Barefoot in White (Barefoot Bay Brides)

  In the best possible way.

  Including, she thought with a wry smile, her heart, which happened to fall dead center in the middle of his target zone.

  Chapter Twenty

  Nick stayed firmly on the floor, not trusting his own body one minute on a skinny piece of furniture that wasn’t a bed or a sofa with Willow. His hard-on had gone way past discomfort into pain, but that finally subsided like the bright pink flush on Willow’s chest.

  She didn’t talk, kept her eyes closed, and didn’t seem to notice a strand of her hair caught in her lips.

  He plucked it out gently, stroking her cheek, full of wonder and amazement and no small amount of man-pride. She might have used her hand, but he got her there.

  “Nick,” she finally whispered.

  “Hmm?”

  “Can you go write five more chapters? They can be short. A page each, tops.”

  He laughed softly, trailing a finger from her chin to her chest, watching her shoulders quiver in response. “Not satisfied yet, Willow?”

  She turned to face him. “You’re not.”

  “I’m fine. This wasn’t about me.”

  “Why not? I’m an equal opportunity virgin.” She nestled her face into his hand. “And I want more.”

  He stared at her for a long time, memorizing every angle, every beautiful slope, every detail of her face. “There will be more,” he promised.

  “At the risk of sounding whiny and desperate, when?”

  He laughed again, leaning in for a kiss on the cheek. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “I believe that’s at the crux of my problem.”

  “I mean, you don’t get why I’m doing this.”

  She sighed, closing her eyes. “You want to make my first time special. You want to have a real connection so I don’t have a vacant, empty feeling when it’s over. You want to make up for turning me down in college. And…” She narrowed an accusing eye at him. “You want me to stick around long enough to be your muse until this book is done, so you’re dragging it out.”

  He considered every single reason, nodding slowly. “Actually, all of those things are true, but you’re missing one, and it’s the one that matters most to me.”

  She thought for a while and then lifted a shoulder. “I have no idea.”

  “I want you to know…” He stroked her cheek then flattened his palm on the side of her face, holding her so she had nowhere to look but into his eyes. “That whoever made you doubt how incredibly gorgeous you are inside and out was wrong. Any guy can take your virginity, Willow, and I’m sure you could have a line of willing guys to pick from. But I want to be the one who makes you realize you can not only take off your clothes and be perfect, you can drop that shell of protection you wear like a coat of armor, too.”

  She stared for a long moment, long enough for him to see her eyes mist up. “It was my mother,” she finally said.

  He knew what “it” was, and he wasn’t at all surprised about her mother.

  She sat up and looked around for her clothes, the move so automatic, he could have predicted it was coming.

  “You don’t need to cover up to tell me this.”

  “Yes, I—”

  He pushed her back down. “Just talk.”

  “Naked?”

  “The only way to fly,” he teased. “And you’re not completely naked, and there’s nothing about your upper half I don’t know.” He smiled and licked his lips. “Quite intimately.”

  “Oh, Lord, you’re sexy,” she whispered on a moan. “Will you at least come up here and lie with me so I don’t feel like my girls are on display?”

  “Let’s do better. Let’s lie in bed.”

  Her eyes widened. “I thought…”

  “We can share a bed together and not give in to temptation, can’t we? You’re the queen of resisting temptation.”

  “Not where you’re concerned.”

  He stood and held his hand to her. “You are not leaving me tonight.”

  She didn’t move, eyeing him. “You want me to spend the night?”

  “Yes.” He reached for her hand to help her stand, then pulled her into an embrace, the shock of their bare chests touching electrifying him all over again. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy on the optempo, but I don’t want you to leave.”

  Before she could argue, he walked her down the hall to the master bedroom, which was dark except for the soft blue glow of the pool lights outside the French doors. He guided her to the bed, but she hesitated.

  “Let me use the bathroom to freshen up first.”

