Their Secret Bargain Read online

He had agreed, but of all the things he’d expected her to ask of him this wasn’t one of them. He thought of the tension and the conversations that would take place. Crap!

  His gaze dropped to her mouth. Jenn wet her lips nervously, reminding him of what he’d been about to do before Gram had so rudely interrupted. Stupid move on his part, but tempting all the same. And it would shut her up. Maybe then she’d change her mind and not want to go?

  “S-stop that.”

  “What?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe I should add a few conditions of my own to our deal.”

  Her eyes took on a wary glint. “Like what?”

  “You want this summer to be all about you? Learning how to have some fun? Finding your inner—” he couldn’t help but smile at the words “—table dancer?”

  Heat spread through her cheeks and her eyes closed briefly. “I can’t believe Suzanne told you that.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Yes, what about it?”

  “Let’s find her.”

  “Wh-what do you mean?”

  “You want me to be blunt?” Jenn’s face had more color than the Red Hots Nick had eaten as a kid.

  “I—I think you might have to be. Just so I know what you’re saying.”

  Uh-huh. He moved close, his gaze sweeping over her from her brand-spanking-new Skechers to the lightweight pants and tee that had Teachers Rule spread across her very generous chest. She had a great rack. “My dates have a tendency to…want more at the end of the night.”

  “You mean, they want you to put out.”

  “If you insist.”

  She nearly choked. “You don’t mean that.”

  He lowered his head until their noses almost touched, his eyes locked on hers. No sense in stopping now. It was bad news to get involved with Jenn, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. And what better way to have her back off? She’d chicken out, freak out or—Take him up on it? And then what? “You still want to go?”

  “I don’t put out on the first date. Or the second.”

  He smirked. “No two-to-screw? That sounds like a challenge.”

  “I believe in deep, emotional commitment on both sides before…well. Take your best shot but you’ll soon see that I’m not that girl.”

  Yet another thing to admire about Ms. Rose. “Still, it sounds like a challenge.” And one he would have liked to explore further, if she wasn’t the way that she was. Sad to say, most of his dates didn’t have her intelligence, and while that was a major turn-on, it was also a turn-off. What man wanted to feel stupid compared to the woman he was with?

  “You’re just saying that to…to…Why are you saying things like that to me?”

  Good question. Deciding that was a subject best left for later, he lifted his hand and smoothed a stray tendril that had escaped her ponytail. “You ever hear of Mara Corday?”

  “No.”

  “Gina Lollobrigida?”

  “No. Are they your old girlfriends?”

  He smiled as he thumbed her cheek, the tempting curve of her mouth. “When I moved out of my parents’ house, I lived in a little room above my uncle’s garage for a few years. My uncle has a collection of pinups my aunt made him store there to get them out of the house.” He stroked her face again, unable to help himself. Her skin was so soft. “Those pictures dated from the early 1900s to the 50s and 60s. Models back then were a far cry from the anorexic models and actresses of today. Women then were more…womanly. Curvy and soft and beautiful. Bathing suits cover a lot less now, but dressed as they were in those discreet suits and gowns, those other women were sexy as all get out and I stared at magazines and pinups for hours on end. You remind me of them.”

  Jenn’s lower lip trembled. Nick rubbed his thumb across the flesh and looked into her astonished eyes, wondering how any woman Jenn’s age could be as sweet and naive as she appeared. Did she think guys thought more about a little extra weight than they did breasts and hips and the strength of their thighs? AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” sounded in his head. A smile curled his mouth at the corners. Jenn could shake him, all right.

  A sound filled the room, low and rumbling. Jenn gasped and clamped her arms around her belly, and despite Nick’s best intentions, he smiled at the absurd noise before anger rolled in to stomp on his humor. She wasn’t going to starve herself. He’d see to that.

