But now I was sitting in the passenger seat of my car, Marie behind the wheel, since she picked me up at the airport, and the amazing time I had with Ryan sadly becoming another memory.
I watched the landscape zoom by once again, feeling a sense of déjà vu, and wondering if things would settle.
Going back to Mitchell’s Pub was starting to feel like a burden, and that was not good.
“Did you book your flight?” I asked, wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.
Marie glanced over quickly. “Yeah. Class starts July ninth.”
My mind flipped through the calendar, knowing I already had a problem, but I wasn’t about to let it halt her plans.
“You’re going to miss Ryan’s wrap party because of me.”
I felt my shoulders tense as I glanced over at her. “Mike needs to keep his big mouth shut.”
Marie barked out a laugh, “I know you’re supposed to be in Pittsburg at his parents’ on the twenty-second as well, which you failed to tell me about.”
“I wasn’t keeping it a secret.” Well, I was, but I wasn’t going to tell her until after she’d left.
She passed a slow-moving camper in the center lane. “Liar. You said you didn’t have anything firm until the Teen Choice Awards on August seventh.”
And therein was my problem, right in a nutshell. Since cloning wasn’t possible, something had to give, just like Ryan had said. “You need to worry about your schedule and leave me to worry about mine,” I growled, teasingly of course.
“I thought you were trying to go to Italy the week before that?”
“No. Ryan’s not sure if he’ll have to go to L.A. earlier. He’s waiting to hear.”
I dug around in my purse for my calendar. “When are you coming back then?”
“July twenty-eighth.” Her voice did an excited upswing, making it sound like a question. I could tell she was treading lightly. She also knew that I had no one to fall back on.
“You’ll come back a lean, mean fighting machine,” I joked, trying to let her know I was totally supporting her decisions.
Marie gave me a weak smile. “I don’t have to go for this session, Taryn. I could put it off. Give it a year, maybe. I dunno. I know I’m putting you in a tight spot.”
I adjusted my ring. “No. Definitely not.”
“Taryn, I’m rushing this. I don’t even know if Mike wants a relationship with me. I’m fighting with Gary over who gets to keep the damn toaster and shit. I shouldn’t be making any big moves.”
“If this is what you want then you go for it now. Time to do what you want to do for once.”
“But—”
“But what? Are you going to doubt your desires because you’re unsure of Mike’s intentions? You want to be a bodyguard, knowing what it entails, then do it. And no buts. I haven’t seen you this excited about something in years. You want to forge a new career path, then now is the time. You’re wasting your education and talents being stuck behind the bar.”
“I’m not stuck . . .”
“Yes, you are. We both are. It’s time for the next chapter.”
“I need an income, Taryn,” she countered. “I can’t go without a job.”
I sighed. “We’ve had this discussion already.”
“Taryn, you can’t pay me a salary that I didn’t work for. You’ve already loaned me money for the lawyer. And it’s going to be a while until I see a settlement from my divorce so I can pay you back.”
“Marie, what did I say?”
She huffed. “It’s not right. You can’t keep bailing your friends out.”
I turned in my seat to look at her, keeping the fact that I was going to cash out some of my inheritance to cover things if I needed to. The bar was making more money but not enough to cover several full-time salaries. “You would do the same for me and you know it.”
“You’re going to have to hire another bartender or two and someone will have to be there to manage the place. And I can’t expect you to hire someone for only two weeks and then fire them when I get back.
Cory is great, but you know as well as I do that he’s young and isn’t ready to take on that amount of responsibility. And what happens if I get down there and find out I can’t handle it? Mike said this is pretty intense stuff—like combat training, firing a gun while rolling on the ground and stuff. I mean, what the hell do I know about disarming someone or kicking someone’s ass? Last time I was in a fight was when we were in high school and I punched Sophie Lithgow in the face for calling me a slut.”
I laughed. “It’s a start. And that was classic, by the way. She deserved that—calling both of us sluts.”
“Yeah, but I at least earned the title,” Marie boasted.
“No you did not.”
Then she gave me a crooked stare, insinuating that she did.
We were silent for another half mile when I finally said what was swirling in my thoughts. “Ryan sort of hinted again that I should sell the bar.”
Marie’s mouth popped open. “Why?”
“Because I can’t be in two places at once.”
She groaned softly. “You sure you want to do that?”
My knee-jerk answer was no, but I said, “I don’t know. I’m thinking about it.”
She shook her head adamantly. “I don’t think you should sell it.”
I was thankful she said that. “Is it wrong of me to want to have a fallback plan?”
“Hell no! Look at me. Bastard locked me out of my own damn house! I barely escaped with the clothes on my back and now he’s threatening to smash our china that his aunt got us just so I don’t try to take it in the divorce. I don’t know where I would have ended up if you hadn’t taken me in. That’s not to say Ryan would do any of that nonsense to you. Honestly, I think you’d be just fine doing something else if you did sell the bar but the part of me going through a shitty divorce says you should keep your safety net.”
