The Player Page 7

  If he held it together and pretended like nothing was wrong, then it wouldn’t be. He’d be normal and the rest of the world could simply accept that he was fine, or they could go to hell. Audrey didn’t have any idea where these impressions and feelings were coming from—she seemed to be more in tune with him than with anyone she’d ever met before—but she knew her instincts were right on. Felt the familiar weight of grief and emotion—his grief and emotion—seep into her very bones.

  She was siphoning already, she realized with a flash of dread, and she’d barely spent any time with him. That certainly didn’t bode well for the rest of the week.

  God, why did this always happen to her? Audrey thought with a silent whimper of despair. Why was she attracted to guys who used her up? Why couldn’t she feel this overwhelming attraction for Derrick? Why didn’t he make her heart squeeze with emotion and her thighs quiver with want?

  Was she simply wired this way? she wondered. Could she only be attracted to men who needed her? How screwed up was that? How screwed up was she? It took very little insight to recognize that she was going to be taking a huge risk by working with Jamie. Between the off-the-Richter-scale attraction and this equally driving need to heal his hurts—even if that meant making them hers—she’d be a fool to think she wasn’t teetering on a slippery slope.

  And she was going to be damned lucky if she didn’t fall.

  Even worse…for him.

  SINCE JAMIE HAD long ago learned to fall asleep in almost any position, in any condition, it was no surprise that he enjoyed a restful night. The mattress on his bed was just the perfect combination of soft and firm, the pillows were excellent and the sheets were quality—Egyptian cotton—and had been cool and soft with a hint of some kind of summer rain scented fabric softener.

  And the quarter bottle of whiskey he’d had before stumbling into bed hadn’t hurt either.

  He would have smiled, but knew from past experience that his face would hurt, so he quelled the urge. Instead, he braced both hands against the shower wall, bent his head and allowed the almost-scalding water to beat down on the back of his head and neck. Between the steam and two fingers of the hair of the dog, he was beginning to feel marginally better.

  Jamie liked a drink as much as the next guy, but he ordinarily knew his limit. Hell, he’d been drinking Jameson since his grandmother had made him his first hot toddy. He knew when to stop. So why hadn’t he, then? Jamie wondered, knowing the question was rhetorical.

  He would have liked to blame it on the clear, cool night, the nocturnal sounds and lapping lake against the shore. Even better if he could have blamed it on boredom—he’d had nothing better to do than sit in the dark and get hammered.

  But he knew better—he’d kept drinking because it had taken the edge off. The way Jamie had seen it, he’d had two choices. He could have either hiked back up the hill and finished what Moses had interrupted—and then some—or he could drink until he could master the urge.

  While he hadn’t mastered it by any stretch of the imagination, he’d at least managed to keep his feet planted firmly on the front porch of his “relaxation” retreat. He smothered a snort. Hell, he’d been more relaxed behind enemy lines with rocket-powered grenades—RPG’s in soldier speak—going off in his shadow.

  Jamie turned the shower off, slicked his hair back from his face and snagged a towel from the rack. Now, in approximately sixteen minutes, if his internal clock could be trusted, he was supposed to continue this relaxing retreat painting watercolors—with Audrey, no less, so that she could personally witness his complete ineptitude—down by the lake.

  Satan had a familiar and his name was Garrett, Jamie thought, with a bark of dry laughter which made his head threaten to split in two.

  He’d fully expected a call from the devil last night, but he suspected a divine hand had intervened. Because if Garrett had dialed him up yesterday evening, considering the alcohol pumping through his system, he would have most likely unloaded on him. Jamie had needed an outlet for all of this pent-up anxiety and since his preferred method of dealing with angst—sex, of course—was off-limits, that only left picking a fight. His cheeks puffed as he exhaled loudly. And since there was no one here he could reasonably pick a fight with—too bad Derrick had left, Jamie thought, wincing with regret—he’d had no choice but to drink.

