Melt Into You (13 page)

Standing a few feet in front of the shed, she eyed its old door, ramshackle siding, and pair of grimy windows. Inside, it probably looked just as bad. The place clearly needed some TLC before she could use it again. She’d purposely neglected it, and it showed. Under its eaves, leaning against the siding, were the various yard tools Natasha stored there—a rake, a shovel, a dilapidated rotary push mower, and a pair of gardening gloves.

All those items more properly belonged inside the shed. But keeping them outside suited Natasha just fine. They were mostly protected from the weather, and they were handy when she needed them. Occasionally, Carol pestered her to either clean out the shed so it could be used for its intended purpose or (more frequently) to “open the damn door and do some work in there!”

Unfortunately, Natasha had abandoned the kind of work she did in the garden shed ... which had nothing to do with gardening.

Today, though, things were going to be different. Today, she was going to take the first step toward the rest of her life. Inhaling deeply, Natasha marched to the shed’s front door.

She glanced around her quiet neighborhood, half expecting someone to accuse her of ... well, she wasn’t sure exactly
what
she expected to be accused of. Not deserving a second chance?

Paul had resented the time she’d spent in her improvised garden-shed workspace, Natasha remembered as she wielded her feather duster. He’d teased her. Sometimes he’d sulked. After a while it had just seemed easier to stop going in there.

Eventually—and much too easily—she’d given up on herself.

But all that was changing ... starting today. Weirdly enough, it was changing because Natasha had finally gotten fed up with Damon enough to leave. He’d accidentally given her the push she needed, just by being his usual bad-to-the-bone self.

“Thanks, Damon!” she muttered under her breath. Then, after squaring her shoulders and taking another tentative glance around, Natasha opened the garden shed door and went inside.

For the fifth time in as many days, Damon headed downstairs from the luxe guest room that Wes Brinkman had offered him. As usual, during the lengthy journey across Wes’s palatial house, Damon tripped over a discarded bottle of vodka, navigated past several passed-out, scantily clad guests from the previous evening’s party, then made his way to the kitchen. There, Damon found no sign of the housekeeping staff ... or anyone else. At Wes’s (
unflooded
) oceanfront beach house, things were pretty casual.

That was because Wes didn’t have someone like Natasha to maintain normalcy and a modicum of order, Damon had decided. But it might also be because Wes, an inveterate partier, didn’t want anyone around who might disagree with his hard-living ways.

Damon could identify with that. Sometimes a man didn’t want anyone pestering him to wake up, get dressed, and be responsible. He knew he didn’t. Not even now. Screw that.

That’s why Wes’s place was so perfect for him.
Perfect
.

After a brief rummage through the fridge, Damon unearthed an orange juice from behind the ever-present supply of Veuve Clicquot that Wes kept on hand. Carefully, Damon made a notation on the notepad he kept on the counter:
Orange juice, 1 pint
.

Keeping track of the items he used had been Damon’s idea. Wes had given him no end of grief about it. The orange juice was only the latest in a growing series of penciled-in entries designed to help Damon track and repay his debt to Wes—the only one who’d truly come through for him in his hour of need. His notepad also included entries recording five days’ lodging, several full meals, and more than one instance of bus fare.

Damon’s Chihuly cache of quarters hadn’t gone very far; despite not having ransomed his BMW yet, he’d still needed to get places occasionally. Although his parents were still being chilly—to the point that Jimmy and Debbie had refused to put up Damon temporarily in their house in Solana Beach—Damon remained dedicated to his work at Torrance Chocolates ... and to finding a way to redeem himself in his dad’s eyes.

Now, if only he knew how in the hell to do that ...

“You know, I’m beginning to think you’re an impostor.” Wes rounded the corner, toting a whiskey bottle and looking sleepy. He wore his suit from the night before—crumpled and worse for the wear—with an unbuttoned shirt and a day’s ration of beard stubble. Lip gloss smudged his collar. “The Damon Torrance I know would have been tallying up bottles of champagne, wrecked hotel suites, beautiful women, and business victories. Not O.J.”

“The Damon Torrance you
knew
wouldn’t have tallied up a damn thing, because he didn’t realize what a mess he was.”

