No Time Like Mardi Gras Page 8

  This whole conversation bordered on insane, and it wasn’t helping his blood pressure any, either. “Unless there’s something else,” he interrupted, “I’m going to get back to work.”

  “Right. Thanks. Bye, Colin.” With a half smile that looked strained at best, she left.

  Well, so much for Callie’s fairy-tale dreams. After all that buildup, this result was both anticlimactic and frustrating. What was crazy was that he almost felt disappointed it had turned out like this.

  Hell, he was just lucky it wasn’t worse somehow.

  * * *

  Jamie wanted to kick herself. She’d acted like a cold bitch—a persona she’d perfected over the last few months—but she felt terrible about it. Both because she could tell she’d hurt Colin’s feelings the other night—which only partly excused his piss-poor attitude—and because she got the weird feeling she was walking away from something she shouldn’t.

  Something important. Which made no sense at all.

  She hadn’t been prepared for the very visceral reaction she’d had to seeing him again. She’d played him down in her head as much as she could, convincing herself she’d just been caught up in the party atmosphere and fueled by cheap beer.

  And it had been working—until about fifteen minutes ago, when he’d turned around looking even yummier than she remembered and causing her to wobble dangerously on her shoes. She’d been this close to crawling across his desk.

  Thank God she hadn’t, because none of that charm she remembered had been on display today. In fact, Colin had a bit of a dickish streak she hadn’t seen before.

  So everything seemed to be stacking up to tell her this wasn’t a good idea. Even if she wanted to ignore the messages the universe had sent by separating them that evening, now they were notorious.

  She just wanted to be a private citizen again, because notoriety sucked. She’d had a taste of it as Joey’s fiancée—once he’d gone pro in such a big way, she’d been on his arm at some pretty major, and heavily photographed, events. That had led to a small interest by a few paparazzi and blogs, but only on slow news days. But then the scandal had broken. The investigation, the allegations, the whole dirty mess had played out far too publicly, and she’d been dragged straight into the middle of the mess.

  Then the same press that’d posted what she was wearing and where she was lunching had turned on her. First mocking her for naïveté when she defended Joey, then vilifying her when she turned against him.

  She wasn’t willingly going to insert herself into any kind of media anything. She just needed to work on her acting skills and learn how to laugh off the Cinderella question—if it came up again—and hopefully the news that Ex-Man’s Cinderella was happily up in Utah now might slow some of that down.

  Ugh. Who’d want to be Cinderella anyway? She hated all those stupid fairy tales—simpering little princesses who just waited around for a prince to come solve all their problems for them.

  It was insulting, really.

  She’d spent too much of her life acting like one of those princesses, letting things happen to her and around her and never taking control.

  Look where that had landed her.

  She’d had quite enough of Cinderella, thanks very much. She didn’t need Colin to take care of this.

  She’d come to New Orleans to take control of her own life, and by God, that was exactly what she was going to do.

  Starting right now.

  FIVE

  See, I don’t want that fairy tale. I don’t want a Prince Charming to make all my dreams come true. I want to make my dreams come true. No one should try to make their happily ever after dependent upon the actions of someone else. Nothing against Prince Charming, of course.

  Eric actually laughed out loud at the last line. “Someone certainly stirred her up with a big ol’ stick.”

  The extra-special “Cinderella Speaks” edition of The Ex Factor was garnering almost as much attention as the original article. Only this time, Jamie’s rant against passive princesses had been picked up by every girl power blogger on the internet and hailed as the newest feminist manifesto.

  Callie could have at least warned him first. “This has gotten way out of hand,” he grumbled.

  “You’re not taking this personally, are you?”

  Colin pulled a beer out of the cooler and went back to check the grill. The small staff of Rainstorm Games, the various other contractors who’d worked on Zhorg and a few friends were milling around in small groups across Eric’s yard and porch as they celebrated the upcoming launch. “Being made to look like a jackass for the amusement of the entire city? Yeah, a little.”

  “First off, except for a few friends, no one even knows it’s you. So calm down.”

  “I know. And that’s enough.”

  “And you care why, exactly?”

  Colin didn’t have a good answer for that question.

  Eric shrugged as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. “Let Callie and Jamie have their little moment. What difference does it really make?”

  Eric was right. Jamie obviously had issues—deep, personal, crazy issues—none of which really had anything to do with him. The last thing he needed in his life was another loose cannon to run damage control around.

  “By the way,” Eric added, “I should probably tell you she’s here.”

  “Who?”

  “Jamie.”

  “What?”

  Eric shrugged apologetically. “Elise invited Callie, and Callie asked if she could bring a friend. Turns out that friend is Jamie. They got here about twenty minutes ago.”

  Sweet Jesus. When had Callie and Jamie bonded? He looked around, easily spotting Callie’s blond hair. Jamie was next to her, all smiles as Callie introduced her to people. In another chameleon-like change, this Jamie was neither the girl next door of Fat Tuesday nor the chic sophisticate who’d stared him down in his office last week. Instead, she looked earthy and natural with her hair piled loosely atop her head, exposing the line of her neck and shoulders. A colorful sundress emphasized her breasts before flowing to her calves.