  Jenn needed to eat before she passed out, and he needed a chance to get himself together and think about things. Was he really going to mess with a woman who blushed and stammered and had been emotionally abused by a jerk like Todd Dixon? “Go grab a healthy lunch and have your tutoring session with Matt before you go home to get ready for this dinner.”

  She swallowed hard. “You’ll go?”

  “It’s a condition of our agreement—you said so.” It was a lousy excuse and he knew it. But he felt guilty about not going and the only way he’d get through the evening was by having someone else there to focus on. Someone like Jenn.

  “But if you expect—”

  “I keep my word. I said you could add conditions and you’ve made this one of them. I’ll do it.”

  “But what about the whole dancing-on-the-table summer thing and your, um, dates?”

  “What about them?” Before his mind could interfere, he dropped his head and brushed a kiss across her mouth, heard her sharp gasp just as the cinnamon gum and orange juice taste of her registered. “What better way to spend the summer than to discover the woman you are away from your ex? Even for an evening. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  Jenn opened her mouth as though to protest—or back out completely, Nick wasn’t sure which—and then took off across the office floor as quick as a shot. She paused by the door, looked at him again, but didn’t utter a word.

  Nick held her gaze until she turned around and then he watched her generous hips sway as she bolted for safety. Images filled his head and he lifted both hands to rub his face, easily able to picture her in the poses of the pinups he’d admired for so long.

  But nothing could alleviate the dread he felt at the night to come. This was it. Before the evening was over he had no doubt one of his family members would fill Jenn in on what she obviously didn’t know, and then…

  End of story.

  Was that why he’d allowed himself to agree—to end things and get it all out in the open without actually having to be the one to tell her? Because he knew the night would end any chance of her wanting him for more than a friend?

  You reap what you sow, Nick. Your lies about school caught up with you, just like your daddy’s anger caught up with him. It happens to all of us at some time. The trick now is making amends.

  His fists clenched. The memory of him and his grandfather sitting on the ground by Grandpa’s favorite fishing hole was as fresh today as it was back then. The smells of the water-soaked earth, flies buzzing in his ears, mosquitoes biting and the sound of the reels whizzing over the water.

  He hadn’t made amends, though. The more people talked, the angrier he’d become, until the five-mile distance between the family home on the mountaintop and his compact apartment in town seemed like halfway around the world. Maybe if his grandfather had lived longer, the damage could have been repaired. But as it stood, nothing had changed.

  Nick moved to a photo on the wall by the door. Stared into his grandfather’s face. Granddad had passed away a year after that fishing trip. “I miss you, you know that? I wish I’d been smart enough to listen.” Too much time had gone by, and too much had been said that shouldn’t have been said. All of it in anger.

  And as of tonight, Jenn would see him exactly the same way his family did. Once the truth came out, he wouldn’t have to wonder about getting to know her better. Boundaries would be set and lines drawn. They always were.

  NICK’S MOOD was just as dark later that afternoon when he entered the apartment to check on Matt. From the garage’s office he’d watched Gram drop Matt off after the boy’s final tuxedo fitting and
he knew the moment Jenn pulled onto the lot to begin Matt’s tutoring session.

  He’d kept to himself, returned phone calls, placed orders and generally had done everything he could think of to stay out of the apartment and away from Jenn. On the one hand he was aware that he was using her as a scapegoat for his anger because he didn’t see eye-to-eye with his family, but on the other hand reality was what it was. People stayed with their own kind, defined by their likes, interests and so on. Jennifer Rose would be no different. But he didn’t like it because it lead to an even more important question. When had it started to matter to him what she thought?

  “It. Was. A. Cro-cro—”

  “Crocodile,” Jenn supplied.

  “Crocodile. The crocodile…Can I have a drink?”

  “Finish reading this section first, please.”

  “But I’m really thirsty.”

  Nick hesitated in the short hall outside the kitchen where they sat, able to see them thanks to the pass-through into the rest of the open apartment. Jenn had tutored Matt five days a week since the start of summer vacation three weeks earlier. Shouldn’t they have made more progress?