The smart woman inside me had been burned too many times by men, and so maintaining self-preservation was a moral imperative. “I hate feeling like that.”
“I know,” she muttered. “What did your mother always tell us?
“The one where you can find trash on any street corner, but you should always hold out for a man with a heart of gold?”
“No, no. That was a good one, too, but the one where she always said that you should make sure the man loves you more than you love the man,” she said. “According to Ryan, the sun rises and sets on your ass so I think you’re good.”
Thinking back to those times when my mom gave me her little quips of wisdom spread warmth up from my heart. “My mother was a wise woman.”
Marie grinned. “Yes she was. Too bad I didn’t listen.”
I scratched my head. “Yeah, that makes two of us. This time I am, though.”
“Yes indeed. Trading in the bad boy for the badass boy.”
For some reason, a picture of a shirtless, beefy Mike Murphy flashed through my thoughts. “Mike’s pretty badass.”
“Yes he is.” She smiled. “He’s the reason why I’m sure things need to end between me and Gary. I didn’t realize just how bad I had it until Mike came along. Gary has never made me a priority. Not once did he ever put my needs ahead of his own. When I look back at our relationship, even before we got married he never made me feel as if I was important. You’ve seen it. After a while, that shit starts to wear on you. But Mike . . . I know he’s pulling in a few favors to get me into this school. He hasn’t hesitated once about taking care of me. Not once.”
“Mike’s been really grumpy,” I told her. “Ryan’s ready to ship him here—soon. Fortunately, they’re just about wrapped on Slipknot.”
Her face lit up. It was such a beautiful thing. “Really?”
I smiled just as broadly. “He thinks Mike’s in love with you.”
“Really?”
“Really, really.”
After a few seconds of grinning from ear to ear, she said, “Ryan’s madl
y in love with you, you know.
Still . . . please don’t sell the bar.”
I bristled a bit.
“I’m sad that I’m going to miss your engagement party at Ryan’s parents’. I’m sure Ellen will stuff you full of food.” She didn’t have to tell me that those words hurt her to say.
That reminded me of one more thing I had to do: time to see if my next bright idea would pan out.
“I went to visit Pete today,” I told Ryan when we Skyped later that night. Poor Pete. I could completely relate to the torturous itching that came from sporting a cast. His new limp also didn’t go unnoticed.
“How’s he doing?” Ryan asked while lying on the bed with his laptop on his legs. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and obviously had just gotten out of the shower, as his skin was flush and deliciously dewy. Damn, it was a beautiful sight on my computer screen.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to talk to you while you’re looking like that?”
Ryan’s face scrunched. “Like what?”
“Naked and all . . .” My hand waved since I was at a loss for words.
Ryan grinned, running a hand over his bare chest. “You like what you see?”
“You know I do.”
He flipped his laptop to the side, making sure the camera was showing what he was now stroking in his hand. Like a teenager watching a porno, I had my very own Ryan Christensen nudie show. “See anything else that you like?”
I blushed, feeling extremely nervous. “Oh my God, Ryan! What if some hacker can see you like that?
That’s how private sex stuff . . . stop! You want videos of you whacking off to go viral?”
He nudged his screen, aiming the camera back on his face, which now showed demanding authority.
“No one is going to see. Take your laptop back to our bed and take your clothes off.”
I jumped a bit at his stern tone, feeling oddly compelled to comply. Still, I was very apprehensive to do anything so risqué over the Internet. “Ryan . . .”
His expression was meant to show that he wasn’t going to be denied. “Now, Taryn.”
It worked.
Begrudgingly, I carried my laptop to my room and flopped down, still fully clothed.
We were both on our sides, one arm propping our heads up. I watched as his fingers moved toward the screen. “I miss you,” he said softly, cracking my resistance as if it were made of tissue paper. “I miss the feeling of completeness I have when you’re in my arms. Do you ever feel that way? Like a part of you is missing when we’re apart?”
I wanted to reach through the screen and touch him back. “All the time. I sort of feel incomplete.”
He wiped his finger over his lips. It was the sexiest damn thing, as if his hunger for me was palpable.
“Do you know what my favorite part of your body is?”
I swallowed—hard—figuring he’d go for the obvious. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of guessing.
“No guess? It’s your lips. And not for the act that you might think I love them for. The curve of them makes me always wonder what’s going on in your head. Between your lips and your eyes I can more or less guess and I’m usually pretty accurate. You may not realize it, but they are the windows into your
soul.”
I studied his face—the softness of his cheeks to where they met up with the shadow of beard growing on his jaw, the incredibly long eyelashes that framed those million-dollar bedroom eyes, the square cut of his chin. “Your eyes give you away, too, you know.”
“If you were here, I’d kiss you right now. I wouldn’t stop until you were naked underneath me, sighing in my mouth. I can almost feel the silky smoothness of your skin as I run my fingers beneath your undies.”
I was beginning to believe there may be some wonderful advantages to video chatting. He was seducing me with the soft cadence of his words and the visuals he created in my thoughts.
“Take your finger, run it slowly down your neck, down to the base of your throat. I want you to feel me kissing you as I make love to you.”