Wes scoffed. “Are you still beating yourself up about that?” He traversed the length of the counter on unsteady bare feet, slung his arm companionably around Damon’s shoulders, then nudged him in the ribs with his whiskey bottle. “Knock it off already, dude. Your prissy secretary was wrong about you! Look around you—you
won
! You’re at the top of the heap! You might as well enjoy yourself, because you damn well earned it. That Vegas thing was just a fucking glitch. A speed bump. Nothing more.”

To punctuate his point, Wes knocked back some whiskey. He offered the bottle to Damon. Regretfully, Damon shook his head.

Wes met his refusal with an indulgent smile. “Fine. Be that way, you damn spoilsport. But before you wrap yourself around the axle trying to be a ‘better person’”—Wes paused to make derisive air quotes with his fingers—“whatever the fuck
that
means, you might want to ask yourself: Where’s the payoff?”

Grumpily, Damon drank his orange juice. He remained silent.

“That’s what I always ask myself,” Wes told him casually. “Where’s the payoff? If there isn’t one, I don’t do it. So where’s the payoff, for you, in trying to be so ‘good’?”

Damon wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he’d scraped the floor in Las Vegas. From here, he could only go up. He hoped.

“Not everything comes with a profit/loss statement.”

“Ooh, listen to you! Now I
know
you’ve been replaced by a pod person.” Wes’s eyes glimmered with laughter. “Come on! I’m not talking about P and Ls. I’m talking about life! Living
life
! Grabbing life by the balls and seeing where it takes you!”

“Lately? It’s been taking me down some pretty dark alleyways.” Sardonically, Damon grinned. “It’s been grabbing
me
by the balls and punching me.” He sighed. “In the balls.”

“I know. I know.” In a conciliatory gesture, Wes spread his arms—a motion that sent telltale whiffs of liquor, cigar smoke, and ladies’ perfume into the air. All the aftereffects of his raucous lifestyle were present and accounted for. “You told me that when you got here. You’ve had a run of rotten luck lately—”

Darkly, Damon chuckled. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“—but have you considered
why
?”

“Why what?”

“Why you’ve been so ‘unlucky’ lately.” Wes examined his bottle, idly rubbing his thumb over its label. “I mean, all these things going wrong at once can’t be a coincidence.”

“It
has
to be a coincidence.” Privately, Damon had begun wondering if he somehow
deserved
all the misfortune he’d been encountering lately. But he didn’t want to think about that. So he didn’t. “I’m probably overdue for a lifetime’s bad luck, that’s all,” he told Wes. “I’ve been skating until now—”

“No. What
you’ve
been doing is being fortunate enough
not
to come across a vengeful woman,” Wes disagreed. “Until now.”

Mystified, Damon stared at him. In many ways, he and Wes were like brothers. They liked the same things. They reacted in the same ways. They shared philosophies and business goals. That had been true for five years now. He and Wes were simpatico.

But this ... “I must be too sober. I’m not following you.”

“Natasha.” Wes nodded. “
She’s
your vengeful woman. You crossed her,” he theorized, “and now you’re paying for it.”

Damon burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. “That’s impossible. Natasha isn’t making me pay for anything. You’ve met her—she’s about as vengeful as a basketful of puppies.”

“Sure.” Consolingly, Wes made a face. “She probably
seemed
that way at first—until you pushed her too far. But then ...” Wes gave an awestruck whistle. “Watch out, sucker. I’ve seen it happen before. You make one tiny misstep, and little miss basket of puppies morphs into a fucking pile of piranhas.”

Involuntarily, Damon thought of Wes’s cadre of ex-wives. If the divorce settlements—which were legendary—were anything to go by, those women had definitely been out for the kill. Still ...

“Not Natasha.” Damon shook his head more firmly. “No way.”

“Yes, way. The quiet ones are always the deadliest after they’ve been riled up.” Wes slugged back more whiskey. He aimed the bottle at Damon’s improvised ledger, where he’d written
orange juice
just moments ago. “Look what she’s reduced you to.
Bookkeeping
.” He made an even more aggrieved face. “Hell.”

“Natasha didn’t do that,” Damon protested. Although it was, he realized, exactly the kind of thing she’d be inclined to do herself for the sake of fairness. “I did it. It was my idea. As far as the rest of my misfortunes go—”

“Who else had the motive to do this to you?” Wes interrupted. “Who else had the requisite access to you to pull it off? Who else could have reported your hotel suite ruined, canceled your driver—all but guaranteeing you’d be mugged on that airport van—and put out the word to all your lady friends that they should end things? I’ll tell you who: Natasha.”

