Sweat Equity Page 3

  “What the fuck has he done now?”

  “I found condoms in his suitcase. The one he took to Vegas. The week he…”

  “The week he made you a basket-case by not calling and talking to you at all. Huh. Imagine.”

  Anger flared in her chest. Her sudden desire to defend Jack nearly made her as mad as Blake’s asshole-ish reaction to her dilemma. “Never mind.” She sipped her beer and studiously ignored him.

  “You’re really willing to live like this Sara?” Blake kept his voice low but she sensed his tension mount as Rob made his way from the kitchen and took up a spot behind the bar, picking up the flirtation where Blake had left off with the gaggle of women at the other end. “I mean, did you and I not live through this sort of shit already?”

  “What are you talking about?” But she knew exactly what he meant. Her face flushed and her ears started buzzing again.

  She flinched when Blake put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry.” He sighed and kissed her hair. “I don’t mean to point out the obvious.” Wiping at her eyes before the tears could flow, she shrugged him off.

  “Forget it. I’m sure it’s…” She slumped; her earlier resolution, to let her anger at Jack go, to accept what was no doubt a perfectly decent explanation about his using the suitcase during an earlier trip, one he took before committing to her, faded. She had to believe that. It was that or drive herself completely insane thinking up all of the other reasons for him to have the stupid things.

  “Don’t make me say it Sara.”

  “Say what?” She pushed her half-eaten food away and propped her chin on her hands. Rob made his way down to them, leaned over the bar and brushed her cheek with a light kiss.

  Blake ignored him. “That the guy is exactly like our father.”

  She closed her eyes. That concept had swirled in her head for weeks and since the utterly dreadful dinner she’d endured, when her high-powered fiancé had finally met her aging Alpha-male father, had become a clanging gong of fear.

  “Blake,” Rob’s voice stayed soft but Sara heard the firm command of it. “I don’t think…”

  Blake’s face reddened, and he startled her with his vehement response to his lover. “You don’t know. That’s the problem here. She’s my sister. I don’t care how long you’ve known the guy. He is not your family. You don’t owe him anything.”

  Sara put her hand on Blake’s leg, alarmed at the waves of unhappiness rolling off him towards the man she knew he loved. He glared at it, so she took it back. “Stay the fuck out of it,” he ground out making Rob blink once, then walk away without a word.

  “Jesus, honey. That was a little harsh.” She stammered. She’d never seen them like this before. “What is going on with…?”

  “You stay the fuck out of that, too.” He kept his gaze trained down at the bar, then looked up at her, the bright green of his eyes shimmering with emotion. “I mean it.”

  She nodded, unable to form words in the face of her calm, stable brother’s outburst. “Damn we suck at this don’t we?” She picked up her beer.

  “At what?” Blake slammed his and signaled for another. She sighed and leaned into his shoulder, comforted once again by his presence. He put an arm back around her. “Whatever, you do this at your peril.” He picked up her left hand, and touched the huge diamond Jack had given her. “Seriously. You should know better. Don’t let him get away with that bullshit now or you are in for the same life our mother lived.”

  Sara sat up and stared at him, relieved but furious that he’d put into words what had spun through her brain for weeks. Unable to muster indignation in the face of his obvious agony and relationship issues, she nodded, finished her beer and stood. “I gotta go.”

  “Tell him Sara. Tonight. Make him answer to you, and don’t take a bullshit story.”

  “Fine. But you listen to me a minute.” He shrugged but she pulled his face around to hers, pinching his cheeks just as he always did to get her attention. “You fuck it up with that man,” she pointed to the kitchen. “And I never listen to a word you say ever again. Go back there and make nice. I mean it. At least one of us deserves to be happy.”

  Her brother’s derisive snort before he sucked back half a beer did not make her feel any better at all as she made her way out the door, to her car, and towards the confrontation that had been way too long coming.

  Chapter Three

  “It’s over.” Sara’s voice broke the silence.

  She slipped off the heavy platinum and diamond ring. Funny, the things a woman got used to. She’d never worn rings, but had immediately become accustomed to its weight on her finger. Her eyes stayed dry, but her heart kept breaking.

