Chapter Eighteen
“Canyons, Utah. Reach for the Sky.” Tiffany read off the sign as the afternoon drew to a close. Tiffany breathed a sigh of relief. Stuck in a car with a moody teen and an angry man stretched the last two hours into forever.
The small town of Canyons lay forty minutes south of Salt Lake City. Quiet and baking in the evening sun, it nestled happily at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. The sky behind the peaks bragged the sort of endless blue that made Tiffany’s eyes water. It was the exact color of Thomas’s eyes.
Canyons looked more like a sprawling residential neighborhood than a small city. Low buildings spread beneath a huge sky. Space. It stretched around them everywhere. They found a motel just off the main road and booked two rooms. The boys would share—Thomas didn’t trust Dakota out of his sight, and apparently he had good reason.
Drugs! She’d bet her last dime Lola knew. How the hell could the woman leave when her son was in this kind of trouble? Any kid deserved more than that.
Dakota hadn’t spoken a word since the incident with Thomas and the bag. Instead, he kept his attention glued to his phone and the steady beat of his music going constantly.
She let herself into her room. It smelled of disinfectant and that strange musty odor of too many strangers passing through and leaving a piece of themselves behind. Ryan would have a fit. The air-conditioning worked, however, which was a blessing because Canyons was as close to hell as she ever wanted to get. The heat rocketed clear into the high nineties and climbed, even as the long summer evening descended. Nobody was hungry, so they didn’t make any plans to meet for dinner.
Tiffany hunted around for something to do. Even her book couldn’t hold her attention. The conversation in the car had scratched her up inside. There had been a time when she’d thought about redoing her high school diploma and going back to college. Then she got scared. Scared of having to face her failure, maybe. Marrying Luke had provided a distraction for a while, and after that it seemed easier to just go along with her father’s plan for her. After meeting Ryan, there didn’t seem any point in going back to school.
She’d never messed with drugs, but the similarities between her and Dakota were clear enough for even her to see. Two lost rich kids, the rebel and the pleaser. One kicking out as hard as he could, and the other doing all she could to keep her father’s approval. She’d decided at a young age it was her job to ease her father’s pain after her mother died. Luke had been her one jaunt into rebellion, and that hadn’t ended well.
Since then, she’d more or less been drifting. Every now and again she got the feeling that she should make a break for it and fight her way clear. But, fight what? A father who adored her and gave her everything she wanted? A life that didn’t demand anything of her, merely that she show up and drift along? Poor princess Tiffany, everything she wants and she’s still not happy. It sucked and she didn’t want to be alone with herself anymore.
She changed into a light summer dress and kick-ass strappy sandals and braved the heat. Outside, the warm air rushed to surround her and stuck to her skin. She jammed her sunglasses over her eyes and looked around. It was a pretty standard motel. Except for the tall peaks of the Wasatch Range etched like the backdrop to a spaghetti Western against the sunset. Luke had chosen a beautiful part of the world to disappear.
The bass thump of music drew her toward the end of the long row of motel rooms. A bar. A nice dry martini would take the edge off. She stopped and frowned. She didn’t like martinis. Why the hell did she drink martinis when she didn’t even like them? Ryan liked martinis and it seemed the right thing to do. She was going from being a daddy pleaser to a husband pleaser. When, in all this pleasing of others, was Tiffany going to get an inch?
The bright, shining Coors sign beckoned. A world of alcoholic possibilities opened up. She pushed open the door to the bar and blinked in the dim after the bright sunlight outside. The smell of beer and old cigarette smoke rushed to meet her. It was surprisingly full for a bar in the middle of nowhere.
Trying not to feel the stares on her, she made her way over to the bar. Bruce Springsteen wailed about lost America from the jukebox. There were other women clustered around, but they were mostly dressed in T-shirts and shorts. At a guesstimate, she would say she was 92 percent out of place. She lifted her chin. It didn’t matter. You were only overdressed if you decided you were, and she totally rocked this Michael Kors dress.
She eased onto a bar stool and crossed her legs. Across the bar, a bearded man lifted his chin. Dropping the eye contact, she ordered a shot of tequila.
The barman slid it in front of her with the salt and lime. She went through the ritual and took the shot, sucking in her breath as it seared down her gullet and crashed into her stomach.
“Hey.” A shadow fell across her shot glass. Thomas. She knew it was him without looking up. “A girl like you could get into trouble in a bar like this one.”
“Where’s Dakota?”
“Sleeping.” He perched on the stool beside her. “He’s crashed off that high. I don’t think he’ll surface for the rest of the night.”
“And if he does?”
