Page 21 of Flirting With Disaster

He pulled the jacket from her hands. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know if he meant for the jacket or for not being what she wanted him to be.

“Beck!”

The Count turned as a tall blonde beauty threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Beck. I’ve missed you so much and have such great news for you…for us!” She pulled back and eyed Jude. “Who is this? You know our deal, Beck. Don’t be breaking it.”

“Don’t worry about our deal, Ava. I never break my promises.”

Whatever “deal” the beautiful woman in the tight-fitting, red sequined dress was referring to, Mr. Beck’s promise to keep it, corroborated Jude’s knowledge that he was only interested in loveless interludes to soothe his damaged soul.

She could relate. Having a child with someone she could easily fall for with no hope of reciprocation, she’d be sentencing herself to a life of heartache every time she looked at her child.

“I’m no one. Excuse me, please.” Jude wriggled out of Beck’s arms, leaving him holding her ruined jacket, and hurried toward the stairs.

The job of mating with simple, disenchanting Mr. Fantome would have to wait for another day.

Ten

“If the facts don’t fit the theory,

change the facts.”

Albert Einstein

The damp, dank darkness of Beck’s room suited his mood. A mood that had plagued him for the past two days, ever since he’d argued with Jude about love and then left Ava standing in the lobby with her unanswered questions.

He didn’t believe in love. But that wasn’t what this was.

Jude wanted sex. She’d stated as much. What was all this crap about love?

Women. Women and castle curses.

Jesus H. Christ. Sure, she was amazing, but Beck didn’t deserve amazing. Not after killing her parents, plaguing everyone around him with angst and suffering.

He’d tried to redeem himself by setting up her secret trust account. Angel Wings was another Hail Mary in his search for redemption. But his soul still choked on his guilt.

He lifted his soda to his lips and stared at the Jack Daniels sitting across the room next to his Beretta 9mm. The warm wicked liquid called to him, beckoned him to numb the need he’d come to expect whenever he thought of missing out on love.

A life of happiness.

Jude.

She was light to his dark, heaven to his hell. He needed her to be his salvation, but he refused to bring her down with him if he fell off the wagon and became the heartless man he used to be. He refused to do that to Jude.

They hadn’t touched each other since she’d been in his room, but he could think of nothing else. It was ludicrous, eerie. The past two nights, they’d been drawn together by fate and circumstances he didn’t understand. A chance meeting on the patio at two in the morning. A mutual urge for an indoor swim at three. It seemed forces beyond their control were pushing them together.

He’d shown her how to use a Dremel to carve gourds into lanterns, how to use curly willow to weave chair seats and how to make the perfect cheesecake—a recipe his mother had taught him before she’d given up on him. They’d played hide and seek in the darkness and Jude had found him every time, and he’d taught her how to swim in the shadows of night in the indoor pool.

They’d become friends over toasted marshmallows, but he wanted more. And more meant he would have to face his demons, take a huge risk and trust himself. Tell her the truth about his role in her parents’ deaths. About his disease.

Every day he lived to deflect the memories and the self-loathing. Pushing away everything he might destroy by working himself into an exhausted stupor.

Jude should be one of those things he pushed away.

If he let his failures, his offenses invade his soul, alcohol was his only balm. A destructive one. In the past, he’d immersed himself in the world of acting, of make-believe. A place where he could spend most of his waking hours being someone else, avoiding temptation, the guilt and shame. But acting had been a diversion to replace the alcohol, a busy life to keep him from the emotional ties he would inevitably set on fire if he were to sink into oblivion again.

Jude would only be here a few more days. And, on Saturday night at the Monster Ball—thanks to his agent—he would be unmasked. Camera crews would be there to film a public interview for the new role he was about to accept, and Jude would see him for who he really was.

A liar and the epitome of all she despised—fame, inconsistency and an indifference to love. All things that had taken her parents and her ex-fiancé away from her.

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