack embracing Sandy.

“And what did Jack say?” Eloise’s expression furrowed as she studied Carrie.

Carrie felt like a bug under a microscope as she admitted, “Nothing.”

“He slept with you and didn’t say anything when he went back to Sandy.”

“He didn’t have a chance to say anything. I saw them hugging and I left. I packed, wrote a note and just left. I couldn’t face him. I just got in this morning and came straight here. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted—”

“You wanted me to say,
poor baby
and comfort you?” Eloise asked.

Carrie nodded. “Something like that.”

“Sorry. I’m fresh out of sympathy for fools.”

Carrie wasn’t sure what sort of reaction she’d expected from her friend, but that wasn’t it. “Eloise.”

“Listen, I’m offering you a partnership in this business because I think you’ve got a lot going for you. You’re talented, creative and have been an asset to the business. With you at the helm here, I can move forward with opening a new store in Pittsburgh. But, now I’m rethinking—”

It took a minute for Carrie to register what her friend had just said. “Partnership?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention it?” Eloise smiled, pins sticking oddly out of the comer of her mouth. “While I was working on our exclusive Carrington Rose line, I was also working on a partnership between us. The papers are on your desk. You’ll be taking over the store here in Erie.”

“Uh.” She didn’t know what to say.

“Is that a yes?” Eloise asked.

“Yes.”

Eloise took the pins from her mouth and stuck them in a pincushion. She extended her hand. “Put it there, partner.”

“Partner. I’ve thought about starting a place of my own, but I liked it here, liked you...” She let the sentence trail off.

Partner.

It was a dream come true.

“Encore will be the exclusive home of Carrington Rose Originals.” 

A partnership. Her own label. It might not be New York, or Paris, but Erie was home and this was her dream.

This was a dream come true.

Which just proved that some dreams could come true.

She thought of Jack.

And some dreams never would.