Beautiful Illusions Read online

  “Jackson.” A smile comes and goes as he continues to study me under the flickering blaze.

  “Jackson. I like it. Nice, strong name for a nice, strong guy.” I shoot him a look sharp enough to threaten even the biggest testicles, and judging by the size of the rest of his body, they could put the best hung horse to shame. “Hurst.”

  “Hurst?” He cocks his head. “Is that a lie?”

  “Yes.” No use in sugarcoating it. “And that was a sliver of truth.”

  “I see what you did there.” His eyes steady over mine as if he’s wondering what in the hell he’s gotten himself into, and he should. He should be casing the exit. I’m far more dangerous than the fire roaring at the other end of the room. A person like me with a dead heart and no soul could give it all up and take everyone around them down in a blaze of glory without giving it too much thought.

  “Listen”—I dart my gaze around the tiny living room, looking for an out myself—“you don’t need to babysit me. Trust me, I’m an expert when it comes to crawling into bed.” Earlier today I was simply trying to get promoted to the pros. “If you want, I can be gone before you ever get up.” I start to rise, and he pulls me gently back to the sofa, landing my thigh just a hair from his. His fingers warm the inside of my wrist, and a heated sensation trickles straight up to my neck like a thousand shooting stars.

  “Don’t go.” His lids grow heavy. “It’s supposed to storm through the weekend. You’re welcome to stick around. I promise I’m not in this for anything physical.” He swallows hard, raking over my features like maybe he is. And I sure hope so. “Stay, Emmy. I want you to.”

  I scoot in close until I’m cradled in the crook of his arm, and something in me settles.

  “Do you mind?” I pull his arm around my shoulder until I can feel his steely muscles conforming to my body. Every inch of me exhales as if I’ve been waiting for this moment all night, and I have. “I can’t help it. I’m addicted to human touch the way junkies are addicted to heroin. You did kiss me earlier, so, technically, this is a slight regression in the physical arena.” I press into his rock hard chest. “You’re warm, and you smell nice, like a tree.” It’s true. Somewhere some cologne company managed to bottle an evergreen, and Gavin Jackson was lucky enough to stumble upon it.

  His chest bucks with a silent laugh.

  “I don’t mind.” He scoots in until there isn’t a gap between us. My hormones light up a thousand times brighter than that Christmas tree tonight. “And thank you. The shower probably helped, but I spend most of my days smelling like a walking tribute to the forest.” He nods toward the fireplace. “I hack wood all day.”

  The T-shirt he was wearing earlier comes to mind. “Jackson’s lumber, we hack it and stack it?” My mouth falls opens. “I get it.”

  “I knew you were smart.” He gives me a squeeze as if we’re a couple. “Now that you know all about me, tell me something about yourself. Where are you from?”

  He’s probing, running his proverbial fingers over my heart, feeling me out to see where all the sharp edges come from. Little does he know, he’s skating on sheet glass, and, if I let him continue on with his game, we’ll both be sliced to ribbons.

  “Down the mountain.” An affluent area of Hayworth to be exact. The north end is sealed off with horse ranches as wide as the sky. My parents built our home from the ground up while I was still safe in my mother’s belly. And as a thank you for nine months of incubation, I sliced my way out of her body and left her to hemorrhage to death on a cold, steel bed.

  “Who are you working for and why?” He pulls me back into the room with the hint of a smile.

  “It’s such a man’s world, isn’t it?” I click my tongue. “Who am I working for? As if a woman isn’t enterprising enough to make arrangements to sell her own body.” Reeva and her mob-controlled brothel ping through my mind. “You’re right, though. It’s true. I’m not that enterprising. But since I hopped on that women’s suffrage bandwagon a few minutes ago, I thought why not hitch another ride. I’m not as industrious as I’d like you to believe. I have a boss. And if I told you who she is, I’d have to kill you.” True story.

  His brows hike up an inch, amused. “I’d dodge a bullet for you. Besides, I like your Feminine Mystique.”

  “Wow, Betty Friedan would be proud.” I marvel at him a moment. Gavin, the woodcutter, is just full of cerebral surprises tonight. “And”—I twirl my finger through his thick, caramel hair, soft and slippery—“I would be the one with the gun, so, technically, you’d have to dodge a bullet from me.”