  The way he figured it, he was going to need a lot of alcohol to combat the attraction. If he factored in the time-to-attraction-to-alcohol ratio, then that meant he’d need an additional say…million bottles of whiskey to go with what he had left? If that didn’t work, he could always see about being chemically castrated for the week. His lips quirked with miserable humor. A man had to have a plan, after all.

  Feeling decidedly uninterested in watercolors, but ridiculously pleased to know that he’d see Audrey, Jamie dressed quickly and made his way outside.

  “Ah,” the object of his recent lust said. “There you are.” Looking fresh and well rested and entirely too sexy for a woman dressed in an ugly flannel shirt, Audrey gestured to a wide assortment of gear at her hiking-boot clad feet. “Would you mind helping me with this stuff?”

  “Sure,” Jamie told her. He easily gathered a couple folding chairs and wooden easels into his arms, leaving her to tote a small bag he assumed held the rest of their painting necessities.

  She shot him a curiously hesitant look. “Have you been up long?”

  “A grand total of twenty-two minutes. Twenty of which were spent in the shower.”

  She smiled and inclined her head. “Ah,” she sighed. “Slept well or barely slept?”

  “Oh, I slept well.”

  “Good. Did you have time for breakfast?”

  “Er…does thinking about it count?”

  “No.”

  “Then no, I didn’t have time for breakfast.”

  She shook her head. “Bad soldier,” she chided. “My grandfather wouldn’t approve. How does a muffin and some fruit sound?”

  Not as good as a half a pound of bacon and a Spanish omelet, but better than nothing, he supposed, grateful nonetheless. “Good, thanks.” What? Was she packing breakfast in that bag? he wondered.

  Giving him a look he grimly suspected meant she’d somehow read his mind, Audrey grinned and grabbed the radio attached to her waist. “Do you want anything to drink?”

  “A beer would be nice.”

  “Not for breakfast. How does tomato juice sound?”

  “Nasty. Can I have coffee?”

  Eyes twinkling, she bit her lip. “Sure.” She placed his order and asked that it be brought down to the lake. “There we go,” she said. “Henry should be down in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and meant it. It had been a long time since anyone had cared whether or not he’d eaten his Wheaties.

  “No problem. Besides, it’ll help metabolize that alcohol and get you over your hangover.”

  Startled, Jamie almost stumbled over his own feet. “I’m sorry.”

  She darted him a sly look over her shoulder. “No need to apologize.”

  “I wasn’t apologizing. I just—” He chewed the inside of his cheek and, equally impressed and disturbed, considered her. “How did you know?”

  She stopped at a level spot behind a rather thick copse of trees and dropped her bag, then took the chairs away from him. “Well, number one, you slept late and you’re a military man—granted, one that’s not currently in service—” she said before he could interrupt because he’d instantly readied his mouth for argument. “I know that’s not the norm.”

  Good observation, he had to admit. Still, it wasn’t enough to deduce a hangover.

  She made quick work of setting up the chairs. “Secondly, you skipped breakfast and you appear entirely too health conscious to make that a regular habit.”

  On the money again, Jamie thought, feeling more and more transparent.

  “Would you mind setting those up?”

  He blinked. “Huh?”

 
; She gestured toward the easels, forgotten in his hand. “Set those up, would you?”

  Right, Jamie thought, jolting into action. His cheeks heated with embarrassment. Here she was doing all the work, while he stood rooted to the ground, marvelling over her ability to read him like a friggin’ book. Good grief. He had to get his head out of his ass and into the game.

  “And thirdly,” she said, shooting him a mischievous smile. “You look like shit.”

  Since he was more accustomed to accepting compliments than criticism, the blunt insult took him completely by surprise, jarring a disbelieving chuckle loose from his throat. “Don’t hold back,” he told her dryly. “Tell me how you really feel.”

  She shrugged. “You asked me how I knew,” she said. “Don’t ask if you don’t want to know.”

  Utterly intrigued by her, he pushed a hand through his hair and nodded. “Duly noted. Anything else I should know?”