  Jack stared at her as if she’d just asked him to eat his own gonads. He had been in the process of piling his wallet, Rolex and Mont Blanc in their usual, tidy spot on the hall table.

  Sara had been waiting nearly two hours as she paced his tastefully decorated Art Deco style home from one end to the other, musing over the fact they’d christened nearly every single room in the place with various stages of sex. He loved foreplay on the massive leather sofa in front of the television. She liked it in the kitchen and in the spare bedroom they’d come to call their playroom.

  A particularly intense session spent in his office, as she distracted him from his new construction project’s spreadsheets. Sara sighed, her chest tight with anticipated loss. It was not healthy. Not anymore. Not if he wouldn’t actually communicate with her beyond work or sex. Especially not now that she’d found the evidence of the essential truth about him. He would never change. He was her father. And she had zero interest in living the life her mother had, successful at work, yet seemingly unable to break from a poisonous relationship in spite of it all.

  No thank you.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” He ran a hand through his hair. His face looked tired; eyes glinted with something approaching anger. “I went out to dinner last month didn’t I? Behaved myself? Let your asshole father make digs all night long about ‘salesmen’? Christ.”

  He sunk into a chair across from her, elbows on his knees. Sara swallowed hard again. Edible-looking in her favorite suit, he remained an impossibility for her. He would not bring her happiness. Still, she had to clamp down on her sudden desire to say “Psyche!” and launch herself at him, then let him fuck her silly, again. Her hands shook. She clasped them tighter in her lap, her left ring finger bare and cold. The large ring glinted on the table between them.

  “I know. And thanks. I just don’t think it’s going to work. I don’t think…” The tears she’d held back spilled down her cheeks. Reaching into her pocket, she clutched the packet of condoms she’d discovered in his suitcase. The one he’d just brought back last weekend.

  She tossed the packets of Trojans onto the table beside her discarded engagement ring. He stared at them, then up at her, confusion in his eyes. “What the fuck? Where did those come from?”

  He kept a supply in his bedside table. They’d dipped into them enough in the past months, until the moment they’d stopped using them in St. Bart’s. Sara closed her eyes, mentally counting the days since her last period.

  “In your suitcase. You know, the one you just brought home. The one you asked me to look through for your ID?” It took all she had to keep her teeth from chattering.

  His frown deepened. Then his eyes lit up. “Oh, babe. Those are from, oh shit, I didn’t. Wow. This looks bad doesn’t it?” He stood and walked to her, his presence sucking her in, making her want to forgive. But she wouldn’t. Not anymore.

  “Yeah, kinda.” She rose to her feet and kept distance between them. He tried to get closer. Sara held a hand up. “Stop. Don’t. I can’t.” She turned away from him, furious at her lame, girlie need to cry.

  “Sara, I swear to you, those aren’t from Vegas. Shit.” He walked over to the liquor cabinet and splashed bourbon into a glass. “I don’t know how long ago I used that suitcase. It’s been over a year, I swear. You
know me. I wouldn’t have gone without…not back then…oh fucking hell.” He sat back down. “You’re right.”

  She whirled on him. More than anything in the universe, she did not want to be “right” at that moment. Part of her had counted on him to convince her otherwise; needed him to talk her down off the emotional ledge as only he could. A band tightened around her chest, making it frighteningly difficult to breathe.

  She gulped in air, watched him put his hand in his hands. When he looked up at her, the “Old Jack” had fallen into place. The arrogant, fuck-the-world look fixed firmly on his handsome face. Sara had no faith in her knees to hold her. She gripped the back of a tall leather chair.

  “I’m not good for you. Your brother, and no doubt your father, is absolutely correct. I’m a shit. I can’t do this. I thought I wanted it, but.” he downed the bourbon in one gulp, stood, and poured another, his back to her. She took a tentative step towards him, her hand out to touch his shoulder, when he turned to her. The look of extreme asshole replaced for a brief second with sheer agony. A sob tore from her throat. It was over. Ignoring his outstretched hand, she stumbled her way to the large front door.