  “Wait just a little longer, please.”

  Matt inhaled and sighed. “The crocodile…c-c—What’s that word?”

  “Crawled.”

  “Can I stop?”

  “Just a little bit longer, Matt. You’re almost done with this story.”

  “But I don’t want to read right now. Can we do math?”

  “We’ve done enough math for the day. Let’s try to work on your reading for a while. You’re doing great. You just need some more practice.”

  “But math—”

  “Matt, honey, your math skills are coming along really well. You know your times tables and you can follow patterns. But we can’t shrug off reading. You’re having some trouble and we need to figure out why and focus on that.”

  Nick’s keys bit into his hand.

  She ruffled his hair. “What’s five times three minus one?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “See? That was the gist of the word problem you missed earlier, but this time you didn’t even have to think about it. Try the passage again. Take your time.”

  Matt inhaled, his head lowering over the page. “The crocodile—Dad!”

  Nick stifled a groan when Matt flew across the room and hugged him as if he’d been gone for years. “Hey, bub. How’s it going?”

  Matt glanced at Jenn, almost too afraid to speak in case she countered his response. “It’s okay.”

  “Matt’s already come a long way with his math. We’re working on reading now.”

  Nick squeezed Matt tight, hesitated, and then grabbed the flashlight from the kitchen bar, pretending he’d come to retrieve it and not because he’d been unable to stay away. “That’s good. Go get back to work, okay? You’re doing great, Matt.”

  Matt sighed heavily and shuffled back to his kitchen chair, head down and a bleak look in his eyes.

  Nick knew that look all too well. Back in school, he’d tried hard, too, but he’d stumbled over the words on the page, had a hard time getting them to make sense and strained so hard to read that finally he’d gotten fed up with the headaches and embarrassment and had stopped trying. The day he was able to quit without his parents’ permission, he had.

  Nick met Jennifer’s gaze momentarily before he turned and left. Matt’s frustration fed his own, but it was the proof that Matt was now going through what he’d experienced that kicked his anger into high gear. He didn’t want to identify with his father. Alan Tulane was a man revered by this town, and especially at the hospital, but throughout Nick’s early years, his father had stood over his shoulder and shouted at him in frustration. Ordered him to do better, as if that would make it happen.

  He’d spent hours and hours studying. Every night. Weekends. All for nothing, because he’d go to school and fail anyway. Just like Matt. This was what it was like. The anger, the frustration…No wonder his father yelled.

  Matt’s not you. He just needs a little help.

  And he didn’t want Matt to quit. He wanted Matt to have a good education. Be whatever he wanted to be when he grew up instead of having to work so hard to juggle everything to make ends meet. Nick made a good living, liked fixing cars and was proud of his work, good at it, but there were times when he saw Garret drive by in his expensive Cadillac and tailored suits and he wondered what might have happened if he’d stayed in school and figured things out.

  “Matt, let Ms. Rose help you, all right? You do what she says.”

  “Yessir.”

  Nick turned and stalked out the door, maneuvered the stairs without really seeing them and tossed the flashlight into the office before leaving the gym for a run. He wouldn’t shout at Matt. Wouldn’t call him lazy or stupid. Wouldn’t suggest that his son was “slow on the uptake” as his father had so often pointed out.

  No, he’d do none of that. He’d punish his body instead. Punish himself for not being able to help his son, because it was no less than he deserved. This was still more proof that he and Jenn were on two totally different playing fields and that he’d made a huge mistake today when he’d mentioned the summer ahead. They had nothing in common.

  Which made taking Jenn to the rehearsal dinner tonight and introducing her to the rest of his family a really… good idea?

  THAT EVENING Jenn pulled her best outfit from the closet and prayed it would zip. She’d stayed with Matt longer than she’d planned to, trying to help the boy with his reading, but as a result, she’d lost what little time she’d have to shop for a dress to wear to the rehearsal dinner. If the suit didn’t fit she’d be forced to cancel, and if she did that, Nick wouldn’t go. That much she knew for a fact.