  “Nothing.” She paused, then seemed to remember something important. “Oh, wait. Erm…I might have seen you on your front porch last night with that bottle of Jameson.”

  A slow smile spread across his lips. Ah, he thought. The heart of the matter. Now that made more sense. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

  She handed him a watercolor pad. “I might have heard that once or twice.”

  “Or more.”

  She nodded. “Or more.”

  Feeling like he’d moved back onto solid ground, Jamie flipped the pad open and arranged it onto the easel. He thought about pretending to know what to do next, but ultimately decided against it. What was the point? She knew perfectly well he didn’t have any damned idea how to paint. “Okay. What now?”

  Audrey bent down by the water’s edge and filled two plastic cups. Now here was a perk, Jamie thought. She might be wearing the ugliest shirt in the Northern Hemisphere—one that was better suited to a lumberjack and not a woman who looked like a cover model—but that shirt was tucked into a pair of jeans which fitted her quite nicely. Her delectable ass presently tested the seams of the worn denim and he found himself silently wishing he had either X-ray vision or the ability to make her pants instantly vanish.

  What the hell. Why not wish for both?

  She’d tied her hair back into a long ponytail at the nape of her neck and the cool morning breeze flirted with the ends of her espresso curls. She looked sexy and competent and…wholesome, Jamie realized with a start.

  Now there was a word he didn’t usually associate with a woman he was attracted to. Stacked, sexy, dim—those were the qualities most of the women he hooked up with possessed. No muss, no fuss. Attraction, action, reaction, end of relationship.

  Audrey, he knew, wasn’t that kind of girl. And yet he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted another female in his life. Was it because he couldn’t have her? The so-called thrill of the forbidden? Had Garrett’s orders somehow made her even more attractive to him simply because he knew he wasn’t supposed to touch her? His gaze slid over the delicate slope of her cheek, the curve of her brow, the dainty shell of her ear and his heart did a funny little squeeze he would have labeled indigestion had he eaten this morning.

  That would have been the simple explanation—the one he wished like hell he could cling to—but he knew better. In an act of what he could only deduce as divine punishment for his mistreatment of women, the Almighty had placed him with the one woman in the world whom he instinctively knew could touch his soul…and had made her offlimits.

  If that wasn’t divine retribution he didn’t know what was.

  She straightened. “Now we paint,” she said brightly.

  Ah, yes. For a moment there he’d forgotten.

  Audrey chuckled, the sound soft and curiously soothing to his ears. “Don’t look so glum. Remember, this one is for my grandfather.”

  Jamie accepted his paints, brush and cup with a vengeful smile. “That’s right,” he told her. “He’s got a fondness for orchids, right?”

  “He does,” she confirmed hesitantly. “But I thought you might want to paint the lake.”

  Jamie wet his brush and dipped it into the red, toyed around with the combination of pigment to water until he reached the right shade of pink. Pussy-pink, Jamie thought, stifling a chuckle. “Nope. I’ll paint an orchid.”

  Clearly suspecting that he was up to something, Audrey slid him a guarded glance. “Suit yourself. I’m painting the lake.”

  “Good. It can be a gift for me.”

  A smile flirted with her lips while she played around with her paintbrush. “Why would I give it to you?”

  He purposely let his gaze slide over her. “So I’ll have a memento of you when I go home.”

  She cleared her throat. “And home’s in Atlanta, right?”

  “It is.”

  “My grandfather mentioned you’d left the military and had gone into a private security business with some friends. Also Rangers, right? In the same unit?”

  He could only imagine what else he’d mentioned, Jamie thought. No doubt the sneaky bastard had told her about Danny, too. The thought had been offhand, but now that he truly considered it, Garrett would have most certainly told her about Danny. And if he’d told her about Jamie’s friends, he’d definitely told her about Danny. Furthermore, he would have cited it as a reason for his visit. Jamie’s fingers tensed around the brush and he mentally swore.