  He didn’t try to stop her, didn’t even call out. As if she had known where this headed using some internal failure radar, she’d already moved the few things she’d kept here back to her place. She stomped down the steps from the bungalow’s large porch, ignored the swing they’d sat in just a week before and sat, drinking wine, actually discussing the wedding without him getting antsy and pissy. That might as well have been a million years ago. The stone that replaced Sara’s heart sank further as she slid into her BMW, turned the key and pulled out his driveway for the last time.

  The Indian summer heat baked her, but she rolled down all the windows, needing the fresh air, needing a reason to breathe. She’d watched him with her father, had seen him full on and had no choice. Her own mother had put up with a man just like Jack her entire married life. It had been brutal on everyone in the house. And Sara had gone and fallen for–shit, she’d nearly married–a man just like Dr. Matthew Thornton.

  Sara shuddered not knowing if it was from fear or the anticipation of long nights of second-guessing she had ahead; or from the agony in her chest at thought of never seeing him again, never feeling his lips on hers.

  She touched the phone button on her steering wheel. “Call Blake.”

  “What’s up?”

  She couldn’t speak. Why had she called him anyway? So he could gloat?

  “Are you okay? What did he…?”

  “I gave him the ring back.”

  A solid minute of silence filled the car. Sara pulled into the parking lot of her condo community and put her forehead against the steering wheel.

  “I’m so sorry Sara.” Blake’s soft voice made her want to strangle somebody, throw something that would shatter and do a ton of damage. “Do you want to come over?”

  “No. I just thought you might like to know.”

  “Oh hell. I never thought,”

  “Bullshit Blake. You never wanted this for me. You practically shoved me into this breakup. You know what, though? It’s fine. You’re right. It won’t work. You knew it. Now I know it and I did what I had to do. But don’t think I like it, because I fucking do not. I don’t like it at all. I miss him already and it damned well sucks.” She jabbed the “end” button. Tears burned hot trails down her face as she launched herself out of the car and towards the door, seeing nothing and knowing even less, other than she’d just either thrown away the best thing to ever happen to her or narrowly escaped a life she’d sworn she’d never live.

  ****

  Jack watched his now ex-fiancé screech out onto the quiet street, sipped his bourbon and relished its slow lubrication of the horror at what had just happened to him. He sank back into the chair and glared at the fucked up still life of the condom and ring together on the table.

  “Happiness thwarted” he could call it, or even better, “In Which Jack is a Dumb Ass.” The purple foil packets stacked next to the nearly twenty-thousand-dollar hunk of metal and compressed coal he’d put so much faith in just a few months ago. “God damn it.” He swept the whole mess onto the floor. His usual method of instant spin, how to fix anything, abandoned him. He had nothing, remained a hollow shell, scraped clean, raw and pulsing like a six-foot five-inch exposed nerve ending.

  The fucking condoms.

  He’d left them there from over a year ago. From when he’d taken that crazy-ass blonde bitch of a client away for a weekend. The weekend she tried to convince him to marry her. But he’d already met Sara by then. So, he had fucked the woman six ways to Sunday then dropped her at her house, his mind and heart elsewhere.

  Oh, the bitter irony of the situation did not escape him. Vegas had been fun, sure. He’d flirted like crazy and let some ladies buy him drinks but he went to bed alone, every single night, without a single qualm or regret. He hadn’t talked to Sara that week, but he’d been busy, serving on countless panels and attending dozens of stupid glad-handing receptions. When he wasn’t doing that he’d played Texas Hold ‘em and lost his ass, but even that didn’t bother him. He’d had his mind firmly fixed on the future. With Sara. He’d even entertained a pretty out-there fantasy of her beautiful body, swollen and full with their child.

  “Oh fuck.” His face and eyes burned. His throat closed up. The room spun. He had to get her back.

  How? Was he even worthy?

  No, he wasn’t but he didn’t care.