  Gavin leans in until my shoulder lies over his chest, and my mouth opens ready for another kiss in the event he decides to renege on his no touch policy.

  “You’re also a self-proclaimed liar,” he whispers warm over my cheek. “Besides, I’m pretty sure the bullet would come from some beefed-up dude named Lefty not a sweet little flower like you.”

  A full-bellied laugh escapes me as I toss my head back into the granite of his arm.

  “You’re joking right?” I blink away the tears that came to the party. I haven’t laughed that hard since, well, the last time I hung out with Eva, my sister from another mister, her words not mine, but I like the concept.

  He gives my arm a gentle squeeze. “I thought I’d fuel the feminist fire.” He winks. “Are you a good shot?”

  “I’ll let you find out, but I suggest you run in a zigzag pattern.”

  It’s his turn to laugh, but it’s short-lived as his demeanor darkens.

  “Emmy”—he expires my name as if it were his dying breath—“what the heck are you doing in this line of work?” That pained look crosses his face again, makes me want to drop to my knees and beg his forgiveness. “I know we just met.” He squeezes his eyes shut a moment. “But please, let me help you.”

  My mouth falls open, and, for the first time, my sharpened tongue, the sarcasm I’m fluent in, eludes me. A bout of calm and repression fills me, and I wonder if this is how the other half lives, without all the acidic comments streaming from their lips, without an entire arsenal of stabbing comebacks ready to plunge into the nearest target. I’d rather secure my feet to the floor with a nail gun than live without my bitter edge.

  “Help me?” I stutter. “Why aren’t you repulsed by me?” Here I am at twenty, trading in my number two pencils for fishnets and garter belts—condoms in every color, enough to line my mother’s vintage Louis Vuitton bag with. I’m sure she’s beaming with pride from up above.

  “Because I’m not that different than you.”

  I glance up and catch the tears glittering in his eyes all for me.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Would I kiss you like that tonight if I did?”

  “Warren Senior has a wife, and I bet he planned on doing a little more than kissing me tonight.”

  Eva says half the guys she’s with don’t bother to take off their wedding rings. She should know. She’s the one who introduced me to this lifestyle.

  He winces. “Not a good visual. I don’t have a girlfriend or a wife for that matter.”

  “Why not? It’s pretty clear the girls love you. Everyone with working ovaries was bending toward you tonight. You were the sun, and every one of them was craving a little vitamin G. I bet girls like Brylee throw themselves at you all the time.” Brylee specifically, but I leave her out of it for now.

  “They do.” He jostles me with his arm. “And I’m usually very good at catching them.”

  “Knew it. You’re a player.” I pull back with a tiny spark of elation.

  “A reformed player. I’m not throwing myself out there like yesterday’s trash anymore. I’m not looking to sleep with just anyone.”

  “Why not? Was chlamydia the buzz kill? You can tell me. I hear it all the time.”

  His eyes avert. “No, I don’t have the clap. I almost knocked the last girl up. Turns out it was a false alarm.” His brow rises on one side, and I melt a little.

  “You should
definitely procreate.” I trace the bridge of his nose with my finger. “A god like you should proliferate entire nations. Manifest testicular destiny. 54º 40’ or fight.”

  “I like you more now that you’ve dragged the Oregon Trail into this.” His smile broadens. “Sounds like someone was paying attention in US history.”

  “Sounds like you were, too.” I swallow hard. Gavin is quickly getting under my literary skin. He’s seeping into my bloodstream, snaking through my veins trying to get a hold of my heart. Little does he know I sold it to Josh in exchange for something I mistook as affection. “How many girls do you think you’ve slept with?” I’m not sure what prompted the question, but I’m curious nevertheless. I’d bet Gavin could garner a harem simply by walking through a nightclub, a sorority—a convent for that matter.

  “Lost count. Double digits but not triple.” He holds up a finger. “And you?”

  “Zero.” I pinch a smile. “I haven’t slept with any girls. God’s honest truth, right there.”