  He released her and watched her walk to the en suite, the pale light highlighting the muscles in her back and the feminine lines of her body as she walked away in nothing but loose, light slacks. How long would those last?

  Long, because he was determined to do this right.

  He turned down the bed, changed out of his cargo shorts into a pair of boxers and lay on top of the comforter, waiting for her. His body—specifically, the lower half—was more or less under control, but he wasn’t the least bit sleepy. For a moment, he glanced at the desk where he’d put his laptop, dark and silent.

  What was the next scene? he wondered while he waited. It was time to write Christina’s farewell. Would that bird fly or crash?

  The bathroom door clicked open, and Willow stepped out in a white Casa Blanca-issued bathrobe.

  “You’re cheating,” he said. “You covered up what I just uncovered.”

  “I’m cold.”

  “Then let me warm you, but why do I have to lose the territory I already won?”

  Laughing, she came to the bed. “It’s your war games, Lieutenant. Ten minutes ago I was ready to complete Operation Deflower.”

  “Not until I know the inside as well as the outside.”

  As she reached the edge of the bed, an unreadable expression settled on her features.

  “What?” he asked. “You have a problem with that?”

  “No, but I don’t get you.” On the bed, she curled her legs under her, wrapping herself in a little protective hug. “Why don’t you want to, you know, do the deed and forget all the ancillary stuff?”

  The question actually hurt, surprising him. “Because you’re worth more than that?” He shouldn’t have made it a question, but it seemed so obvious, he was surprised she didn’t realize that.

  “But it’s so…” She closed her eyes and dropped her head. After a second, she looked up. “I don’t like to be manipulated.”

  “I’m not manipulating you.” Was he? Hell, he thought he should get a freaking medal for being as legit as they come.

  “Because,” she continued, “that’s another thing that led me to have this…what did you call it? Coat of armor.”

  “Who manipulated you?” he asked.

  She gave him a look that said she couldn’t believe he didn’t know.

  “Your mother?” he guessed.

  “Not that I want any part of her in this bedroom or discussion or, frankly, my life, but since you are so hell-bent on knowing me on the inside, yes, my mother. Ona Zatarain, who would give Machiavelli a run for his money and then insist he have a full-body makeover afterward.”

  “How did she manipulate you?” he asked.

  “How didn’t she, is a better question.” She gave a sharp laugh. “Starting with naming me for exactly what she planned for me to be—a clone of her—then fighting and squeezing and correcting and insulting and pummeling me to try to get that to happen.”

  His gut squeezed as he leaned closer. “Did she hit you?”

  “No, no,” she corrected quickly. “Bad choice of words. She tried to”—she mimed the action of someone kneading dough or clay—“make me into what she wanted me to be. My earliest memory is itching. Itching in clothes I didn’t want to be in, itching in situations I didn’t like, itching to be free of her.”

  Neither spoke for a moment as she plucked at a thread in the terry robe.

  “I figured out somew
here around, oh, twelve or thirteen that I could stop the itching by eating.” She whispered the last word, closing her eyes as if it shamed her. “For one thing, food was comforting, for another she couldn’t exactly come right out and say I shouldn’t eat—what mother could do that, right? But I knew it drove her crazy that I didn’t have her legendary control when faced with a box of candy.”

  “It was certainly a safe way to rebel, considering other things a kid could do to her body,” he said.

  “Well, it’s not safe to get that overweight, and I’m not sure I was rebelling, per se. But I could control what I put into my mouth. She couldn’t stop me and, Lord in heaven, she hated every pound I packed on.” She looked up with a sad smile that barely reached her eyes. “And by the time I was a sixteen or seventeen, I knew I’d found the secret to getting her to leave me the hell alone.”

  “She ignored you?”

  “Most of the time. When she didn’t, we’d fight about my weight, and she’d fling words that stung like ‘disappointment’ and ‘disgusting’ and ‘humiliation.’”