Obediently, I did as he instructed. Each time he told me to wet my fingers or pinch my own flesh turned me on more and more until I was drenched with excitement, panting and moaning. I’d touched myself plenty of times during those dry spells between dating, but this was a million times better.
A million.
Ryan had conveniently turned the screen so I could watch him clean up. My pounding heart was finally slowing when he nudged his laptop back to display his face on my screen.
His satiated smile lit up my heart. “You should video-seduce me more often,” I said.
He laughed lightly, finger-combing his hair back off his forehead. “I’d much rather do that to you in person, but we do what we have to do in the meantime.”
“I didn’t realize watching you would be such a turn-on.”
His lips twitched. “Oh, I did. Just hearing your voice is a turn-on for me; everything else was just a bonus.”
I rolled over onto my stomach. “Yeah, right. My voice excites you that much.”
His expression said he was dead serious. “Future wife, we’ve had phone sex before and now not only can I see your face, I can also see your naked boobs. Trust me. Now tell me about Pete, unless you want to go for round two, which I must say I’m getting ready for.” I watched him stuff a few pillows under his head and then he flashed his semi onto the screen again just to show me his exclamation point to that statement.
After I regained my ability to speak, I muttered, “Pete’s miserable.”
“You iron out that crap with Tammy?”
“No. But I will. I’m presuming we’re still in the wedding. You still want to be a groomsman? He asked if you were still in. I’d understand it if you don’t want to. You haven’t known Pete that long and—”
Ryan interrupted me. “I already told him I would. I gave him my word. They should know that my presence is going to cause a stir, so if they’re good with that, I’m in. They’ve been warned. Besides, there’s no way I’d let some other guy walk you down the aisle, Taryn. No way in hell.”
I loved his possessiveness. It made me feel safe and cherished. “Is that your final answer?”
He glared at me over my screen before saying, “That’s my final answer forever. You good with that, babe?”
Considering that Thomas had left me at a party once, not giving a shit who drove me home or even if I got home alive, I was more than fine with it. “Yes.”
“That’s my girl.”
Say what you will, but I was damn glad to be his in no uncertain terms.
“And what did he say to your other proposition?”
The memory of Pete’s reaction when I asked him made me smile wider. “You’d have thought I’d offered him a miracle.”
“So he’s on board with it?”
“Yes. He starts training with me tomorrow.”
Chapter 18
When It Rains
It was coming down in buckets outside. It was the kind of heavy rain that you swear just might come through the roof because it’s falling that hard. I wandered to the front door of Ryan’s parents’ home, cracking the door to watch the rain pour down.
Ryan had wrapped on filming Slipknot, and the cast wrap party was something else. Pete was doing an excellent job managing the pub, so I was able to meet Ryan back in Vancouver. Nicole had gotten quite intoxicated, slurring at us and insinuating it was Ryan’s fault that her lover, Lauren Delaney, wasn’t there.
I knew for certain that her love life wasn’t even on Ryan’s radar when we arrived at the party, but she was under the impression that he’d banned Lauren from the guest list.
Maybe he overdid it just a bit when he said she’d be lucky to get a job waiting tables once the media catches wind of her drug habit, but it definitely shut her up quickly.
So many people only see the smiling public photos of celebrities at premieres and junkets; if the general public only knew some of the sh
it that went down on major movie sets, they’d be shocked.
Personality clashes, overinflated egos, differences in acting methods and scene interpretations—it all happened.
But that was two days ago, Ryan finally had some downtime, and we had a family engagement party to brace for.
Ryan slid a hand over my khaki shorts and gripped my hip, peering over my shoulder. “Go,” he nudged, pushing me on through the threshold. “Let’s go stand out on the porch.”
The sky at 7:30 P.M. was dark and ominous; the heat of the day was being quenched, causing the steam to rise up off the hot macadam driveway. I held my hand out into the thick stream of rainwater that was flowing over the lip of the storm gutters that edged along the porch roof.
“Nick and I washed my dad’s car in a downpour like this once. We had a blast. Dad gave us a bucket and sponges and put us to work, though we didn’t know we were working at the time. We were all soapy and soaked but damn did we have fun.”
The water pelting my hand was cool and refreshingly chilly as I imagined two mischievous boys running around with soap sponges. “Wow, it’s really pouring!”
“I’ll say. Last time I saw it rain this hard, we were—”
I instantly stiffened. Ryan stiffened up, too, stopping himself.
Streaks of car lights flickered through drops of rain in my thoughts; the sounds of tires screeching on wet road and a horn blaring at me to get out of the middle of the street in downtown Miami swirled into one painful flashback. That horrid memory, that feeling as if I’d just been eviscerated seeing him kiss Lauren, that wishing to have all the pain just go away washed over me. It was distant but instant.
Thankfully, I was able to keep that memory separate from this current moment, not allowing those bad moments to pull me under.
“I shouldn’t . . . I didn’t mean,” Ryan fumbled, followed by the whisper of a curse to himself.