  “Very funny.” His eyes magnetize over mine like a seal, and the heat rises around us ten times hotter than the fire. “How about boys? I bet you have to fight them off with a stick, but only because you’re beautiful.”

  An inferno washes over me. It’s as if Gavin placed a magnifying glass over me, and his words were the white-hot sun.

  “I’m not fighting anyone off with a stick, Gavin.” I can feel my face doing its best impression of the scarlet letter. “I’m a virgin.” I give a coy smile, trying to hijack this conversation from the unholy numerology my vagina has unwittingly found itself wrapped up in. “There I go lying again.” My eyes lock onto his, and we find ourselves in a standoff for a solid minute. “Okay, I’ll tell you a number, but you have to promise not to laugh.”

  “No laughing.” He pulls back an inch to get a better look as if my face might tell him a different story.

  “Two.”

  “Two?” Gavin tilts his head as if waiting for the rest of the numbers to materialize.

  “Two thousand.” Two thousand years ago an innocent man was hung for my sins—beaten and bruised all for me, and every day since my father died, I’ve added another blow. I sag a moment. My father raised a good girl. We went to church and prayed at night as if our lives depended on it, and then he died and it felt as if God and Jesus, the entire church were swallowed into a black hole along with him. I take a breath. “Okay, maybe a dozen. I’ve slept my way through the last few years—mostly boys at parties. Once I met a man at the beach. He was high, and I was hurting. It was a match made in beach bathroom heaven. Both my feet and heart were soaked in urine. I can still smell the stench.” My body goes rigid. “Then I slowed down. There was a lab professor in macro last fall. He was my last. And, I can’t mention my last without acknowledging my first, after all, he got the party rolling.” God, it’s going to happen. I’m going to vomit it out into this sweet, homey cabin and leave a big indelible stain over the night. “It was my stepbrother.”

  Gavin’s eyes widen. His jaw tightens as if he’s going to find the son of a bitch and feed him to the fire. I like his bravado—his over achieving testosterone that demands the world know he’s a man. Someone like Gavin would be a treasure to have on your side in a fight. Sometimes it feels as if I’m fighting against the world—my frail frame shadowboxing the wind—futile as anything, and, yet, just as ironic as the meaning of life.

  “He slipped into my bed.” I hike my shoulders to my neck and keep them there. “He’s older by two years. I was fifteen and in desperate need of attention. He gave me all of that and, unfortunately, more.” I close my eyes, and I’m right back at Winter Haven in my Laura Ashley bedroom, those cloying, heavily patterned walls. The scent of Josh’s spiced cologne starts to choke me out, and I gasp. I give several hard blinks, overdosing on my new reality, taking in the heavily carved bear in the corner, no bigger than a footstool. The fireplace gives a few loud pops as if celebrating this new world as I sink deeper into Gavin’s arms.

  “It’s okay.” He pulls me in close and plants a sweet kiss over the top of my head. “We don’t need to go there. You’re safe, Emmy. I promise.”

  His words reverberate through me. They etch themselves over my bones like a covenant written in blood.

  I’m safe—right here in Gavin Jackson’s arms.

  If I close my eyes I can trick myself into believing it’s seven years ago, and I’m safe in my father’s arms, too.

  Gavin

  The sizzle of bacon crackles through my ears as I struggle to keep my eyes open and not burn the shit out of breakfast.

  Emmy and I never made it to bed—our respective separate beds. I give a wry smile. Can’t remember the last time I had a beautiful girl over and we didn’t wake up naked, ready for a different kind of breakfast. But we’re not naked, and breakfast is brought to us by free-range chickens and a cousin of Zuckerman’s famous pig. I give a bleak smile. Emmy is smart and funny and obviously well educated. I can’t figure out why she’d put herself in harm’s way like this. She mentioned the pervert who raped her—the stepbrother. So maybe she didn’t call it rape, but that’s what it sounded like coming from her lips. Then the sea of guys she tossed herself into the wind for. Emmy is hurting, and she’s punishing her body to cover up the pain. But it was what she said about her macro professor that caught me off guard. She mentioned she slept with him last semester—that he was the last one. Maybe playing dress up for sixty-year-olds is a new gig? I don’t want to plow in too deep with my thoughts on the subject. I just thank God my shower was acting up and I needed to make the trek to the boathouse.