  It seemed this look did it for him, too, as the heat from the grill had nothing on the heat rising off him.

  What was it about her? Sure, physically she checked all his boxes, but he wasn’t some horny teenager who couldn’t control himself around a pretty woman. And if he’d developed some kind of new yen for unavailable crazy women, he needed to know now so he could find a good therapist.

  Whatever it was, he needed to get it under control, because Callie was headed toward him with Jamie in tow, ready to wreak more havoc on his life.

  She introduced Jamie first to Eric, who managed to keep a straight face. Just.

  “Congratulations on your launch, and thank you for letting me crash your party.” Jamie’s smile was both genuine and charming and it worked on Eric perfectly.

  “No, thank you for coming,” Eric gushed, making Colin want to hit him hard. “We don’t get nearly enough pretty women around here. I warn you, though, this crowd could turn very geeky at any moment. You might regret coming.”

  Jamie smiled. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

  Callie laughed. “This crowd can’t turn geeky. It’s geek central already. And you already know our head geek, Colin.”

  Jamie’s smile dimmed a little, becoming slightly self-conscious. “Hi.”

  Callie looped her arm through Eric’s. “Why don’t you show me where the beer is?”

  It was a transparent ploy, as Callie had been to dozens of parties at Eric’s and knew damn well exactly where the coolers were. Eric, though, grabbed the excuse and led her away before Colin had a chance to call them on it.

  So that left him alone with Jamie. “I can’t say I expected to see you here.”

 
“I know. But I don’t know many people yet, so I jumped at the chance to actually get out and meet some. I’m going a little stir crazy.”

  “Eric wasn’t kidding though. Geek central.” He was very proud of himself. Even as his body was screaming at him to touch her, he was able to keep himself calm and even detached-sounding. She couldn’t make him crazy if he didn’t let her.

  “Everyone has something they go geek for. I’m not one to judge on what that thing is.” Her mouth twisted. “As long as it’s not sports, that is.”

  “I can safely say that sports aren’t real popular with this crowd.”

  “I’m very happy to hear it. And I’d like to apologize,” she said in the same breath.

  He had to shift focus quickly. “For what?”

  “Being such a bitch the other day.”

  He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Well, it got your point across.”

  “I know, but I’m not normally like that. My only excuse is that I don’t like to feel like my life is out of my control. The chaos scares the crap out of me and it seems I don’t handle that well.”

  Few people did. Hell, he’d been ruled by that fear for years, always trying to stay ahead of whatever disaster might be coming down the pike next as his mom swung from extreme to extreme, dragging him and Elise along for the ride.

  Jamie squared her shoulders. “So I’m not going to wait around anymore for someone else to come fix my problems.”

  He could relate. He’d learned to cope—eventually—mainly by getting past that fear and taking control of what he could. Jamie had gotten there a little quicker than most. “You made that clear in your rebuttal on the blog.”

  “No one seemed to be interested in the whole she’s-in-Utah thing, so I decided to be proactive. So I wrote it up and emailed Callie through the site. Hopefully that will put an end to the Cinderella thing and you, me and The Ex Factor can go back to business as usual.”

  “You told him already?” Callie reappeared with beers and handed one to Jamie. “Excellent.”

  Her cheerfulness put him on guard. “Told me what?”

  “That you’re off the hook. I took your advice and I found a guest blogger.” The smile grew bigger, and slightly mocking, as well. “Jamie’s going to cover for me—since you wouldn’t—and depending on how that goes, may become a regular.” She lifted an eyebrow in his direction. “Jamie already knows your secret identity, so no worries there. Is that going to be a problem?”

  He looked at Jamie, who seemed to have developed a great interest in the label of her beer, then back to Callie. Damn it. “Of course not.”

  “Good.” She held out a plate. “Can I have a burger?”

  He cursed. He’d been distracted by Jamie’s arrival, and now the burgers were slightly overdone. Talk about needing to get things back under control. He had no idea why Jamie had the ability to distract him like this, but his brain seemed to check out whenever she was around.

  The burned burgers were simply another indication that it would be better for his mental health—not to mention his career and cooking skills—to pretend he’d never met the woman.

  She must have had similar feelings, as Jamie spent most of the evening at a distance. But he was painfully aware of her presence nonetheless, almost as if he was catching whiffs of her pheromones, and the resulting level of distraction had people assuming he’d had too much to drink and threatening to confiscate his car keys.

  All because of one unavailable crazy woman.

  Maybe he should start looking for that therapist.

  * * *

  A cookout, some beers, people hanging out and having a good time...Jamie couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent such a normal evening.

  Well, normal might not be quite the right word. She’d been warned of potential geekiness, and it hadn’t been a false alarm. These were people who lived and breathed technology, and she spent a good portion of the evening in conversations that she didn’t quite understand—and that sometimes didn’t even sound like English—but she’d never been ridiculed for her lack of knowledge, and more than once people had patiently tried to explain things to her. They also had a fascination with sections of pop culture totally outside of her expertise or experience, but beyond being offered DVD sets of TV shows she simply “had to watch,” she’d come through unscathed.

