Audrey gave a faint smile. “I always thought the same thing.” But for some reason, that didn’t sound nearly as interesting to her anymore. She thought of Reese’s roguish smile and the way he constantly strove to drive her absolutely up a wall. Maybe that was what she needed—someone to push her out of her neat, orderly life and make her spit a bit of fire. She had to admit that she felt more alive around him.
“Oh, well,” Daphne said after a moment. She flicked her cigarette into the lake and pulled out her pack, frowning. “Damn it, that was the last one. I’m heading back to the house to get more. You want to come?”
“No thanks. I think I’ll stay out here a bit longer,” Audrey said, turning back to the lake. “Clear my head a bit more before returning. Camilla’s perfume is killing me.”
“Ha.” Daphne snorted. “Someone should tell her it’s gauche to bathe in her own line of perfume.”
“Yeah, but someone won’t, because she’s rich and powerful.” Audrey shared a smile with her twin, then waved her back toward the lodge. “Go. I’ll be in in a few.”
Daphne headed back up the path and Audrey circled the lake again, lost in her thoughts. She really didn’t know what to make of the situation. Was she the other woman? Just a bit of a fling? What was Reese other than the best friend of the man she was supposed to be in love with but hadn’t really thought about much since arriving? She didn’t have answers.
After about a half hour of walking alone, she arrived back at the dock and turned to head back to the lodge. As she headed back up the path, she heard voices and paused.
It was a male and a female voice. Curious, Audrey sneaked along the side of the cabin, listening in. The two were standing by the woodpile, and as she got closer, she could hear Reese and Camilla talking.
A stab of jealousy gutted her, and Audrey stopped short, surprised at herself. Why was she jealous? Reese wasn’t hers. Not really. There was nothing for her to be possessive about, but when she heard Camilla’s voice, she couldn’t stop her hands from clenching into fists. Unable to help herself, she slid forward along the lodge so she could listen in a bit more. After all, that wouldn’t hurt things, would it?
“Camilla,” Reese sighed. “Please. Don’t make this harder for me than it already is. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m just trying to make you understand. That’s all.”
“How am I supposed to understand? How did you change your mind so quickly?” There was a pause and a crunch of grass, as if someone was stepping. “A few days ago, we were in the hot tub, enjoying ourselves.” Camilla’s voice turned seductive, and Audrey pictured her leaning into Reese, her hands on his chest. “I don’t see how things have changed that much in that little time,” the heiress continued.
“Well, for starters, you left me behind,” Reese replied. “No clothes, no phone, no nothing. I have to admit I wasn’t a fan of that.”
“I was nervous,” Camilla said in a soft voice. “She was taking pictures with her phone. You know my father wouldn’t be happy if I got caught in a hot tub with a strange man.”
“Topless,” Reese added.
“Topless,” Camilla agreed in that slinky voice. “So you understand?”
“Oh, I understand. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t annoy me.”
“So is that why you’re turning me down?” Her voice became petulant.
Turning her . . . down? Audrey cocked her head and took another step forward, suddenly intensely curious as to what the two were saying. The knot in her throat became dry as a bone.
“Don’t make this more difficult than it is, Camilla.” Reese’s voice was calm and easy, but it sounded a little dead to Audrey’s ears. As if he was saying the words but truly didn’t care how Camilla felt. Was this how he was with other women? How did they not notice his utter boredom with them?
Was he ever like that with her? She made a mental note to pay attention the next time she talked to him in private.
“I don’t see why this has to be difficult at all, Reese. You told me you wanted me.” She gave another huffy sigh, and then asked, “Is there someone else?”
Audrey held her breath.
“I’m sleeping with someone, yeah.”
“Do you love her?”
Audrey nearly swallowed her tongue.
Reese laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is me you’re talking to.”
And just like that, her heart plummeted back to reality. For a moment, Audrey felt weirdly crushed. She mentally shook herself. Why did that bother her? Wasn’t she just using the man for a mindless fling, too? Who cared if he was in love?