  “I’ve lost a few pounds. I’m lifting weights. I’m eating grass. Please fit.” The suit was her Easter outfit from two years ago. A beautiful skirt with a fitted waist, an A-line shape and a flirtatious hem. The jacket was meant to button, but she could wear it open over a camisole. The look was figure-flattering, something she desperately required at the moment. “Please, please, please fit.”

  The jacket and matching skirt were a beautiful dove-gray color that brought out her eyes and paired with matching pumps—her best dinner-at-the-country-club getup. But now that the time was drawing near, she was becoming ridiculously nervous. Why had she insisted Nick take her? If her sister was at the club, would Jenn have gone? No. Because she knew what family tension felt like.

  Nick’s relationship with his family is not the same as yours with Megan or your father.

  She hoped. Old bitterness welled deep within her and paired with more recent memories of Todd’s betrayal and deception. Was it any wonder she doubted her ability to attract a man? To feel desirable?

  Nick kissed you. Obviously you did something right.

  But why had he kissed her? And that talk about pinup girls…Could she really be compared to women like that?

  Jenn glanced down and gave herself a critical once-over. Despite the extra weight, she still had a shape and her legs were nicely solid, not too cottage-cheesy. Her skin was smooth and her breasts full without the aid of a push-up bra. Guys appreciated that, right? But did men like Nick really fall for girls like her?

  He didn’t say anything about falling. He said nothing about falling in love.

  “The real question is whether or not you’re going to take him up on the romantic offer.”

  Did she dare?

  No, no, no. She was the responsible one. Casual sex was like Russian roulette with six bullets instead of one. That wasn’t for her and it wasn’t who she wanted to be. If she were really honest, she’d say it was more like something Megan would do. Act out and pay the consequences later.

  Lacking any insight or answers, Jenn glanced at the clock beside her bed and gasped. Murmuring another prayer, she lifted the suit from the bed.

  Please fit.

  Chapter 10

  NICK GRIPPED THE WHEEL with
both hands. The run had left him tired and soaked with sweat, but now he was showered, dressed and in the truck, and still wondering why he’d agreed to this. Suffering through a wedding with a crowd he could get lost in was one thing, but a dinner where the majority of the guests were family members he barely spoke to…

  “Why aren’t we going?” Matt asked from the backseat. “When Gram took me to try on my tux she said to make sure we weren’t late. She said it a couple of times.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet.” He’d bet Gram had had a lot more to say than that, too, considering he’d just told her he wasn’t going at all. “Did you…mention the summer-school thing?”

  “No. I don’t want her or anybody to know. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah, Matt, that’s fine. I haven’t said anything, either. We’ll keep it between us, okay?” Matt nodded and Nick breathed a sigh of relief. One worry down, five billion more to go.

  “She asked about Ms. Rose, though.”

  Nick froze. Five billion and one. He forced himself to let go of the wheel long enough to turn and face Matt. “Gram asked about her? What’d you say?”

  Matt shrugged. “Just stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Try to remember.”

  Matt scrunched up his face and rubbed his freckled nose. “She just asked if I liked her and stuff. I said I did. And I told her that Ms. Rose watches TV with me sometimes. Ms. Rose likes the big screen as much as Darcy does when she babysits me.”

  Which meant Gram knew Jennifer had been upstairs in his apartment, an area he kept pretty well off-limits to everyone but Matt and himself.

  Suzanne had wanted other guys to notice Jenn, but he’d never considered his family getting involved. Things were becoming complicated.

  “Dad? We’re gonna be late.”

  Maybe if he stalled long enough they wouldn’t have to go at all?

  “I betcha Ms. Rose looks pretty. Have you ever seen her all dressed up? Last Halloween she was a fairy princess with wings that flashed. She was really pretty. The teachers voted her the prettiest.”