  She’d spent a large part of her life around jocks and was pleasantly surprised to find that for all of the jocks-versus-geeks jokes, the situations weren’t that much different—especially for those who weren’t as excited or knowledgeable about the topic. Both crowds spoke in a mixture of acronyms and numbers and often got very excited about the minute details of the oddest things.

  And since none of these people followed sports, she didn’t have to worry about them having an opinion on Joey and his current troubles. It never even came up. A night without any discussion of baseball was such a refreshing change, she didn’t care that she hadn’t understood much of the rest of the conversation.

  While this wasn’t quite what she’d expected—or even begun to imagine—from her move to New Orleans, she wasn’t unhappy, either. She’d tripped at the start line, but all in all, had managed to recover okay. And she’d made a couple of new friends as well.

  Maybe she had been meant to meet Colin. Colin had led her to Callie—who was now talking about maybe paying her to blog regularly if things went well—and this group of people who’d welcomed her without missing a beat.

  But Colin...that was a problem.

  She stole a peek over to where Colin was talking with a small group. That cold, snippy Colin from the other day at his office was missing, and he was pure relaxed charm tonight. He had plenty of friends, and even Callie—his ex, for goodness’ sake—seemed to like him, so that attitude obviously wasn’t a large part of his personality.

  He was definitely a bit of a chimera. That brawn belied some serious brains—not only when it came to computers and games and how they all worked, but also the business side. In an instant he could flip, though, arguing about the physics of Doctor Who in one breath and the hotness of the current companion the next. He was someone who seemed comfortable in his own skin.

  She envied him that a little.

  However, she did rather wish she hadn’t had sex with Colin. No, that wasn’t quite right. The sex had been great, and she couldn’t regret that. It was more the fact that she’d had sex with him already. That fact made things a little awkward. Aside from the mental images that popped into her head at inopportune moments, she had some kind of residual energy from him that, even now, nearly two weeks later after the fact, still caused tingly shivers.

  And possibly because this was such an inappropriate place and time, she couldn’t not think about the details she’d been brutally suppressing—the way she’d just been overwhelmed by want, desperate with need, ending up with the kind of orgasm she’d heard rumors of but never experienced.

  Damn it. She felt another flush coming on.

  She excused herself from the conversation and went to the bathroom to splash water on her face and neck. The slight tint to her cheeks was easily attributed to the weather, as even in March, New Orleans was warm and muggy even after the sun went down. Summer might just kill her.

  As she left the bathroom, she found Colin in the narrow hall, leaning against the wall and typing something into his phone. He looked up as she came out.

  The awkwardness came back with a vengeance, and she wasn’t sure this time how to cover it. “Sorry. I didn’t realize there was a line.”

  His brow wrinkled in confusion, then cleared. “No, I wasn’t waiting. I needed a quiet spot to make a phone call and return some emails, and this was the only unoccupied place in the house.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He was obviously busy, so she should go on past. But she didn’t know when
she’d get another chance. She took a deep breath. “Are you all right with this?”

  “With what?”

  “Me being here with your friends. Me agreeing to guest blog for Callie. Stuff like that.”

  Colin shoved his phone back into his pocket and crossed his arms. “I think you overestimate my involvement with Callie’s blog, so our interactions with that will be minimal. As for you being here...” He shrugged. “It’s a party. Have fun.”

  “That doesn’t really answer my question.”

  “You’re the one who disappeared. Then when you reappeared, you made it clear that you didn’t want to have anything to do with me. If anyone’s going to have a problem, I’d think it would be you.”

  That was a little harsh, but true. “I know it sounds clichéd, but it’s really not personal. It’s not even anything you did—or didn’t—do.” She was feeling lower than dirt right now, so she dug deep for courage and forged ahead with honesty. “I don’t trust myself right now to make good decisions. Especially with men. So I’m being careful. Taking baby steps. Staying in the shallow end.”

  Colin’s eyes roamed down her body in a way that seemed more intimate than a touch. By the time they came back up to her heated face, her breath felt trapped in her chest. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  The words could have sounded flip or sneering or dismissive, but the husky edge to Colin’s voice made them sound like a caress.

  She swallowed hard.

  The hallway was dark, the only light coming from the kitchen at the far end. And it was quiet, with the voices outside seeming very far away.

  And this was not what she’d expected when she’d decided to open the conversation.

  Damn it, she knew what Colin had to be thinking, because she was thinking the same thing. And knowing that was somehow worse. Or better. It certainly made the thoughts brighter, clearer...

  Colin was still leaning against the wall, but only inches separated them now—which meant she’d been the one moving closer, even though she had no recollection of it. Or even an explanation for it. Without really meaning to, she placed a hand on his chest, and she could feel the heavy thump of his heart through the cotton of his shirt.