Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [29]
“I know,” Jason said. “It was really stupid, and petty.”
“Why did you do it?”
He loosened his tie and flung himself onto his back on the bed hard enough for me to bounce a little where I was sitting. “I don’t know.”
“Liar,” I said.
He turned his head to look at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you have some kind of history with these people.”
“They moved away when he became governor. I didn’t know they’d come back here for the wedding. It must be a local girl. God, I pity her.”
“Yeah, I saw how the women on staff were looking at you, like as soon as I turn my back they’ll pounce.”
“Keith looks like me, and I clean up well, but he’s rich, and his dad’s rich. There always seem to be women who want to be close to rich men.”
“And now his dad is governor and about to make a run for president. I think that’s adding to the Summerland appeal,” I said.
Jason nodded, then sat up. He leaned his elbows on his knees and held his head. “I should not have posed for the cameras like that. That was childish, but the twins were the bane of my childhood. We were always getting mistaken for each other, by teachers, girls, guys, strangers. Keith would deliberately do shit and get me blamed. He did the same thing to his brother, too, so I wasn’t so special there.”
“Kelsey, right, the brother?”
“Yeah.”
“Is the brother any nicer?”
“Kelsey was in some of the plays with me. He was quieter, a little shy. As awkward with the girls as Keith was smooth.”
“Sounds like you like Kelsey.”
“I would have, if he hadn’t been a Summerland and Keith’s brother. You couldn’t be friends with Kelsey unless Keith allowed it, and he hated me.”
“Why?”
“I got a few girls who had turned him down. I mean they turned him down, then slept with me, Anita. Think about that.”
I did. “They turned him down not because he wasn’t cute, but because he personally was an asshole.”
“Yeah, and all his daddy’s money couldn’t buy him the girls who knew what he really was.”
Jason got up and went to the mirror, started straightening his tie. “I went to college in St. Louis, and he stayed near the state capital. But I heard rumors that he had a couple of date-rape charges. Dropped, never saw court, but I’d believe date rape for Keith. He never took no very well.”
“And his father is making a run to be president on a family conservative ticket,” I said.
“That’s probably why they’re in such a rush to get him married off.”
“Marriage doesn’t cure you of being a bastard,” I said.
He grinned at me. “Nothing cures you of being a bastard.” He came to me and held his hand out. I took it and let him get me on my feet. “Let’s go to the hospital.”
“I thought we might eat first.”
He shook his head. “If we start taking off more clothes for comfort I’m going to want sex, and as you pointed out we’ll get all messy. I desperately don’t want to go to see him. So that means go now, get it over with.”
“I thought I was the jerk-the-bandage-off type, not you.”
“Maybe years of watching you be brave is rubbing off on me.”
I was sort of embarrassed. “I’m not that brave. I nearly threw up on the plane.”
“Before I knew you, I thought brave was not being afraid. You’ve taught me that bravery is being terrified and doing it anyway.” He drew me closer into his arms, and because of the nearly identical height it had that intimacy that Micah could do. When you aren’t looking up, really, but at a man.
I studied his face, tried to see the fear he was talking about. “I see more anger in you than fear, Jason.”
“You’re going to ignore the compliment and go straight to the business, aren’t you?”
I shrugged, a little awkwardly, with my arms around his waist and his around me.
He closed the almost invisible distance we’d been keeping between our bodies, so we touched from chest to groin and thigh. The