  Jack stood, retrieved the expensive ring from the floor and set it on the front hall table with his other stuff. His heart clenched at the sight of it. Anger followed close on the heels of despair. The house echoed with silence. He knew what he needed. Picking up his smart phone he quick dialed his oldest friend, Suzanne.

  “Hey Jack, what’s up?”

  “I need to talk.”

  “Where are you?” As the noise of her beer bar receded, he assumed she must have walked into the brewery.

  “Home. But I’m coming over. You gonna be there?”

  “Well, I wasn’t, but I’ll stick around.” Silence spun out between them before she spoke again. “You did it, didn’t you?”

  Jack dragged a hand through his hair. He knew exactly what she meant. “Yeah. I did.”

  “Oh hell, Jack.” The ensuing silence deafened him. He trusted Suzanne more than he trusted just about anyone, except her business partner, who currently had his honeymoon to distract him. “C’mon over you fucking idiot. I’ll buy you a beer.” Jack slumped against the wall, relieved to have somewhere to go, sick to his stomach and emptier than he’d ever felt in his entire life.

  Chapter Four

  Blake didn’t have to stay, but he did, busying himself behind the bar, which annoyed the perfectly competent bartender he’d hired. He was aware of Rob’s voice in the kitchen, raised in increasingly louder decibels of anger. By the time the last customer had closed out their tab he’d run out of busy work and sat, nursing a dark stout beer and wondering where his relationship was headed. Rob had been his anchor for the last four years, his lover, business partner, closest confidant, and best friend. But the past months had been tense, to say the least. His chest constricted at the thought of losing the man.

  “So,” Blake started at the touch of Rob’s hands on his shoulders and the sound of his deep, familiar voice. “How did it go at the bank?” Blake shut his eyes and leaned back into the other man’s hands, letting him rub some of the tension out of his neck.

  “About like you’d expect. But I think they’ll give us the loan after we jump through a few more hoops.”

  “You understand how I feel about this.” Rob kept his tone light, but Blake knew the undercurrent of disapproval well.

  “Yeah. But if we want to distribute the beer,”

  “Which, I don’t think we need to do. Not yet.”

  “I know,” Blake sighed. “Can we not talk about this tonight?”

  “Sure. The sil
ence that curled around them as the last employees shouted goodnight was anything but comfortable.

  The bar manager approached them. A perky young female grad student, she’d brought a new level of organization to the place that Blake knew had helped. She was damn hot too. He stared at her a minute, taking in the curve of her hips, the swell of her breasts under the tight company tee shirt. “Hey guys. Um, you want me to leave the taps on awhile? I gotta go.”

  “Hot date Gwen?” Rob walked around behind the bar and poured himself a deep amber brew. “Lucky guy.” He raised his glass to her, making Blake wince with realization that the man had been checking her out as intently as he had. “Go ahead and switch ‘em off. We’re headed out soon.”

  Blake watched her go. He couldn’t help it. A woman’s body was a wonder to him, always had been. He looked over to see Rob’s eyes trained on the departing girl’s ass as well. He met Blake’s eyes and grinned, drawing a smile from him.

  “You have to stop controlling your sister.” Rob made his way from behind the bar, set his beer down and resumed his position behind Blake, putting strong arms around his shoulders, pressing lips to his neck. Blake closed his eyes, let his body react but his brain would not calm. He sighed and shrugged the other man off; cursing himself for being such a dramatic shit head.

  “Whatever.“Rob, ever the patient, calm one, took a seat and resumed drinking his nightcap. “You know what?” He kept his eyes straight ahead, mirroring Blake’s stubborn avoidance. When the other man didn’t answer, he went on. “You are really at risk of alienating her. Making the woman dread asking for your advice or help. She’s engaged for Christ’s sake. She said yes to him. Let them sort out their own shit. It’s what grownups do.”

  “Huh,” Blake turned to face the incredibly handsome man who’d rescued him from himself that day in Chicago. The weekend after Suzanne had dumped him with no warning, leaving him wandering the streets of a major beer festival in a daze. Rob tilted his head, waiting for Blake to continue. “Actually, they are not engaged. Not anymore.”