Beyond Breathless

Jeff slapped him on the back again, and Andrew held onto the bar to keep from toppling. His head was starting to spin, the hangover already starting, and who knew what sort of trouble his brother could get them into.

“We should leave,” Andrew said. “I’ll have to break out the credit cards if we stay much longer.”

“You, using a credit card? It’s one of the Four Signs of the Apocalypse. We definitely should leave.”

“Are you calling me cheap?”

“Did you send flowers to the mystery woman? Or perfume or lingerie?”

“She’s not the type.”

Actually, Jamie McNamara defied a type. Yeah, she was hard as nails, but when she got the “oh, shit” call, he’d watched her in action. Pushy, but not obnoxious. Resolved even after her butt had been wirelessly kicked from Connecticut to California and back. Still, she got over it. She had picked herself up, brushed herself off, and sashayed away, never missing a step. Hell, Andrew had employees that couldn’t do half that. No, she was one in a billion, and the sex had been one in a billion, too.

Maybe Jeff was on to something here.

Jeff looked at his brother through the empty shot glass. “Not the type? All women are the type.”

“Not this one.”

“You should at least send her something. An abacus.”

Andrew frowned.

“That’s a joke,” his brother said.

“What would you send her?” Andrew asked, because the more he thought about it, the more he realized his brother was right.

“Lingerie. Classy, but sexy. Not slutty. Women like it when you don’t think like a man. Classy is about as far as you can go and still be labeled sensitive.”

“No lingerie. Bad idea.”

“Chocolate. Or a spa treatment.”

A spa treatment? Andrew remembered the way Jamie kept rubbing her neck. A massage wouldn’t be a bad idea. His hands flexed, thinking of the bare, ivory shoulders, knotted with tension. He’d start with the neck, then work his way down…

“A professional,” Jeff interrupted.

Andrew locked his hands away. “I knew that.” If he gave her a gift, simply as a gesture to indicate his gratitude for…no, strike that. Gratitude was all wrong. “Thinking of you,” he murmured. “I need something that says ‘thinking of you.’”

Jeff shook his head. “Mistake, Andrew. I know the female mind. It’s a dangerous bear trap, jaws open wide, one wrong move and—BAM!” Jeff clapped his hands together. “You’re history, never to experience sex in a Hummer again.”

“Can we move past that?”

“You were the one bragging about it.”

“I wasn’t bragging.”

“You’re still the one who brought it up.”

“Only to prove my point.”

“You still brought it up.”

Andrew rubbed his eyes. “We can’t be related. It’s impossible.”

“Give me a break. I’m tons better than Mercedes.”

Andrew latched onto the subject of their sister with relief. “Have you talked to her recently? She never returned my call from Tuesday.”

“She’s probably still pissed because you didn’t cosign for that apartment.”

“She’s twenty-five, she should be able to manage her own things. Anyway, the place was a dump, way overpriced, and there’s no grocery within twenty blocks.”

“You checked it out?”

“Of course.”

“Can’t cut the cord, can you?”

Andrew got up. “Can we leave?”

“What are you going to give the Hummer Honey? Tell me and then we leave,” answered Jeff, sticking to his bar stool like glue.

“Don’t call her that.”

“If I had a real name…”

“Hell will freeze first.”

“Okay, but you need to send her something. That coupling was a monumental achievement in your life, a shining light in a love life that was previously best described as ‘blah.’”

“Ass.”

“Send her something.”

Andrew slapped a fifty on the counter. “Let’s go before I bankrupt myself. Give the victim, uh, the groom, my regards.”

“Who?” asked Jeff, a confused, slightly drunk grin on his face.

“Peter? Remember?”

Jeff nodded. “Oh, yeah.” He lifted a hand and waved in the general direction of everyone.

There was something rotten in this joint, and it wasn’t the gin. “There never was a bachelor party, was there?”

“I lied.” Jeff threw an arm around his older brother. “Just practicing a little quality family time.”

“Freeloading. That’s what you’re doing. At two hundred bucks an hour.”