Certainly not her. She was supposed to be in love with someone else.
Camilla gasped. “Is it Daphne Petty? Ohmigod. You’re sleeping with Daphne Petty? Reese!” For a moment there, Camilla sounded excited, and then she quieted. “Is it true that she’s hooked on the hard stuff? She looks like a mess in there. Yuck.”
“Camilla,” Reese said in a warning tone.
“I won’t tell anyone. But you have to get me backstage at her next concert. She has this really hot drummer and I—”
“Camilla, I’m not sleeping with Daphne Petty.”
There was a long pause, and Audrey could practically hear the gears grinding to a halt in Camilla’s pretty blonde head. Then, she snorted. “There’s no one else here but the fat chick. Don’t tell me you’re riding that moped?”
Audrey bristled. That little bitch.
“Shut up, Camilla,” Reese said in that same bored, dismissive voice. “I trust this won’t affect business?”
“What are you talking about? Of course it affects business. You think I won’t tell Daddy about this?”
“I rather hoped you wouldn’t.”
Audrey bit her lip. She was still annoyed about the fat comment, and now Camilla was going to hold the business deal over Reese’s head? She supposed Reese deserved it for trying to use the heiress for his own means, but it bothered her to have him more or less held hostage by the spoiled blonde’s whims.
“You know what they say,” Reese said flatly. “Never mix business with pleasure.”
“But Reese—” Camilla’s voice took on that whining tone. “You’re not being fair to me. Sleep with the fat chick or Daphne Petty. I don’t care. She can be your gimme.” Her voice turned seductive in a flash, surprising Audrey. “But I don’t see why that has to spoil our fun.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Audrey ducked behind the stairs when she heard footsteps. Sure enough, Camilla came stomping past in her adorable outfit, a pout on her pink, glossy lips. She paused at the steps, oblivious to Audrey hovering in the shadows behind them, and turned to give Reese one last look. “If you want that business deal, you know where I’ll be.” Her shoulders gave a slight shrug. “I think we can still have fun together, but that’s up to you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Reese told her.
“So . . .” Camilla asked.
He sighed. “My answer is still no.”
Audrey ducked further back into the shadows as Camilla went up the stairs of the cabin and Reese turned to walk down to the lake. She watched his broad back as he left. Their little fling had come close to ruining Reese’s business deal. It sounded like Camilla still wanted Reese, even though he didn’t want her, and that was confusing to Audrey.
Why was he turning down the heiress? It didn’t make sense. Because of their bet? Did he really want to be Audrey’s slave for a day?
She almost snorted aloud. She doubted he wanted that more than the anal sex she’d agreed to.
It had been shocking to Audrey to hear him suggest such a thing as part of their dare. She’d guessed from the challenging, almost playful look on Reese’s face that he’d expected her to freeze up or flip out on him. He’d been trying to get a rise out of her.
Instead, she’d agreed to it. God only knew why. She’d never had anal sex, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to sleep with a man—no matter how sexy he was—right after he rolled out of
another woman’s bed. But somehow, she’d found herself agreeing to it, knowing it was pretty much a sure thing that she was going to lose.
Reese coaxed her wild streak to the forefront, and she liked it. Just the thought of doing wild, dirty, forbidden sex with him sent a whole fleet of butterflies through her stomach.
Of course, his turning down Camilla had never really even been a consideration. It was downright strange. Not only was he losing guaranteed sex from two women—and according to Reese’s reputation with ladies, he never turned down no-strings attached sex—but he was in danger of losing his precious business deal.
And that made her feel weird.
She should have never dared him to seal the deal with Camilla. Maybe he hadn’t liked that Audrey was trying to force him in one direction or another and that was why he’d gotten cold feet. Maybe he was just denying Camilla at the moment so she’d only want him more when he returned.
