Hard To Handle. Jamie Denton
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perfectly good diet soda on a classless jerk. Instead, she shot him a cold look and kept moving.
In an era where reed-thin models graced the covers of nearly every magazine on the stands, she had the kind of body that had gone out of fashion five decades ago. As one of her previous lovers had told her after she’d shown him the exit, she had a body made for sin, but the heart of an ice queen.
She’d laughed in his face as she held the door open for him, all because he’d kept pressing her for a commitment. She’d warned him she wasn’t into exclusive relationships, but he hadn’t listened. Why was the concept of a no-strings affair so difficult to grasp? Men did it all the time, but when a woman wanted to do the same, she was called coldhearted or worse. She’d already found and lost her one true love—if such a thing even existed—but it had ended badly and she had no desire to repeat the experience. Ever.
“Don’t you just love a good buffet?” Lauren said when Mikki reached their table, now laden with small oval platters, one of them heaped with various tidbits and a small sampling of the goodies from Rory’s shop—thankfully prepared by Rory and her competent staff. Rory had lightened up and hadn’t forced Mikki to actually keep her word when she’d arrived to help. She’d even added a prize of her own to the cause with a day behind the scenes at Lavender Field along with a month’s supply of baked goods.
“Who wouldn’t?” Mikki answered, carefully setting their drinks amid the array of food. “There’s always bound to be just the right combination to sate most any appetite.” She paused while handing Lauren her drink to blatantly follow the progress of a tall, athletically built Adonis with sun-kissed blond hair and a confident swagger striding toward the black-and-white-tiled dance floor.
Rory made a minor adjustment to the shimmering lilac shawl draped loosely over her shoulders before taking a tentative sip of her white wine. “I have a feeling she’s not talking about the food,” she said to Lauren over the din of conversation.
“Does she ever think of anything besides sex?” Lauren returned with a laugh, taking her drink from Mikki.
Mikki perched on the stool and carefully tugged down the hem of her short, black sleeveless dress. “Not really,” she said, before taking a sip of soda. God, what she wouldn’t give for a real drink. She’d even settle for one of Lauren’s favored frou-frou blended numbers—a sign of true desperation.
Lauren let out a weighty sigh. “Don’t you ever want more from a relationship than sex?”
“Sex is the only relationship I’m interested in, thank you very much.” A long and lean stud looked her way. She smiled at him and slowly lifted the delicate white-gold chain around her neck, the small suitcase charm Maureen had given her upon arriving swinging enticingly in front of her cleavage. His deep-set eyes filled with regret as he shrugged and displayed empty hands.
She let out a sigh. Damn. No key. Not every guest at Clementine’s had opted to purchase a lock or key ticket, although they had paid the rather steep entrance fee to the private party. The few moments she’d had to speak to Maureen upon arriving, her friend had been ecstatic about the money being raised for Baxter House. There’d even been a sizable donation from one of the wealthy and privileged Telegraph Hill set.
“Don’t you ever look at a guy—like him for instance—” Lauren inclined her head in the keyless stud’s direction “—and wonder if he could be the one?”
Mikki forced a laugh. She’d found “the one” once and, as a matter of self-preservation, she’d pushed him away. Hell would freeze over before she ever went there again. She had too many skeletons in her closet and preferred to keep them locked away, something a serious relationship wouldn’t permit, not when trust required a certain level intimacy she had no interest in exploring.
Keep it simple, keep it short, keep them from getting close enough to see what she kept hidden in the closet. That was her motto, and she was sticking to it—with the tenacity of a pit bull.
“The one to make me scream with pleasure?” she replied with her usual flippancy whenever Lauren started with the Cinderella propaganda. “All the time.”
“No,” Lauren said, her tone serious. “Settle down. Buy real estate.” She studied the creamy liquid in her glass, appropriately called a White Knight. “Have a family.”
“I don’t need a man for that,” Mikki said with more brittle laughter. “Just a better-paying job.” She let out a weary sigh. “I don’t have the intrinsic need most women do to nest. I’m a realist, Lauren. Not a romantic.”
Lauren lifted her clear hazel gaze to give her a pointed look. “What about a family?”
Mikki shrugged, but the unexpected weight settling on her shoulders refused to budge. “You, Rory and Mom are my family.” She downed a large portion of her diet cola. The sorry substitute did nothing to quell the sudden sharp craving for something a whole lot more potent than an innocuous soft drink.
“I meant a family of your own,” Lauren pressed. “You’d make a great mother, Mikki. I hope you realize that someday.”
No way. Not her. Never.
She knew exactly what her sister meant and she resented the reminder. She suffered with more sorrow than she’d ever admit to over her decision to never have children. But she couldn’t change the past. She was who she was—a Correlli. And the bloodline ended with her. Period. She’d learned to accept her fate—why wouldn’t anyone else?
But something deep in Mikki’s chest still caught and squeezed hard anyway. It wasn’t the sharp pang of longing. Or was it? Maybe it was another one of those annoying ticks from her biological clock that hadn’t caught on that Correllis had no business breeding. She kept hitting the snooze button, but every so often the what-ifs managed to sneak past her barriers to tweak her self-pity nerve. She couldn’t change who or what she was: the last woman who should ever consider having a baby.
“Motherhood doesn’t interest me,” she said a tad too snappishly. Guilt instantly slammed into her at the flash of hurt in Lauren’s eyes.
Shit. She hadn’t meant to sound so cold, but Lauren was hitting a nerve she didn’t appreciate having nudged. What was done was done. And she’d gotten over it a lifetime ago.
“You’re wonderful with kids.” Rory tugged her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
“Just as long as they belong to someone else,” she reminded Rory. “When you two decide to start having babies, count on me to spoil them rotten. Now, can we please change the subject before I break out in hives?”
A server neared and Mikki signaled to place another order. She would have sold her soul and then some for a something strong enough to anesthetize her mind. She loved Lauren but, dammit, she had no desire to navigate an emotional obstacle course.
The server took his sweet time coming their way, giving the craving gnawing at her time to build. Her hands trembled, so she fisted them in her lap and attempted to concentrate on the rich red-and-gold, bordelloesque decor of Clementine’s. The need for a shot of bourbon only grew stronger. After four years of sobriety, it annoyed the life out of her that she still had to fight off such strong temptation for a drink—for several drinks—but she’d learned early on that some days were easier to get through than others.
She dug her nails into her palms as the server finally approached. “There’s a twenty in it for you if you’re back in less than five minutes,” she told him, placing an order for another two glasses of soda and another round for Lauren and Rory.
Opening her black silk evening bag, she pulled out her car keys and set them in front of Rory for safekeeping. “Just in case,” she said tightly. “It’s one of those days.”
Rory’s expression instantly filled with concern, but Mikki shook her head, signaling she didn’t want to discuss the war going on inside her. She’d get through this, just as she always did. One second at a time if necessary. Ridding herself of her car keys