  “Didn’t your dad help you?” Surely the man who wrote My Sweet Ambrosia for his infant daughter wouldn’t sit back and let this kind of abuse happen.

  “In some ways, he did. I was always closer to him, which pissed her off more because she wanted to be like some celebrity mom trotting her perfect offspring through LA and New York. But, of course, she couldn’t show me to anyone, because I was, you know, eww. Fat.”

  She let the word fall on the bed with a thud, and Nick wished he could scoop it up and throw it out and take away her pain.

  “But to answer your question, there’s something you need to know about my dad. He is wholly and completely and down-to-his-last-cell in love with my mother. That’s not an act. That is the truest, closest, strongest bond between two people I’ve ever seen.”

  “Wow. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be raised in an atmosphere of love like that. I told you what I had—the Bickersons.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “You know what they say about the grass. Your parents fought, but mine lived in a cocoon where no one else could ever squeeze in. And when push came to shove, Dad chose her side every single time. And me?” She gave him a big smile and surprised him by leaning over and slowly falling on the bed next to him. “I chose chips and chocolate.”

  He reached for her without thinking, pulling her closer in a natural move. “So did you have to go to shrinks to figure this all out and get yourself so healthy and in shape?”

  “A little. A few. I didn’t really like counseling, though I’ve worked with some trainers who were natural psychologists. Honestly, I didn’t need to dig deep to find the root of my issues. One day, when I was about to turn twenty-six, I’d been at their house, and it had been a particularly ugly blowout. Some magazine was there doing a photo shoot, and they wanted pictures of me, and she…” Willow bit her lip. “She refused to let them take any. I overheard her telling one of the photographers that I had mental issues, and they wanted to keep me out of the media for my own safety.”

  Her voice cracked, and he tightened the embrace, wishing he could do anything to take away that heartache.

  “But it was the turning point I needed,” she reassured him. “I left the house, stopped for ice cream on the way, and threw the gallon out of my car before I got back to Canyon Country, where I lived in virtual isolation. She was still manipulating me, and all I was doing was suffering with a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound body.”

  She cuddled closer, comfortable with her tale now, maybe lost enough in the telling that she forgot they were on a bed side by side with nothing but a bathrobe separating their bodies. Nick forced himself to forget it, too, much more interested in the inside of this complex, damaged woman than the outside right then.

  “I started dieting the next day, and I wish I had a story about what an uphill challenge it was, but honestly, losing a hundred and twenty pounds that I didn’t want was easy. And it wasn’t that tough to avoid seeing her all this time, either. Except for that near run-in on the mainland, we just never connect. I’ve seen my dad now and again, but really, not for the last two years, so he doesn’t know how much weight I’ve lost. I like it this way.”

  “Don’t you ever want to talk to her? I mean, why not mend the broken fences as adults?”

  “No,” she said simply. “If she loved me now because I’m not fat, I think I’d hate her even more for being such a hypocrite.”

  “What about your dad? Will you see him?”

  Another shrug. “Probably. I kind of miss him, because he’s such a character, but they’re a package deal, and I don’t…I don’t…” Her voice cracked again. “I don’t want to have anything to do with her.”

  “What if you get married or have a child or…” It seemed so final, and really sad.

  “If I never see her again, that’ll be fine. That’ll make me…happy.” But she sounded anything but.

  “Are you happy, Willow?”

  She looked up at him, her eyes misty and full of…well, not happiness. Those eyes looked like pain, regret, and a whole lot of wishing things were different. “Right now I am,” she whispered. “Here, with you.”

  “C’mere.” He pulled her all the way into him, stroking her arm over the robe. “You don’t have to talk anymore.”

  “Mmm.”

  She felt leaden in his arms, like she’d just carried a ton of baggage and dumped it in pure exhaustion. They didn’t talk or kiss, but Nick caressed her hair over and over and over until she breathed evenly with sleep.