Or maybe there was a bit more there with the “fat chick” he was nailing? Audrey felt a heated blush creeping over her cheeks at the thought, and she pressed her palms to her face.
What a silly thought. She couldn’t hold on to someone like Reese any more than she could hold on to a handful of lake water. He was witty, sexy, urbane, and had women falling all over him. She was calm, efficient, and boring. Well, most of the time. When she was with him, she was . . . different.
She should confront Reese, she decided. Make him tell her what was going on behind his thought process so she could quit wondering about it. They were friends, after all. He’d tell her.
But for some reason, Audrey found herself slinking away so Reese wouldn’t see her, wouldn’t know she’d been listening in to their conversation. She’d give him the afternoon. That would allow him plenty of time to change his mind and see where he landed with this thing.
And maybe give her stomach time to calm down and quit acting all excited, like he’d just chosen her to take to the prom or something.
***
Audrey lurked in the house for the rest of the day, determined to act like nothing was wrong.
Like Camilla hadn’t gotten into her car and driven away, tires screeching down the gravel road.
Like Reese hadn’t gone upstairs and slammed his door as if he were annoyed at the world, and then spent the afternoon up there, avoiding the rest of them.
Like both Cade and Daphne weren’t giving her curious looks and whispering to each other, trying to figure out what was going on.
Nope. Audrey acted as if nothing was going on. She popped a bowl of popcorn and settled down in front of the fire with her book and read, acting as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
In all reality, she’d already finished the book. Twice. She was simply staring at the pages, lost in her own thoughts. Well, except for when it came to the love scenes. She read those at least twice more with great attention to detail. She might have also pictured herself in the place of the heroine, and Reese in the place of the hero. At least once. And then she felt weird about it and went back to staring at the page, turning over the conversation with Camilla in her mind.
She couldn’t figure out Reese’s motives as to why he’d turned down the heiress. The way she could see it, there were only a few possibilities as to why he’d refuse Camilla’s blatant invitation: that he was truly interested in Audrey, that he was determined to make Camilla suffer for abandoning him, or that Camilla had some horrible sort of sexually transmitted disease and this was an easy out.
Oddly enough, the latter two were the most probable. Especially the STD, she thought, then chided herself for being unfair. Camilla’s greatest crime was being interested in the same man who Audrey was.
Then again, the bitch did call her fat.
Feet thumped on the stairs and Audrey looked up from her book. Cade and Daphne had gone for a walk around the lake—they all usually took at least one turn around the lake with a partner daily since there wasn’t a TV in the lodge and not much to do in the way of entertainment otherwise—so Audrey knew it must have been Reese heading down the stairs.
She resisted the urge to smooth a hand over her bun.
Sure enough, it was Reese, dressed in a dark burgundy open-collared shirt that actually fit him and a pair of jeans. She guessed Camilla must have returned with his clothing. He looked sexy as hell in it, too. Audrey eyed his tight ass in his jeans appreciatively.
He gave her a black look as he passed by the couch, his foul mood clearly lingering, then headed into the kitchen. She put aside her romance novel and her empty popcorn bowl and sat up. That look he’d given her was a warning one. A “not right now” look. A “don’t fuck with me today, I’m not in the mood” look. Too bad for him that he was alone in the cabin with the one woman immune to Reese Durham’s black glare. He didn’t scare her. Hell, he didn’t even intimidate her, really. She just wanted to know why he was so cranky, and why he’d turned the heiress down.
She headed into the kitchen after him.
Reese was bent over, pulling somethingout of the fridge. When he straightened, he gave her a foul look and tossed the package of ground beef on the counter. “Go away, Audrey. I’m not in the mood.”
“That’s not like you,” Audrey said in a deliberately light voice, moving a bit closer to him anyhow. “Rumor has it that you’re always in the mood.”
He ignored her, pulling a sauté pan out of the cabinet and thumping it on the stove with a bit of force. When she didn’t move back, he glared at her again, reached past her, and grabbed a knife, then slit open the meat and dumped it in the pan.