  Repeatedly.

  God, how could he not realize that before now? He suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable, two adjectives he’d just as soon not associate with himself. Danny’s death was a private pain, one he had no intention of sharing with anybody. You know, it was one thing to send him up here to work some behind-the-scenes machinations to keep her from marrying an asshole, but to use his own grief as a means to that end was beyond the pale.

  And Garrett had seriously underestimated him if he thought he would simply let that slide.

  Belatedly remembering that he was supposed to be carrying on a conversation, Jamie finally managed to respond to her comment. “I am in the private security business,” he confirmed. “With friends. Me and a couple of guys who were also under your grandfather’s command opened up shop a few months ago.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” he murmured, putting more effort into his painting. He wanted it to be just right for Garrett, the scheming bastard.

  “And business is good?”

  “Better than we expected,” he told her, the pride evident in his voice.

  “That’s fantastic. It’s nice when hard work pays off.” She added a few strokes to her own work, then nibbled absently on the end of the brush. “Do you miss being a Ranger?”

  That topic was still too raw and he didn’t have a clear-cut answer he could give to himself, much less her. “Sometimes,” he told her, for lack of anything better.

  “I know what you mean.” She cocked her head, studying her work. “In a previous life I was a commodities broker.”

  Now that was enough to draw him up short. Wearing what he knew had to be a dumbfounded look, Jamie paused and turned to stare at her. “You were a what?”

  She chuckled at the look on his face. “A commodities broker. Had the whole Wall Street walk going on. The briefcase, the PDA, the BlackBerry.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” she told him.

  Jamie returned his attention to his orchid—which was beginning to finally resemble the female genitalia he’d been aiming for—and digested this newest bit of information about Audrey. He couldn’t make it fit. “So how does a Wall Street commodities broker end up in Maine running a de-stressing camp?” he asked, genuinely intrigued. That was a big damned leap.

  “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you,” she teased. She sidled over next to him. “What are you—” She gasped, clasped her hand to her mouth to smother a laugh. “That looks like a—” Her shocked gaze swung to his.

  Jamie quirked an eyebrow.

  “I mean to say, that’s…We
ll, that’s—” She nodded, seemingly at a loss. “That’s lovely.”

  Jamie grinned and chewed the inside of his cheek. “Is there something wrong with my orchid?”

  She pressed her lips together, shook her head. “Not at all.”

  “I think he should hang it in a place of honor, don’t you?” Jamie asked her sweetly. “Like behind his desk or maybe in his home office. Possibly even his bedroom.”

  Her cheeks pinkened adorably and she gazed at his vagina painting with something akin to humorous outrage. “I’m s-sure he’ll find a g-good home for it.”

  “You look a little flushed,” Jamie commented, thoroughly enjoying her discomfort. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked with faux concern.

  Tearing her fascinated blue gaze away from his painting, she jerked her attention back to him. “Me? Oh, no. I’m fine. Look,” she said, a little too brightly. “There’s Henry with breakfast.”

  If she’d been drowning, Henry would have been the lone life preserver in dangerous waters, Jamie thought, his lips curling into a grim.

  “Oh, good,” he enthused. “After I eat, I think I’ll paint a picture of a couple of mountains. You know, the Colonel was right. This painting is very relaxing.”

  7

  * * *

  “WHAT THE HELL do you think you’re doing?” Tewanda said, under her breath. She gestured disgustedly at Audrey’s clothes. “Flannel?” she asked, horrified. “Flannel, Audrey? Why on earth would you clothe yourself in the single greatest ‘do-not-touch-me’ fabric known to mankind when a hot man like that is here?”

  That’s exactly why she did it, Audrey thought, shooting a careful look at Jamie from the corner of her eye. He’d finished his orchid painting—she inwardly snorted—and was presently hard at work on his interpretation of “mountains.” Despite the flannel shirt, she kept feeling his darting gaze study her breasts, then go back to work. It was enough to make a perfectly sane woman go a little crazy.