  A soft sigh comes from the sofa before Emmy rises to her feet. She spins a moment with her hair wild and hot as hell. It hurts a little that I didn’t get to mess it up with my hands the way I wanted last night. My balls still haven’t forgiven me for that I’m-not-touching-you routine I threw it out there in a bout of spontaneous chivalry.

  “Morning sunshine.” I give a quick wave with the spatula.

  She stumbles over with her mascara smudged, looking sexier than anything I’ve ever seen, and I fight the urge to cover her mouth with mine.

  “Looking good.” She leans in and moans into the bacon.

  “I was hoping you meant me.”

  Her eyes shoot up to mine.

  “I did.” She spins and makes her way toward the bathroom.

  She did. I give a sheepish grin to my sweats and old ratty Jackson Lumber T-shirt that should be soaked in oil and thrown in a tower of lumber along with a match. I’ve never been so worked up over a girl so fast. My dad once said he fell hard for my mother—love at first sight. They were engaged in a month. Maybe it runs in my blood.

  Emmy strides down the hall with her dress hiked a little higher than it should be, showing off her toned, lean legs. I’ve always been a leg man. She turns and leans in with her cleavage quivering for attention, soft and light, and, holy hell, I’ve always been a tit man, too.

  “Don’t burn anything while I’m gone.” She disappears, and the smoke alarm goes off on cue.

  By the time she comes back, I’ve plated us breakfast—dry scrambled eggs and slightly charred bacon.

  “Sorry.” I hand her a cup of coffee to go along with it. “Looks like we’ll be playing fast and loose with the carcinogens this morning.”

  She takes a careful sip and groans. “Mmm, you’re good.”

  “So they say.” I regret the words as soon as they leave my mouth.

  “Prove it.” She gives a cockeyed grin that makes me want her twice as bad, but I rein it in.

  “No.”

  “How about I try to make you?” She swoops in and doesn’t stop until her arms are wrapped around my neck. Her lips find mine, and she delivers a minty fresh kiss, soft as rain.

  I don’t move an inch in the event she’s up for delivering another.

  “That’s for being you.” She takes a seat at the table, and I fall in next to her.

  “I’m just entertai
ning company.” I run my tongue over my lips, licking up her sweetness.

  “You’re entertaining a whore, Gavin.” The grin fades from her face.

  “You said you’ve slept with maybe a dozen. I’ve slept with an entire army of women. I think we’ve already established I’m the only whore around here. Man-whore.” I add that last bit as if my balls demanded it.

  “And how do you know I wasn’t lying? Maybe it was legions.” She takes a bite of her bacon and moans. My balls ache just looking at the way her eyes roll to the back of her head, the way her throat flexes along with that vibrating tone of approval.

  “I don’t think it was legions, Emmy.”

  “I am a liar.”

  “A bad one.” My eyes roam up and down her body. “I’d bet every dollar I own that you’re not the real deal—that the biggest lie of them all is what you profess to do for a living.” And, right now, I’ve got about all of twenty bucks to prove her wrong.

  Her entire face lifts an inch because, evidently, I’m right.

  “I like you, Gavin.” She continues to wolf down her meal like she’s late for a flight.

  I want to tell her I like her right back, but everything in me would much rather show her.

  She takes a few careful sips of coffee and lets out another moan.

  “Too sweet?” My mouth wants to seal itself over hers to confirm the theory. I made the coffee just the way I like it—creamer and just a hit of java.

  “Nope.” She rises from her seat and lands in my lap. “The only thing that’s too sweet around here is you.” She wraps her arms around my neck again as if that’s their new home.

  Her grip tightens, and I gently try to pry her arms off before a hard situation presents itself in my boxers.

  “No, please. I want to.” She sinks into me with her lids hooded low. “I haven’t had anyone touch me—hold me like this, in so long. I like it. A part of me thinks I need it. I’ve needed it for as far back as when my dad died. Sometimes a person just needs the touch of another human being.”