Bless Allison’s heart. She was trying to save her.
“No.” Caroline shook her head. “Jonathon will be fine with Jamie. I seriously need you to baby-sit Finn. God, why do we even have relatives?”
Jamie was dead. That’s all there was to it. Unless she invoked the three R’s. Reduce, reuse, recycle? No, that wasn’t right. Resist, reject, retreat. That was it.
Clearly, she had been right in saying she wasn’t ready for a relationship. She was a total emotional mess, and it wouldn’t be fair to either of them to race down a relationship course that would leave them both bruised and bleeding when they crashed at the bottom.
Sinking back in the chair, she resigned herself to her fate—a really uncomfortable, sexually frustrating weekend.
Jack huddled in the backseat of his cousin Steve’s SUV and tried not to grimace. He, Steve, and Pops were on their way to the wedding rehearsal, then dinner, and Steve’s driving was making him sick.
Or maybe his life was making him sick.
His empty, lonely, meaningless life.
How could Jamie have left him like that? After he’d handed her his bleeding heart on a bloody stick.
It was the question that had been repeated a thousand times in a thousand different ways.
And he had yet to come up with an answer.
Steve took the corner at forty miles an hour, nearly annihilating a group of tourists trying to cross the street to see the Rockefeller Center.
“Slow down,” he growled, pushing his sunglasses firmly back up his nose.
Steve glanced at him. “What’s the matter with you? You don’t look so good.”
“I think I ate bad chicken.” It was a total lie, but was better than blurting out the truth, that he was mooning over Jamie. Steve would spend the whole damn night telling him I told you so.
“Uh, bad timing, Jack. You can’t be puking at your sister’s wedding. It won’t look good on the video.”
No, he didn’t imagine it would. “I’ll be okay if you slow the damn car down.”
“Fine, fine.” Steve shot him a grin. “I saw enough of you tossing your lunch last week at the bachelor party.”
Jack groaned. “Don’t even bring that up again.”
The memory made his head pound. After spending a lonely night wondering why the heck Jamie had left him, he had gone to the bachelor party and had proceeded to drink himself under the table. Literally.
He hadn’t done anything that stupid since he was twenty-one.
Steve wasn’t finished razzing him, though. Shifting gears, he said, “I’ve never seen anybody throw up down the front of a stripper before.”
“It was an accident.” One that held no comedic value for him, despite the laughter in Steve’s voice. He didn’t imagine the stripper had found it all that funny either. It had taken a profuse apology and a five-hundred-dollar tip to keep the whole bachelor party from being thrown out of the club.
But he hadn’t meant to do it. He hadn’t been interested in the stripper at all, in fact, had waved her away. She had persisted, shaking herself and her red-tasseled breasts in his face. His perception had already gone the way of the whiskey, and she had made him dizzy with all that wobbling. And then an image of Jamie wiggling out of her jeans topless had risen in his mind, and before he even knew what was happening, he had thrown up, splashing those tassels and her red high-heeled shoes.
Not one of his finer moments.
“It was disgusting,” Steve said with relish.
Jack wasn’t going to argue.
Nor did he feel like discussing it any further.
Pops, who had been making his way through a bag of peanut M&Ms in the front seat, added his two cents. “Bad chicken? Bah. Looks like girl trouble to me.”
“Are you supposed to be eating those?” Jack asked, grabbing for a subject change.
“Do I give a shit?” Pops threw a green one in his mouth and chewed defiantly. “I don’t have a peanut allergy. And stop changing the subject. If you’re pissed that Jamie dumped you, you should do something about it. A hard-on girl doesn’t come along every day.”
Steve let out a laugh. “What in the hell is a hard-on girl?”
Jack considered crawling under the seat to avoid this conversation. Pops shared none of his embarrassment.
“A girl who gives you a hard-on just by thinking about her. Jamie does that to Jack.”
He swore under his breath while Steve nearly ran them off the road from laughing so hard. “He’s pitiful, isn’t he?” Steve asked. “You should have seen him begging her to meet for coffee. It was sad to see how far the mighty have fallen.”
“Fuck off.”
Steve only laughed harder. “Come on, Jack, even you have to admit your strategy didn’t exactly work.”
“So what do you suggest I do, since you’re such an expert?”
“You can stop being so dramatic for one thing. No chick is going to like a puppy dog following her around with hopeful eyes.”
Pops nodded. “Kid’s got a point. And I read that metro-sexuals are on their way out of favor. Women want manly men, who take charge.”
Oh, good God.
“So stop acting like a crybaby and seduce her,” was Pops’s conclusion.
“Seriously,” Steve added. “And drop the whining about being rich. Makes you sound like a spoiled brat.”
Wow, the sympathy pouring forth from his family was just overwhelming.
The evening stretched ahead of him, long and unpleasant.
And he couldn’t even seek solace in the wine.
With his luck, he’d throw up on the entire bridal party.
But maybe Steve and Pops had a point, when you waded through the useless crap they had spouted. Maybe he needed to stop moping like a bad cliché and do what had always come naturally to him—take action. Meet the challenge head-on and emerge triumphant.
As he hit the button for the car window to go down, he pictured life without Jamie in it. Desolate, empty. Siberia of the heart. Nope, that just wasn’t going to happen.
He would love her, damn it, and she’d learn to like it.
Chapter 15
“Oh, my God, what is he doing here?” Allison said as she opened the door of a cab. “Quick, get in before he sees us.”
“Who?” Jamie turned around and spotted Beckwith. He was kind of hard to miss, wearing that floral dress and Charro earrings. “Maybe he was just in the neighborhood.” She waved at him.
Allison grabbed her hand and yanked it down. “Stop that! He’ll see you, and we’re on the verge of being late to the rehearsal. Caroline will have a cow if we’re late.”