“Well,” Damon mused aloud involuntarily, “Natasha
did
have contact information for all the women I dated. Over the years, we’d streamlined the process of sending ‘sorry I broke your heart’ bouquets after the inevitable breakups happened.”

“‘Sorry I broke your heart’ bouquets?” Wes goggled at him. “Gag me. Let me guess: that was your secretary’s bright idea?”

“Maybe the first one was ... . I can’t remember.”

“See? She’s corrupted you!” Wes pointed the whiskey bottle in outright indignation. “Plus, she’s obviously turned Jason and his wife against you. Who knows
what
she told your parents to make Jimmy and Debbie turn their backs on you, too—”

“Hey.” Damon gave his friend a stern look. “Watch it.”

“Sorry.” Wes really did appear contrite. For him. Which didn’t mean much. “All I’m saying is, it bugs me to see you suffering this way when you don’t have to! It seems obvious to me that your pissed-off secretary somehow put your whole life into meltdown mode, and now you’re suffering the consequences.”

Almost against his will, Damon found himself nodding. It was true that no one else in his life possessed the necessary access to wreak the havoc he’d undergone lately. Only Natasha.

“Worst of all, you’ve internalized the damage!” Grandiosely, Wes spread his arms. His whiskey sloshed in its bottle. Across the room, a woman wearing a sequined miniskirt and one high-heeled shoe—and nothing else—stirred in her sleep. “That’s the real kick in the head! You’re suffering, and you think you deserve it. You think you’re supposed to fix yourself somehow, starting with a stupid ledger of orange juice entries.”

Somewhere between
internalized
,
suffering
, and
fix yourself
, it occurred to Damon that Wes may have had a
lot
of therapy. Maybe too much. Everyone knew Wes had been in and out of rehab. All the same, some of what he was saying made sense.

“I still don’t think Natasha would do anything like this on purpose. She couldn’t,” Damon insisted. “The really weird part is that while I’m here struggling, Natasha is doing
great
. Jason and Amy told me she’s happy, she’s got tons of new job offers, her clunker of a car is running well, her flowers look better than Martha Stewart’s, her mother-in-law is apparently being extra agreeable ... . Even that bastard Pacey is probably being nice.”

At the thought of Natasha’s husband, Damon frowned. But Wes wasn’t the least bit sidetracked by thoughts of Natasha’s spoiled artiste hubby ... and how lucky the bastard was to be with Natasha, probably right now, this very minute. Damn it.

“It’s obvious what’s happened here.” Wes gazed directly at him. In a solemn tone, he said, “
Natasha
has
your
share of good luck.
She’s
got all the good luck
you’re
supposed to have.”

For a moment, the idea just hung there between them, feeling important and right and inarguable. Maybe it was.

“That’s as good an explanation as any.” With a nod, Damon slammed down his orange juice. “I need to get it back.”

“Yes. You
deserve
to get it back.”

“I’m going to get it back. Today.” Warming up to the idea, Damon ran his hand through his hair. This was the first break he’d had in days. He meant to run with it. “I bet all I have to do is get Natasha to forgive me, then ... bam! The universe will right itself again, and I’ll have my mojo back.”

Wes beamed. “
That
sounds more like the Damon Torrance I know. Go get her, tiger! For you, this should be easy.”

“Yeah,” Damon agreed. “It
will
be easy! I might be down, but I’m not out. I’m still me! I can get whatever I want.”

“Damn straight, you can.” Wes saluted with his whiskey.

Feeling fired up, Damon nodded. “I’d know exactly what to do, too... .” He paused. “If it weren’t for Pacey.”
Stupid Pacey
.

If not for Natasha’s inconvenient husband, Damon could have taken the easy way out and charmed her into forgiving him. As it was, he’d have to try some other, less intimately enjoyable method of convincing Natasha to give him a second chance.

If only he knew what it was ...

Well, he’d figure it out when he got there.

“Point me to suburbia!” Damon told his friend exuberantly. “I’m headed to the land of minivans, carpools, and faithful family mutts—and I’m going to conquer it by lunchtime.”