  She was ignoring the truth like he did when he tried to rewrite history. The only difference was, she was helping him face that. Could he help her? When he was sure she’d drifted off, he slipped off the bed, inexplicably energized, and went to the laptop to see if he could unload a little more of his own baggage.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  During a rehearsal, the bulk of the hard work fell on Ari’s shoulders, and tonight’s walk-through was no different. With the kitchen completely ready for the dinner service and the dining area staged and ready on the sand, Willow was in a holding pattern. She stayed on the fringes of the festivities, observing the rehearsal with Gussie.

  “I’d bet a bucket of Bit-O-Honey this marriage won’t last,” Gussie murmured. “All you need to do is look at that groom’s weak chin. No chin, no balls.”

  Willow stifled a laugh. “I’m not your gambling partner, Gus, she’s down there.” Willow gestured toward Ari, currently in a deep conversation with the bride, Jill Peyton. “I don’t know who has the balls, but Jill definitely wears the pants in that relationship.”

  The wedding party was small, but included the darling “matched set” of Emma and Edward, who were doing their best not to be too bored, but twice little Edward had picked up a seashell and turned to find his mother off on the side to show her his treasure.

  Finally, Tessa stepped away and walked across the sand to join Willow and Gussie.

  “I think we’ll be better off if he can’t see me,” Tessa said as she approached. “He’s determined to show me every shell he finds.”

  “They’re amazingly well-behaved for little children asked to play a part with a bunch of strangers,” Willow said. “Stand here, Tessa. We have a bird’s-eye view, and Gussie’s snark is worth the price of admission.”

  “Who can be cynical at a wedding?” Tessa asked, sidling up next to Willow.

  “The wedding planners,” Gussie told her.

  “Haven’t you heard?” Willow teased. “We’re the most cynical of all.”

  “I guess you have seen the dark underbelly of the wedding process,” Tessa said.

  “Enough to know we’ll never have one, right, Willow?”

  Willow opened her mouth to agree, but inexplicably nothing came out. Why did Gussie cling to that silly pact so much, anyway? Would a wedding be the worst thing in the world to have?

  “Willow?” Gussie prodded.

  “Yeah, tha
t’s our deal,” she finally said. “We’ve seen enough of these things to know there would only be nightmares ahead.”

  Tessa shook her head, a smile on her face. “When I married Ian right on this beach, it was…” She laughed again. “Well, you guys were here.”

  “We certainly were,” Gussie said. “I’ll never forget how you fainted.”

  “And then your groom disappeared,” Willow added.

  “Or how you sent us off in a hot-air balloon ride so we didn’t find out the whole thing was a sham.” Gussie looked at Willow. “Why would we ever be cynical?”

  Tessa laughed again. “I had extenuating circumstances.”

  “They all do,” Willow assured her. “But we don’t hold that against you.”

  “Still, no weddings for us,” Gussie said. “They’re for the family anyway.”

  They sure were. And that had been Willow’s driving motivation behind agreeing to the pact. She had no interest in a wedding that would mean a reunion she didn’t really want to have. As the other two women joked and talked, Willow sneaked a peek over her shoulder, able to see part of the patio and the barrel-tile roof of Artemisia.

  Not that talk of weddings and families made her think about Nick, or anything. Truth was, everything made her think about him. She’d had a hell of a time concentrating for the few days since she’d last left his villa.

  It had been dawn when she’d slipped out after a remarkably sound sleep. Nick had written almost all night, woke her with kisses and coffee at sunrise, and promised her he’d have another five chapters finished very soon.

  He’d texted her his progress, and the last she’d heard, he’d completed four chapters. One more and…

  “What the hell is she doing here?”

  Willow turned to follow Gussie’s stunned gaze, zeroing in on a woman striding along the walkway to the villas, ponytail swinging, a phone to her ear, her freakishly thin model’s body moving at a rapid gait.

  “Misty Trew isn’t due for her walk-through for two more weeks,” Gussie said. “The last thing we need is the clash of brides tonight.”