“I’ve got his phone.” Thomas showed her. “I don’t see him going anywhere without it.” He turned toward the bar. “So, what are we drinking?”
“I’m drinking tequila.” Ouch, that came out a bit bitchy. Giving him attitude when she was kind of glad to see him didn’t seem the best option when she was outnumbered twelve to one in the bar. It had been a bit of a weird day. Scratch that. It had been a batshit crazy day. Dakota doing drugs? She snorted softly beneath her breath. That was why Lola had taken off so fast. This shit got way too real for Lola.
“Sounds good to me.” Thomas tapped the bar top to get the barman’s attention.
Tiffany studied him out of the corner of her eye. God, he was fine. He had showered and changed. His damp hair clung to his nape and he wore a fresh tee. She had no idea how he managed to fit them all into that one bag of his. She eyed the slogan across his chest.
Have you tried turning it off and on again? Not her favorite, but good for a smile. She spread the salt onto her hand and licked it off. The tequila made her eyes water on the way down, and the lemon had her sucking in her breath.
He watched her do the shot, an unreadable expression on his face.
She opened her mouth to ask what and then shut it again. She didn’t feel like caring. She motioned the barman for two more. Beside her, Thomas’s arm snapped as he took his shot. No salt and no lemon, just straight up. Thomas Hunter—a straight-up kind of guy. She snickered to herself.
He slammed his shot glass against the bar and sucked in a deep breath. “Damn, that had claws.”
Tiffany grinned at him. Of course it had claws. It was tequila. She lined up her next shot and shook the salt out onto her hand.
“Now, that’s just no fun.” He snagged her hand and raised it to his mouth. His eyes locked on hers—deep liquid blue—as his tongue slid hot against her skin and lapped up the salt.
Her belly tightened beneath her dress. Tiffany fought the desire to look away. As he turned and took the shot, her breath came out in a whoosh. This was certainly not helping the attraction thing. “I think salt licking should be off the agenda as well.”
He gave a wry smile. “You’re probably right.” His smile widened into a grin. “You know, in Africa, animals share salt licks all the time? In a totally nonsexual way.”
His brand of goofy eased the tightness in her chest. “Is that so?”
“Honest. It’s considered a sign of trust.” He shook salt onto his hand and offered it to her. For a crazy moment, she was tempted. Then she shook her head and took her own salt.
His expression mocked her lightly. “What are we drinking to?”
“Me.” The next shot went down easier and she ordered another two.
“Sounds good to me.” He turned to look at her, a question in his eye. “Anything specific about you?”
“Freedom. As in me getting mine.”
“From Luke?”
Funny, she hadn’t been thinking about Luke. “Sure. Why not?”
“To your freedom.” He raised his glass and clinked it against hers.
“Tell me something?” She got a waft of his Thomas smell as he leaned closer to pour salt over her hand. “Do you ever get the feeling like you want to run hard enough to forget where you came from?”
“Sure.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “You’re talking to the man with permanently itchy feet.” His tongue whipped out and took the salt from her hand.
That tongue had serious talent. His flirting snapped her feel-good synapses. Tiffany let the tingles do their buzzy thing and grinned at him. Hey, she might be having fun here. They took the next shot together.
“Do you dance?” She gestured the small space beside the bar where a couple was shuffling around, more vertical making out than dancing.
“I’m sad to say I don’t.” He smiled, with a little something behind it she couldn’t put her finger on. She liked it anyway. “Why don’t you tell me your story instead?”
The tequila created a nice fuzzy warmth in her midsection. She motioned the barman for another two. “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you tell me yours?”
“Me?” He looked taken aback. “I don’t have much of a story. Pretty much, what you see is what you get.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Okay.” He took a breath. “I’m the youngest of three brothers. My family lives in Willow Park, north of Chicago. Older brother is a doctor, middle brother a financial whiz kid, and I’m an engineer.”
“Hmm.” Not what she had been hoping for, but it was a start. “Married? Girlfriend?”
“Neither.” His smile did those great crinkle things to the corner of his eyes. “I move around a lot, so I don’t really have time for that sort of thing.”
“Commitment phobe?”
“Maybe.” There went that killer smile again and the tingles crackled beneath her skin. “Or maybe I haven’t met the girl to make me want to stay in one place.”
She missed her hand with the salt and squinted down as it wavered a bit. Finally, she got enough to lick. She glanced at Thomas as she did it. His hot gaze tracked the movement of her tongue like a starving man. A surge of power warmed her up inside. “So you’ve worked in Zambia, where else?”
“Chile. Gaspé—”
“Where?” He didn’t seem to mind that she didn’t know stuff, and it made asking so much easier.