“So you’re not talking to me?” she asked.
“I thought I told you to go away.”
“Are you mad that you chased your heiress away?”
That time, the glare he gave her was icy. Reese gestured at the pan. “Do you mind? I’m trying to make dinner so you can keep romancing Cade into thinking you’re the perfect woman.”
“Mmm,” she said, eyeing him. For some reason, it was adorable seeing Reese all moody and blustery. Maybe it was because she was normally the one on the defensive and Reese the one on the offensive. Turning the tables? Kind of fun. “So what am I cooking?”
“Spaghetti.” As if to prove the point, he grabbed a large pot and turned, thumping it into the sink with a crash and then began to fill it with water.
“Wonderful. Cade loves spaghetti. That’s rather thoughtful of me.” She crossed her arms under her breasts and leaned up against the counter. “I don’t suppose I thought of garlic bread, too?”
He glared at her hatefully, then turned a knob on the oven, pre-heating it. “You did. Happy now? Can you go?”
Audrey tilted her head, studying him. “I will after you tell me what’s going through your head.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Really? You think it’s none of my business?”
He ignored her, turning off the tap and then moving the pot of water to the stove top, as if she weren’t speaking. That was fine. She’d break through that icy facade at some point, and then he’d snap. Kind of like she always did.
And for some reason, that started to turn her on.
Audrey tugged at her T-shirt, hoping her hardening nipples weren’t visible through the fabric. She continued to watch him, then commented, “So why’d you turn Camilla away?”
“I didn’t.” The two syllables sounded gritted, as if spoken through clenched teeth.
“Really?” She pretended to pick a piece of lint off his sleeve, oh so casual. “That wasn’t what I heard.” And she waited for the inevitable blow up.
Reese slowly turned, looking at her long and hard. “What did you hear?”
She gave a small shrug, but felt her panties get a little damp with arousal. “I overheard you talking to Camilla back by the woodpile. You’re riding the moped, remember?” At his unmoving face, she continued on. “You know the joke. Fat chicks are like mopeds. Fun to ride but you never let your buddies see it—”
“I know what she meant, Audrey. And I never said you were fat.”
“No, you didn’t. Camilla did. You told her you were sleeping with me, though, and it torpedoed your big business deal. And I don’t understand why you did that.”
He gave her a scathing look, then grabbed a spatula and began to stir the ground beef that sizzled in the skillet. “I said we weren’t talking about it.”
“Did you decide that you didn’t want the business deal?” she asked, knowing she was goading him. “Or maybe Camilla wasn’t your type after all? She told you that she didn’t care if you slept with me as long as you had fun with her. Was that the problem? You weren’t having fun? Or maybe—”
He set the spatula down, his hands clenching. “Let it go, Audrey.”
“Maybe you’re chicken,” she continued. “Maybe you felt like you couldn’t back up your bet, so it was safer to lose to me. Not every guy’s in the right sort of mindset for anal sex, after all—”
Reese turned away before she could finish. Audrey let her words trail off, curious and a little disappointed. All that ammo she’d been throwing at him and he wasn’t even going to say anything to her? As she watched, he moved to the oven and turned off the knob. Then he did the same to the stove and gave her another glare. “You want to be in the kitchen so bad, you can cook dinner.”
And he began to stalk away.
She reached out and grabbed his arm. “You want to know what I think?”
“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.” He tried to pull away.
Audrey ignored his attempts to lose her. He was well versed in pushing her out of her own comfort zone, and it was time someone turned the tables on him. “I think you’re pouting.”
That got his attention. His gaze snapped back to her and he gave her a black scowl. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. You’re pouting. You’re sulking because you turned down a woman who holds the purse strings to a lucrative business deal and you’re mad at yourself for doing it, because you don’t understand why you did so. And you want to know something? I don’t understand it, either.”