“It’s in Canada, eastern Quebec. Very cold and tons of snow.”
“Not like Zambia?”
“Not at all, and if I have a choice I’d much rather be hot than cold.”
She nodded and drank. “And that’s where you ran into Luke.”
“Yup.”
“What do you think he’s doing in Utah?”
“Dakota says he’s working in some sort of bike shop here. Works during the weeks and goes mountain biking on the weekends.”
“Ah.” Now it made perfect sense. Thinking about Luke made her happy buzz waver around the edges. She hadn’t clapped eyes on him in seven years. Had he changed? Of course he’d changed, and she had, too. Luke would have loved this dress. Tiffany looked down at her dress and sighed. White and curve hugging, it clung in all the right places and ended short enough for her legs to do the talking. “He would have liked this dress.”
“Any man with a pulse likes that dress.”
“You say a lot of stuff like that. It’s making the ignoring part difficult to . . . um . . . ignore.” The tequila disintegrated her erase button. His shot sat on the bar and she snagged it. And then his wrist, and poured salt all over it. Salt scattered over the bar top and onto his pants. She didn’t care.
Up went one of his eyebrows in a silent challenge.
With a grin, she bent and lapped the salt from his wrist. He tasted yummy, salty, with a tang of warm skin. Warm man-skin on her tongue. “So, why do you say them, the dog things?”
His eyes screamed danger, but the tequila laughed in its face. “I’m a man, we all think things like that. I say them.”
“I noticed.” There it came again, the smile, the warning and the tequila smoothing away the edges.
“And I think you’re hot.”
“Yeah.” The pit of her stomach dropped. What a total disappointment. She wrinkled up her nose at him. Not to sound ungrateful or anything. She was glad she’d been born with her fair share of natural assets, but she liked it better when he called her smart, or a human calculator. She especially liked that one. “Yeah, but it’s not real.”
“Say what?” His gaze roamed her from top to toe. “It looks pretty real to me.”
“Nuh-uh.” She shook her head and signaled the barman. If she was going to have this conversation, she definitely needed more hooligan juice. “I mean, some of it’s natural, but not the rest.”
His eyes sparkled down at her, his interest snagged. “Which bits?”
“Botox.” She tapped her forehead.
He frowned at her. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-six, but it’s never too early to start.” She leaned forward. Oops, her balance seemed a bit iffy.
He steadied her with one of his huge hands. He could get her whole breast in a hand that size. Which reminded her. She pointed at her chest. “Sweet sixteen present.”
“No.” He eyed her breasts.
“Great job, but fakes.” Sitting back a little, she let him get a proper look.
“What else?”
She tapped her nose.
His eyes widened.
“And that’s it.” She rapped the counter. The barman must be asleep. She needed him here with that next shot.
The barman’s gaze drifted over to Thomas.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Thomas cocked his head.
“No.” She slapped her hand on the bar. “Another one.”
He grinned and shook his head. “Okay.”
“I don’t like being told what to do. Ryan does it all the time, and it’s okay when he does it because he loves me and he’s my fiancé.”
His beautiful blue eyes chilled. “Almost fiancé.”
“Tomahto, tomato.” She waved her hand at him. He seemed pissed and she had no idea why. The barman put down another two shots and she beamed her thanks at him. “Wanna do a body shot off me?”
Thomas looked kind of primitive for a moment. She thought he might grab her and drag her off to his cave. The weird part being how on board she was with the idea.
“No.”
“Aw, come on.” She slung her arm around his shoulders and tugged him closer. He had such pretty eyes. And his mouth. His lips were kind of stern and sexy all at once. His bottom lip was full and biteable, his top lip clearly drawn in strong lines. “I thought you were a model.”
“I know.”
“You’re very good-looking.” She tightened her grip around his neck and his face got closer. Maybe he wanted to kiss her. She wouldn’t mind that. He was always telling her she was hot and stuff. He probably wanted to kiss her. That would be great. No. She sat up suddenly and released him. That would not be good at all. That would be very, very bad. “I’m engaged.”
“Almost engaged.” He touched the end of her nose. “And you’re a sloppy drunk.”
She almost took offense. Maybe if he had looked like it bothered him even the teeniest bit, she might have. Instead, he looked like he thought the whole thing was a hoot. “No.” She held up her index finger. Then she cupped the end of his lovely, strong chin. With a chin like that, she bet he made up his mind in a big way. “I am a horny drunk.”
“Good to know.” He grinned. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no.” She reeled back. Unfortunately she misjudged her momentum and went too far back.
He caught her around the waist. He had those biceps that looked like they wanted to bust free of the arms of his T-shirt. Nice. She blinked at his totally hot arms. Were they as strong as they looked? She gave them a squeeze. Oh, boy, a girl could sink her teeth into those. Maybe she shouldn’t. Of course she shouldn’t, which brought her back to where she was before he made her look at his arms. “I’m not going to bed with you.”
“I’m heartbroken.” His arms tightened around her waist as he pulled some cash from his pocket and dropped it on the counter. “And I didn’t ask you to go to bed with me. I said we should get you to bed.”
He edged her off her bar stool.
She wavered on her feet for a moment. It was the Manolos. Great shoes, but they didn’t go well with tequila. “What exerts more pressure per square inch when walking, a one-hundred-pound woman in heels, or a six-thousand-pound elephant?”
His eyebrow shot up as he steadied her against his wide chest. “Is the elephant wearing heels?”
“No.” She snorted a laugh and his expression softened.
“Damn, you even make that sexy.”
“Do you know?” She patted the rigid line of his chest.
“Pressure is defined as force over area,” he said. “Pressure being directly proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the area. So, given that the area of the tip of a high heel shoe is so small, and an elephant’s foot is so much larger and it walks with two feet on the ground at once, I would say the woman in the kick-ass shoes wins hands down.”
He got it right. Tiffany beamed at him and stroked his chest. His mind was as sexy as the rest of him. Nice. Her feet didn’t want to stay under her. “You don’t want to sleep with me?”
“I never said that.” He took her weight and half carried her to the door.
“So, you do want to sleep with me.”
“Tiffany.” He stopped suddenly and turned her toward him. Her Manolos tried to run away again and he tightened his grip. “You’re loaded right now, so you probably won’t remember this. I would give my left nut to sleep with you, but you would have to be sober at the time.”
“Oh.” That made her feel a lot better. She took deep breaths of the sticky night air as he propelled her down the walk to her room. The crappy motel looked a lot nicer at night, warm and welcoming.
He propped her up against the wall while he opened her door. “Here we go.”
“Thomas?”
“Yup.”
“If you gave your left nut, would you still be able to sleep with me?”
He gave a short bark of laughter.
She might not be smart, but he thought she was sexy and funny and he knew numbers like she did. It made her feel like one of those people in the movie Cocoon, all glowy and stuff.
He pushed her gently into the room. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I might need help getting into bed.” She leaned toward him and giggled.
He caught her and steered her back into her room. “I think that’s a horrible idea.”
The door started to close. Grabbing the edge, she tugged it out of his grasp. She leaned toward him, but lost her balance. “Thomas.”
He caught her against his chest. That, too, was a whole lot of lovely. His head seemed a very long way up, so she grabbed his T-shirt and tugged until he brought it down to her level. She plastered her mouth over his. His lips were soft and firm at the same time. She pushed him away before her tongue gave way to the impulse and went for it.
He looked a little mussed and a lot frustrated.
Good. I am woman, hear me roar. She’d read that somewhere and she thought it sounded rather good. “Thanks for a lovely evening.”
She shut the door and leaned her weight against it. Her nipples tingled against the stretch of her dress, standing up and waiting to be noticed. Except there was nobody to notice them. Nobody but her. She brought her hands up to cup her breasts.
Thomas had noticed her breasts. She looked at the door again. Nope. She shook her head and stumbled over the edge of the carpet. Going out there again was a bad idea. She ran her hands down her torso to the apex of her thighs. Heat pulsed through the thin fabric of the dress. Her breath caught in a soft gasp as she pushed her fingers against her mound. She could give herself relief, but she didn’t want that.
Irritably she yanked off her sandals and tossed them across the room. Well, she had a fiancé, right? Almost. Screw that. Tiffany dug her phone out of her bag and hit Dial. “Hello, baby,” she purred as Ryan answered.
“Tiffany?”
“How you doing, babe?” Delilah came out to play.
Silence met her for a moment. “Are you all right?”
“Ryan.” She sprawled across one of the two beds in her room and arched her spine like a cat. She ached and she wanted to make it feel good. “You know what we’ve never done?”
“Tiffany, have you been drinking?”
“Yup, I have. We’ve never had phone sex. I think we should change that right now.”
“You know I don’t like it when you drink.”
“You’ll like it just fine in a minute, baby. Ask me what I’m wearing?”
“No, Tiffany, I am not asking you what you’re wearing, because I’m not playing this ridiculous game. Sleep it off. I have work to do.”
The phone went dead in her ear.
“Ryan?”
Silence.
“Fuck.”